January 13, 2019 Jesus in the Temple at 12 Luke 2:41-52

The first question I have every time I look at our gospel reading for today is why does Jesus stay behind in Jerusalem?  He does it without asking or informing his parents.  If Jesus is the sinless one, then hasn’t he just broken the commandment to honor is father and mother? 

That problem with Jesus’ actions take us right to the heart of the matter.  And let’s just dive right in, because simple as this Bible story is, it points to something deeply profound, a teaching for all that ages and probably why it’s in the gospel at all.  The gospel writer Luke was unlikely to include a story about Jesus’ childhood simply because it was cute.

Let’s be sure t remember something about the story so far.   Jesus’ parents are good Jews.  Parenting?  Well, that’s another story.  At least in the movie Home Alone the parents recognize they’d left their kid within a couple hours; while it took Jesus’ parents all day.  But, that aside, were good Jews!  They follow all the religious laws: Jesus is named and circumcised when he is eight days old.  They’ve also offered the proper sacrifices for him and dedicated him the way first born Jewish males are supposed to be.  In today’s reading we learn that like all good Jews, they travel to Jerusalem for Passover.  They practice all the expected pieties.  But somehow they and their son start to diverge.  If going to Jerusalem for Passover is all that God wanted from his people then why does Jesus stay behind?

This is really a story about piety.  At first faith the way Joseph and Mary practice their faith is very appealing.  You simply do the right things and God blesses you for it.  I’d argue that is the basis of faith for many people who call themselves Christian in American today.  They want to live in a way that pleases God, and as a reward for pleasing God they can expect to live a good and prosperous life.  Sure, bad things may happen but God will be there to help you through the difficulties.  Even if it feels like everything is falling apart it is believed that God will give the emotional strength to endure.  We have a name for faith such as this.  It’s called the “prosperity gospel.” 

Ultimately it is horrible!

Jesus staying behind in Jerusalem is in no way criticizing his parents’ piety, but he is pointing to something deeper.

I’m currently reading Kate Bowler’s book, Everything Happens for a Reason, And Other Lies I’ve Loved.  She started her career studying the prosperity gospel in America.  She was a 35 year old woman, brilliant professor and theologian, was married and had a little boy, and in 2017 was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer that started in her intestines and spread throughout her body.  She’s still alive.  Her cancer appears to respond to treatments somewhat, but of course she’ll never beat it and she’ll never live to be old.  The book’s title pretty much says it all, but she goes into something much deeper and more profound.  Because the prosperity gospel, good religious piety, and the way we understand ourselves as citizens of America all link. 

She writes, “Fairness is one of the most compelling claims of the American Dream, a vision of success propelled by hard work, determination, and maybe the occasional pair of bootstraps.  Wherever I have lived in North America, I have been told a story about an unlimited horizon and the personal characteristics that are required to waltz towards it.  It is the language of entitlements.  It is the careful math of deserving, meted out as painstakingly as my sister and I used to inventory and trade our Halloween candy.  In this world, I deserve what I get.  I earn my keep and keep my share.  In a world of faith, nothing clung to can ever slip away. (Pg. 8)

“There is something so American about the ‘show-and-tell’ of our daily lives.  A big house means you work hard.  A pretty wife means you must be rich.  A subscription to The New York Times shows you must be smart.  And when you’re not sure, there will always be bumper stickers to point out who has the honor roll student and who finished a marathon.  America likes is shopping malls big and its churches even bigger, and every Starbucks in every lobby proves that Jesus cares about brewing the best. (Pg. 20)”

Isn’t that really living a life of piety?  It may not be exclusively religious piety, but it is American piety!  Work hard, make healthy choices, stay out of trouble – and all will go well in your life.  But if your life is falling apart, you must have done something wrong.  If your child is addicted to heroin or ends up in jail you must have failed as a parent.  If your house is foreclosed upon you must not have done your homework before you bought it, or you over-reached financially.  If you’re overweight, or you’re addicted to smoking or alcohol you must have a moral defect and lack will-power and self-control.  No, we don’t dare to say such stuff, but we believe it.

Aren’t all these things subtle and not-so-subtle messages from our society that you aren’t doing your American piety properly?

Now don’t mishear me.  I am not denying that actions have consequences.  I am not saying we should blame other people or the government or social systems for our ills.  There still needs to be accountability and responsibility.  But, the message is that if you do it right, life will be good.

Hear Kate Bowler one more time, “What would it mean for Christians to give up that little piece of the American Dream that says, “You are limitless”?  Everything is not possible.  The mighty Kingdom of God is not yet here.  What if rich did not have to mean wealthy, and whole did not have to mean healed?  What if being people of “the gospel” meant that we are simply people with good news?  God is here.  We are loved.  It is enough.” (Pg. 21)

Those are truth-filled words that free us.  Those are words that go underneath the piety of following the Jewish rituals of Jesus’ day or the piety of Americanism today.  We call ourselves the land of the free and then we live lives that are completely enslaved!

In our gospel reading we see Jesus at age twelve focusing his life on something beyond religious piety and on what God was doing.  That became his singular purpose.  It did not negate the good piety of his parents, but it did point to something deeper. 

Here is what was true then and what is true now.  It is the message Jesus embodied and taught:

God is in charge; always has been, always will be.  And God is drawing creation forward into the fullness that God has always had for it.  You are part of that fullness.  You are known to God, you are loved by God, and you are wanted by God.  But life is not all about you.  It is about what God is doing.  And God invites you to participate in his work, his plans.  That’s how God gives you value.

There is nothing in God’s work that is going to trap you into feeling like a failure because: you got cancer, or your life is short and full of pain, or because your child dies from a drug overdose.  And God’s not going to exhaust you in the pointless societal rat-race called success.

What’s the point of being a Christian if it doesn’t lead to a healthy, easy, prosperous life?  That’s the question many people will ask.  The problem is that it’s the wrong question, the wrong way of thinking.  Ask it and you’re guaranteed to get a bad answer.

The point of Christian faith is to be freed from the dead-end tortuous stupidity most people devote their lives to.  Instead it invites you to see your value as secure in God and offers you true freedom.  It gives you confidence because the future does not rest in your hands, or your goodness, or your piety in whatever form it takes.  The future rests securely in God.  That is an eternal truth God invites you into.  It is the good news we proclaim and how we live.

January 6, 2019 Epiphany Matthew 2:1-12

We humans like to domesticate things.  The first thing we appear to have domesticated is dogs.  They’ve been domesticated so long there’s no way to trace exactly what their wild ancestors were.  We also domesticated cattle, sheep, cats, and all sorts of creatures.

We also like to domesticate the geology around us.  None of us lives in a natural environment – at least I don’t think any of you live in a cave.  We shape the world to our liking.  We domesticate it.  It is no surprise then that we also like to domesticate God and the Bible.

Neither of those domestications are all that smart.  While Christianity is based on the belief that Jesus of Nazareth was God come to life as a human that is God coming to us – not us domesticating God.

And of course the Bible is among the wildest and most out of control writings in human history.  We, however, try to domesticate it into a tame book of history and good advice.  Not so!  You’ve heard me say before that the traditional Christmas pageant is a highly domesticated story.  Stars, angels, shepherds, Wise Men, and a stable with Joseph, Mary and a baby lying in a manger. 

There’s nothing wrong with it in and of itself, but it is wrong when that gets in the way of what the Bible’s authors actually intend.  There are two versions of Jesus’ birth in the Bible.  One is in Luke’s gospel.  One is in Matthew’s, which we read today.  Both authors tell a story of darkness, mystery, and fear.  Both gospel writers include satire in the stories (always easy to lose sight of that).  And Matthew’s gospel is more about fleeing threats and killing than anything else. 

So, let’s look at Matthew.  Matthew suggests that Jesus was born in a house – actually Joseph’s house – in Bethlehem.  Bethlehem was a dusty hamlet of no consequence.  You know how you drive into city or village and there’s a sign saying, “Home of….” And then they list some famous person who was born there?  Or maybe they list their high school’s sports titles.  Have you ever seen a sign that lists some high school sports triumph from like 45 years ago?  I find myself thinking, “And since then…?” 

Well, if there had been such a sign in Bethlehem in Jesus day it would have been a very worn and rotted sign that said, “Welcome to Bethlehem.  Birthplace of King David” and then listing his birthdate 1000 years before.  Never overestimate the importance of Bethlehem.  Nothing of significance had happened in it for over 1000 years!

Jesus is born.  Matthew gives nothing about shepherds and angels, just another baby in just another house in just another village.  Unknown to the inhabitants of that house some astrologers from far to the east -probably Parthia- are looking for them.  These astrologers have seen a star.

I typically imagine this star as an obvious and bright object appearing in the sky, and it leads the Wise Men like a carrot to where Jesus is.  Not so.  Ever looked at the night sky in a truly dark place and realized the countless dim stars that are there?  Even now many of them are not counted or named. Other than Matthew there is no historical mention of a new star appearing at that time.  Some suggest a comet, but that’s a stretch.  What you have is a number of astrologers, court priests, again, probably from Parthia, noticing something and deciding to follow it.  In those days it was a common belief that when people who would become great kings were born a new star would appear.  Matthew is building on that. 

The Bible makes no mention of how many of these wise men there were or how long it takes them or anything.  Just, sometime later they arrive in Jerusalem seeking where the child who has been born King of the Jews.

These astrologers are not an innocent appearance.  The vast Parthian Empire existed to the east of the Roman Empire.  Here’s a piece of first century history I always forget: The Parthian Empire was larger and more powerful than the Roman Empire was at that time.  Two global super-powers side by side.  Rome’s eastern territories, like where Jesus was born, was of tremendous military significance to Rome.  If the Parthians ever conquered them Rome would lose their land infrastructure around the Mediterranean Sea.

These were very dangerous, very unsettled times.  And from the perspective of Herod in Jerusalem, when court priests of the chief enemy empire show up talking about the next King of the Jews, he sees a threat on many levels.  He hatches a plan to both save his own legacy but also keep the these Parthian astrologers from doing too much spying.  That’s a whole different topic.

For us, we want to focus on these enemy ambassadors as they make their way to the dusty hamlet of Bethlehem, five miles from Jerusalem.  They show up – again, who knows how many - and I doubt their appearance was welcome.  The gifts they bring are highly symbolic.  Gold, a gift fit for a king.  Frankincense, an incense used in religious rituals, a gift fit for a High Priest.  And then downright unnerving, myrrh.  You may remember well that myrrh was used as an embalming spice in those days.

Picture this – you are parents of a newborn.  You’re at homing having dinner and there’s a knock at the door.  A group of travel worn and unkept foreigners are there asking to come in and give gifts.  Now these gifts are not the hottest items currently selling on Amazon.  No, they’re strange.  Strangest of all they give you a coffin for your child.

How about putting that in a children’s Christmas pageant – dirty foreigners bringing in a coffin?  Nope, we don’t want a realistic nativity scene!  Keep it domesticated!

Do you get a sense of how weird this all is the way Matthew tells it?

The foreigners then leave, double crossing Herod, which puts him in a tyrannical rage.  Joseph, Mary, and newborn Jesus have to uproot from their home and flee to Egypt as political refugees.  It is a dark and difficult story.

We use the arrival of the Wise Men to note the revelation of God to all the nations of the world.  Right from his birth Jesus is opening God’s grace and mercy to the whole world.  God’s grace and mercy are not national possessions, or the possessions of any exclusive religion.  They are God’s boundless openness and desire to gather all things into his goodness.  No limits, no boundaries, no gatekeepers.

God’s actions in the Christmas story are good and wonderful.  It is a beautiful story.  But it is not good news for all.  The powers that be – represented by Herod – do not like it.  This innocent little baby in a dusty village where nothing ever happens poses a threat.  It must be eliminated.  If you know the story well you know that Herod orders the killing of all the babies in and around Bethlehem two years of age and younger.  That is why Joseph and Mary flee to Egypt.

            What is the actual historical truth behind it all isn’t important.  The story speaks the truth of the way earthly power doesn’t want God’s goodness. 

It seems to be human nature to want to draw lines and categorize people as in or out, good or bad.  We see: races and nations, assets and liabilities, resources, potentials, good and bad, smart and stupid, riches and poverty.

            But I think God just sees a world in need.  It is a world in need of what God has to offer.  If the world would accept it, it would be better on the whole.  But those who hold power in the world, in other words those whom the world’s systems favors don’t like it.  To them it means loss.

            I pray that we have the sight to see what God is really up to.  I don’t think Epiphany is about what you do.  It is about seeing what God is doing and rejoicing in it.  Right from Jesus’ birth his is attracting all nations of the world – even the enemy pagan Parthians.  Ironically they worship him while Herod, representing the Roman Empire, seeks to kill him. 

May you recognize God’s star at its rising, for God is doing that all the time.  I’m not talking about literal new stars.  It is God’s actions at work, and they may be things few other people see.  But may you to see God’s goodness come to life.  And may it nurture your faith for ever new revelations of God to the world.

December 16, 2018 Advent 3 Luke 1:57-80

            “Does my life have a purpose?” I think is one of the fundamental questions of being a human.  It’s a good question because we want our lives to have meaning.  We want all the struggles and the toil and the obstacles overcome to be worth it.  Otherwise, what is the point?  If we are just accidents in a pointless cosmos then why exhibit any virtues at all? 

Some branches of sociology suggest that religion is an invention of humanity in order to give meaning to life in the midst of meaninglessness.  Some scientists, perhaps Carl Sagan most visible among them, suggest that we really need to divorce ourselves from the idea of God and realize the cold hard reality that there really is no point to existence.  We are just accidents of mathematical probability.

What a cold and depressing way to exist!

But let’s not swing to the other extreme either.  Some people seem to think that everything that happens to them is a sign from God and that every hardship and every success is sent by God for fulfilling their divine purpose.  That’s a pretty narcissistic way to think.  It also makes God into a cruel little man behind a curtain pulling levers micromanaging our lives.  Or perhaps it makes God into a heavenly bungler.  I remember a Far Side cartoon where God is depicted as a little boy who has just received a “Grow Your Own Humans” kit and he can’t wait to get started.

The gospel reading we had for today gives us a good idea of how to understand our purpose.  We encounter Zechariah again.  We met him two weeks ago.  If you were here you’ll remember that he was met by the angel Gabriel who promised that he and his wife would have a son despite their old age.  They were to name their son John.  Zechariah was both terrified by the angel and skeptical.  He probably did the stupidest thing in his life and asked the angel for proof.  His proof was that he would be unable to speak until it came to pass.  And in those days people associated being unable to speak with also being deaf.  Though the text does not say it, the original readers probably assumed he couldn’t hear either.  And that is borne out by the text because it says they had to use hand gestures and writing to communicate with him.

Some length of time has passed since then; nine plus months to be sure.   The child has been born.  He’s eight days old so it’s time to circumcise him, as was the expectation of good Jewish families, and name him.  The expected name would be Zechariah after his father.  But, obeying the instructions of the angel he is named John.  Immediately Zechariah can hear and speak again.

            Let’s not miss that the original readers would have thought two miracles had occurred here.  The obvious one that Zechariah could speak again.  But also the less obvious one that Elizabeth says the boy should be called John.  Zechariah can’t hear this so they motion for him to give a name and he also writes John.  Now they could have somehow agreed beforehand what to name, although Elizabeth was probably illiterate, so the fact they independently come up with the same name would have been seen as a sign of divine intervention.

            Zechariah’s first words are this well-known poem, often called the Benedictus.  It is a grand vision that God is up to something new and great.  The first part of it, vs. 68-75, say what God will do:  God will visit his people, God will redeem them (redeem being the legal term for paying the price for someone).  God will send a savior who will save them from their enemies and those who hate them.  And God will be faithful to the promises made long before.  There are two major promises or covenants God makes with the people in the Old Testament.  One is the Moses covenant.  In that covenant God says that if you obey me I will be good to you and you will stay my people.  The other covenant is the Abraham covenant.  There God says I will be your God and you will give birth to my people… period.  There is no condition.

            Which of the two covenants is mentioned here?  It’s not the Moses one with conditions.  It is the unconditional Abraham covenant.  Therefore God will act and will accomplish his purposes regardless of human acceptance or not.  In other words, there are no “ifs” here.  God will act.

            The second part say how God will act.  And here is where we understand our purpose and how God interacts with us.  God does not say he’s going to do it all on his own; this fulfillment of a guaranteed covenant.  God has chosen John, and his father Zechariah, and his mother Elizabeth, and Jesus’ mother Mary, and everyone else we meet as the cast of characters in the gospel expands.  All are part of God’s plans.  Notice I did not say that God has a plan for each and every one of them.  No, God has one plan, the Abrahamic covenant, and each and every person is invited to participate in it.

            Zechariah says these words over his son John, “And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins.”

            This is both a very specific purpose, but also a very broad one, for it is our purpose too – to proclaim that God’s salvation by giving knowledge of forgiveness.

            If you’ve looked through the bulletin you may have been puzzled by the two photos.  One shows the famous Budweiser Clydesdales pulling the 12 Horse Ale wagon.  The other is a team of 32 horses pulling a combine harvester in a wheat field in the early 1900’s.

            Some people would like their purpose in life to be like the Budweiser Clydesdales: handsome powerful horses who are individually well groomed pulling a fancy shiny wagon.  I suppose many people would also like the idea of God as the wagon driver whose sole purpose is to deliver beer.

            But I think God’s purpose is much more like the harvesting photo.  You see 32 horses of different colors and sizes.  They aren’t all looking the same direction.  They do not have coordinated steps or anything.  It looks more like a hoard than anything else.  But they are all strong and capable.  That combine does not have an engine on it.  Those horses are not only pulling the heavy thing up and down hills, they are providing the power for the machine to thresh the grain.

            Jesus uses a lot of harvest imagery in his teaching.  And while combines certainly did not exist in his day, I think the image works.  God’s goal is the harvest.  It is sure and certain.  God wants you as a part of the team.  That is the purpose of life.

            You may not get your own individual grooming, and a fancy stall, and perfect food, and get to pull a famous wagon in parades to cheering crowds.  The work will be dusty and dirty.  You’ll be in the hot sun.  You’ll pull hard and have aches and pains, and probably marks from where the harness dug into you.  Sometimes food and care will be good and sometimes not.  But at the end the harvest will be complete.  The task accomplished.

            Are you important to God as an individual?  Yes, of course!  But our purpose, our meaning, our value comes in being part of a hard working team.  God’s first purpose is not to micromanage every aspect of everyone’s life.  God’s purpose is to get the job done.  God’s already given you the capability to do it.

            Don’t embark on a quest for a unique purpose for your life.  That’s a waste of time.  Embrace the purpose that God is already doing.  Zechariah’s words continue with what God is doing, which means we are to do as well:
            “… the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

December 9, 2018 Advent 2 Luke 1:39-56

            You know that I often pick on the way our culture depicts angels – usually cute little cherubs with wings – when the Bible depicts them as fearsome warriors who strike fear into all who encounter them.  I also take issue with the way we depict Jesus’ mother Mary.  She’s always portrayed as an absolute vision of feminine perfection – sweet, flawlessly beautiful, kind, and submissive.  She’s often wearing either white or blue and she’s always spotlessly clean; as if she is so pure that dirt can’t even cling to her.  But again, look at what the Bible really says about her.  She’s never physically described, but you get a bit of her attitude from the Magnificat, which we read in our gospel reading.

            Us First World people read this as a sweet poem of an innocent and immature teenage girl.  But look at the words carefully.  “[God] has shown strength with his arm.  He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.  He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”

            These are the words of a faith-filled person, but they are not words of meek submissiveness.  And who are the rich and the powerful and the proud?

            When I was in seminary I had a class called “The Bible from the Underside.”  It was studying scripture from a Third World perspective.  It was very helpful to study the Bible from the perspective of scholars and theologians living in the Third World.  It was also very unnerving.  To them the proud and rich and powerful was us.

            Their portrayal of us was not at all flattering.  I like to think of the United States as the place where people from all over the world like to come.  You get the feeling these days that there are hordes of people wanting to cross the border each and every day looking for opportunities and freedom.  I like the way my one friend from the Czech Republic describes the way people there imagine the United States.  She says they imagine that in the United States life is so easy that cooked pigeons just fall from the sky and into your mouth.

            But that is not the Third World.  Their perspective of us is that we are a global bully exerting imperial oppression over all.  They see our economic policies leading to their exploitation and perpetual impoverishment.  To them the best thing that could happen to the United States is for us to be crushed an annihilated.   I think they’re perspective is inaccurate, and it surely misses the complexity of life in the United States and our global policies.  Still, they probably do have a better handle on what Mary is talking about.

            They do not picture Mary as a sweet teenage girl with an interesting poem.  They see Mary as a fearsome prophet proclaiming God’s guaranteed doom upon people whose lives are the way they perceive ours to be.  To some extent they are wrong.  But they’re also somewhat right, and from that perspective these are not words we like to hear.  We’re going to find a lot that we do not want to hear in Luke’s gospel.

            We tell ourselves we are not rich.  We are not powerful.  We are not exploitative or oppressive.  We can point to people and leaders who are rich and powerful and oppressive, and they are not us.

            But consider the Third World perspective.  And let’s remember just how powerless many people in the world are.  We don’t even realize the luxuries we have, they are so basic to us.  There are basics that are obvious, like food and dependable clean water and heat and air conditioning and that sort of thing.  But how about the even more basic?

            I think we forget just how rich you have to be in this world today in order to have a say in where you live.  Have you ever considered that you are wealthy enough to afford a choice in where you live?  I’m not talking about living in a mansion in a gated community, I mean that you have the money and the freedom to determine where you live.  If the neighborhood becomes violent or goes down the tubes you can afford to move elsewhere.  You have options.  If you own a house you may not want to move if the neighborhood goes down the tubes because you’ll lose a bundle in the sale, but you can still do it.  Many people in the world do not have such an option.  They live where they live because they have to.  Moving away to a different or better area is not an option.

            If you’re working and you lose your job you have options for another job.  It might mean a pay cut or moving or a lower standard of living, but you have options.  That makes you rich.  Many people don’t.

            Consider the life of Jesus’ mother Mary.  She’s living in Judea, an okay place to live but not a great place.  She’s living under the economic and military oppression of the Roman Empire.  In Chapter 2 we’ll read the well-known birth story of Jesus.  We meet Mary and Joseph again, and this time Mary’s on the point of delivering a child.  Why are they on a long journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem in such a state?  Because the Romans told them they have to.

            This is abuse.  This is oppression.  This is being an occupied country under imperial rule.  This is life without choices.  If you know The Hunger Games books and movies they give you a perspective of someone powerless living under oppression.  The people in the districts are exploited so the people in the capitol can live in ease.

            Now consider Mary’s words: God will lower the proud, and powerful, and rich.  God will raise up the lowly and the poor and the oppressed.  Things are being reversed.  The rich will now be hungry.  Mary is not a sweet teenager with innocent desires who is so pure that not even dirt can attach itself to her perfect clothes.  This is a hopping mad teenager looking forward to the vengeance God will deliver.  It is not hers to deliver.  It is God’s to deliver, and she is looking forward to seeing it happen.

            All of this could make us feel very guilty.  Perhaps we should feel guilty when we consider how much we consume.  But it is also a reminder to us of just how privileged we are and how much freedom we have.  By privilege I’m not talking about money and luxuries and that sort of thing.  By privilege I mean things like we have a justice system we can basically count on.  We can go through daily life without having to go through endless police checkpoints, or have to always have cash on hand to pay bribes.

            I’ll never forget my dad’s stories about traveling around Zimbabwe.  There were many police checkpoints where they were stopped and questioned.  But the local my father was traveling with knew how to get through them.  He always kept a stock of bottled water in his car.  Simply offer the police a bottle of water in the middle of a hot summer day and they’ll usually let you go through unquestioned.

            Being free enough and wealthy enough to choose where we want to live and who our neighbors are is a privilege.  We do have racial inequality and gender inequality in our country, and they are things we have to work on.  But at least a woman is not a piece of property to be possessed as in many other countries.  At least if a woman is in an abuse marriage she has options available to her.  They may not be easy, but they are options.  That was not the case for Mary as she speaks the words we read today.

            Our thoughts and prayers should be both thankfulness for what we do have, but also for those who do not have.  Those who live trapped in this country or in others.  Those who have no hope.   Those whose lives are so bad that they turn to hatred and cruelty because it is the only thing they have. 

            Mary’s words are a promise of God’s action, but they are also a plea for all humanity to be treated as such.

            As agent of God’s kingdom in this world we should not allow ourselves the luxury of sitting back and letting others suffer.  We should be informed.  We should keep our eyes open.  We should act.  I don’t mean protests and civil disobedience and all that stuff, although if you feel moved to do it that is perfectly fine.  I mean being aware and caring and knowing what you buy and what our leaders are doing.  We do have power and we should use it.  It is a blessing that God has given us.  There is no greater joy and satisfaction than using what you have in order to build and contribute to the lives of God’s people.  May you see ways that you can enact the words of Mary and know the satisfaction of bringing God’s reign into reality.

December 2, 2018 Advent 1 Luke 1:1-38

            I am probably very weird in this, but I find the first verses of Luke’s gospel to be very engaging.  This is one of the very few times in our scriptures that the authors tip their hands as to what they’re up to.  The author, who has been given the name, “Luke,” although he never identifies himself so we don’t have any real idea who he is, tells us that he is not an eyewitness to Jesus.  He never met Jesus.  He never saw Jesus.  He’s writing probably 50 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection.  He tells us that he’s being an historian.  He has critically examined many of the writings about Jesus that are out there and he has selected some of them to create an orderly account of the life of Jesus.

            We have to remember that there are far more writings about Jesus than made it into the Bible.  This book, called The Other Bible contains some of them.  Many of them are outright bizarre.  A couple weeks ago I read one account to the confirmation class.  There Jesus was a boy and he wanted to play with some of the children in the neighborhood.  Apparently they didn’t want to play and they hid.  So, Jesus turned all the children into goats.  That’s not your usual story about Jesus!  Anyway, in the end Jesus turns them back into children.

            You can see from that that there were many strange and bizarre stories floating around about Jesus.  Luke gathers them, weeds out the nonsense, and puts together the gospel we have today.  He also wrote a second volume that is in the Bible, The Acts of the Apostles.

            One source that did make it into Luke was almost certainly Mark’s gospel.  They rest side by side in our Bibles and it is easy to see how Luke picks up things from Mark and uses them in his own account.

            All of this gives us insight into the formation of scripture.  When I was little I had this image of how Bible texts were written.  I imagined a man hunched over an old wooden writing desk with a feather quill in one hand, a piece of yellowed parchment on the desk, and a sputtering candle too.  I then imagined the Holy Spirit hovering over the writer inspiring the writing with God’s own words.

            While the Holy Spirit definitely had a hand in the writing and compiling of the Bible as we know it, it was actually a much more complex process.  And that is a good thing.

            I get frustrated when people pull out their Bibles and point to a chapter and verse and say, “That’s what the Bible says, it must be true.”  Not so.  If we’ve learned anything from our reading of Bible passages over the last couple years it’s that they are complex; even often deliberately written so as to be self-contradictory.  We are left to conclude that either the authors were complete dimwits who didn’t know how to keep their facts straight, or that something far more complex was going on. 

            A study of ancient Hebrew writings and teaching techniques shows that they often created contrasts and contradictions to make a deeper point.  It often led to debates as to exactly what scriptures meant, and we see that Jesus engaged in those debates as well.

            The Bible is not a simple instruction book where if you simply do what it said God would be happy with you and bless you with a good life.  I fear that all too many Christians these days see the Bible and their relationship with God in that way:  do good and God will like you and give you a good life.  If you actually know the scriptures you know that the most faith-filled people often had very difficult lives full of struggles and troubles.

            It would make my job, and the work of evangelism, so easy if faith were simply a matter of applying word for word what a piece of scripture meant.  It would be so simple, and it would be obvious that those people who lived that way were blessed by God with a statistically measurable better life.  Everyone would want to have a part just to have an easier life.  Not so!

            God made you a creative, intelligent, and complex being.  Do you really think God will then give you an overly simplistic set of instructions, call it The Bible, and then say follow it?  Nope.  If God made you creative, intelligent, and complex then God will also come to you in creative, intelligent, and complex ways.  The scriptures will reflect that.  We need to work with them, struggle with them, and explore them.

            It’s interesting that Luke sort of dedicates his work to someone.  He says, “I too decided, after carefully investigating everything from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth…”

            Theophilus can be a name, but it is a name with a meaning.  It means lover of God.  Some people think Luke actually wrote his gospel, and the book of Acts, for a real person named Theophilus.  Most doubt it, and count me among them.  “Most excellent theophilus” is you.  It’s anyone who loves God and seeks to have a deeper loving relationship with God through what Luke has written.

            And as an aside, isn’t it nice to have the Bible speak out to you and call you, “Most excellent lover of God”?  How often does someone call you “excellent”?  God does through the Bible.

            There are parts of the Bible that read like personal letters and stories, but Luke’s gospel isn’t one of them.  He writes like a grand storyteller making a great public statement.  Theophilus is surely everyone who reads this text!

            So, what does Luke have to tell us –lovers of God- after all his research and finding things like Mark’s gospel to be reliable… and stories like Jesus turning children into goats not so much?

            Well, we meet two people and an angel in the verses today.  Poor Zechariah.  He’s a godly man, working in the temple; a high and holy task.  He’s getting old but he is faithfully serving his shift in the temple when suddenly and angel greets him.  Now this is the temple, so he shouldn’t be surprised to encounter something godly, but the angel’s promise is miraculous: He, Zechariah, and his wife Elizabeth will have a child!  They’re both old and this is highly unlikely.  Can you imagine going to the park with your child when everyone else there is either a young parent or a grandparent with their grandchildren?

            Zechariah does a very reasonable, but it turns out very stupid thing.  He asks the angel for proof.  Here’s a hint.  If you’re ever met by and angel, and the angel promises something beyond belief, just accept it.  Don’t ask for proof!

            Careful what you ask for, because you might just get it!  Zechariah’s proof is that he can’t speak until the child is born.  Who knows, those quiet days may have been the best days of his wife’s life!

            Anyway, contrast Zechariah with the next person we meet – Mary.  Now, if Zechariah was promised something miraculous by the angel, Mary was promised something impossible.  A child!  No way!  Not happening!  She knows enough about the ‘birds and the bees’ to know how things work!  But look at her response to the angel.  Does she say, “Prove it,” or, “Give me a sign,” the way Zechariah did?  No.  Despite the impossibility of the promise she simply says, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

            I think that is Luke’s model of discipleship he wants lovers of God to have.  He also wants his readers to know that when God acts, all normalcy is off.  Luke is not going to ask us to start believing in magical fairies or unicorns, or that Jesus is turning little kids into goats.  He is also not telling his readers that they should expect miraculous and impossible things to happen in their lives because they love God.

            No, Luke is inviting us to see beyond the limits of what we think is possible and open our hearts and minds to what God is capable of doing.  Over and over again in Luke’s gospel we’ll meet people who say something is impossible.  But God acts in ways that are beyond the limits of possible.  Luke doesn’t want his readers to be stuck in the mundane limitations of life and miss that God is at work in many and various, and often VERY unpredictable ways.  The cross is the most unpredictable of them all.

            And so, don’t expect the Bible to give simple answers to complex problems.  No, it is up to the task of being the voice of God journeying with you into the most difficult and complex things that may come up in your life.  And then, in a relationship with God that is not crippled by our sense of limits, we, like Zechariah and Mary and many others we have yet to meet, embark on the adventure of being a lover of God.

November 18, 2018 Casting the First Stone John 8:2-11

Our gospel reading is one of the most famous of all the stories of Jesus.  Interestingly it isn’t included in the lectionary at all, so we never read it in worship.  This famous text is also mysterious at a couple levels.

First, it isn’t an original part of the gospel of John.  The oldest copies of John that exist all omit this text.  Interestingly it sometimes shows up inserted in very ancient copies of Luke’s gospel.  All the biblical scholars I’ve read all agree that it was not written by John, but that it is an ancient, and probably original account of something that happened in Jesus’ ministry.  And despite not being part of John’s gospel originally it fits very well where it is.

Commentator Gail O’Day notes that it provides a real world application of teachings Jesus gave earlier.  If you were here last week you may remember that we set the scene for today.  The annual Festival of the Booths was coming up.  Jesus and his family were in Galilee.  His brothers were going to travel to Jerusalem for the festival, which was encouraged by all Jews.  At first Jesus says he will not go, but later he does go, and we find him then and there in today’s reading.  You may remember that last week’s gospel posed a basic question:  Do you use your categories for life to define Jesus, or do you let Jesus define your categories?  The obvious answer is that Jesus should define our categories, not the other way around.  Obvious as it is, it is much harder to live out.

I think that takes us to the second mysterious thing about the text, and that is the story itself.  We’ll see that when we remind ourselves about its historical context.

It is early in the morning and Jesus is teaching in the temple, the religious center of Jerusalem.  By “the temple” we mean the vast courtyards surrounding the temple itself.  No teaching ever took place in the temple proper.  Jesus, and probably others would talk and teach in the courtyards to the crowds that were there for the holidays.  By this point Jesus is becoming well known and has a following.  He’s also had some run-ins with the religious leaders.

The scribes and Pharisees bring a woman caught in adultery to him.  It’s a trap to ensnare Jesus.  They had to bring her here into the temple complex.  While she was apparently caught in the act, it’s hard to believe there would have been any place in the temple where she could have gotten away with it.  Most likely the offense took place somewhere in the city or surrounds and they drag her here into the temple.

They say, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of the adultery.  Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women.  Now what do you say?”  Interesting, that’s not what the law taught.  We read one of two places in the law where the punishment is given.  Both the man and the woman are to be stoned.  So where is the man?

Further, the law requires that any death sentence be corroborated by witnesses.  Where are the witnesses?  Are these leaders the witnesses?  Their case is sloppy and their knowledge of the law is suspect.

Notice what Jesus does.  Pay attention to his body during this scene.  He was sitting when they approached him.  Now he bends down and starts writing in the ground.  Many people have speculated what he wrote.  Ultimately it doesn’t matter.  What does matter is that he doesn’t say anything.  By bending down and writing on the ground he is clearly refusing to engage in the situation. 

They keep questioning him – basically badgering him for a response.  And look at his body movement again.  He straightens up and says as is most famous in the King James translation, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”

I cannot imagine the terror this woman felt while all this was going on.  There is certainly the embarrassment, the shame, of being caught and then drug through the streets to be placed in front of this out-of-town preacher and used as a manipulative tool.  There is the also the great likelihood that within a couple hours she will be executed.  Definitely terrifying.  Interestingly the religious leaders who drug her in front of Jesus don’t seem to care.  She is an object to them, an object to be used for their own ends.

And speaking of being an object to be used, often this woman is portrayed as a prostitute.  But there is nothing whatsoever in the text to suggest that.  She has no back story.  We know nothing about her past.  Anything is possible.  She might have been a prostitute.  Or she might have been a woman who came into Jerusalem as a pilgrim along with others for the festival.  She may have just met the guy she was caught with – and again, interestingly he does not show up in the story at all – or he may have been a pilgrim too and this was a long time thing for them.  Maybe she was caught in an arranged marriage to a highly abusive man.  That doesn’t justify what she did, but it does affect how we feel about her; and about how Jesus treats her.

The point is, the story gives us nothing about her.  And if it gives nothing about her, then whatever it was about her doesn’t really matter to either the story or to Jesus.

Look at what Jesus does right after he says that whoever is without sin could cast the first stone.  Verse 8, “And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground.”  He is refusing to engage in the situation again.

Those who heard it they went away, one by one, beginning with the eldest.  It is suggested that this eldest leaving first signifies that not even the most senior and revered members of the community are without sin.

Keep watching Jesus.  They leave, and when he was left alone with the woman standing before him, Jesus straightens up.  He says to her, “Woman, where are they?  Has no one condemned you?”

            This is the moment of resounding grace in the text.  Jesus stands up, I imagine looks her in the eye, and speaks directly to her.  He, and he alone, is treating her in the fullness of humanity.  She has his undivided attention.  He asks her a genuine question.  “Has no one condemned you?”  She replies, “No one, sir.”  And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you.”

            The one who has the power to condemn or acquit does not condemn her.  Those who were wrongfully claiming the role of judge, jury and executioner were the ones seeking condemnation.

            Jesus does not judge her in this passage.  He does not scold her.  He forgives her.

            Now let’s not overlook Jesus’ final line.  “Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”  There’s a lot packed into that line.  On the surface is the acknowledgement that what she did was wrong.  He’s not condoning it.  He’s not saying it was okay.  He’s just saying she’s escaping punishment for it.  She should not do it again.

            This forgiveness should however, need to a new life.  “Go your way…” is Jesus direction to live as God intended her to live – just like Jesus goes on his way – not the way others say he should go; like we read his brothers doing last week.

            We do not know this woman’s past, but this will impact her in the future.  If she is a, “woman of ill repute” that means a new livelihood for her in a culture which gives women little in the way of livelihoods apart from being married.  If she is not, however, she has been publically disgraced.  What will her family and friends say?  What will her husband say?  What will her lover do and say?

            We don’t know her back story, but her future story isn’t going to be easy.

            In this text Jesus brought the promise of freedom to all – scribes, Pharisees, the woman – but that freedom demands a renunciation of old ways and former claims; for all, not just the woman.

            God’s grace is a wonderful but puzzling thing.  Let us embrace it but not exploit it.  And let us not become jealous when God’s grace appears to forgive greater sinners than ourselves.  Our lives must be accountable, but they are more than accountability, and that is true freedom.