6TH SUNDAY OF EASTER — 17 May 2009
St. Paul’s, Durant — 9:00 am
[BCP] Acts 11:19-30 Ps 33 1John 4:7-21 John 15:9-17
This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
Jesus was raised from the dead and commissioned his followers to proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom of God in the power of the Holy Spirit, nineteen hundred and seventy-some years ago.
For pretty much all that time ever since, we’ve been fighting with each other about it.
I’m not picking on you! I’m picking on all of us! I’m picking on me! God knows I love religious battles as well as anyone, and probably better than most. Which is probably why our Lord frequently has to remind me, “I did NOT say: ‘I came that they may have RELIGION, and have it abundantly’!”
Or, as he also says to us all with similar frequency, and occasionally we may even hear him and pay attention: “What is it you don’t understand about: ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you’?”
In the Epistle today, from John’s First Letter, which is mostly about love, John begins, “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” “Let us love one another, because love is from God; … for God is love.” What John is sharing with us in today’s Epistle, like what Jesus is sharing with us in the Gospel, is not just a set of moral rules but a vision of reality. A vision of reality. That which is the most real of everything, that which is the ground, the basis, the root, the foundation of all that is real, is Love love’s-self. God’s very nature is love. The most fundamental thing that we can say about God—even more fundamental than talking about God as omnipotent or omniscient or any of those other six-dollar philosophical words—is that God is loving, indeed, more profoundly and fundamentally, that God is love.
One of the most basic affirmations of the Christian faith. But one about which we need to be very careful. Because the truth of the matter is, our understanding of love is pretty shaky, and when we extend “love” as all too often we mean “love” and apply it to God, we end up with a shallow and sentimental deity very much in our own image. Quite the contrary, it is God who defines what love really is: obviously a reality too rich to define simply, but having to do with the mystery of creativity, indeed the very rationale of creation; the bestowing of authentic being upon another, the free sharing of life, a fundamental generosity that is not controlling or self-gratifying, but the kind of self-giving disclosed in Jesus. This is what love really is, and our loving is only truly loving to the extent that it reflects (in a finite way) the infinite divine loving of God. As St John says, “In this is love, not that we loved God but that God loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” Or as Jesus himself says, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends ….” “Love one another as I have loved you.”
Well, that’s all very inspirational, no doubt. But we easily overestimate how much interest God really has in being inspirational. “Inspiration” is often very much like “religion,” and “religion” is often what we substitute for holiness. But God tends to be disconcertingly concrete and practical. It is after all from St John—the one we like to think of as the “most spiritual” of the Gospel writers (and thus we can keep him safely enshrined on the “religion” shelf)—it is from St John that we hear, “Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.… Those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.…Those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.” “Love one another as I have loved you.” That’s the practical definition of love for us, the pattern for our loving: if we want to see what love really is, we look at Jesus. His commandment to love is not just an order to be obeyed, but a disclosure of reality, and not just a disclosure but an invitation to share in that reality to its richest depths, to share in the very life of God. “I have said these things to you,” Jesus says, “so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”
As we move beyond thinking of Jesus’ commandment to love as a sort of religious inspiration, and start catching it as a vision of reality to be lived in, and to be shared with others, and to be enacted in the world (and feeling the exhilaration of the assurance of God’s trust in us), then perhaps our love will no longer be quite so hedged round and qualified. Perhaps our love will no longer be quite so conditional, not quite so sensible. Perhaps we will be less concerned to count love’s cost. We’ll start seeing more clearly, not only with the eyes of our minds but with the eyes of our hearts, that to love one another—to love one another by the measure of how Jesus has loved us—is what it is really to be alive. As the divine love reaches out beyond itself in creation in a free bestowal of being, so we turn outward beyond ourselves in respect, in concern, in compassion, in affirmation, in cherishing—to other persons and to the whole of God’s creation. We hear more clearly Jesus’ words today, “You did not choose me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last.” “Love one another as I have loved you”—not just a commandment in the narrow sense, not just an inspirational motivation, and not just for ourselves, but a commission, a commission to bear to the world the vision of its own truest destiny.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Sermon -- 3 May 2009
4TH SUN. OF EASTER — 3 May 2009
St. Paul’s, Durant — 9:00 AM
Acts 4:(23-31)32-37 Ps 23 1 John 3:1-8 John 10:11-16
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”
The picture of Jesus as the Good Shepherd is one of the most common in Christian imagery. In one form or another it recurs throughout the gospels, and for that matter through the Hebrew scriptures as well. We may immediately think of the parable of the lost sheep (in Matthew and Luke). Jesus also picks up on themes that run throughout the Old Testament — as we heard in Psalm 23 today (“The Lord is my shepherd…”), or in Psalm 100 (“We are [God’s] people and the sheep of his pasture”), or in Psalm 80 (“Hear, O Shepherd of Israel, leading Joseph like a flock; shine forth, you that are enthroned upon the cherubim”). Recall that the Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) were all shepherds, as was Moses after he fled from Pharaoh’s court in Egypt into the Sinai, as was David before he was anointed as Israel’s King (“I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep to be prince over my people Israel” 2 Sam 7:8).
In the 34th chapter of Ezekiel, a passage which Jesus pretty obviously has directly in mind in what he is saying in today’s Gospel, the prophet Ezekiel, speaking for God at the time of the conquest by the Babylonians, condemns the leadership of Judah for not caring for God’s flock but letting them be scattered, and God promises to be their true shepherd and to bring them home.
Most of us have little direct acquaintance with sheep or shepherding. (Are any of you still raising sheep? Or at least, was your family raising sheep on the farm when you grew up?) So for most of us, the image of Christ the Good Shepherd is a lot like the stained glass window over the high altar over at Trinity Church in Iowa City, which some of you have probably seen: Jesus in long white robes, with a neatly trimmed beard and long flowing locks of well-brushed, well-conditioned hair, cuddling a couple of soft curly lambs that at first glance look like poodle puppies.
Right. You get my point.
When the Bible talks about us as the sheep of God’s flock, about Jesus as our shepherd, there is nothing cute or romantic about it. We’re not being given a compliment here, folks! But what I hope is clear is that God loves us, God cares for us, God rescues us even at the cost of his life, and this is not because we deserve it or have earned it, but just because!
And we say that over and over, but even as we say it, we back away from it. Yes, God loves us — if.…
God cares for us — when.…
God rescues us, if we can demonstrate that we deserve it. When we can prove that we have earned it.
And that’s wrong. And we know that it’s wrong.
How many of you were raised Lutheran? Martin Luther knew this was wrong. Lutherans since Martin Luther, not so much. Anglicans, at least since Richard Hooker, not so much. Reformed, including John Calvin, not so much. Roman Catholics, not so much, especially if you went to parochial school.
Why do you suppose it is that no matter how much we say we understand, how much we think we understand, we so often just don’t get it? One of the things that I discovered when I had left parish ministry and went to work for the University — something I really hadn’t realized before, since I was ordained to the priesthood when I was still a young squirt and clueless about a lot of stuff — but something which I suspect most of you have known for a long long time — is that the world is full of folks who are really good, decent, caring people but who have long since been turned off by “The Church” or “The Christian Religion” because their experience has been that they’ve been repeatedly told that God will love them but only when they get all their ducks in a row, and sorry, they aren’t in a row yet, at least not good enough. Perhaps some of you have been there. If so, welcome back!
Let me be clear in a brief excursus: I am not suggesting that issues of sin and morality aren’t important. They are. In some instances they are far more important that we realize. (Although in some others, they are far less important. But I digress.) But there is a widespread notion, even within mainstream Christianity, that the big problem with sin is that it offends God. Now, I don’t believe that God is offended by our sins. But I do believe that God is deeply grieved by our sins. Because our sins damage and even destroy ourselves, and they damage and even destroy each other, and (as we are becoming increasingly aware) they damage and even destroy the world that God created for us to live in. God does not want us to destroy ourselves, because God loves us. God wants us to be whole, and not to be broken. And sin breaks us, and it breaks others, and it breaks the world. As Jesus says in the verse immediately before this morning’s Gospel reading: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” We live in a world, and in an age, when “religion” seems to some to be slowly, and not always so slowly, losing its grip, at least in Western society. I’m not at all sure this is a bad thing. History does not suggest that when “religion” has a grip on society it has very much to do with the Kingdom of God. I mean, let’s just look around at various parts of the world these days, including some aspects of our own society, and of alleged “Christianity.”
All the more reason why it is vital that we not just sigh and say, “Oh well.” Jesus calls us to proclaim his good news — the good news of God’s love, God’s love for humankind — including others who do not belong to our particular sheepfold — for whom the shepherd has laid down his life in order that we all may share his life.
St. Paul’s, Durant — 9:00 AM
Acts 4:(23-31)32-37 Ps 23 1 John 3:1-8 John 10:11-16
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”
The picture of Jesus as the Good Shepherd is one of the most common in Christian imagery. In one form or another it recurs throughout the gospels, and for that matter through the Hebrew scriptures as well. We may immediately think of the parable of the lost sheep (in Matthew and Luke). Jesus also picks up on themes that run throughout the Old Testament — as we heard in Psalm 23 today (“The Lord is my shepherd…”), or in Psalm 100 (“We are [God’s] people and the sheep of his pasture”), or in Psalm 80 (“Hear, O Shepherd of Israel, leading Joseph like a flock; shine forth, you that are enthroned upon the cherubim”). Recall that the Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) were all shepherds, as was Moses after he fled from Pharaoh’s court in Egypt into the Sinai, as was David before he was anointed as Israel’s King (“I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep to be prince over my people Israel” 2 Sam 7:8).
In the 34th chapter of Ezekiel, a passage which Jesus pretty obviously has directly in mind in what he is saying in today’s Gospel, the prophet Ezekiel, speaking for God at the time of the conquest by the Babylonians, condemns the leadership of Judah for not caring for God’s flock but letting them be scattered, and God promises to be their true shepherd and to bring them home.
Most of us have little direct acquaintance with sheep or shepherding. (Are any of you still raising sheep? Or at least, was your family raising sheep on the farm when you grew up?) So for most of us, the image of Christ the Good Shepherd is a lot like the stained glass window over the high altar over at Trinity Church in Iowa City, which some of you have probably seen: Jesus in long white robes, with a neatly trimmed beard and long flowing locks of well-brushed, well-conditioned hair, cuddling a couple of soft curly lambs that at first glance look like poodle puppies.
Right. You get my point.
When the Bible talks about us as the sheep of God’s flock, about Jesus as our shepherd, there is nothing cute or romantic about it. We’re not being given a compliment here, folks! But what I hope is clear is that God loves us, God cares for us, God rescues us even at the cost of his life, and this is not because we deserve it or have earned it, but just because!
And we say that over and over, but even as we say it, we back away from it. Yes, God loves us — if.…
God cares for us — when.…
God rescues us, if we can demonstrate that we deserve it. When we can prove that we have earned it.
And that’s wrong. And we know that it’s wrong.
How many of you were raised Lutheran? Martin Luther knew this was wrong. Lutherans since Martin Luther, not so much. Anglicans, at least since Richard Hooker, not so much. Reformed, including John Calvin, not so much. Roman Catholics, not so much, especially if you went to parochial school.
Why do you suppose it is that no matter how much we say we understand, how much we think we understand, we so often just don’t get it? One of the things that I discovered when I had left parish ministry and went to work for the University — something I really hadn’t realized before, since I was ordained to the priesthood when I was still a young squirt and clueless about a lot of stuff — but something which I suspect most of you have known for a long long time — is that the world is full of folks who are really good, decent, caring people but who have long since been turned off by “The Church” or “The Christian Religion” because their experience has been that they’ve been repeatedly told that God will love them but only when they get all their ducks in a row, and sorry, they aren’t in a row yet, at least not good enough. Perhaps some of you have been there. If so, welcome back!
Let me be clear in a brief excursus: I am not suggesting that issues of sin and morality aren’t important. They are. In some instances they are far more important that we realize. (Although in some others, they are far less important. But I digress.) But there is a widespread notion, even within mainstream Christianity, that the big problem with sin is that it offends God. Now, I don’t believe that God is offended by our sins. But I do believe that God is deeply grieved by our sins. Because our sins damage and even destroy ourselves, and they damage and even destroy each other, and (as we are becoming increasingly aware) they damage and even destroy the world that God created for us to live in. God does not want us to destroy ourselves, because God loves us. God wants us to be whole, and not to be broken. And sin breaks us, and it breaks others, and it breaks the world. As Jesus says in the verse immediately before this morning’s Gospel reading: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” We live in a world, and in an age, when “religion” seems to some to be slowly, and not always so slowly, losing its grip, at least in Western society. I’m not at all sure this is a bad thing. History does not suggest that when “religion” has a grip on society it has very much to do with the Kingdom of God. I mean, let’s just look around at various parts of the world these days, including some aspects of our own society, and of alleged “Christianity.”
All the more reason why it is vital that we not just sigh and say, “Oh well.” Jesus calls us to proclaim his good news — the good news of God’s love, God’s love for humankind — including others who do not belong to our particular sheepfold — for whom the shepherd has laid down his life in order that we all may share his life.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Sermon -- 19 April 2009
2ND OF EASTER — 19 April 2009
St. Paul’s, Durant — 9:00
Acts 3:12a, 13-15, 17-26 Ps 111 1John 5:1-6 John 20:19-31
Do not be faithless, but believing.
The Gospel on the Second Sunday of Easter is, every year, the account from St. John about Jesus’ appearances, first to the Ten (the Twelve, less Judas of course, and also with Thomas missing) on that first Sunday evening, and then a week later to the Eleven again, this time with Thomas present. Thomas, we are told, refused to believe that Jesus had been raised from the dead until he saw Jesus with his own eyes and touched Jesus’ wounds with his own hands. And hence poor Tom has been nicknamed “Doubting Thomas” ever since. And we’ve been reading this Gospel passage on this Sunday in the year almost ever since; and it gives us good occasion to talk about faith and doubt.
Faith and doubt are often seen as opposites, as incompatible with each other. If you experience doubtfulness about something - especially something “religious,” something the Bible says, something the Church says - then you obviously “don’t have enough faith,” and folks use this as a club to beat you over the head with. Maybe you even use it on yourself as a club to beat yourself over the head with.
I don’t think God expects us to give our assent to things blindly and uncritically. God does not expect us to hang our brains on the hat rack when we walk into church (although, God knows, plenty of us do just that!). On the contrary, I think genuine faithfulness includes a readiness to use our minds rigorously, to think critically, to judge on the basis of credible evidence, though always in a spirit that humbly seeks truth, rather than one that proudly seeks power.
But back to our story. There’s nothing in the Gospels that suggests that Thomas was a skeptic by temperament. On the contrary, he was fervently devoted to Jesus. When Jesus starts up to Jerusalem the last time, even though the disciples warn him that the establishment has it in for him, it is Thomas who convinces the others, “Let us go with him too, and die there with him!” Thomas doesn’t have any trouble believing in Jesus; he just has trouble with pious platitudes and wishful thinking.
St. John’s Gospel, we might note, comes out of an early Christian community which (among other things) was trying to deal with people who tried to be more spiritual than God. (Later on some of this kind of super-spiritual religion would take forms which we would later refer to as “Gnosticism” - sort of the “New Age” of the second century - very lofty, anti-materialist, anti-worldly, esoteric stuff.) One of the things which the Fourth Gospel is at some considerable pains to defend is precisely that in Jesus “the Word became flesh, and pitched his tent right here among us.”
And so in John’s Gospel, when Thomas hears that the rest of the disciples have seen the risen Jesus, he says, “I don’t want to hear a bunch of inspirational stuff about the triumph of life over death, I don’t want a meaningful experience, I don’t want to be uplifted, I want to know the truth! I want to see his body, nail-holes and all!”
And note that Jesus really doesn’t seem to have any big problem with this. Look at the Gospel story again. That first Sunday night he appears to the Ten, and they’re all scared blue (fair enough!). (Incidentally, have you ever noticed in the accounts of the resurrection appearances, that people normally don’t recognize the risen Jesus when they see him? The women don’t, until Jesus speaks to them; nor Mary Magdalene; nor the disciples, in Jerusalem, on the road to Emmaus, or in Galilee; nor Paul on the Damascus Road. We don’t find him; he discloses himself to us.) (Anyway.) Jesus appears to the Ten, and says, “Peace. Don’t be afraid.” And he shows them his hands and his side. “Look, it’s me.” Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. It’s okay that they should first experience the reality of his body. And it’s okay for Thomas, too, a week later. “Come and look,” Jesus says. “Come and touch. It’s really me. I’m really here. Do not be faithless - be faithful.” (That’s what the Greek says. It isn’t really talking about “doubt” in an intellectual or conceptual sense at all - it’s talking about personal commitment, personal trust, personal relationship.)
Thomas believed, Thomas placed his faith, Thomas let Jesus disclose himself to him. Because he saw.
“Blessed are those who believe, even though they don’t see,” Jesus says. Well, yes. He’s talking about us. Because we’re not going to see Jesus the way Thomas did (well, probably not.). We’re not going to, not exactly that way. The folks for whom and among whom St John’s Gospel was written weren’t going to see Jesus exactly that way either. That’s why the Gospel was written (and it says so, right there): “These things are written down so that you may believe.” Thomas needed some evidence, and that was okay. We need evidence too, and it’s still okay, and we’ve got some. The real crunch comes when we do meet Jesus, when Jesus does disclose himself to us through the people around us; do we recognize him then? Do we commit ourselves then? Are we faithful, rather than faithless?
St. Paul’s, Durant — 9:00
Acts 3:12a, 13-15, 17-26 Ps 111 1John 5:1-6 John 20:19-31
Do not be faithless, but believing.
The Gospel on the Second Sunday of Easter is, every year, the account from St. John about Jesus’ appearances, first to the Ten (the Twelve, less Judas of course, and also with Thomas missing) on that first Sunday evening, and then a week later to the Eleven again, this time with Thomas present. Thomas, we are told, refused to believe that Jesus had been raised from the dead until he saw Jesus with his own eyes and touched Jesus’ wounds with his own hands. And hence poor Tom has been nicknamed “Doubting Thomas” ever since. And we’ve been reading this Gospel passage on this Sunday in the year almost ever since; and it gives us good occasion to talk about faith and doubt.
Faith and doubt are often seen as opposites, as incompatible with each other. If you experience doubtfulness about something - especially something “religious,” something the Bible says, something the Church says - then you obviously “don’t have enough faith,” and folks use this as a club to beat you over the head with. Maybe you even use it on yourself as a club to beat yourself over the head with.
I don’t think God expects us to give our assent to things blindly and uncritically. God does not expect us to hang our brains on the hat rack when we walk into church (although, God knows, plenty of us do just that!). On the contrary, I think genuine faithfulness includes a readiness to use our minds rigorously, to think critically, to judge on the basis of credible evidence, though always in a spirit that humbly seeks truth, rather than one that proudly seeks power.
But back to our story. There’s nothing in the Gospels that suggests that Thomas was a skeptic by temperament. On the contrary, he was fervently devoted to Jesus. When Jesus starts up to Jerusalem the last time, even though the disciples warn him that the establishment has it in for him, it is Thomas who convinces the others, “Let us go with him too, and die there with him!” Thomas doesn’t have any trouble believing in Jesus; he just has trouble with pious platitudes and wishful thinking.
St. John’s Gospel, we might note, comes out of an early Christian community which (among other things) was trying to deal with people who tried to be more spiritual than God. (Later on some of this kind of super-spiritual religion would take forms which we would later refer to as “Gnosticism” - sort of the “New Age” of the second century - very lofty, anti-materialist, anti-worldly, esoteric stuff.) One of the things which the Fourth Gospel is at some considerable pains to defend is precisely that in Jesus “the Word became flesh, and pitched his tent right here among us.”
And so in John’s Gospel, when Thomas hears that the rest of the disciples have seen the risen Jesus, he says, “I don’t want to hear a bunch of inspirational stuff about the triumph of life over death, I don’t want a meaningful experience, I don’t want to be uplifted, I want to know the truth! I want to see his body, nail-holes and all!”
And note that Jesus really doesn’t seem to have any big problem with this. Look at the Gospel story again. That first Sunday night he appears to the Ten, and they’re all scared blue (fair enough!). (Incidentally, have you ever noticed in the accounts of the resurrection appearances, that people normally don’t recognize the risen Jesus when they see him? The women don’t, until Jesus speaks to them; nor Mary Magdalene; nor the disciples, in Jerusalem, on the road to Emmaus, or in Galilee; nor Paul on the Damascus Road. We don’t find him; he discloses himself to us.) (Anyway.) Jesus appears to the Ten, and says, “Peace. Don’t be afraid.” And he shows them his hands and his side. “Look, it’s me.” Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. It’s okay that they should first experience the reality of his body. And it’s okay for Thomas, too, a week later. “Come and look,” Jesus says. “Come and touch. It’s really me. I’m really here. Do not be faithless - be faithful.” (That’s what the Greek says. It isn’t really talking about “doubt” in an intellectual or conceptual sense at all - it’s talking about personal commitment, personal trust, personal relationship.)
Thomas believed, Thomas placed his faith, Thomas let Jesus disclose himself to him. Because he saw.
“Blessed are those who believe, even though they don’t see,” Jesus says. Well, yes. He’s talking about us. Because we’re not going to see Jesus the way Thomas did (well, probably not.). We’re not going to, not exactly that way. The folks for whom and among whom St John’s Gospel was written weren’t going to see Jesus exactly that way either. That’s why the Gospel was written (and it says so, right there): “These things are written down so that you may believe.” Thomas needed some evidence, and that was okay. We need evidence too, and it’s still okay, and we’ve got some. The real crunch comes when we do meet Jesus, when Jesus does disclose himself to us through the people around us; do we recognize him then? Do we commit ourselves then? Are we faithful, rather than faithless?
Monday, April 6, 2009
Sermon -- 5 April 2009
PALM SUNDAY — 5 April 2009
Mark 11:1-11a Isaiah 45:21-25 Pa 22:1-11 Phil 2:5-11 Mark 15:1-39
At three o'clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
I’m told there is a common nightmare — though I haven’t had it so much as a dream during sleep as rather that sudden bolt of fear while wide awake in the case itself: driving too fast in the rain and dark on a narrow highway, and coming suddenly to the crest of a hill, only to discover that there is no other side. The bitter and empty chill of the abyss.
One of the things we're all looking for, and may come to church to find, is some kind of peace, a sense of fulfillment, the assurance that the road does go on, a connection with other people and the universe, a sense of God's presence in our lives. That's okay! We have this longing for God (let’s name it as that, because that’s what it is, even when we don’t always recognize it as such), we have this longing for God because God built it into us; “we come that way.” And we do, at least from time to time, experience the presence of God with us. Different ones of us in different ways; sometimes in overwhelming ways, sometimes in quiet ways; sometimes in the great events of life, sometimes in the midst of the thoroughly ordinary. Sometimes we experience God's presence when we most need God.
And sometimes when we most need God we do not experience God's presence with us.
“Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Of all the words of Jesus, these from the cross are for many Christians the most troubling. If ever there was anyone who, we assume, always felt the presence of God, surely it was Jesus himself. Was not Jesus God’s own Son? Is not Jesus the Incarnation, the humanization, of God’s own Self — the Word become flesh and living among us? And yet Jesus cries, “My God, why have you forsaken me?”
It's not enough to point out that what Jesus says is in fact a quotation of the first verse of the 22nd Psalm — a psalm which verse by verse foreshadows and resonates with the events of the crucifixion — a psalm which begins as a cry of distress but concludes thirty verses later in a song of faith and praise (though we didn’t read it that far this morning): “My soul shall live for him; my descendants shall serve him; they shall come and make known … the saving deeds that he has done.” Doubtless Jesus, steeped in the Hebrew Scriptures as he was, even in the depths of his agony, knew what psalm he was beginning to quote, and how that psalm ends. And yet there's more than that; that's too easy an answer. We must not so cheaply deny or so piously explain away Jesus’ experience of the absence of God. “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Oh, if only I were a better person, if only I had more faith, if only I prayed more, if only I read the Bible more, if only I were holier, then I would feel God’s presence all the time, I would know God is with me, I wouldn’t feel so cold and lonely and empty. Well, perhaps so. Or Not. It is especially to the holy that God risks stepping back into the shadows. It is the holy ones who really experience the Dark Night of the Soul. It turns out that one such was Mother Teresa of
God is never really absent, of course; but we know that by faith, not by evidence, and it doesn’t warm the chill very much when we don’t feel God's presence. But God is not Mr. Fixit rushing in to repair all our problems. God is not a control freak who makes everything turn out all right all the time. God is not a vending machine dispensing heavenly consolation for those with the right spiritual coins. Those who claim that God is always right there for them haven’t been to the cross yet.
“But this isn’t what we were seeking. This doesn’t fulfill our longing. This isn’t the God we wanted.”
Jesus cries out in the words of the 22nd Psalm; the words of the same psalm, verse 8, are thrown back in his face: “He trusted in the Lord; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, if he delights in him.” But God didn't rescue Jesus. God let Jesus die. Oh, God raised him from death on the third day, but first God let him die. Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?
I don’t really know why Jesus experienced abandonment on the cross. I can talk about it, but I don’t really understand it. I do know this: Jesus shows us — in his life, in his teaching, in his death — Jesus shows us who God really is. Or, perhaps better, in Jesus, in his life, in his teaching, in his death, and, yes, indeed, in his resurrection, but only after “in his death,” God reveals who God really is.
For remember this: Given that this is what it takes to reconcile a broken humanity to its Creator, God did not find somebody else to do the job. “Love does not send others to suffer in its place. Love comes itself.”1 Whatever else we may want to say about the relationship between the humanity of Jesus of Nazareth and the divinity of God, that much is fundamental. And so we may even say: in Jesus on the cross, God tastes the bitterness of his own absence. And that says something about who God is, too.
God's presence with us is not a matter of our feeling; nor is it a matter of our deserving. Being better or holier may make us more keenly aware of God's presence, but on the other hand it may make us more keenly aware of God's absence. Our relationship with God is not, in the end, a matter of feeling anyway. It's a matter of decision, of response to a call. God calls us to faith, to commitment to the service of an eternal cause, a heavenly kingdom. But this is a call to a faith which trusts even when we do not feel God's presence; a faith which seeks not to use God to make us feel good but which seeks to be used by God to make the world holy; a faith which says Yes when everything around us and even within us cries No; a faith which seeks not to escape death but which trusts and knows that only through death can we be raised to true life.
1 John Austin Baker, The Foolishness of God (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1970), pp. 407-8
Monday, March 30, 2009
Sermon -- 29 March 2009
5TH IN LENT — 29 March 2009
St. Paul’s, Durant — 9:15 a.m.
Jer 31:31-34 Ps 51:1-13 Heb 5:5-10 John 12:20-33
Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
The people of Jesus’ time, and for many generations before, had been waiting for deliverance. With great longing they yearned for the coming of the Messiah (the “Anointed One”), or The Prophet (like Moses, or Elijah returned), or the heavenly Son of Man. (The titles varied somewhat.) But they had their own ideas of how God ought to act, and what the Messiah, or Whoever, should do, and what deliverance and salvation meant. They assumed that they knew what the nature of reality was, and how the universe worked, and what they had a right to expect from God. Their ideas of deliverance were in terms of power, of glory in the sense of grandeur. They expected God to come and fix everything for them. They wanted the Messiah to come swooping in like Superman and make everything all right again. They wanted the Messiah to drive out the Roman occupation army and re-establish the kingdom of Israel like it had been in the good old days of David and Solomon. They thought that God’s Messiah would make them all righteous and prosperous and free, and so on and so on.
And how unlike all that Jesus is! “If you try to save your life you will lose it; you will only save your life if you lose it for my sake.” This saying recurs over and over in the Gospels—we heard it in Mark’s Gospel three Sundays ago—and it is right at the heart of Jesus’ teaching. Perhaps this above all is the scandal of Christ. And let’s be honest: If, upon reflection, in our heart of hearts, if we aren’t offended, scandalized, “tripped up” by Christ—at least sometimes—then we just aren’t paying serious attention. Jesus really means it when he says the first shall be last and the last first. In the Reign of God, everything really is (by our standards) topsy-turvy.
“Quit trying to accumulate things for yourselves,” Jesus says, “riches, or position, or security, or even honor, or even virtue. Stop trying to save your own lives! You can’t do it. If you want to live really, live fully, live eternally beginning right now, then you have to give your life away. Don’t try to run away from death—it is only through dying that you can begin to live. All those things in which you put your trust to find your security and happiness will betray you in the end and rob you of that which you seek.”
And that’s not what we were expecting! That isn’t what we had in mind at all! That’s an attack on everything we have ever held dear, all our traditional values! If these are God’s ways, they are strange indeed! Think about it! What an absurd Messiah! There he stands, not in Rome, the capital of the Empire, or in Alexandria, the Mediterranean world’s second city, but in the middle of Jerusalem, a backwater provincial not-much-more-than-a-county-seat-town, surrounded by a rag-tag mob of ne’er-do-wells who obviously have nothing better to do, proclaiming: “Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”
We thought we knew, in those days, how God ought to operate in God’s world. We still think we know how God ought to operate in the world. We think in terms like “merit” and “virtue” and “earning” and “deserving” and “worthiness” and “security” and “self-fulfillment” and “self-preservation.” We think that’s being Realistic. The scandal, the offense, of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that the Gospel claims that God does not operate in the world the way we think God ought to. The Gospel claims that what we assume is “realistic” isn’t realistic at all, isn’t real at all. God does not bring salvation and deliverance by power and the glory of grandeur, by lightning and thunder and armies of angels. God does not send us a king, as this world understands kings. God does not take us out of the world of pain and suffering and death—God leads us into pain and suffering and death, and through pain and suffering and death God brings us out into true and genuine life. God does not manipulate us, or compel us, or coerce us. God draws us—draws us by the divine love, draws us by the divine truth, draws us to the Cross.
And this is the mystery of the Cross, the mystery into which we enter more and more deeply as Holy Week approaches:
– The power and glory of God are known to us through suffering love;
– What our human lives are really all about is seen in the Crucified One;
– Only in letting go of everything can we really have anything at all;
– Love—unreserved, unconditional, unrestricted, unbounded love, love that holds back nothing, seeks nothing for itself, but gives all—this love is the most powerful reality, the only truly powerful reality, ultimately the only reality of all that is.
Only by being lifted up on the Cross does Jesus draw all of us to himself by his power and glory.
We heard Jeremiah speak today of a new covenant that God is making with us, written on our hearts. This new covenant is a covenant which calls us to die: to die to ourselves and our own ways, our self-assurance, our self-sufficiency, our false and illusory “realism,” our security, our “worthiness”—to die to all of this, so that we may be re-born, re-created, re-enlivened with the real life, the true life, the eternal life of the Crucified and Risen One.
St. Paul’s, Durant — 9:15 a.m.
Jer 31:31-34 Ps 51:1-13 Heb 5:5-10 John 12:20-33
Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
The people of Jesus’ time, and for many generations before, had been waiting for deliverance. With great longing they yearned for the coming of the Messiah (the “Anointed One”), or The Prophet (like Moses, or Elijah returned), or the heavenly Son of Man. (The titles varied somewhat.) But they had their own ideas of how God ought to act, and what the Messiah, or Whoever, should do, and what deliverance and salvation meant. They assumed that they knew what the nature of reality was, and how the universe worked, and what they had a right to expect from God. Their ideas of deliverance were in terms of power, of glory in the sense of grandeur. They expected God to come and fix everything for them. They wanted the Messiah to come swooping in like Superman and make everything all right again. They wanted the Messiah to drive out the Roman occupation army and re-establish the kingdom of Israel like it had been in the good old days of David and Solomon. They thought that God’s Messiah would make them all righteous and prosperous and free, and so on and so on.
And how unlike all that Jesus is! “If you try to save your life you will lose it; you will only save your life if you lose it for my sake.” This saying recurs over and over in the Gospels—we heard it in Mark’s Gospel three Sundays ago—and it is right at the heart of Jesus’ teaching. Perhaps this above all is the scandal of Christ. And let’s be honest: If, upon reflection, in our heart of hearts, if we aren’t offended, scandalized, “tripped up” by Christ—at least sometimes—then we just aren’t paying serious attention. Jesus really means it when he says the first shall be last and the last first. In the Reign of God, everything really is (by our standards) topsy-turvy.
“Quit trying to accumulate things for yourselves,” Jesus says, “riches, or position, or security, or even honor, or even virtue. Stop trying to save your own lives! You can’t do it. If you want to live really, live fully, live eternally beginning right now, then you have to give your life away. Don’t try to run away from death—it is only through dying that you can begin to live. All those things in which you put your trust to find your security and happiness will betray you in the end and rob you of that which you seek.”
And that’s not what we were expecting! That isn’t what we had in mind at all! That’s an attack on everything we have ever held dear, all our traditional values! If these are God’s ways, they are strange indeed! Think about it! What an absurd Messiah! There he stands, not in Rome, the capital of the Empire, or in Alexandria, the Mediterranean world’s second city, but in the middle of Jerusalem, a backwater provincial not-much-more-than-a-county-seat-town, surrounded by a rag-tag mob of ne’er-do-wells who obviously have nothing better to do, proclaiming: “Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”
We thought we knew, in those days, how God ought to operate in God’s world. We still think we know how God ought to operate in the world. We think in terms like “merit” and “virtue” and “earning” and “deserving” and “worthiness” and “security” and “self-fulfillment” and “self-preservation.” We think that’s being Realistic. The scandal, the offense, of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that the Gospel claims that God does not operate in the world the way we think God ought to. The Gospel claims that what we assume is “realistic” isn’t realistic at all, isn’t real at all. God does not bring salvation and deliverance by power and the glory of grandeur, by lightning and thunder and armies of angels. God does not send us a king, as this world understands kings. God does not take us out of the world of pain and suffering and death—God leads us into pain and suffering and death, and through pain and suffering and death God brings us out into true and genuine life. God does not manipulate us, or compel us, or coerce us. God draws us—draws us by the divine love, draws us by the divine truth, draws us to the Cross.
And this is the mystery of the Cross, the mystery into which we enter more and more deeply as Holy Week approaches:
– The power and glory of God are known to us through suffering love;
– What our human lives are really all about is seen in the Crucified One;
– Only in letting go of everything can we really have anything at all;
– Love—unreserved, unconditional, unrestricted, unbounded love, love that holds back nothing, seeks nothing for itself, but gives all—this love is the most powerful reality, the only truly powerful reality, ultimately the only reality of all that is.
Only by being lifted up on the Cross does Jesus draw all of us to himself by his power and glory.
We heard Jeremiah speak today of a new covenant that God is making with us, written on our hearts. This new covenant is a covenant which calls us to die: to die to ourselves and our own ways, our self-assurance, our self-sufficiency, our false and illusory “realism,” our security, our “worthiness”—to die to all of this, so that we may be re-born, re-created, re-enlivened with the real life, the true life, the eternal life of the Crucified and Risen One.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Sermon -- 22 March 2009
4TH SUNDAY IN LENT — 22 March 2009
St. Mark’s, Maquoketa — 10:00 a.m.
Num 21:4-9 Ps 107:1-3,17-22 Eph 2:1-10 John 3:14-21
And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.
There are certain classic forms for that important literary genre, the joke. For instance, there are the jokes that begin, “A guy walks into a bar…” Or sometimes it’s a penguin that walks into the bar. Or a giraffe. Or maybe René Descartes (that’s a very philosophical joke).
Another classic form is the one that begins, “A man dies and goes to heaven, and St. Peter (or Jesus, or God) meets him at the pearly gates and says to him, ‘What have you done that entitles you to be admitted here?’” (Have I told you the one about the Baptist preacher and his wife, and the Lutheran pastor and his wife, and the Episcopal priest and his wife, who were going out to dinner together but they were in an automobile accident and were all killed, and when they appeared at the pearly gates…?) (If you don’t know that one, ask me at coffee hour. Or, if you’re smart, don’t.)
Well, anyway, this classic joke form depends upon a widely shared and commonly understood scenario of what our final judgment will be like. And in this scenario we appear before the divine tribunal, and our file is pulled and scrutinized, and all the wrong things we have done and right things we have failed to do are added up, and God says, “Hmmmm,” or perhaps “Hmmmm,” and depending on the tone of that “Hmmmm” we either get in or we don’t, we are either saved or damned. It’s a model rather like a human courtroom. Except that in a human courtroom we presumably have a defense attorney and can plead extenuating circumstances or something like that. But in our image of the last judgment — possibly influenced directly or indirectly by Michelangelo —we are guilty until proven innocent, the charges are inscrutable, and the sentence unappealable. It’s actually less like a court of law and more like an IRS audit.
Well, I don’t think the image of judgment in the Gospel is like that at all. St. John’s Gospel actually says quite a lot about judgment, and takes it very seriously, and so should we. I think it’s a real mistake to make a modernist sentimentalist assumption that God is a real weenie when it comes to judgment. But judgment is not the imposition upon us of a sentence by someone else (even by God) —where the issue might arise in our minds as to whether we were being dealt with fairly, where we might claim, “Yes, but, you don’t really understand!” On the contrary, judgment is the utterly clear, utterly transparent, utterly truthful disclosure and revelation of who we really are, what we have really made of ourselves. It really isn’t a matter of balancing our sins against what good we have done — in any case we are not saved by the good deeds we have done. What we have done matters, but it matters because what we do is what makes us who we are.
And so the Gospel today:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.”
This is the judgment: face to face with the source and ground of the being of all that is, and seeing that That One is by very nature totally self-giving Love, who indeed so loves us that he came among us as one of us and shared our condition to its bitterest dregs in order to raise us to his condition in its utter glory — face to face with That Love, have we become persons who go to be embraced by That Love, or have we become persons who withdraw into our own sorry selves? (This is what “believing in the name of the only Son of God” is about — not subscribing to doctrinal propositions about Jesus, however important those may be in their place, but turning to the embracing arms of the Divine Love.) In the presence of the Light of the World, do we rejoice in that Light’s illumination, or do we flee to hide in the shadows? This is the judgment.
We are already being judged, by who we are becoming. And who we are becoming is a function of what we do. So the Lenten call to repentance (indeed, the call to repentance in every season) is critically important: we really do need to look at ourselves, be honest about what we have done and what we are doing, and understand who we are becoming. In some respects, at least, we’re going to realize that “this isn’t who I want to be!” So we had better do something about that, and turn around (which is what “repent” means) and become people who “do what is true” and therefore who in the judgment will “come to the light.”
St. Mark’s, Maquoketa — 10:00 a.m.
Num 21:4-9 Ps 107:1-3,17-22 Eph 2:1-10 John 3:14-21
And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.
There are certain classic forms for that important literary genre, the joke. For instance, there are the jokes that begin, “A guy walks into a bar…” Or sometimes it’s a penguin that walks into the bar. Or a giraffe. Or maybe René Descartes (that’s a very philosophical joke).
Another classic form is the one that begins, “A man dies and goes to heaven, and St. Peter (or Jesus, or God) meets him at the pearly gates and says to him, ‘What have you done that entitles you to be admitted here?’” (Have I told you the one about the Baptist preacher and his wife, and the Lutheran pastor and his wife, and the Episcopal priest and his wife, who were going out to dinner together but they were in an automobile accident and were all killed, and when they appeared at the pearly gates…?) (If you don’t know that one, ask me at coffee hour. Or, if you’re smart, don’t.)
Well, anyway, this classic joke form depends upon a widely shared and commonly understood scenario of what our final judgment will be like. And in this scenario we appear before the divine tribunal, and our file is pulled and scrutinized, and all the wrong things we have done and right things we have failed to do are added up, and God says, “Hmmmm,” or perhaps “Hmmmm,” and depending on the tone of that “Hmmmm” we either get in or we don’t, we are either saved or damned. It’s a model rather like a human courtroom. Except that in a human courtroom we presumably have a defense attorney and can plead extenuating circumstances or something like that. But in our image of the last judgment — possibly influenced directly or indirectly by Michelangelo —we are guilty until proven innocent, the charges are inscrutable, and the sentence unappealable. It’s actually less like a court of law and more like an IRS audit.
Well, I don’t think the image of judgment in the Gospel is like that at all. St. John’s Gospel actually says quite a lot about judgment, and takes it very seriously, and so should we. I think it’s a real mistake to make a modernist sentimentalist assumption that God is a real weenie when it comes to judgment. But judgment is not the imposition upon us of a sentence by someone else (even by God) —where the issue might arise in our minds as to whether we were being dealt with fairly, where we might claim, “Yes, but, you don’t really understand!” On the contrary, judgment is the utterly clear, utterly transparent, utterly truthful disclosure and revelation of who we really are, what we have really made of ourselves. It really isn’t a matter of balancing our sins against what good we have done — in any case we are not saved by the good deeds we have done. What we have done matters, but it matters because what we do is what makes us who we are.
And so the Gospel today:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.”
This is the judgment: face to face with the source and ground of the being of all that is, and seeing that That One is by very nature totally self-giving Love, who indeed so loves us that he came among us as one of us and shared our condition to its bitterest dregs in order to raise us to his condition in its utter glory — face to face with That Love, have we become persons who go to be embraced by That Love, or have we become persons who withdraw into our own sorry selves? (This is what “believing in the name of the only Son of God” is about — not subscribing to doctrinal propositions about Jesus, however important those may be in their place, but turning to the embracing arms of the Divine Love.) In the presence of the Light of the World, do we rejoice in that Light’s illumination, or do we flee to hide in the shadows? This is the judgment.
We are already being judged, by who we are becoming. And who we are becoming is a function of what we do. So the Lenten call to repentance (indeed, the call to repentance in every season) is critically important: we really do need to look at ourselves, be honest about what we have done and what we are doing, and understand who we are becoming. In some respects, at least, we’re going to realize that “this isn’t who I want to be!” So we had better do something about that, and turn around (which is what “repent” means) and become people who “do what is true” and therefore who in the judgment will “come to the light.”
Monday, March 16, 2009
Sermon -- 15 March 2006
3 LENT—15 March 2009
St. Mark’s, Maquoketa — 10:00
Ex 20:1-17 Psalm 19 1 Cor 1:18-25 John 2:13-22
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.
The preacher was preaching on the Ten Commandments; and as he preached, a man sitting toward the back slunk lower and lower in the pew, commandment by commandment; but at the end of the sermon he suddenly straightened up, his face brightened visibly, and the usher heard him to say to himself, “Well, at least I have never made unto myself any graven image!”
The Old Testament lesson today is the narrative of God’s giving the Ten Commandments to Moses—the heart of the Torah, the Law of the old Covenant. The cornerstone of morality, we might say; and some do say. I’d like to think for a few minutes about morality and law.
There is a level at which we think about morality or goodness or righteousness in terms of obedience to laws. Virtue consists in keeping the laws; sin consists in breaking the laws. There’s a certain immediate simplicity to that; it makes moral issues fairly clear-cut, at least in principle. We know where we stand, roughly. Legalism can be attractive and appealing. But it’s not the basis of Christian morality. (Nor, for that matter, is it even the basis of classical philosophical ethics.)
St. Paul wrestled very hard with the issue of the Law. Paul was by upbringing, education, and natural inclination a Pharisee—a member of that party in Judaism which took very seriously the obligation to obey strictly the most minute prescriptions of the Law of Moses.
(The Pharisees, by the way, were not, on the whole, hypocrites in the sense of being phonies. They really did try very hard to live up to their ideals, and many of them succeeded, or came pretty close. One such was the young Saul of Tarsus, as he was known in Jerusalem—“Paulos” was his Greek name. But the Pharisees were rigorists, and rigorists are often intolerant, and they tended toward the notion that their strict observance of the Law earned them God’s special favor.)
(By “The Law,” we might also note, in St Paul’s letters, he normally means not “law” generally in the sense of the civil law, but very specifically “The Law” given by God to Moses and the people of Israel, the Jewish Law of the Old Testament as we would call it, the Torah. It would probably be helpful if in the translation of the Epistle, “Law” were capitalized when it refers to Torah.)
(Ancient Greek manuscripts don’t distinguish between upper- and lower-case letters, so capitalization in English versions is always an editorial decision of the translators.) (Are you taking notes on all this? There will be a quiz...)
Anyway!—The issue of the Law was a very important one for the first Christians. If you can gain salvation by keeping Torah, then what is the point of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ? If on the other hand salvation comes by God’s free gift, working through one’s faith in Jesus Christ, then keeping the Law—particularly things like the dietary and ceremonial regulations which apparently did not involve moral issues—is no longer necessary. As Christianity spread into the Gentile world, the question of the place of the Old Testament Law in Christian faith became crucial, and Paul, the great missionary to the Gentile world, had to struggle very hard with it, as we see especially in his letters to the Christians at Rome and to those in Galatia (west-central Anatolia, what we now know as Turkey).
The problem with the Law—or with any law—all by itself, is that it shows what is good and what is evil, but it gives no power to choose the good over the evil. The Greeks thought, and lots of folks today still think, that it’s just a problem of education: if we teach folks so they know what is right, then they’ll do it. The Greeks could be stupefyingly naïve! And so can we! Paul had a much more perceptive view of human being. “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” Moral law—whether Torah or any other—can educate us, it can show us what things are loving and what things are destructive, but law cannot save us. Law cannot make us good, it can only show us our sin.
In the Gospel today we see Jesus symbolically cleansing the Temple (he’s enacting a fulfillment of Malachi’s prophecy of the Messiah). And when he’s challenged about it, he replies very cryptically, “Destroy this temple [he means his own body, of course; well, maybe not “of course”; Jesus can be very enigmatic, especially in John’s Gospel!]—destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” The old order is coming to its fulfillment in the new creation which is breaking in.
Christian faith, and the ethical dimension of Christian faith, calls us beyond mere obedience to law, even to what we think is God’s Law. Rather, in Jesus Christ we are called into faithful relationship with a person. We are summoned to a discipleship that is far more than just following a set of rules. We are enlisted in a cause, Christ’s cause, to be heralds and agents of the Reign of God, pioneer and charter members of the redeemed community that shall in the end include all creation. For obedience is all that law can command; God claims our whole hearts.
St. Mark’s, Maquoketa — 10:00
Ex 20:1-17 Psalm 19 1 Cor 1:18-25 John 2:13-22
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.
The preacher was preaching on the Ten Commandments; and as he preached, a man sitting toward the back slunk lower and lower in the pew, commandment by commandment; but at the end of the sermon he suddenly straightened up, his face brightened visibly, and the usher heard him to say to himself, “Well, at least I have never made unto myself any graven image!”
The Old Testament lesson today is the narrative of God’s giving the Ten Commandments to Moses—the heart of the Torah, the Law of the old Covenant. The cornerstone of morality, we might say; and some do say. I’d like to think for a few minutes about morality and law.
There is a level at which we think about morality or goodness or righteousness in terms of obedience to laws. Virtue consists in keeping the laws; sin consists in breaking the laws. There’s a certain immediate simplicity to that; it makes moral issues fairly clear-cut, at least in principle. We know where we stand, roughly. Legalism can be attractive and appealing. But it’s not the basis of Christian morality. (Nor, for that matter, is it even the basis of classical philosophical ethics.)
St. Paul wrestled very hard with the issue of the Law. Paul was by upbringing, education, and natural inclination a Pharisee—a member of that party in Judaism which took very seriously the obligation to obey strictly the most minute prescriptions of the Law of Moses.
(The Pharisees, by the way, were not, on the whole, hypocrites in the sense of being phonies. They really did try very hard to live up to their ideals, and many of them succeeded, or came pretty close. One such was the young Saul of Tarsus, as he was known in Jerusalem—“Paulos” was his Greek name. But the Pharisees were rigorists, and rigorists are often intolerant, and they tended toward the notion that their strict observance of the Law earned them God’s special favor.)
(By “The Law,” we might also note, in St Paul’s letters, he normally means not “law” generally in the sense of the civil law, but very specifically “The Law” given by God to Moses and the people of Israel, the Jewish Law of the Old Testament as we would call it, the Torah. It would probably be helpful if in the translation of the Epistle, “Law” were capitalized when it refers to Torah.)
(Ancient Greek manuscripts don’t distinguish between upper- and lower-case letters, so capitalization in English versions is always an editorial decision of the translators.) (Are you taking notes on all this? There will be a quiz...)
Anyway!—The issue of the Law was a very important one for the first Christians. If you can gain salvation by keeping Torah, then what is the point of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ? If on the other hand salvation comes by God’s free gift, working through one’s faith in Jesus Christ, then keeping the Law—particularly things like the dietary and ceremonial regulations which apparently did not involve moral issues—is no longer necessary. As Christianity spread into the Gentile world, the question of the place of the Old Testament Law in Christian faith became crucial, and Paul, the great missionary to the Gentile world, had to struggle very hard with it, as we see especially in his letters to the Christians at Rome and to those in Galatia (west-central Anatolia, what we now know as Turkey).
The problem with the Law—or with any law—all by itself, is that it shows what is good and what is evil, but it gives no power to choose the good over the evil. The Greeks thought, and lots of folks today still think, that it’s just a problem of education: if we teach folks so they know what is right, then they’ll do it. The Greeks could be stupefyingly naïve! And so can we! Paul had a much more perceptive view of human being. “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” Moral law—whether Torah or any other—can educate us, it can show us what things are loving and what things are destructive, but law cannot save us. Law cannot make us good, it can only show us our sin.
In the Gospel today we see Jesus symbolically cleansing the Temple (he’s enacting a fulfillment of Malachi’s prophecy of the Messiah). And when he’s challenged about it, he replies very cryptically, “Destroy this temple [he means his own body, of course; well, maybe not “of course”; Jesus can be very enigmatic, especially in John’s Gospel!]—destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” The old order is coming to its fulfillment in the new creation which is breaking in.
Christian faith, and the ethical dimension of Christian faith, calls us beyond mere obedience to law, even to what we think is God’s Law. Rather, in Jesus Christ we are called into faithful relationship with a person. We are summoned to a discipleship that is far more than just following a set of rules. We are enlisted in a cause, Christ’s cause, to be heralds and agents of the Reign of God, pioneer and charter members of the redeemed community that shall in the end include all creation. For obedience is all that law can command; God claims our whole hearts.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
