30 December 2007

The Ugly Side of Christmas


There is an ugly side to Christmas. I think you know what I mean. It's not all about bright lights and pretty paper. It's not all soft music and candlelight services. There are some ugly things that start to crop up right about now in the Christmas season. Like the way you feel when you look at the bathroom scales in the morning. Or the blurry way your eyes feel after hours spent with a new computer game or video game that you got for Christmas. Or the mounds of trash piled up for pick up. Or the funny snoring noise Uncle Leopold makes when he's sleeping in front of the Meineke CarCare Bowl game. Or the balance on your credit card bill when it comes in a few weeks. Oh, it can get ugly allright, even at Christmas.

It's sad because it's not supposed to be like this, is it? Family members are not supposed to be annoying during this special season of the year, but somehow they still are. Brothers and sisters are not suppposed to fight with one another in the season of peace, but they do, don't they? Nations are not supposed to be at war, swords are supposed to be beaten into plowshares, and families are not supposed to be separated from their loved ones because of military service, but they are and we are. Our bosses are supposed to be more understanding, salesclerks are supposed to be more cheerful, people who are sick are supposed to make miraculous recoveries in order to be home for Christmas, the stock market is supposed to rise, creditors are supposed to be more lenient, people with serious differences are supposed to bury the hatchet, cats and dogs are supposed to live together. That's what Christmas is supposed to be like, right?

But as we come out into the harsh light of day after the beauty of those evening services with candles and soft lights last Monday for Christmas Eve, we find that, even though the baby is in the manger now, the world is still an unsettled place. The housing market is still dead, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan goes on, and we were witness to the horrible events in Pakistan this week as Benazir Bhutto, a hope for some sort of democratic reforms, was assasinated. If we were expecting Dec. 25 to look a lot different from Dec. 24, we had some huge disappointments.

So we come to Church this morning. Surely, if there is some place to come to hear that the world is different, it would be here. There are 12 days in Christmas after all. While the rest of the world is trying to rumble back to normal and pretend that Christmas is only one day, surely the Church can make the magic last a little longer. Alex is bound to tell us something hopeful, even if it's in some strange story. We're certainly going to sing some Christmas carols. That's what you were thinking, wasn't it?

Then we had to go and spoil the mood by reading the Bible! Well, you know, the Psalm was allright. It's all about praising God, and that's good. Hebrews was a little strange, talking about God sending Jesus to suffer. Not exactly warm and cuddly stuff, but understandable given that that is what Jesus did. But did you hear that passage we read from Matthew? Who decided that we'd keep reading Matthew after Christmas Eve? Didn't the lectionary people know that while the first 12 verses of chapter 2 are good stuff, all about the wise men and their gifts, the next 10 chapter are definitely rated R. No one in their right mind would let children hear this, would they? A story about King Herod throwing a fit when the wise men didn’t do what he asked and ordering all the babies in Bethlehem murdered? Sword-bearing soldiers are definitely not in my nativity set at home!

I remember preaching from this text when this lectionary reading came up in 1995, just three days after Rachel was born. Christmas was strange enough that year, but to go through this miraculous birth and to be celebrating the ways God had come to visit us in our new child, and then to go and preach about the slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem was a good reminder that what is good and precious in the world is always at risk. There is always evil. There is always suffering and injustice and we are right to try to protect and defend those we love from it and rage against it when it comes into our families and our lives.

Christmas doesn’t change things so that we can never be hurt, but it does change the way we tell the story of evil. In the Christmas story, Jesus comes and evil does not just flee away forever vanquished. As Herod’s vicious act shows, evil remains and rages against the good, but the difference is that now, when we tell the story of how we and those we love and the whole world have been injured by evil and sin and death, we have a new ending to the story. Christmas shows us that while we were yet sinners, God showed love for us by sending Christ to live with us and die for us. Christmas shows us that God is not content to stand idly by while the creation God made is wounded and distorted by evil. Christmas shows us that God came to write a new ending to the story in which evil can never have the last word. It’s all a part of God’s story of redemption and liberation and salvation now. Even evil is part of God’s story and it can’t ultimately win.

Look at how Matthew tells the story. It’s really a story in three scenes and every one of the scenes ends with the fulfillment of a prophecy. Luke tells the story of Jesus’ birth from Mary’s persepective, but Matthew stays with Joseph. You might remember that Joseph was not quite as accepting of the news that Mary was going to have a child as Mary was. It took a dream and a visit from an angel to convince him to do the right thing, even though it didn’t look much like the right thing according to the standards of the time.

But he did take Mary to be his wife and they did have the child, and wise men did come to visit and as they were leaving they decided not to go back to tell King Herod where the new baby was born. They were warned by a dream. Dreams are very important in this story.

So that’s where we pick it up and verse 13 of chapter 2 tells us that an angel appeared in a dream to Joseph again. What the angel had to say to Joseph was pretty terrifying. The angel said, “Joseph, get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt and stay there until God calls you out because Herod is going to try and kill the child.”

Now, going to Egypt is no strange thing for God’s people to do. If Joseph thought about it he might have remembered the story of another dreaming Joseph who was forced to go to Egypt. Do you remember that story? Maybe it’s something you read in Sunday School a long time ago. Maybe you’ve been to see “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.” That’s the one I’m talking about. That Joseph became Pharoah’s dream interpreter and saved his family from danger in the land of Israel. That Joseph and his descendents came to be a huge nation which God eventually called out of slavery in Egypt to return to the promised land. It was that story that Matthew remembered because he ends the first scene of this story by saying that when Mary and Joseph and Jesus fled to Egypt they were fulfilling Hosea’s prophecy which said, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

You see how this all works together? Matthew reaches back and says, “You see? Do you see what God is doing here? God didn’t forget. God didn’t abandon Israel and God is still with the people, even though they are occupied by the Roman Empire and oppressed by a puppet king. (That would be Herod.) The future is all tied up in the promise God made in the past and which God has repeated in every generation to everyone who will listen. It’s all about Immanuel. God is with us. God was with us. Lo, I am with you to the end of the age! Scene One ends with the hopes of the people in exile in Egypt once again, but it’s not the end of the story.

Then there is the horrible scene. The one that you often don’t see in movies about the life of Christ. Herod, the puppet king, who was angry to hear that the magi were looking for a baby they called king, who was furious when he realized they weren’t coming back to tell him where this child was…Herod who is devious, impulsive, paranoid and prone to fits of rage, orders the wholesale killing of all the children two and under in Bethlehem and the surrounding area.

It’s an act of pure evil. One that makes you wonder: where were the angels for the children of Bethlehem? Where are the dreams that would tell them to flee to a safe place? It’s incomprenhensible. It’s tragic. It’s outrageous. It’s evil. But even this scene has a place in the story. Because we all know that incomprehensible, tragic, outrageous, evil acts take place in the real world. Acts like September 11 that cause us to ask: where were the angels for the people who died in the World Trade Center? Where were the angels for those who died in the tsunami? At Virginia Tech?

But even in the midst of tragedy, Matthew remembers a similar time in the day of the prophet Jeremiah when the nation wept over those sent into exile. A time when Rachel, the mother of the nation, was “crying for her children, and she did not want to be consoled, because they were no more.” For Matthew this was another such time and God embraced the suffering of the mothers of Bethlehem and found a way to connect the promise of the past with the hope to be found in Jesus. Scene two ends, not with Herod’s success, because even though he exercised all his brutal power, he failed…no, scene two ends with God’s word spoken over human history to give it new meaning.

Then in scene three, still in the echo of the words, “crying for children that are no more,” Herod is no more. Ding, dong, the witch is dead. And guess who gets a visit from an angel in a dream? Joseph down in Egypt is visited once more and the gets almost the same command he got in the last dream. “Joseph, get up, take the child and his mother, and go to Israel, because those who sought the child’s life have come to an end.”

The only hitch this time is that Joseph is a little bit wary about returning to the area where Herod’s son is ruling, so, after another dream, he goes to Nazareth, but even this fulfills a prophecy. Matthew tells us that the Messiah will be called a Nazarene and Jesus is that Messiah. Thus ends the third scene and once again, God has the last word.

I don’t have to tell you that the world is a mess. You can turn on the television and see that. I don’t have to tell you that your life is sometimes a mess. Sometimes more than others, but always more than we would like. I don’t have to tell you that there are still evil forces like Herod, that there are still grieving mothers as in Bethlehem, and that there are still refugees, like the Holy Family in Egypt. Even Christmas can’t hide the fact that we are imperfect people in an imperfect world.

But the story of the ugly side of Christmas is not the whole story. Herod has his day, but it is short-lived. Within the space of four verses he has a fit, orders this genocide and then dies himself. And despite himself he fulfills a prophecy from the God of love.

You see, the message we should take away from this reading is not that there is evil and it assaults us even though Christ came at Christmas. That’s not a redemptive message. The real message is: yes, there is evil but it could not defeat good because God is Immanuel and because Christ came at Christmas. So, Herod, take your best shot. You won’t be the last. Christ will be persecuted, reviled, spit upon, whipped, stripped and strung up on a cross. God will die and evil will still not carry the day because God has power even over death. So try your best, Herod, the headline news will still be the same two thousand years later: King Herod is still dead, but King Jesus is still alive!

If that’s true, then what is to stop us from proclaiming the same thing to the Herods in our lives? Come on, Age! Come on, Illness! Come on, Depression! Come on, Heartache! Come on, Insecurity! Come on, Conflict! Come on, Insensitive Boss! Come on, Heartbreak of Psoriasis! Come on, Playground Bully! Come on, Acne! Come on, Embarassing Itch! Come on, Social Awkwardness! Come on, Low Self-esteem! Come on, Poverty! Come on, Life! Come on, Death! Come on, and give me your best shot, because you don’t have the last reel, you’ve only got the first scene. You can’t define my life because it’s been defined for me by a God who formed me in the womb, who has cared for me since the moment I was born, who has come to live with us and who has promised to never leave us. Come on, Herod, because Jesus is still the king!

So go tell it in the valley of injustice! Go tell it on the plains of pain and suffering! Go tell it in the desert of loneliness and conflict! Go tell it on the mountain of misery! Over the hills and everywhere that Jesus Christ is born. Jesus Christ is born. Jesus Christ is born and nothing will ever be the same!

Do you believe that Church? Do you believe that goodness is stronger than evil? That love is stronger than hate? That a baby in a manger is stronger than a king on the throne? Because I tell you when I looked at that baby in my arms twelve years ago I believed it.

God is here to turn the world upside down. God is here to turn your life upside down. God is here to remind us of the promise that goes all the way back to a garden in paradise. You and I and this whole crazy world are not meant to be victims of evil, we are meant to children of God. And whatever we look like, whatever road we have travelled, whatever heartache we have suffered, whatever darkness has entered our lives…the light has entered the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. Thanks be to God!

Matthew 2:13-23
Now after they had returned, look, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph saying, "Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt and remain there until I tell you, because Herod is about the seek out the child to kill him."
So Joseph got up, took the child and his mother in the night and left for Egypt and he was there until Herod's death, so that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled when he said, "Out of Egypt I called my son."
When Herod saw that he had deceived by the magi, he went into a great rage, and he arranged for the slaughter of all of the children aged two or younger in and around Bethlehem, working from the time established by the magi. Then that which was spoken through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
"A voice was heard in Rama,
there is weeping and great sorrow.
Rachel is crying for her children and she did not want to be consoled,
for they are no more."
Now upon Herod's death, look, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to Israel, because those who sought the life of the child have died."
So he got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But upon hearing that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father, Herod, he was afraid to return there. So, having been instructed through a dream, he went away to the region of Galilee. And when he came there he settled in a town named Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled: "He shall be called a Nazarene."

23 December 2007

A Domestic Disturbance


Overheard by the nativity set:
I am Joseph, the quiet one. I was one of the first to see God in that baby in the manger....and I was his father....in a way.

Sometimes I feel like I don't belong in that scene. I should be placed over here, at a distance, removed from the center of the action. Because, you see, the story is really about that baby - about how he was born and what he came to do.

And as for me? Well, I was the adopted father - the one with the pedigree and the ancestral line. For me the birth came in the midst of chaos. Leave it God to choose a domestic disturbance for a display case.

Look at me! I look so calm and gentle. My eyes are closed with such a peaceful look. My hand is extended in a gesture of caring. I look so strong.

I suppose I might have looked a little like that on the night. The Church through the centuries has certainly wanted to remember me like this. The countless nativity scenes, the stained-glass windows - they all look pretty much the same. Good, strong, kind, understanding, obedient Joseph. Definitely not a deadbeat dad.

But it wasn't that easy! I may not have been a deadbeat dad, but I sure was a downbeat one - at least at first. I was the outsider and it almost didn't happen this way. If it hadn't been for that dream and that angel....

Well, you all know the story. It's written down right at the front of the New Testament. We read it each year. You just have to read between the lines to see how difficult it all was - and most people don't look beyond the baby to see the disturbance he caused and the turmoil within me. They only see Joseph the Good. My wife, Mary, they remember well. Her words and her song are part of the Christmas tradition. But Joseph? I have no words to record my dilemma. Mary was blessed among women, but I was embarrassed among men.[i]

Matthew tells the story pretty well. He knows that the point of it all is that baby. He says so right up front. To prove it he goes through the genealogy - the family tree - from Abraham right on down to me. And there are all the greats from our Jewish history - Jacob and Judah, David and Solomon, Hezekiah and Zerubbabel - all the giants who walk through the stories of scripture.
But read between the lines and you see that there are some surprises here. Even a few scandals. There aren't many women in this list, but the ones that are there are interesting. There's Tamar - who posed as a prostitute to lure her father-in-law into a liaison that resulted in the birth of my ancestor Perez. There's Rahab, the Canaanite prostitute who rescued the Jewish spies from Jericho. Ruth, was a Moabite - a foreigner from a land we consider evil. Bathsheba, who was taken by David and whose husband David murdered. Not exactly a peaceful and pure family line. But God used them anyway.

So I guess it's no surprise that the whole family tree ends with a question mark and another scandal. It says, "Jacob was the father of Joseph," (that's me), "who was the husband of Mary, of whom the baby was born." You'd expect it to say "Jacob was the father of Joseph who was the father of the baby" wouldn't you? But no. I was the outsider, only connected to the baby through my relationship with Mary. Mary. The fifth woman in this family tree - and the fifth surprise.

Surprise isn't the word for it! You see, it all happened while Mary and I were still engaged. "Engaged" is not really the best word to use because it was more than that. To be engaged in my land, in my religion, meant that we were not just intended for each other, we were already called husband and wife.

Mary and I were young. We were in love. We had the future in front of us. Which made it all the more painful when I found out....that Mary was pregnant.

What was I supposed to do? It was adultery! Even though we weren't married, to be engaged and to have your wife come tell you she's pregnant, even if it's by you, it was...adultery!

It broke my heart. For Mary to be expecting was not what I expected! I knew that it was over. Or at least I thought I did.

I really didn't have many options. The Law of Moses says that a woman caught in adultery was to be stoned to death at the gate of the town. But death? For Mary? This severe punishment wasn't carried out very much anymore, but if it had been, could I have lived with that?
More likely the result of a public divorce would have been that Mary would spend the rest of her life shamed and shunned. Her prospects for marriage would be ruined for good. Could I have done that to Mary? My Mary? If I was to follow the Law of Moses, I would have to. And I had followed the Law of Moses all of my life.

Matthew has it right. He knew my dilemma. "Joseph," he said, "was a righteous man and he was unwilling to expose Mary to public disgrace." Those two things don't go together. A righteous man follows the Law and does not quietly go around the rules to save a sinner from public shame. But that is where I was - wanting to be righteous and yet wanting to do what was right. They're not always the same.

But I had so many plans for Mary and me. I couldn't let them go so easily or so quickly. In fact, I even briefly considered a third option which would have been legal - I could have claimed the child as my own and gone ahead with the marriage. Which is what I eventually did. But that was before...before the angel. And I guess I wasn't that much of a saint.

Now I know what you're saying. Why didn't I talk this out with Mary - find out what really happened? Why didn't we discuss the options together? Why didn't we sit down with a premarital counselor for relationship therapy to see if we could salvage this marriage? In my time - in my land - we hardly spoke to one another privately before marriage. It wasn't done.

So I had made up my mind. Or at least I thought I had. I had decided to let her go quietly and to let her take all of my dreams with her. That was before the dream.

Now I've always been known as something of a dreamer. I guess that could be expected from a man named Joseph. Like my namesake so many years before in ancient Egypt, I was known to have prophetic dreams. This one was so clear and so compelling that it was like talking out loud. I still can't be sure that I didn't!

I was speaking with an angel - surely one of God's own angels. The angel knew what I was going through. The angel greeted me by saying, "Joseph, son of David, don't be afraid." Son of David - that's what the called the child when he grew up. But it was my family line. "Don't be afraid to take Mary for your wife, for what is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit." It was beyond belief what this angel said. A child conceived by God's own spirit! "She will bear a son," the angel said, "and you will call him Jesus, for he will save his people from all their sins."

Jesus. That was to be his name. It was not all that uncommon of a name. There are many men named Jesus. But I had never really thought about what the name meant - "He saves." That’s what it means – “He saves.” Now the angel was telling me that this child - this baby would save his people from sins. God knows there's enough of that around. And we have been waiting for the savior to come. And I was given the task of naming this savior.

When a father names a child he accepts the child as his own. That's one of the ways adoption is done. I had been asked to adopt this child of God into my family line so that he would also be the son of David. And when he would save his people, it would include me.

Well, Matthew records that I did what the angel commanded. I married Mary and she did have a son and I did name him Jesus. But it wasn't as easy as all that. It's never easy when God interrupts your life with a baby. And when the baby is also Emmanuel - "God with us" - well, it's even harder.

Despite the angel's assurance in that dream, which was so vivid, I still felt a distance between Mary and me. We had no relations between us before the child was born. During the pregnancy I was never sure that I shared the incredible joy that Mary seemed to feel. During the labor and the birth there was no sign that this was miraculous.

But when I held that child for the first time. When I looked into his eyes and heard his fresh, stripping cry - then I knew that what the angel had said was more than true.

He stripped away all of my defenses, leaving me feeling naked, vulnerable, raw and needy…just like him. There was no sense putting up a front with this baby. He would have nothing to do with it. He saw behind it and beyond it. He seemed to know me as I really am.

This child was God's child and he saw me in all my sinfulness. He knew how hard I struggled to be righteous, even when it meant I wasn't right. He knew how much I needed a Savior. How much I longed for a world made right. How deep the wounds were that kept me from experiencing joy.

I looked at Mary and we smiled at each other. We touched for the first time in weeks.
That's how I got to be at the center of it all. In the midst of a messy domestic disturbance, God used an unwed mother and a disturbed but righteous man to do the right thing. And I became the father of a savior, and the husband of a saint. And the world was never the same. Thanks be to God.


Matthew 1:18-25
Now the birth of Jesus Christ happened like this:
When Mary, his mother, was engaged to Joseph, but before they came together, it was discovered that she was pregnant by the Holy Spirit. But this man Joseph, being righteous and not wanting to publicly disgrace her, made quiet plans to send her away.
Yet while he was considering this, look, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, "Joseph, son of David, don't be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for what she carries was fathered by the Holy Spirit. And she will bear a son; you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. All of this has come about so that what the Lord had spoken through the prophet might be fulfilled:
'Look, a young maiden shall become pregnant and will bear a son,
and they shall call his name, Emmanuel,'
which means 'God is with us.'"
Upon rising from sleep, Joseph did as the angel of the Lord commanded him and took Mary as his wife. And he did not have sexual relations with her until she had borne a son, and he called his name Jesus.


[i] With credit to Will Willimon.

02 December 2007

Stolen Time: What Advent Can Take From You


Plenty Coups, the last great chief of the Crow nation, looked over at Frank Linderman, a Montana cowboy who had befriended him. “When the buffalo went away,” he said, “the hearts of my people fell to the ground, and they could not lift them up again. After this nothing happened.” The two men were talking in the 1930s and Linderman was trying to get Plenty Coups to talk about how his life had changed since the end of the Indian Wars. When he wrote about the discussion later on, Linderman said, “Plenty Coups refused to speak of his life after the passing of the buffalo, so that it seems to have been broken off, leaving many years unaccounted for.”[i]

The old chief had lived a long, full life. He was born in 1848 when the Crow were a proud, warring people living on the high plains in what is now Montana and Wyoming. When he was young the plains were filled with buffalo and Crow warriors were feared by other tribes and by the advancing white settlers. When he died in 1932 he and the remaining Crow were living on a reservation, totally disconnected from the life they once lived.

In 1921, Plenty Coups was invited to Washington to attend the ceremonial burial of the Unknown Soldier. He was wearing beaded buckskin clothes, carrying a coup stick, which the Crow used to carry into battle, and wore a magnificent eagle-feather headdress. As the ceremony ended Plenty Coups did something entirely unexpected. He took off his war bonnet and laid it on the tomb alongside his coup stick. It was a symbol of the death of a way of life for his whole people. He was burying them.[ii]

If anybody could have been prepared for this, it would have been Plenty Coups. When he was nine years old he went out on a vision quest, something many young men would do as rite of passage in his culture. He went off to a mountaintop by himself and prayed to God for a dream. The first night he had no dream so he chopped off a piece of his finger to encourage a vision, something that was not uncommon in his culture.

The second night he had a dream. In the dream he saw buffalo, huge herds of buffalo, coming out of a hole in the ground. They filled the plains as far as he could see in every direction. Then in an instant they were gone. The young boy, Plenty Coups, in his dream looked around and all he could see now were a few antelope. Then more creatures started coming out of the ground. Creatures like buffalo were again coming out of the hole but these were different from other buffalo. They were spotted and when they lay down on the ground they looked different. The noises they made were different, too. They were not buffalo. To Plenty Coups they were like strange animals from another world.

Then Plenty Coups saw a great forest of trees. At the base of one of the trees was an old man that the young boy understood was him at a much older age. Then a storm came and the Four Winds went to war with the forest. Every tree in the forest was knocked down except for the one under which the old man sat.

The tree that remained was the lodge of the chickadee. The chickadee was not admired for his strength, but for his wisdom. The chickadee is a good listener and he never misses a chance to learn from others. It was the chickadee’s tree that remained when all the others fell.

When Plenty Coups came back and told this story to the elders of the Crow people they understood what it meant. Yellow-bear said, “He has been told that in his lifetime the buffalo will go away forever and that in their place on the plains will come the bulls and cows and calves of the white man.” The storm that destroyed the forest was understood to be the coming of the white men. Yellow bear said, “The meaning of this dream is plain to me. I see its warning. The tribes who have fought the white man have all been beaten, wiped out. By listening as the Chickadee listens we may escape this and keep our lands.”[iii]

The tribe listened to Plenty Coups’ dream. When the white men came they made alliances with them. They were able to secure a large reservation. And soon the buffalo were gone and the cattle came. The Crow still existed, but something had died. They had no framework for understanding what their lives meant in this new time. As Plenty Coups said, “After the buffalo went away nothing happened.” Or as another elderly woman, Pretty Shield, told the cowboy Linderman in the 30s, “I am trying to live a life that I do not understand.”[iv] How do you make sense of the world when everything that helped you make sense of it is gone? What do you do when you are trying to live a life that you do not understand?

This may seem a strange story with which to begin Advent but it’s no stranger than the gospel passage that we have for this day. The story of Plenty Coups and the Crow nation is not a warm and fuzzy tale of the season. But Jesus’ apocalyptic warnings are not exactly heart-warming either. Somebody forgot to tell the preacher today that Christmas is coming! Surely something is wrong when there’s more Christmas cheer in Peeble’s than there is in Franktown Church! But there’s something deeper here. There is hope and for Christians hope comes in some strange forms. Maybe it’s a candle on an Advent wreath. Maybe it’s like a chickadee in the only tree left standing. Or maybe it’s like a thief in the night.

It seems to me like Jesus was trying to get those disciples’ attention when he told them about the times that were coming. Like the Crow people they were about to experience a total disorientation. They had no idea what they were in for. These followers who had given their lives over to Jesus were about to be living in a strange new time that was not framed by who they had been but by what Jesus had done. They may have been fishermen and tax collectors and mothers and brothers before, but none of those things were going to determine who they were going to be now. “Come with me and I will make you fish for people,” Jesus said. [Mat. 4:19] “Who are my mother and my brothers and sisters?” Jesus said. “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” [Mark 33, 35] “Anyone who puts their hand to the plow and looks back is not fit for the kingdom of heaven,” Jesus said. [Luke 9:62] They couldn’t live out of who they had been. Because of the cross that Jesus died on…because of the tomb that Jesus had vacated…because of the heavens into which Jesus ascended…and because of the earth to which Jesus would return nothing was going to be the same for any of them and they had better get used to it.

So here in this 24th chapter of Matthew, just before his crucifixion, we have Jesus telling the disciples what it will be like when he returns. And the images he uses are disconcerting, to say the least. “It’s going to be like the great flood,” Jesus says. In the days of Noah people were going about their business as usual, doing the things that give life rhythm and meaning. Eating, drinking, getting married…all of those things that we still do. Little did they suspect that the whole world was going to change. It wasn’t until Noah closed the door on the ark that it was clear that something was wrong. It wasn’t until the floods came that they were hit with the realization that the lives they had been living didn’t make sense anymore. It’s going to be like that when Jesus comes back.

Then Jesus talks about his return as a kidnapping. Two people will be working in the field. One will be taken and one left. Two women will be grinding in the mill. One will be taken and one will be left. It’s going to be like that when Jesus comes back.

A flood. A kidnapping. How about a thief in the night? If the householder had known when the thief was coming, he would stand guard, but Jesus is coming unawares at an hour when you don’t think he will be coming. It’s going to be like that when Jesus comes back.

So what were those disciples supposed to do with that information? What are we supposed to do with this information? Is Jesus trying to get us to live our lives in a constant state of anxiety? Are we always supposed to be looking over our shoulder, ready for the other shoe to drop? What does it mean for him to say to those disciples and to us, “Be alert because you don’t know when your Lord will come”?

Whatever it means, it cannot mean that the defining characteristic of our lives should be fear. As Paul reminds us, we did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but we have received a spirit of adoption so that we can be children of God. [Romans 8:15-16] Fear kills. Fear saps us of life. Isn’t it fear that keeps you awake at night? Wondering if that strange new pain is something terminal? Wondering if there’s enough money in the bank? Wondering if your boyfriend can be trusted? Wondering if your kids are going to turn out alright? Wondering if you’ve done enough? Wondering if you’re good enough? Wondering if you’re acceptable in God’s sight? Wondering where you’ll get the strength to pull through? Do you know what it’s like to live out of fear? I’m betting you’ve had those nights and those days.

But what Jesus calls us to is not fear of what is to come. He did not tell us about the suddenness of his coming so that we would be afraid. In fact, the Bible tells us that we should pray for Jesus to come and come quickly. Practically the last words of the Bible are John’s words at the end of Revelation where he quotes Jesus as saying, “Surely I am coming soon!” to which he responds, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.” [Rev. 22:20]

No, Jesus is not giving us these words to strike the fear of God into us, but to tell us how to live out of hope. We light these candles because it is an act of defiant, radical hope. From the world’s perspective it’s a silly gesture. Why light a candle for Christ’s coming? The world cannot comprehend what it means for life to be determined by what God has done and is going to do through Jesus. The world may find Advent and Christmas useful. To have a boost for the economy because of the tradition of giving gifts is a useful thing for Wall Street. To have a message of generosity for those in need is a useful thing for a world in which there are people left out and looked over. Even to have a message of peace and light is a useful thing in a world disrupted and overturned by war. But the world does not have a use for Jesus’ coming again. The world is invested in the way things are. Christians are invested in the transformation of everything. The world doesn’t want to hear about the end because it sounds too much like bad news. Christians have to hear about the end because they know that it is good news. The world doesn’t want a thief to come because there is too much to protect. Christians know that they need a thief to take away all those things that are keeping us from being alert and watchful and waiting and ready to receive what God has to give.

The difference is in what we expect in the end. If the end is destruction and death then it might make sense to just enjoy what we’ve got until it all comes crashing down. Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we may die. Try to cover over the fear and anxiety and just forget.
But if the end is life…a life beyond anything we can now imagine…a life determined by God and promised by Jesus’ death and resurrection…well, our waiting may take on a different character. As the First Letter of John says, “We are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when it is revealed, we will be like [God].” [1 John 3:2] That’s why we look forward to the coming day of the Lord. The world will be turned upside down, but God’s reign will be revealed as right side up.

God knows we need a word of hope. God knows what a mess our lives are. God knows how unprepared we are to receive a savior. God knows how wounded our world is. But hear the good news: God didn’t wait until we were ready to come to us in Jesus. “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” [Romans 5:8] And Jesus won’t wait until we are ready to come back. That’s the source of our hope.

Jonathan Lear tells the story of the Crow chief, Plenty Coups, in his book, Radical Hope. He tells how the Crow people stopped doing one of their most essential dances, the Sun Dance, when they went onto the reservation. In the midst of everything they had lost it didn’t make any sense for them to do the dance anymore. The symbols of the Sun Dance were about the warrior culture that had died. But in 1941 they started to do the dance again. Only now it was done as a prayer…as when a young girl is getting ready for a heart operation, the dance is done. Lear sees hope in this.

It was important for Plenty Coups to recognize and to say out loud, “After the buffalo went away, nothing happened.” The old ways had died. But it cleared the way for something new to happen. “It is one thing to dance as though nothing has happened,” Lear says. “It is another to acknowledge that something singularly awful has happened—the collapse of happenings—and then decide to dance.”[v]

It would have been one thing for the disciples to act as if nothing had happened when Jesus died. It is another to acknowledge that something singularly awful happened in Jesus’ death and then to decide to dance because the hope of the resurrection cannot be eliminated from the face of the earth.

There is dancing to be done, sisters and brothers. There is hope in this season. And it is a hope on the horizon. Jesus is coming. Come, Lord Jesus. Thanks be to God.

Matthew 24:36-44
“But about that day and hour no one knows, not the angels in heaven, not the Son, but only the Father. For just as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Humanity. Because, as it was in those days before the flood, they were feasting and drinking, marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark. They did not know until the flood came and swept everything away, just so will be the coming of the Son of Humanity.
“Then two will be in the field – one is taken and one is left. Two women will be grinding in the mill – one is taken and one is left. Be alert, therefore, because you do not know in what day your Lord will come.
“Understand this, though: If the homeowner knew in what watch of the night the thief comes, he would stand guard and not allow his house to be broken into. Because of this you also must become ready, because the Son of Humanity will come at an hour when you do not think he will come.”

[i] Recorded in Jonathan Lear, Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation, [Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, 2006], p. 2. Referred to hereafter as Lear.
[ii] Lear, p. 33.
[iii] Lear, pp. 66-72.
[iv] Lear, p. 56.
[v] Lear, p. 153.

25 November 2007

Crossing into the Kingdom


There is nothing quite so delightful as a gift given at just the right moment. Or better yet…there is nothing quite so delightful as a gift received at just the right moment. I’m not ignorant of what season this is. It may be Christ the King Sunday on the liturgical calendar. It may be the end of the Thanksgiving weekend. It may be yet one more week before Advent begins and Christmas is still a whole month away, but I know what the season is. Friday was Black Friday. The Internet sellers are expecting their big business to hit tomorrow on what they call Black Monday. (Such ominous names that are supposed to bring such joy to retailers!) We are in gift frenzy and in the midst of all of it, I’m thinking of the few times in my life, and I mean the very few, when I have experienced and seen true and real delight in the giving and receiving of a gift.

I’m thinking of the Christmas when my Uncle Dick couldn’t think of anything he wanted for Christmas except a flashlight and everybody in the family gave him a flashlight. He had 18 flashlights and I don’t think I ever saw him as happy as he was on that Christmas.

Mostly, though, I think of children who are still getting the hang of the present thing. When a child’s eyes light up at a gift it is the purest form of joy. They don’t know that they are supposed to withhold some of their excitement. They don’t know that they are supposed to be skeptical about why they are getting this particular gift. They’re not sizing it up to estimate their value in the eyes of the giver. They aren’t wondering if they can take it back to exchange it for a better size or color. When a gift is given and received at just the right time, it’s magic.

I’m afraid that’s what we’re trying to recapture in all of our mad frenzy this time of the year. We have seen that delight and that joy once or twice in our lives and we are desperately trying to recapture it. For some of us, beneath the jadedness and disappointments we have with the season, we still want to believe in the magic of a gift. But we’re going to have to dig down beneath a lot of crusted-over old layers to get back to the little child. And a store-bought present is not going to be enough for the excavation, much as we love them.

Which, in an odd way, brings me to this disturbing scene in our gospel lesson this morning. Here we are ready to go into Advent and the scripture lesson today takes us right back to another Black Friday – the day when they took Jesus outside Jerusalem up to a hill called The Skull and nailed him to a cross, raising him up to die between two criminals who were also crucified. It’s a strange place to go to end the cycle of the Christian year. After all, Christ the King Sunday is supposed to be the day when we celebrate the coming reign of Christ when, at the end of all things, Jesus will come again in glory to rule in majesty and power. This is the culmination of everything. The end of the story is Christ at the right of God, not a dying thief at the right hand of the dying Jesus, right?

There’s a reason for this story being told on this day, though. It’s a story that has to do with kingship and how we misunderstand it and what we do to those who presume to tell us that we’ve got it all wrong. And if we don’t listen to this story, we’re in danger of forgetting everything the cross has to tell us about the power of God. When we talk about Christ coming in glory, it is a glory born of this journey to the death. Soon and very soon we are going to see the king, the spiritual says, but the king we see will be the same one who was on that cross outside the city with the words nailed above him: ‘This is the King of the Jews.’

So there he is. Lifted up and brought down all at the same time. It was not all that unusual that his final companions were criminals or that his final stand should be outside the gates. Jesus was always one who spent his life on the edges, on the margins, among people who weren’t exactly socially respectable. He was the one you could find at table with publically-identifed sinners – prostitutes, taxcollectors, malcontents, lepers. That’s where he hung out. So why not a final stand with two men who are not known by their names but only because of what they’d done? We call them thieves because tradition says that’s what they are, but they are generic sinners, standing in for all of us.

As Jesus is pronouncing a final blessing over the people, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing,” the crucifiers are performing some last indignities – dividing his clothes among them by throwing lots. At the beginning of the gospel of Luke, Jesus tells his followers, “If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt.” [Luke 6:29, NRSV] Now here he is offering not only his cheek but his entire body, and giving away his coat, his shirt, his very self for the enemy he is forgiving.

There are people watching. With them their leaders. And their talk is of salvation. They scorn Jesus as he dies and they wonder why he doesn’t save. “He saved others; let him save himself if he really is the Messiah.”

Closer in the soldiers are asking the same question. They bring over their cheap wine to Jesus as if he were one of their drinking buddies having a bad day. They mock him and they say, “The sign says you are the king of the Jews. If you’re the king, why don’t you save yourself?” Save yourself.

Closer still is the criminal hanging beside him. But his question is the same. “Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself.” But then he adds something, which perhaps is the plea behind all of the other questioners, too. The criminal doesn’t have anything to lose by saying it, though. He not only says ‘save yourself’ but he also adds ‘and us.’ Save yourself and us.

Is it just me or do you hear a plea behind all these scoffing words directed at Jesus? Just as loud as the voices that cried “Crucify him,” are all of these voices that say, “Save yourself,” but are they not really all saying, “Save me”? Just like when we are dealing with an adolescent or a person who is acting out in some really destructive ways, we have to listen to what’s not being said. And when we hear what the crowds are not saying, perhaps it is just what the one criminal does say – “I’m saying ‘save yourself,’ but save me.” Now the criminal is probably saying this in a very cynical way. It’s a way for him to make fun of Jesus and the power that the title King of Jews seems to confer on him. For him it has probably always been about ‘saving me,’ and so this is just one more way of proclaiming his self-interest. But there is it any less real for the crowds?

What must they have been thinking? For some it must have been relief. Jesus was threatening to turn a lot of things upside down and even some of those who were hoping that he would stick it to the powers that be were probably a little fearful of what the result would be. It all sounded so good – loving our enemies, bringing God back into the house of God, welcoming the stranger, forgiving the sinner – but what would happen to the world as we know it if those things really became the standard of the kingdom? Do I really want those things?

Because when you get right down to it, if Jesus had turned out to be who he said he was all of those people deriding him from a distance would have had to face a horrible truth. If Jesus was who he said he was, they would have to change. They would have to be transformed. And some of us are so attached to our sins, so enmeshed in our mess, so limited in our vision of who we are and what we could be that we would rather put up with the demons than to send them packing in the light of Jesus’ love.

C.S. Lewis has an image of this in his book The Great Divorce, which was Lewis’ attempt to describe heaven. In the book the main character meets a ghost, the shadow of a real person worthy of heaven, who has a red lizard, which represents the temptation to lust, attached to his shoulder. The ghost is told by an angel that he will not survive unless the lizard is killed and separated from him, but the ghost is reluctant to let the angel kill it. As he finally gives permission and the angel begins to act against the lizard he struggles when he realizes it is going to cause him pain. The angel responds, “I never said that removing it would not hurt you, only that it would not kill you.” It’s a wrenching fight, the man screams in agony, but in the end the lizard is transformed into a magnificent stallion that carries the man off into heaven.[i] The man could not recognize his own salvation because he was so closely attached to his sin.

I have a sense that the people watching Jesus weren’t so blind. I think they must have seen their own salvation there on the cross, but refused to acknowledge it for fear of the pain changing would involve. But also for fear of giving into a deeper hope. This is where the connection with the gifts comes in, because I feel one of the reasons we so seldom see the deep joy and delight we seek in our gift-giving is that we are not willing to give into those emotions for fear of appearing naïve or weak. We’ve got too many barriers to our joy. We had too many losses or too many disappointments to connect again with what it feels like to be truly touched. Or maybe we’re too busy orchestrating the occasion – making it the perfect Christmas – that it fails to be perfect for just that reason.

So then there’s Jesus. What is it that keeps us from loving Jesus? Our questions may be the same as those folks watching and scoffing from a distance. Who’s going to throw their lot in with a king whose hanging on a cross dying? Who’s going to sell out for Jesus when he’s so obviously uncool? Who’s going to put all their eggs into the basket of a savior who tells his followers to leave behind the lives they have known, to leave behind their kin, their wealth, their comfort, their status – everything on which they had built their lives – and to take up their cross and follow him? Who’s going to do that? Who’s going to follow this king into his kingdom?

Are you going to do that? Are you going to give your life to a man that the world is mocking? That the world is deriding as powerless? As a pretender? As a fool? Are you going to stake your life on the life that Jesus promises or are you going to stand on the sidelines protecting yourself from any small flicker of hope because sophisticated people just don’t do that. People who have it all together do not give themselves over to such things. The in-crowd is not into Jesus this year because the in-crowd is always into irony and protecting itself from getting genuinely invested in anything. There will always be something novel but never anything really new because the way of the world is continuation not transformation. The way of the world means you should never get excited about Jesus. You should never put your hopes in Jesus. And for goodness’ sake, you should never give your life to Jesus.

But here’s this other thief. This other man hanging on a cross next to Jesus. This other criminal who has seen what all of these others have seen. But somehow he has seen something more. And he rebukes, not Jesus, but the other criminal. “Don’t you have any fear of God at all, for you and I got the same sentence of death that this man got? And we were judged rightly because there was cause for our sentence. But this man did nothing wrong.” Then he spoke to Jesus. And he doesn’t say, “Save yourself.” And he doesn’t say, “Save me.” What he says is, “Jesus, remember me. Remember me when you enter into your kingdom. When you enter into your kingdom.” There is no doubt in this man’s mind. Jesus has a kingdom. Jesus is a man worth investing his life in. Jesus is a man worth giving himself to, if only to be remembered before God.

You could say, “Yes, but what did he have to lose? The thief was never going to be confused for part of the ‘it crowd.’ The thief didn’t have to worry about he was going to look. He didn’t have to maintain an image any more. He was dying.”

The model in this story is precisely in the thief, though. When we look to the crowd and the soldiers and the thief we see them all asking Jesus a question so that they don’t have to ask it of themselves. They ask if Jesus can save himself so that they don’t have to ask, “Why can’t I save myself?” Why can’t I do it? Why can’t I make it work by my own efforts? Why can’t I achieve what I want in my job? Why can’t I make my family the all-American family? Why can’t I feel contentment in my heart and peace in my soul? Why can’t I buy the right accessory or live the right lifestyle to make it all make sense? Why can’t I save myself? Jesus, you can’t save yourself, can you? Jesus, you can’t save me, can you?”

So what I’m inviting you to today is an opportunity to give it up. Give up whatever crowd it is you’re trying to hang with. If you’re in school, it’s not a gang or a social group that’s going to save you. Give it up for Jesus. If you’re older, it’s not your job or your political party or your love interest or your community status or your neighborhood or your things that will save you. Give it up for Jesus.

What I’m suggesting is that there is within us the seed of our salvation. It’s what was implanted in us before we were born. It is what it means to be made in the image of God. And that has been distorted and bruised and battered by what we have done and left undone. Sin has mangled our lives in many ways. The devil has had his way with us, but one thing that the devil does not have the power to do is to take away from us the deep hope that informs our souls. The greatest challenge we have is not that we feel we have no power but that we fear the power we do have. We are afraid that if we let the world know the source of our true hope we will be ridiculed and ostracized and separated and maybe even sent outside the city with the criminals and the outcasts. And perhaps we will be. But who are you to deny the world the hope that is within you? Who are you to take the message of the new life we have in Jesus and hide it away? Who are you to live your life guarded and protected from disappointment by a wall of cynicism and irony?

When are you going to give it up for Jesus? When are you going to sell out to the king of Kings? When are you going to take your place in the chorus? When are you going to take the role that God has been preparing you to play for your whole life? When are you going to join the great big family that Jesus is making from the likes of you and me and accept that you are accepted and that you have work to do for the kingdom? When are you going to look to Jesus and say, for all the world to hear, ‘Remember me when you come into your kingdom’?

Some of you are old enough to remember when “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” was a new Christmas TV special back in the 60s. One of the most memorable scenes in that show is when Rudolph goes to visit the Island of Misfit Toys. This is a place where toys that are considered defective or otherwise undesirable are collected. It’s ruled over by King Moonracer, a flying lion who travels the earth looking for toys that are unwanted. He brings them to this land and looks over them. So there’s a Charlie-in-the-box and a cowboy on an ostrich and a train with square wheels. You know, misfits. But the wonder of the story is that these misfits help another misfit, Rudolph, discover what his deep purpose is.

You’ve got a purpose much greater than Rudolph’s. You’ve got a destiny prepared for you since the beginning of all time. All you have to do is claim your place in the kingdom and to join those that the world calls misfits – people who give it up for Jesus – the king of kings that we met on a cross, that we scorned, that we mocked, that we killed, but who loved us to the end and who will remember us, if only we ask.

Thanks be to God.

Luke 23:33-43
Then they came to the place called The Skull. There they crucified him along with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing.” They divided his garments among themselves by throwing lots.

The people stayed there watching. They and the rulers with them scorned him, saying, “He saved other; let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the chosen one.”

The soldiers mocked him, too, coming to him, offering him their cheap wine, and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself.” And it was written over him: “This is the King of the Jews.”

One of the criminals hanging there was deriding him, saying, “Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us.”

But the other one responded, rebuking him, “Don’t you have any fear of God at all, for you received the same sentence? And we were judged rightly because we deserve what we are getting for what we did. But this man did nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

He said to him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.”

[i] C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, [San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1946], pp. 106-112.

18 November 2007

Working Hard and Hardly Working


If I were listening to me saying what I’m about to say to you this morning, I would be really annoyed. Because you’re going to hear me tell you something that sounds so obvious and so unhelpful that you will wonder if I’m living in the same world you do. (Some of you wonder that already.) But you know, this is my role here – to study the scriptures and pray and then bring you a word that you were not expecting to hear or maybe that you were expecting to hear but need to hear in a deeper way. So, like I say, I’d be annoyed if I was being told this by my preacher, but I’m just doing my job.

So here’s what I have to say – and this is right out of Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonian church – if you don’t want to work, you shouldn’t eat. I know. That’s a really simple message. Lots of times we read a passage of scripture and we scratch our heads and wonder what it could mean or how it could be interpreted. But this one is pretty clear. If you don’t want to work, you shouldn’t eat. It’s very practical. Very straightforward. Not much getting around what Paul wanted to say here. He’s got a problem with lazy folks and he’s telling them, “Hey, buck up and pull your fair share of the load.” Which doesn’t sound very theological but it does sound right. All of us who have been in organizations or workplaces know how much better things go if everyone pulls their weight.

“But wait a second, Alex,” you might be saying to yourself. “Hold it right there. I see where you’re going and if you are going to try and relate this passage to our day and time and tell me that I’m not working and not pulling my weight, well, that’s…annoying.”

To which I say, “See, I told you.”

“But hold on, Alex. This just doesn’t look my life. Especially at this time of the year! Do you know what it’s like? I’m so busy I’d have to postpone a mild heart attack. I’ve got 3 papers, a book report presentation and a Spanish vocab test for Mr. Pereira standing between me and Christmas. I’ve got music lessons. I’ve got basketball practice. I’ve got to take the kids to basketball practice. They’re downsizing at work and I’m now doing three people’s jobs. I’m pulling multiple shifts at the hospital and I haven’t had a day off in a week and a half. My dad’s in physical therapy and may need a home health nurse. My folks are coming for Thanksgiving. I said I’d host the Christmas party for work and I’m not ready. The car needs to go in the shop. There are 16 special programs at school and Christmas play rehearsals at church. I said I’d make a cake for the UMW program and I haven’t even been to the grocery store for ingredients. I haven’t picked up the newspaper in three weeks just because there is no time. Bills need paying. The house needs cleaning. Cats living with dogs. It’s crazy here and you’re preaching about how we need to work? Forgive me if I laugh.”

So, O.K., I get it. You’re busy. But here’s a thought: What if being busy is not the same as working? What if what Paul means by working is something a little more life-giving, a little more holy, a little less annoying than busy-ness?

Because truth be told, I think we’re all looking for something a little more life-giving and a little more holy than we find in the midst of our busy-ness. We say to ourselves, “Look how much I’m doing. I must be fulfilled.” Corrie is a single mother with two kids. She puts it this way in a recent blog post: “You would think the kids and work and working toward my 2nd Masters and taking care of a home would keep me busy enough that I would never be bored. That is so not true….[My parents are moving in for awhile.] I'm sure in a few more weeks things will settle into a nice flow and it won't be so bad. In the mean time, anyone have a spare room for [me] to stay in because between the folks and the teenage girls I'm going crazy!!! Did you know that crazy feels bored too?”[i]

So just what was Paul telling the Thessalonians? We know what he says. In the passage we read this morning he tells the Christians there at Thessalonica to “keep away from believers who are living in idleness and not according to the tradition that they received from us.” Those are connected. The ones Paul is warning them about are idle because they are not living according to the traditions or teachings that they received from Paul.

This is where God gets into this teaching. Because you see the reason that there are lazy Thessalonians is because there has been some bad teaching in the community. Paul, who had started the church there, had been telling the new Christians to be prepared because Christ was going to return and no one knew when that would be but they should live as if it were imminent. Jesus had left them with this expectation. We still live with this expectation.

But some believers in Thessalonica had begun to teach that Jesus had already returned. In chapter 2 of this book he says to them, “As to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we beg you, brothers and sisters, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed…to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here.” [2 Th. 2:1-2] There were some people saying, “Hey, maybe we are already living in the new age. And if this is the new age, then why do we keep up with old patterns and habits? Why do we need to obey the old rules? Why can’t we just have a good time? Why do we need to work?” These folks were idle for theological reasons. This is why Paul says that they needed to deal with those people “who are living in idleness” and not according to his teachings.

There’s something more to this, too. The word that is translated as “idleness” here has another meaning. It does mean idleness and that’s definitely what Paul means because he goes on to talk about how these folks should follow his example in working to earn his own income. But the literal phrase here is that these were people “walking in disorder.” It’s a military term. When you get a group of soldiers marching you want them to be in step and moving in the same direction. Rachel and I were doing this the other night – marching around the parsonage kitchen to the music from “Bridge on the River Kwai.” But if soldiers break rank – if they walk in disorder – it makes it impossible for the army to move forward with efficiency. The army can’t do what it’s supposed to do or be what it’s supposed to be if there are soldiers who walk in disorder.

This is the problem with idleness. It’s not just laziness; it’s a disorder for the whole community. In the early Christian communities this was a particular problem. These were folks who were sharing their lives at a deep level. The book of Acts tells us about Christians who sold their possessions and held everything in common. They devoted themselves to communal living, communal prayer, and communal meals. They did take care of those who were in need…the vulnerable in their community…but they also depended on the members being transformed by their experience with Jesus Christ so that they would give all that they had, including their work, to God.

Here’s the important thing, though: Even the idea of work was transformed by Jesus. Work now is the way that we invest ourselves in the world until Christ comes again. Work is our way of participating in God’s continuing work of creation. As children of God, made in God’s image, we are given the capacity to join God’s work, reflecting the Creator’s glory in what we do in the world.

Why do we do this? We could say, couldn’t we, “What’s the point? If Jesus is coming again, if the ultimate destiny of this age is to pass away, then why should I put my labor into it? Isn’t that kind of like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic?”

To think like this is to deny what the incarnation was all about. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Christ was born of Mary. We have seen the living God who “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.” [Philippians 2:7] As the Scottish sage George MacLeod was fond of saying, “Matter matters to God.” So what we do with the stuff of the world and the stuff of our lives matters to God.

What is that we have to do except to present ourselves and this world as “a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God”? [Rom. 12:1] What is that we have to do except to glorify God by adding to the beauty of the universe, the beauty that we glimpsed on that cross and in that empty tomb? According to Ephesians, we “must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” [Eph. 4:15]. We grow into the image of Christ as we do what he did, as we submit ourselves to the discipline of community, as we give ourselves over to something beyond ourselves, as we work for the kingdom of God rather than the kingdom of me.

All fine and good, but now I have to tell you the really annoying news. We are walking in disorder as a church. Nobody is going to accuse Franktown Church of idleness. If you come in here just about any night of the week you will find things happening. You will find boxes being prepared for Operation Christmas Child. You will find picture of orphans in Russia being supported by church members. You will find Emma cataloging and organizing our excellent Media Center. You will find bible studies, children’s Christmas play rehearsals, choir practice, the depression support group, Administrative Board and Council of Ministries meetings, Nora and Carolyn and Mickey and others cleaning the building. Come in the day and you’ll find kids at the Montessori school. You’ll see people dropping off donations for the Hispanic ministry. You’ll see more study groups. Oh, it’s a busy place here. We’re even busy beyond here, outside the walls of the church. But there is a difference between busy-ness and work.

The test of whether this church is a church is not based on its programming or its calendar or its busy hum. The test is whether or not we are being and making disciples of Jesus Christ. The test is whether our membership vows are being lived out so that we are glorifying God with all that we have. Do you remember what it is that we pledge in the membership questions? We are asked if we will uphold the church by our prayers, our presence, our gifts and our service.

Are we praying for this church? Are we praying that it will be a place where people hear the good news of God and come to a saving knowledge of Jesus? Are we praying that it will be a place that reaches out to serve the community? Are we praying that it will nurture young people and older folks as they grow in faith? Are we praying that God will use it for whatever God wills? Are you praying for this church? It’s part of your work.

With our presence…Are we here? Are we here for worship? Are we here to serve and lead? Are we here for all those programs? Are we there in the community representing Franktown Church? This body is not a body without all of its members. Can’t you tell the difference when we are doing things together? When the place is full? Are you upholding the church with your presence? It’s part of your work.

With our gifts…this congregation has been able to do some astounding things through the ways that our gifts are offered. Through art and music and landscaping and nursery service and hospitality and witness we give what we have to God. These are our gifts. Last Sunday at the emerging service, not only did Gillian dance, but we all did. Dancing for God.

But also in our financial gifts. Our faithfulness to God’s call comes through the ways we use our money, too. Drury is here this month to talk about our budget and how it expresses our ministry as a congregation. Each of those line items should in some way reflect our primary mission, which is “to glorify God by making disciples of Jesus Christ as the Holy Spirit empowers and guides us.” That is the mission statement you see posted all over this building. As he said last week, if this budget makes the church seem like a business, it does, because the church is in the business of doing all those things.

Our financial giving is not done to meet a budget, though. Our giving is done out of a desire to imitate Jesus’ self-giving lifestyle. We give because it is a way of following Christ and opening space within ourselves for God to work in us. Giving is part of our work.

Finally, our service. Hands offered to do the work that needs doing. Hands to scrape paint from the walls of a house that was under ten feet of water during Hurricane Katrina. Hands to hold other hands as they make the transition from this world to the next. Hands to make the meals for dinners. We discover our identity as a disciple of Christ as we serve others. Are we offering our service? It’s part of our work.

But here’s the thing about the hard work we do here: When we do it right, it seems like hardly working. It’s pure joy. Yesterday at the UMW Day Apart that was held here, we sang a song from our hymnal called, “Lord, your Love through Humble Service.” The third verse asks God to make “known the needs and burdens your compassion bids us bear, stirring us to tireless striving your abundant life to share.” When we are trapped, seeing our work in the church or in the world only as tireless striving, it feels like Paul’s got it all wrong. We don’t want more work. We don’t want more reasons to feel stretched and frazzled. We don’t want one more candle to burn at both ends.

What we want is at the end of that verse. The tireless striving is for the purpose of sharing abundant life. Abundant life. Isn’t that what you’re waiting for? Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly” [John 10:10]. Isn’t that what we strive for? Isn’t that the deep desire of our hearts? All this work. All this busy-ness with which we busy ourselves. If it’s not getting you to heaven…if it’s not getting heaven into you…well, you might as well be idle because you’re walking disorderly. Annoying, isn’t it?, to realize that work might be the substance of our salvation. But the world is full of the presence and the beauty of God and so is the work that is done in Jesus’ name. Give thanks and let’s get to work! Thanks be to God.

2 Thessalonians 3:6-13
Now we command you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, keep yourself away from every believer who walks without direction and without regard to the tradition which they received from us.

For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, for we were not idle among you. Neither did we eat bread from anyone without paying for it, but instead we worked arduously, night and day, so as not to burden any of you. We did this, not because we didn't have the authority, but in order to make ourselves a model for you to imitate. Even when we were with you we commanded this: "Anyone who does not want to work shall not eat."

We hear that some among you are walking without direction, not working but monkeying about in others work. To such as these we command and beseech them in our Lord Jesus Christ that they will settle down and work to earn their bread. But you, brothers and sisters, do not get tired of doing what is right.

[i] Corrie’s Rant Space, http://nmb1blonde.spaces.live.com/, May 15, 2007

13 November 2007

Learning How Not to Breathe (poem)

The surface shines like some skin
stretched taut above the deep
Reflecting the sky, the sinewy clouds
and my own anxious face
(I am seeing into a glass not so dimly)
Behind my mirrored eyes
a scaly fin flashes with borrowed sunlight,
and disappears again into the murk of another world

I dive to follow
and feel the warmth of immersion
It is regression
There is no thought, no sound,
no future, no time
It is silent being
In the womb
there is no need even to breathe.
We are creatures not yet
of the earth, though entirely embodied

It is the contingency of breath that makes us incarnate
But in the plunge
there is a moment when I forget
to be so careworn and at risk
I am no longer separated
from my origin
I do not stand apart

I swim into my baptism
mindful and mindless
(Knowing as I am fully known)
It is only the grim necessity
of oxygen that calls me back from primordiality
I gasp
as concentric ripples scatter to unknown frontiers
The glass is disturbed

I am still learning how not to breathe

11 November 2007

All Along the Watchtower


Who’s going to stand on the ramparts with Habakkuk? Who’s going to go up to the watchtower with him to look to the horizon and see what’s coming? Who’s going to stay awake? Who’s going to keep their eyes open when there are so many reasons to look away? Who’s going to live out of hope when the soup de jour is hopelessness? Who’s going to look for salvation when the world is talking about damnation? Who’s going to remain faithful when the day seems to belong to the faithless, the proud, the wicked and the unjust? These are just a few of the questions raised when you turn to the book of Habakkuk.

There are actually a lot of questions to ask about the book of Habakkuk. Number one being – Just how do you pronounce his name? But the question that seems to be at the top of the list is where the people of God find their strength in the midst of trials. And I am here to tell you today that we find our strength on the horizon. We find our fortitude on the frontier. We find our faith in the future.

The future. The goal. The end. That which is to come. It’s the thing that makes Christians different from other folks. We are on a timeline here. We’ve got an eye on the horizon because we believe that there is narrative here. We’re in the midst of a story. It’s a story that has markers in the creation and in the covenant with Israel. It’s a story that reaches its climax on a cross on Calvary’s hill and in an empty tomb somewhere nearby. And it’s a story that will reach its conclusion with the return of Christ and the establishing of God’s reign throughout the heavens and the earth. Everything…everything hangs on that story and it changes how we view the world. If we did not have this story, then each moment would not be significant. If we didn’t have this story, then what I do today would be pretty inconsequential. Time would be rolling along but to what end?

I don’t know how many of you are football fans, but if you are then you have probably heard about a new rookie running back who is rewriting the record books. Adrian Peterson plays for the Minnesota Vikings and in eight games this year he has already run for over 1,000 yards, which is a great year for a running back. Last week against the San Diego Chargers he ran for 296 yards, which is not only a record number of yards for a rookie to run in one game, it is the NFL record for anybody ever. Peterson is a phenomenal athlete and a wonder to watch.
What is most amazing is the way that he runs. He’s kind of small for a back at only 6’1” and a little over 200 pounds, but he runs over people. He doesn’t spend a lot of time juking and jiving, he just runs straight ahead. Tiki Barber last week said that the thing that was most impressive about Peterson was the way he kept his eyes on the end zone. He keeps looking straight ahead, ignoring the distractions on either side of him, and uses all of his power to move him towards the goal line. Part of Adrian Peterson is living in the end zone already; his body is just trying to catch up.

Well, welcome to the world of Habakkuk and to the world of God’s people. Our journey makes sense when we recognize that part of us is already living in the future that God is ordering. Our bodies are just trying to catch up. We stand with the future.

Now I admit that when I say something like that, “We stand with the future,” it sounds kind of like a cute “buzzwordy” phrase. Something like you might see on a corporate billboard. You know, like “Microsoft: We Stand with the Future.” But that’s not what I’m after here. Christians stand with the future, not because we believe in a cult of progress. We stand with the future not because we believe that every day and in every way we’re getting better and better. We stand with the future not because we’re guaranteed some sort of golden ticket that makes us immune to the slings and arrows the world might send our way. None of that is true! We stand with the future because of what we’ve seen in the past and what we’ve seen in the past and know in the present is the God who has revealed salvation in the covenant with Israel and ultimately in Jesus.

Habakkuk recognizes this. We know very little about who he was, but it seems that he was a prophet in Jerusalem just as the southern kingdom of Judah was coming to an end. Babylon was rising to the east and soon the nation would be attacked, conquered and many of its people carried off into exile.

Things looked bad. The book of Habakkuk begins with the prophet lamenting that the people are crying out for help and it seems that God is not answering. “O Lord,” he says, “how long shall I cry for help and you will not listen? Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention also. The wicked surround the righteous.” It’s all falling apart for Habakkuk. He wonders where God is.

Something happens by the beginning of the second chapter of the book, though. Habakkuk goes up to the watchtower and to the walls of the city. Those would be the places where the guards and sentinels kept a watchful eye for the approaching Babylonian army. But Habakkuk is not going up to look for the end; he’s waiting on God. And he hears a word from God.

“Write this down,” God says. “Put it on tablets. Write it big so that people running past it can see it. There is still hope. There will come a day. There will be an appointed time. The word is true. The promise is sure. It may seem to tarry, but wait for it. The day of the Lord will come. That’s why you must not be like the proud or the wicked. The righteous live by faith.” This is the God that Israel had staked its life on. This is the God who redeems. This is the God who promises to come again in power.

Now you might say, “That’s great, but how many thousands of years have passed now since Habakkuk went up on the ramparts to look for God? How many years have we been waiting? To coin a phrase from Langston Hughes, ‘What happens to a dream deferred?’ When does Jesus return? When does God come? When do the unjust get what’s coming to them and when are the righteous redeemed?”

So we work to explain the discrepancy. Maybe Habakkuk meant the day of the Lord metaphorically and it’s really about some spiritual reality. Maybe there’s a Hebrew word that just didn’t get translated right. Maybe the problem is us.

Or maybe violence, destruction, injustice, anxiety and fear are not the exception to the norm of life in this world. Maybe violence, destruction, injustice, anxiety and fear ARE the norm. Maybe the world does not look so great on an average day. Maybe wars and rumors of wars are just the normal, everyday newspaper headline. They have been for all of my life. Maybe struggle, abuse, and death are not all that uncommon for human beings. Maybe every generation feels like the generation behind it has lost its bearings, lost its moral compass, lost its sense of propriety, and lost its common sense. Maybe life has always seemed a fragile thing. Maybe I don’t feel as good as I used to. Maybe cats have always left hairballs in just the place your toes could find them. Maybe acne has always plagued teenagers. Maybe things just aren’t as they should be and by golly, if the end isn’t near, it sure ought to be.

If that’s true…If it is the case that the world is always a frightening place in the present tense then maybe what we need is a watchtower to stand on. What is it that Habakkuk says? What is it that Jesus tells his followers? Keep your head up. Be of good courage. Pray for strength. Because you don’t stand with the present. You stand with another reality that is drawing near. The reign of God is drawing near.

What is it that is drawing near? Redemption, liberation, hope, the kingdom, the power and the glory, Jesus, the future is drawing near. And we do not fear. We do not grow faint. Our arms do not grow tired. Our backs do not grow weak. Our feet do not grow weary. We keep our heads up because…we keep our heads up because we Christians stand with the future. And the future is assured because of Jesus, the one who came and lived among us, who knew our pains and sorrows, who shared our joys and passions, who died our death, and went down into the grave so that he could break through into new life. We stand with the future because the past tells us everything that God intends to do with us and this crazy, chaotic world. God’s answer to the question of death is no and God’s answer to the question of life is always yes. That’s where we stand.

So Jesus really does make all the difference. It makes every place that we stand a new place – one in which the sufferings of this present age don’t get to define the meaning of this time. Because Jesus has redeemed every moment, all these moments are holy and will be taken up into God. They seem like so many loose ends now. We can’t see the purpose in a young girl’s terminal fight with cancer. We can’t see the meaning in a young boy’s life cut short by a roadside bomb in Iraq. What do we do with the senseless ruin that drugs and alcohol can bring to lives? What do we do with the wounds in our minds and in our souls that just don’t seem to go away? All of those loose ends are taken up by God in ways that we can’t perceive. In God’s economy all those threads are drawn together into a tapestry of grace. What is lost is found. What is dead is made alive. This is the work of God is Christ.

I remember having a great discussion with a student once on a mission trip to Mexico. A few years ago I went with a team of students from the Wesley Foundation at UVA to the border region of Texas and Mexico. We were working at projects on both sides of the border and one day a small group of us was resealing the roof on a kindergarten run by the Methodist Church in Reynosa, Mexico, which is a huge, sprawling city of about a million people right across the river from McAllen, Texas.

After working on the roof, a doctor in the Methodist-run clinic nearby took us over to a colonia on the south side of the city. Colonias are neighborhoods, often with no city services, that grow up when new migrants come into the region looking for work. This one grew up on a landfill. You see, the industry that supports most of the 14,000 people living in this colonia is trash. Every day carts pulled by donkeys go through the streets of Reynosa collecting garbage and every night they come back and empty the trash into their neighborhood. So now it is a small city built on piles of rotting paper, food, and worse.

A river runs by the colonia and separates it from the main part of the city but so much trash has collected here that there are now islands in the river. And on top of the new islands are houses. Shacks really. No running water. No electricity. At night the dirt streets are pitch black. And 14,000 people, many of them children, live here. The border with the United States is less than a mile away.

It’s hard to stand with the future in the streets of this colonia. It’s hard to see liberation drawing near for the children who call it home. But there’s something else in this neighborhood. There’s a Methodist Church. This is what the clinic doctor who brought us there wanted us to see. Three brand new buildings. One, a dining hall to serve breakfasts to up to 300 children a day. One, a clinic to serve the many medical needs of the community. And the last, a sanctuary where large groups gather to worship and praise God and to witness to a hope they don’t yet see.

One of the students who was in that small group saw this and she was angry at what she saw. She wondered how the church could simply set up shop in this neighborhood without challenging some of the reasons why the neighborhood had grown up there in the first place. Wasn’t this just accepting some great injustice? Couldn’t more be done to ensure that such places never had to exist anymore?

On the other hand you could see the place as a watchtower. The Methodist Church of Mexico is small. It doesn’t have many resources. But some of its leaders believed that if God is anywhere, God is in the midst of a suffering people. And what little resources they have for new expressions of the church they are putting into places like this church compound, which is called El Sendero, The Way. U.S. church volunteers have come to help build El Sendero and they have come away talking about how they have seen faith in action in a very disturbing place. But when you worship at El Sendero, you stand with the future. And that’s what Christians do.

The world is fierce and vast and devastating and beautiful and God is everywhere within. This is the vision of Habakkuk and God’s people. And God will come to bring God’s people home.
If you are in the midst of some deep struggle this morning, you should know that it may seem to have great power but it does not have the power to change what God has done and what God will do in Jesus Christ. We stand with the future because of what God has done. And God is faithful. And for that reason the righteous live by faith. Thanks be to God.

Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4 (NRSV)
The oracle that the prophet Habakkuk saw: O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you "Violence!" and you will not save? Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous -- therefore judgment comes forth perverted…I will stand at my watchpost, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint.

Then the LORD answered me and said: Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it. For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay. Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by their faith.

04 November 2007

Revisiting the Afterlife


Whenever anyone asks me for a good book to read I find myself handing them the same book. It’s a book by Leif Enger called Peace Like a River and I must have bought the book eight times now. I just keep giving it away.

I like the book because, number one, it’s a great story. You just can’t put the book down once you get started because it draws you in. It’s the fictional story of the Land family in early 1960s Minnesota as told through the eyes of 11-year-old Reuben Land, a boy who has a bad case of asthma and who often finds it hard to breathe. The family is led by Jeremiah, a man who has lost his wife and is trying to raise three children, including Reuben.

The story takes a dramatic turn when the oldest son, Davy, ends up going to jail when he kills two intruders who break into the family house and attack the youngest child, a daughter. He ends up breaking out of jail and heading out into the wilds of North Dakota. Most of the rest of the book is the tale of the family going off to find Davy in the midst of the winter.

But along the way there is great writing and there are great observations about life and faith, which are the other reasons I recommend this book. It seems that Jeremiah, the dad, can do miracles. Not earth-shattering, crossing the Red Sea kinds of miracles, but acts of everyday wonder that remind Reuben that there is more to the world than most of us can imagine. Beyond the observable world there is another reality at work and at certain times it becomes obvious. At one point Reuben writes:

Real miracles bother people, like strange sudden pains unknown in medical literature...Lazarus obeying orders and climbing up out of the grave -- now there's a miracle, and you can bet it upset a lot of folks who were standing around at the time. When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him back up. A miracle contradicts the will of earth. My sister Swede, who often sees the nub, offered this: People fear miracles because they fear being changed -- though ignoring them will change you also.[i]

There are several reasons I thought of this book as I was reading Jesus’ words in the gospel of Luke this week. I’ll come back to another one a little later. But one of them is found in that passage. “People fear miracles because they fear being changed – though ignoring them will change you also.” It seems to me that what we have in the confrontation between the Sadducees and Jesus is a clear example of people being threatened by something they can’t see or explain – in this case the resurrection of the dead. The threat is not only that they can’t get their minds around what will happen after death; it’s also the threat that if they accepted the idea of an afterlife they would have to change in the here and now. Heaven – it’s not just for the afterlife anymore.

The confrontation begins in the Temple in Jerusalem where all sorts of people were gathering around Jesus. He was nearing the end of his earthly ministry and he had finally come to the Temple – the holiest site in Israel. He was teaching and telling people about the Good News of God and he had a lot of eager listeners. But he was also gathering representatives of the religious leaders who were very threatened by him and the change he represented.

One of those groups was the Sadducees. What the Bible tells us about this group is that one of their defining characteristics is that they didn’t believe in the resurrection. This was not unusual. The idea that people would be raised to an afterlife after they died was a controversial notion within Judaism. The Pharisees believed in a resurrection from the dead. There were many images in the Jewish scriptures, particularly in the prophets and the later writings, of a world to come. But the Sadducees represented a branch of Judaism that was skeptical about the resurrection.

So they came to Jesus as he taught in the Temple with a test. They came and said, “Teacher,” which was a term of respect and honor, though you might wonder how much they meant it that way. “Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote a law for us.” This was where the test began. Moses was the most revered figure in Jewish law. What Moses had left behind, they were supposed to observe. So they start the test by going straight back to Moses. It would be like one of us saying about a piece of constitutional interpretation, “Well, Thomas Jefferson wrote…” Just the name adds weight.

“So,” the Sadducees said, “Moses wrote that if a man dies and leaves a wife and no children that the woman should become the wife of the man’s brother so that they can produce a child for the dead man.” It seems like a pretty bad idea to us in our day, but it was a kind of social security system in biblical times. Women without husbands or sons had no claim to the means of living or land ownership. So this law allowed widows to have status within her husband’s family and perhaps to have a son that would give her future security. It didn’t always produce ideal results, though, as you can see in the stories of Judah and Tamar in Genesis and in the story of Ruth. But it was in the Law of Moses and the Sadducees were going to use it.

So they tell a parable. At least that’s how it starts out. It’s not nearly as good as Jesus’ parables. It’s pretty boring and when they finish with it you would be forgiven for thinking, “Couldn’t you do better than that?” but there we have it. “There once were seven brothers.” Seven is a good number. It means a perfect number of things. This was an ideal set of brothers. And the first one took a wife and then died without children. So being a good Jewish family, they followed the Law of Moses and the second one married the widowed woman but he died also without producing any children. Then the third brother married her and the same thing happened.

When they got to the fourth brother I’m sure he was little nervous about things but he married her, too, and he died. No children. The fifth brother took out a life insurance policy and then did the same thing. Same thing happened. The sixth brother said goodbye to all of his friends and then married the woman. Guess what happened? Then the seventh. Well, you know what happened to him, too. All seven had married her. All seven had died. No children in sight. At last, the woman herself died – probably grateful that there were no more brothers.

“So,” the question came to Jesus, “they all married her and none of them had any children.” So when the resurrection comes, (IF the resurrection comes, they were probably thinking), when the resurrection comes, whose wife will the woman be?

Now there are several times in the scriptures where Jesus stops and has compassion on people who are coming to him with questions or challenges. A Canaanite woman who has an ill daughter confronts him and he tries to put her off, but she keeps after him and Jesus sees her faith and gives her daughter healing. A young man who is trapped by his wealth comes to Jesus and the scriptures say that he loved the young man even as he told him to give away all that had to the poor.

I think Jesus must have looked at the Sadducees in the same way. He must have had compassion because they so obviously didn’t get it. They tell this silly parable that turns on an obscure legal point and think they’re getting closer to the kingdom of heaven, or at least proving a point about it. But they just don’t have the eyes to see.

Jesus dealt with their question about marriage first. Marriage is appropriate for this world and this age where things are broken and life is uncertain and where human love can model the love of God for humanity. But if they only had the eyes to see, the Sadducees would understand that the arrangements God makes for human beings in this life are irrelevant in the age to come. “Those who are considered worthy of the age to come and the resurrection of the dead,” he says, “will neither marry nor be given in marriage.” And because marriage in the law was meant, in part to deal with the problem of death, Jesus adds, “Those who are resurrected cannot even die.” The resurrection is all about life.

This is the point Jesus wants to make for them. Death is the way of the world. As Reuben puts it in Peace Like a River: When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him or her back up. Death is the inevitable limit of earthly life. But because Christ opens the way to life that does not end, death no longer has the power to have the last word. God is not our destiny and all the rules of this age are off. Marriage is a promise of what is to come – not an eternal reality. Children are a promise. God is the fulfillment and the all in all.

What we can do that the Sadducees could not do, at least at the time of their questioning of Jesus, is to see, lived out in human history, the power of the resurrection. The theologian Karl Barth put it this way, “Those who believe in Jesus can no longer look at their death as though it were in front of them. It is behind them.”[ii] Our death is behind us. Jesus died on the cross and that death was not for himself but for the whole of humanity. Paul in Romans says that “we have been [past perfect tense] buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” [Rom. 6:5] There is a new world breaking upon us that the Sadducees can’t see, you see?

To quote again from Barth:
Death may still be the tyrant, but it is no longer an omnipotent tyrant…It can take away from us everything we have. It puts an end to our existence. But it cannot make God cease to be God, our God, our Helper and Deliverer, and therefore our hope. It cannot do this. And since it cannot, we may seriously ask: What can it do? What is all that it can do compared with what it cannot do?[iii]

And if the resurrection has broken all the rules and upset every apple cart, if it has thought outside every box and reframed every paradigm, then why are we still slaves to death’s power? Why do we live our lives in fear instead of confidence? Why do we live as people who have no hope and die as people who believe that death still has a chance to defeat God? What’s sad about the Sadducees is that they cannot envision a world in which God makes an ultimate difference.

Paul knew this was the most critical thing. He knew that if the Christians ever gave up on the resurrection or explained it away as somehow not essential that the game would be lost. In 1 Corinthians he says, “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.” [1 Co. 15:19-22, NRSV]

This is our hope. It’s also why we celebrate this day, All Saints Day. We light candles and we remember those who have died, not because we are worshipping them or because we think that if we do not remember them their memories will be forever lost. We light the candles to celebrate what God has done through them and to attest to our faith that this God we serve is the God of the living and in God’s love Abraham and Isaac and Barbara and Rosa Mae and Eleanor and Linwood and Bill and Myrtle are not gone from us or from God. Because Christ lives, they live.

Another reason I give Peace Like a River to so many people to read is because it contains one of the most beautiful descriptions of heaven that I know. Leif Enger doesn’t know any better than you or I what heaven looks like, but his heaven feels like a place I know from having known Jesus and God’s love. It feels right. Here’s just a piece of his description, because I don’t want to give too much away and I do want you to read the book:

And now, from beneath the audible, came a low reverberation. It came up through the soles of my feet. I stood still while it hummed upward bone by bone. There is no adequate simile. The pulse of the country worked through my body until I recognized it as music. As language. And the language ran everywhere inside me, like blood; and for feeling, it was as if through time I had been made of earth or mud or other insensate matter. Like a rhyme learned in antiquity a verse blazed to mind: O be quick, my soul, to answer Him; be jubilant my feet! And sure enough my soul leapt dancing inside my chest, and my feet sprang up and sped me forward, and the sense came to me of undergoing creation, as the land and the trees and the beasts of the orchard had done some long time before. And the pulse of the country came around me, as of voices lifted at great distance, and moved through me as I ran until the words came clear, and I sang with them a beautiful and curious chant.[iv]

Now here’s the good news. There have been days…and I hope you know what I’m talking about as I say this…there have been days when I have felt this heaven on earth. There have been times and places when the earth is filled with the glory of the Lord and I feel it. There have been people in whom I have seen God’s love shining so fiercely that I was burned by their intensity. There have been moments when the earth seems a very thin place indeed because some other, better world is showing through the stretch marks of this one.

“Those considered worthy,” Jesus says, “will experience the age to come and the resurrection of the dead.” What makes us worthy? Grabbing hold of Jesus and recognizing the gift Jesus gives of new life. Don’t settle for anything less. Don’t despise this gift that has been won for you. Don’t turn your back on the one who refused to turn his back on you. Just grab hold of Jesus and hold on because when you do that…nothing will ever be the same. Thanks be to God.

Luke 20:27-38
Then some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came and asked him, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us, ‘If a man’s brother dies and he has a wife and is childless, then his brother should take the wife and raise up a descendent for his brother.’ Now there were seven brothers and the first one took a wife and then died without children. Then the second and third took her. In the same way, all seven did the same and died without leaving children. After all this, the woman died as well. Now, in the resurrection, whose wife will she be? All seven had her as their wife.”
Jesus said to them, “The children of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy of the age to come and the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage. They cannot even die for they will be like the angels and children of God, being children of the resurrection. That the dead are raised up even Moses showed at the bush, as he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now this is not the God of the dead but rather of the living, for all to him are alive.”

[i] Leif Enger, Peace Like a River [New York: Grove Press, 2001], p. 3.
[ii] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III.2, p. 621.
[iii] Ibid., p. 611.
[iv] Enger, p. 302.