Sermon for Lent II --- 24 February, 2013

(This is not the sermon I delivered. When I got into the pulpit, I decided I didn't like the sermon I wrote. So after a show of hands, I junked the written one and preached off the top of my head on the Genesis reading and God's covenant with Abram. Anyway, here's the written sermon.)

Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work.

• With all the talk of foxes, hens, and chicks, this Gospel reading takes on a “barnyard” feel. In fact in this week's Bible Study, I learned a lot about how hens protect their chicks, and this passage suddenly made even more sense. And beyond that, there is a further real lesson here.
• It's worthwhile to focus on the mission of Jesus. He tells the Pharisees who came to warn him of Herod's plotting. He calls Herod a “fox” but also speaks of his mission, which he characterizes as casting out demons and healing the sick. These might be seen as the high points, the most powerful and dramatic aspects of his mission among us. He doesn't speak of his preaching and teaching, but as a rabbi, this might go without saying.
• Jesus goes on to say that, despite the opposition of Herod and others, he will continue his mission today and tomorrow then adding what might be a cryptic phrase to end his statement: and on the third day I finish my work..
• From the way this is said, it appears that what Jesus does today and tomorrow continues on until he come to the end of what he had intended to do. His reference to the third day appears to a lot of commentators and to many of us to be directed to Jesus' crucifixion, death, and resurrection. (Later, when we recite the Creed, listen to what is said – especially when we get to the phrase “On the third day he rose again”.)
• What comes before our eyes here is that Jesus' mission of preaching, healing, exorcising demons, and proclaiming the coming of the Kingdom of God cannot be separated from his death and his resurrection. To do that would mean losing something of either.
• In history, some rather famous people have held Jesus to be a great teacher of ethics, giving the world an example of how to live. One very famous writer-statesman went so far as to publish an edited version of the four Gospels in which he removed all the miraculous events and anything that had a supernatural or spiritual “feel.” What was left was Jesus' social and ethical teachings, which that man felt were the only worthwhile items to be kept from the Gospels. This whole train of thought avoids what Jesus did in his teaching and it certainly avoids any relationship to the Cross of Christ. His death might be seen as an unfortunate consequence of politics, but it has no bearing on us except to deprive us of further wisdom from the Master.
• There are other people who emphasize the death of Jesus as if it were an event having nothing to do with his teaching and preaching. It's as if Good Friday existed without any of the days before and often, any of the days after! Admittedly, this is not too common, but this too leads to a skewed and twisted view of what Jesus was about. This view doesn't avoid the cross but it makes barren all that led up to the Cross.
• I don't feel that we are in either camp. Once again we'd best see Jesus and his ministry as a whole.
• His teaching, preaching, healings, and exorcisms are vital to show us and all his followers since his time that the Kingdom of God has come near in our own present. The words of Jesus, his healing of the sick and his casting out of demons are all demonstrations of the coming of the Kingdom. His death and his resurrection – since we can't really separate the two – brings the Kingdom of God even closer because it makes the forgiveness of sins and the presence of the grace of God in creation more and more a part of our own existence. Jesus as the Word-made-Flesh shows that God is not simply interested in this world and in the life of each of us, but is quite willing and able to become part of the interweaving of all life and events in this world.
• For us, Jesus' death on the Cross cannot be separated from Jesus' teaching for all the reasons I've laid out. If we should want to do this, we could well be guilty of desiring “cheap grace”, that is grace without cost, without commitment, without repentance, indeed grace without the cross. The cross of Jesus Christ is a very stark reminder that although grace may come to us without our payment or our worthiness or our deserving, it does not come without cost. That cost has been truly paid for us.
• So Jesus tells those Pharisees who warned him of Herod's plotting and ill-will that he will continue his ministry even if it takes him to Jerusalem and to the cross. In fact, there is so other way for his ministry to come to it's fullest and highest meaning.
• In our own way, we cannot avoid the cross in this time of Lent. It is precisely where our journey of these forty days leads us. At the end of the journey is the cross, the odd, upside-down sign of the endless love of God and the fathomless depths of grace from which all our life comes.
• We know of the cost of this grace and we also know that, whatever else it might mean to us, the cost of our salvation and our lives of grace was paid for on the cross.

Transfiguration - !0 February 2013

{Late, I know, but present}

"This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!"

• As I begin this talk today, I'm thinking of something an acquaintance of mine was discussing on-line. A third person asked that if Jesus was God, how could he be tempted by a creature like the devil? The person I knew responded that since Jesus was human “on his mother's side”, that side of him could be tempted. I would have to take issue with this, but I didn't because the setting would mean that would receive more comments than I would want to deal with. Most of the comments would not be pleasant.
• The mistake I found in this conversation is seeing Jesus as half-human-half divine, dividing Jesus up as we might our ethnic heritage. It isn't the same as saying a person is, say, half-German and half-Danish. Jesus is not half-God and half-human on his mother's side. He is completely human AND completely God.
• You might be wondering what this has to do with today's readings. If Jesus reveals his divinity to his disciples on the mountain, what becomes of his humanity? If he walks down the mountain with them in his humanity, what has become of his divinity.
• I've heard it said that Jesus was “faking it”, never really living as a human being. I've also heard it said that he was temporarily a human, sort of “slumming” it in human form. That of course, is the side of the discussion that accepts the divinity of Jesus. Others deny this, saying he was human and that was the end of it. A prophet and a teacher, maybe, meaning whatever that might mean, but not any sort of divine being.
• So, were do we see the real Jesus? Is the real Jesus the glowing figure transfigured on the mountain top? Or is the real Jesus the one that walked down the mountain with his friends? Then what was the reason for the event we call the “Transfiguration”?
• I really think this whole thing is not a matter of “either/or”, but rather a matter of depth. Luke puts it this way: “...while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him.” In this experience, the disciples get a glimpse of all that Jesus is, not a divine being hiding under the guise of a man, or a man with some delusions of godhood. Neither was he a sort of combined being with one foot in heaven and one foot in the mud of the earth. To see Jesus in glory, speaking to Moses and Elijah and to see him at their side is to see the real Jesus. You cannot separate him into parts without doing violence to who he is, just as you can't divide any of us into component parts without losing sight of the whole.
• There is the issue for us today. If we see Jesus as simply a human, we deny his divinity and his ultimate power to save and redeem. If we see him as divinity dressed up as a human, we are in danger of losing our connection with him. If that connection is lost, salvation is lost as well, for it is Jesus' taking on of human nature that allows us to be redeemed.
• The moment on the mountain experienced by Peter, James, and John could be seen as a revelation of Jesus as “God-with-us”, and if that were the only moment of revelation, there would be disappointment. If it is a moment of seeing and plumbing the depth of all that Jesus is, we know him as “God-with-us” in the other moments of his life with his disciples and with us now.
• I suppose the real point is this: the disciple's mountaintop experience showed them all that Jesus is in a way they could never come to on their own. This did not change their experience of him in their everyday lives and they might have come to understand that they knew him as he was in the entirety of the life of Jesus.
• In knowing the story from the Gospels, we actually have an advantage on the disciples of Jesus. We know the outcome of the story, which they did not. We have come to know Jesus through the experiences of the disciples and the early church; That is exactly why the Gospels were written. Through the Gospel writers, we stand at the manger in Bethlehem, on the mountain of the Transfiguration, at the cross on Calvary, and at the empty tomb and the upper room. We know what they came to know.
• Our faith shows us the way to understand and comprehend what is told to us. But what has become clear to me is that we see the so-called “real Jesus” all through-out the Gospels. His preaching, his healings and miracles, his Transfiguration, and his death and resurrection, all show us that he is “God-with-us.” His eating and drinking, his companionship, his sadness at times, and his joy at other times shows us that he is -for lack of a better term- “Us-with-God.”
• In truth, what ever we think of Jesus, he is more. As both God-among-us and a human with us, he is the way salvation comes to us and indeed he is our salvation. He is the bridge between humanity and God and indeed brings both together. There is no difference between Jesus in the Transfiguration or Jesus before or after. We are blessed to have both and to know and follow him as “God-with-us” and as “Us-with-God.” He makes the difference for us.

Ash Wednesday 13 February 2013

(With a handful of ashes and a faithful handful of people, we began our Lenten journey. I think the high point for me was to ask the one acolyte to put ashes on my forehead!)

...and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

• Jesus cautions his disciples to be real and sincere in their practises of repentance. All the things he mentions – alms-giving, fasting, and prayer – were common practises in the Jewish community. They were actions of piety and the signs of a truly pious person.
• The difference is sincerity. Our word, “Sincere”, is an odd one. Some say it actually comes from the art world, in particular, the art of sculpture. In the ancient world, a statue might be commissioned by a person and finished by the artist. But what if a mistake were made? What does the artist do? Start over? Sure, but then the cost has to be swallowed. Give the damaged statue to the buyer? That will never work. Fill in the mistakes and flaws with wax and cover over the problems while you send it to the buyer? That's what happened a lot. Wax or some other substance like wax was used to fill in chips, cuts, or other flaws. So to send a finished statue “without wax” would be the best. In Latin, “without wax” is “sine cera” or “sincere.” At least this is one explanation.
• In any event, sincere would mean honest and true in this case. A person who gives alms, fasts, or prays in order to be seen and rewarded would not be sincere or true. If a person did this acts in such a way that no one else would know, their sincerity would not be so suspect. It still might be the case, but if these acts were done without fanfare or even notice, it says something more positive about the mindset of the do-er.
• There are two persons that are much harder to fool. The first is ourselves, although it is possible to lie to yourself. This usually leads to problems, both within and outside of the self. Secondly, it is impossible to run a snow job on God. “and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” Sincere or not, true or not, our Father will know.
• Remember that Jesus does not institute these practises and teach his disciples about them. He recommends them as things he expects his disciples to be doing anyway. What he teaches them about is Why.
• Another point to remember here is that the disciplines of alms-giving, fasting, and prayer will not win us God's favour or God's grace. Our righteousness is not based on what we might or might not do, but upon what God has done for us. These disciplines of Lent do not win us God's grace, but flow from God's grace. Alms-giving, fasting, and prayer are useful tools for deepening our life with God, and they flow from God's favour given to us in Jesus.
• As we cast off for our voyage through Lent, we can engage in the age-old disciplines of giving ourselves away, laying aside what our ego craves, and entering into the silence that surrounds our God. If we do this - “without wax”- we will find our Father “who sees in secret” waiting to welcome us deeper into his own life.

Transfiguration -- 10 February 2013

(This is being posted rather late, I know. Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday can be a lot of work and those come first!)

"This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!"

• As I begin this talk today, I'm thinking of something an acquaintance of mine was discussing on-line. A third person asked that if Jesus was God, how could he be tempted by a creature like the devil? The person I knew responded that since Jesus was human “on his mother's side”, that side of him could be tempted. I would have to take issue with this, but I didn't because the setting would mean that would receive more comments than I would want to deal with. Most of the comments would not be pleasant.
• The mistake I found in this conversation is seeing Jesus as half-human-half divine, dividing Jesus up as we might our ethnic heritage. It isn't the same as saying a person is, say, half-German and half-Danish. Jesus is not half-God and half-human on his mother's side. He is completely human AND completely God.
• You might be wondering what this has to do with today's readings. If Jesus reveals his divinity to his disciples on the mountain, what becomes of his humanity? If he walks down the mountain with them in his humanity, what has become of his divinity.
• I've heard it said that Jesus was “faking it”, never really living as a human being. I've also heard it said that he was temporarily a human, sort of “slumming” it in human form. That of course, is the side of the discussion that accepts the divinity of Jesus. Others deny this, saying he was human and that was the end of it. A prophet and a teacher, maybe, meaning whatever that might mean, but not any sort of divine being.
• So, were do we see the real Jesus? Is the real Jesus the glowing figure transfigured on the mountain top? Or is the real Jesus the one that walked down the mountain with his friends? Then what was the reason for the event we call the “Transfiguration”?
• I really think this whole thing is not a matter of “either/or”, but rather a matter of depth. Luke puts it this way: “...while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him.” In this experience, the disciples get a glimpse of all that Jesus is, not a divine being hiding under the guise of a man, or a man with some delusions of godhood. Neither was he a sort of combined being with one foot in heaven and one foot in the mud of the earth. To see Jesus in glory, speaking to Moses and Elijah and to see him at their side is to see the real Jesus. You cannot separate him into parts without doing violence to who he is, just as you can't divide any of us into component parts without losing sight of the whole.
• There is the issue for us today. If we see Jesus as simply a human, we deny his divinity and his ultimate power to save and redeem. If we see him as divinity dressed up as a human, we are in danger of losing our connection with him. If that connection is lost, salvation is lost as well, for it is Jesus' taking on of human nature that allows us to be redeemed.
• The moment on the mountain experienced by Peter, James, and John could be seen as a revelation of Jesus as “God-with-us”, and if that were the only moment of revelation, there would be disappointment. If it is a moment of seeing and plumbing the depth of all that Jesus is, we know him as “God-with-us” in the other moments of his life with his disciples and with us now.
• I suppose the real point is this: the disciple's mountaintop experience showed them all that Jesus is in a way they could never come to on their own. This did not change their experience of him in their everyday lives and they might have come to understand that they knew him as he was in the entirety of the life of Jesus.
• In knowing the story from the Gospels, we actually have an advantage on the disciples of Jesus. We know the outcome of the story, which they did not. We have come to know Jesus through the experiences of the disciples and the early church; That is exactly why the Gospels were written. Through the Gospel writers, we stand at the manger in Bethlehem, on the mountain of the Transfiguration, at the cross on Calvary, and at the empty tomb and the upper room. We know what they came to know.
• Our faith shows us the way to understand and comprehend what is told to us. But what has become clear to me is that we see the so-called “real Jesus” all through-out the Gospels. His preaching, his healings and miracles, his Transfiguration, and his death and resurrection, all show us that he is “God-with-us.” His eating and drinking, his companionship, his sadness at times, and his joy at other times shows us that he is -for lack of a better term- “Us-with-God.”
• In truth, what ever we think of Jesus, he is more. As both God-among-us and a human with us, he is the way salvation comes to us and indeed he is our salvation. He is the bridge between humanity and God and indeed brings both together. There is no difference between Jesus in the Transfiguration or Jesus before or after. We are blessed to have both and to know and follow him as “God-with-us” and as “Us-with-God.” He makes the difference for us.

Fourth Sunday after Epiphany -- 3 February 2013

And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

• This is the answer to Paul's exhortation to “strive for the greater gifts”, the teaser phrase we heard last Sunday. Unless we read ahead or knew what the next verses in the letter said, we might wonder what the greater gifts might be. Compared to apostleship, prophecy, teaching, healing, wonder-working, and pastoral ministry, what could be greater?
• Paul is very clear that love is the greatest of all these God-given gifts. He goes so far as to say that without love, tongues, healings, the working of wonders, the knowledge of mysteries, and even the martyrdom of poverty or blood are worthless without love. All those wonderful thing are counted as nothing in Paul's view, if they are done without love. He say that some of these thing might be done for the sake of boasting, which only sets those things apart in a different and poorer way.
• If effect, the reasons why a Christian exercises the gifts they have received makes all the difference in the world. Hear again Paul's words: If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
• Paul does not in any way down-play these gifts within the church. If anything, he reminds the Corinthians of their power. At the same time, he tells the truth – what is done out of self-interest, pride, or a desire to show off has less value than the simplest thing done with love, no matter what might be done in either case.
• In a poetic fashion, Paul speaks of what love looks like in the real world. It is kind and patient, gentle and mild, enduring and truthful. To be otherwise would not be love.
• After Paul spent so much time outlining the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the churches of his time, he speaks of this higher gift of love. The Corinthian Church was a fractured congregation and appears to have opposing factions pulling in a number of directions. What we heard last Sunday was Paul's attempt to let this troubled church know that their gifts were valuable and each fulfilled some indispensable function or role within the body of Christ, the term used since that time to describe the church.
• As he continues his letter, he lets the people know that what is even more important to the life of the church is mutual love in the congregation. All the other gifts might be present and in use, but if love is not found there, they will avail to nothing.
• It is the mutual love within the Christian community that is the hallmark of the Christian life and that's what makes the difference.
• Paul uses Epiphany language in writing to the Corinthians. In one translation, he says he will 'show' them a better way. What he shows them is not simply a project to be completed or a goal to be achieved. He's showing them nothing less than a new way of life, a new reality. It is not a rehashing of old values or a new paint job on “the way things are.” It is a whole new way of being, grounded in the grace and love of God.
• Right here and right now, this is to be our way of life as well. The gifts of the Spirit that Paul outlined are here among us. There are fine leaders and inspired teachers. There are willing spirits and sharp minds. We might not have apostles and we might not recognize prophets among us, but there are healing hands and wonder-workers of their own kind. And, having said that, what we always, always need is a renewal of the gift of love among us. It's there, it really is, and it still needs to be renewed.
• Notice that in his letter, Paul never says that the higher gift, this “better way” is easy. Look again at what shows love and what love consists of - patience, kindness, humility, truth, selflessness, faith, hope, endurance. None of these are easy and few of these virtues come easily to us. Yet, these are the marks of the gift of love.
• I read an article a few days ago by Derek Penwell, entitled “'So What?' The Nightmare Christians Should Be Having.” It was a powerful and troubling piece of writing and we'll talk about it more another time. I think what he had to say fits here. In discussing the increase in the number of people who identify themselves as having no religious affiliation, he says this:

“Think about this for a minute, though: What if part of the reason the "Nones" are so underwhelmed by organized religion isn't because they don't find Jesus interesting, but because it appears to them that Christians don't find him sufficiently interesting enough to take seriously?”

• Do you and I want to take Jesus seriously? If so, we will have to go beyond believing to acting. We will have to believe and act like we believe. Paul shows us the way and in the words of the King James Bible, the “better way.”

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.