![]() Before moving into the passage proper, I want to review what we’ve learned of biblical justice in the last two weeks:
A Pharisee and Jewish leader named Nicodemus came to see Jesus at night. There's a whole lot to preach right there. Pharisee Jewish leaders are the folks who, a few chapters from now, are going to be plotting to kill Jesus. And it’s night time. Night is the opposite of day, the opposite of light. Darkness and light are persistent themes in John: dark is the arena of evil; Jesus is the light. Why does this potential enemy of Jesus want a late-night appointment, and why does Jesus give it to him? Nicodemus might be a spy for the Temple, except it's kind of early for that; he might be trying to recruit Jesus for their side; or maybe, Nicodemus himself is going rogue. His introduction is suggestive of all three: “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Jesus, interestingly, treats the statement like ordinary rabbi-talk – rhetoric, like professors on a dais pontificating back and forth, using their words strategically to score against each other. When Nicodemus wants to know if “born again” is what Jesus really means to say, he is asking about the words – not whether a child could actually re-enter a womb. They go back and forth a bit until Jesus drops the rhetoric. Suddenly his words are personal, very personal. How can you profess to be a man of God and not know what I am talking about? Why, do you suppose, Nicodemus doesn’t answer? I think it’s because he did know. He knew, and Jesus knew he knew; he just isn’t ready to know what he already knows in the way he must know it to take the next step before him: the step toward or away from faith in Christ. Because one cannot follow Jesus in the dark, can he? Jesus is the light. Nicodemus is not ready to know what he knows: that to follow Him means to follow Him. He is the Light. We also know that Nicodemus already knows what Jesus is talking about, when he says, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” He speaks the straight-up truth of Jesus the Messiah. Out loud and plain as day, Nicodemus tells Jesus, I see the spirit of God at work in the words and deeds You say and do. Have you ever known some truth that you knew only in the dark, that you did not share with anyone else? -- something that you knew inside you and wished like anything you could not have to know it in the daylight too, because of how it was going to mess up your life and the lives of people around you? Ask any Baptist kid who ever knew he or she was gay. Here are some of my truths: As a little girl, I would rather read than play or talk to other people in my house. As a young woman, I came to think I’m supposed to be a preacher. Most recently, I’ve come to know that white privilege is a thing; that if everything else was still equal, just being white makes life in this world easier for me than for my neighbors who are brown and black. It’s like cruise control on my car. I have the choice to take advantage of it – or not. Discipleship is a journey, friends – full of confession and repentance – that begins with knowing what we did not know before and continues with deciding what we shall do with what we know. The particular truth Jesus accuses Nicodemus of not knowing has to do with flesh and spirit, ways of knowing and living long discussed by philosophers and cognitive scientists. None of which I am, of course. I am a preacher. Preachers tell stories. I've told you this story before. A little girl's grandma died when she was six years old. One windy day a few weeks later the front porch swing was banging hard against the house. The mother went to check the noise and the little girl looked up from her coloring and said, "Oh, that's just Mamaw on the swing. She sits there sometimes." "Is that right?" the mother asked. "Do you see her other times too?" "Oh sure," the little girl said, matter-of-factly. "If you put your hands close together she'll come put her hand in between, like this." And she went back to coloring. The poets and the mystics speak of flesh and spirit too, more like the five-year-old we all once were, before modern, Western Protestantism and public school hammered the notion into us that truth, that what is real, is formed of that which we can see and hear and smell and taste and touch (beginning, coincidentally, at about age six). And that's true; it's just not ALL that's true. We are not just flesh and bone, but spirit too. And we forget it at our peril, because biblical justice always accounts for the spiritual, for the reality that God is at work, always at work in our lives, our life together and the world around us, as much at play in the course of things as any force that human beings bring to bear. In any given situation of injustice, no matter how dim the prospect for change or healing or correction or vindication, there is also and always grounds for hope. Nicodemus is biblical evidence for that hope. He disappears from the passage after verse 10. How does Nicodemus think he came to know what he knows about Jesus? NO other Pharisee told him (though he does say “we,” interestingly). Might the spirit of God’s own self have led Nicodemus to know this? I would dare to guess, yes. So, he knows here in chapter 3. What he does with what he knows, we know from chapters 7 and 19. In chapter seven Jesus was back in Jerusalem teaching in the Temple, causing all kinds of trouble for the things he was saying. Jews send police to arrest him. They are too afraid to do so. The other Pharisees are outraged, and Nicodemus speaks up, “Our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing, does it?” To which they respond, “Surely you are not also from Galilee, are you? Search and you will see that no prophet is to arise from Galilee.” See how they instantly throw him in with Jesus? It's easy to miss Nicodemus being brave right there. But he was – getting himself identified with the radical. Even when we stammer and can't say all we wish we could, speaking truth to power is still speaking truth to power. With just that sentence – quoting their Bible back to them, mind you – Nicodemus took a big step away from his own institutional religion, when it was acting out of fear of Rome/this world rather than faith in God. In chapter 19, after all of Jesus' real disciples had abandoned him, leaving his dead, broken, bleeding body to the care of strangers, Nicodemus stepped up. He was half of all the people with the courage to associate themselves with the crucified Christ. Think of all you know about Jewish rules against touching the dead; layer on the shame associated with the cross and the fear of the Romans thinking you are one of Jesus' followers. No one to this point has more closely, more personally associated himself or herself with Jesus than Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea. Not even Peter, James and John were willing to do this for their friend. I like this Nicodemus character. He starts out thoughtful, intentional; the way I wish I was, instead of so jumpy and impulsive. He's significantly more cautious about discipleship and faith than the way I was raised to think was right, where one could reasonably be expected to move from disbelief to full-blown faith in the time it takes to sing a four-verse hymn. I like him for showing me here on a Bible page that the transition from knowing the truth to living the truth is more complicated than simply wanting to. Nicodemus was a human being, with people to please and fears to overcome. And Jesus gave him space for that – more space than Nicodemus’ own community was willing to give him. I like thinking Jesus let Nicodemus make a late-night appointment, knowing full well why: because it is a huge decision to follow Christ – a dangerous, risky, life-transforming decision, in which a person can lose friends, lose status, lose a job, lose the life she had before she followed Him. Because some things cannot be kept, if Jesus is going to be received. However timid Nicodemus seems here in chapter 3, he more than came around. He lapped those Sons of Thunder when it came to courage – not that it's a contest, I know. But it's cause for hope for all of us, amen? We who already know there's more going on than what we see with these eyes and hear with these ears, we know that the pursuit of biblical justice in the world today is up to us – but not to us alone. The spirit of God which moves the wind and gives us breath is also here – within, among, and in the world around us – giving us cause for hope and courage. For there is much work to do, and we are called to do it.
0 Comments
Was it a prop or a weapon, this whip of Jesus'? Was his tirade a sermon or a tantrum? Did Jesus lose his temper, or did he do what he did and say what he said according to a plan he'd made before he ever stepped into Jerusalem that day? Because everything more or less depends on how we answer that.
And there are good lessons to preach either way – about biblical justice and all the rest of it . . . the gospel, that is. I’m going with the pre-meditation option: that Jesus knew what he'd find in Jerusalem at Passover – and he planned what he'd do about it. He'd find a religious system corrupt to its core, turning a profit on the spiritual neediness of human beings. A system which ought to have been devoted solely to fostering connection between humanity and God was abusing its power to satisfy and enrich itself. All these thousands of people are in Jerusalem for Passover. Passover remembered the Hebrews' escape from Egypt, and so meant freedom from slavery. Passover marked the constant presence of God with the people of God – the presence which began at a time when they were on the run from people who meant to kill them. They’ve come to the Temple to pray and to sacrifice. Temple also had layers of meaning:
To celebrate Passover in Jerusalem was the height of any religious Jew's worship experience – to make the sacrifice and say the prayers in the very spot where heaven and earth meet, where God's presence is known most fully. Some might go every year, if they lived close or could afford the trip. Some might go every few years. Some might go once in a lifetime. Jesus grew up in Galilee. Poor people were HIS people. He sees the Temple courtyard with the eyes of a Galilean. There were hardly any wealthy people anywhere in Israel. No middle class whatsoever, and masses of poor people. Walking for days, they couldn’t haul their own animals for sacrifice and expect them to still be ritually pure upon arrival. They were forced to buy animals in Jerusalem, from vendors whose animals were vetted by Temple priests. Cattle and sheep for wealthy people. Doves for poor people. All those pilgrims came with the currency of their home countries. They had to use Temple coin to buy sacrifice and make offerings. The moneychangers were at their service – for a fee. The vendors rented space, just like at the Farmer's Market downtown. That money also went to the Temple. The vendors got paid in Temple coinage too, then had to turn their money back into local currency to go home. The Temple made a profit on vendors coming and going too. Having changed their money, worshippers would run the gauntlet of vendors to select their animal for sacrifice, then get in line to go in to the priests who were sacrificing the animals. Rivers of blood were carried away by gutters around the altars built for this exact purpose. It was an assembly line of worshippers carrying live animals in the front, empty-handed worshippers and animal carcasses coming out in two separate lines the other side – for all the days of Passover. Into the courtyard on this day, Jesus arrives with his shopping bag from Michaels or Joann’s, with his craft supplies – a needle, thread, and leather straps. He sews and knots the leather into a whip. Does it take an hour? two hours? . . . his disciples no doubt scratching their heads, “He’s sewing?” "I'm ready," he says at some point. And stands up. But they weren't – not for what happened next. He cracks the whip and tips over tables. Animals run away and money scatters over the pavement. "Take the doves out of here," he says (caged doves can't run away). "My Father's house isn't a marketplace." It seems over almost as suddenly as it started. Nobody gets arrested. The police aren't even called. The people in charge want to know what Jesus is up to, asking, "By whose authority are you doing all this?" They want his credentials – which is weird, as if something depends on his answer, as if they need his reason to measure their own judgment of the situation. I think they're asking about Rome. Romans did this kind of thing now and then. Best not to get in the way, if this was coming from Rome. See how suddenly NOT IN CHARGE of Jewish religious life they were? How spineless? Having to check the political winds before they can tell right from wrong? Biblical Justice is never more doomed to fail than when religious leadership loses its backbone. But as soon as Jesus spoke, they knew it wasn't Rome. Rome always had a good reason. Jesus sounds like a crazy person: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?" which is all of the actual conversation John records. Because none of it makes sense to people who don't know Jesus Risen. Even his disciples don't understand any of this – not until after Jesus had risen from the dead, a point driven home again and again by John: that nothing Jesus says or does can be understood outside the light of his resurrection. “Destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up." He can only be talking about himself here. The Jews in the story don't know, and thus can only speak of brick and mortar. While Jesus says, I AM and MY HOUSE, Jesus is not a pilgrim. He is the host, the one welcoming the pilgrims home, and chastising the servants who are supposed to be helping: providing hospitality and access to the host; straightening and smoothing the crooked, rough places that trip and obstruct the people so desperate to get to him. Great is the temptation to follow the tasty rabbit of economic injustice showing itself here in the Bible and in our own life together. To imagine the real rot of religion then – or now – look at its habit of confusing value and usefulness. A new analysis from Georgetown University attempts to document the economic value of religion in U. S. society. It found that the faith sector is worth $1.2 trillion, more than the combined revenue of the top 10 technology companies in the country, including Apple, Amazon, and Google. They came up with three numbers for consideration. The first estimate took into account only the revenues of faith-based organizations, which came to $378 billion annually. The second estimate, $1.2 trillion, included the fair market value of goods and services provided by religious organizations and included contributions of businesses with religious roots. The third, higher-end, estimate of $4.8 trillion takes into account the household incomes of religiously affiliated Americans, assuming that they conduct their affairs according to their religious beliefs. The argument might be made that $378 billion would buy a lot of homeless shelters and soup kitchens; that such a system might possibly have failed to grasp Jesus’ call to die to the things of this world, take up our cross and follow him; that he might possibly have been misheard by the modern believer. At the same time, we like churches with doors, a roof, an HVAC system and fresh toilet paper. Is it wrong for leaders to ask their members to pay those bills? It's tempting and easier to write off these money changers and vendors as cheats – but who, exactly, is served by that? It is us – is it not? We are the ones served, having gotten off scot free. Our hands and our hearts are clean of any guilt, any responsibility. Then again, if your hands and heart – and mine – are so squeaky clean, what are we doing here? Year after year, these worshippers returned to Jerusalem, to buy a sacrificial animal, to confess a year's worth of sins to the priest, who slays the animal and confers forgiveness. In the process their pockets got picked and their spirits got shamed, but it was all worth it for the year's worth of reprieve and relief it bought . . . until next Passover. There is the core of the rottenness, you see. The ultimate brokenness of a system that treats symptoms but never the disease. It’s the water that sends you back to the well again and again. And the wine that tastes like all the other wine we ever had but never even hinting at what wine is meant to be. So long as our end game is economic systems, important as they are, we're still living like folks who don't know Jesus Risen. Jesus didn't come to fix the broken system – simply to point out that it was broken? Yeah, he did that with a whip the same way he did that with the wedding wine. But it was not his grand and final goal. He tipped some tables and moved on. It was just a sign of what he'd truly come to do: break up Temple sacrifice once for all. Remember that: once for all. It's why I march in marches now and then – to be with people who see this world's brokenness and want the truth about it told, if only for as long as we walk together one Saturday a year. I don't think the world broke a year ago either. Only that I woke up from some things I thought were true but aren't. But marching isn't fixing. I am not that naïve. The only thing that is going to fix this world is what God already did in Jesus. Only through eyes and hearts who know him risen does marching make any sense at all. Not just marching – preaching, singing, worshipping; sitting with people in the nursing home who will still be there tomorrow; feeding people who will be hungry again tomorrow; encouraging the ones who will get overwhelmed and afraid again next week. It's all for nothing if Jesus didn't rise. The wine and the whip are props, sweet friends. Signs, John calls them, for a world we could never imagine otherwise. Would you pray with me? Justice Matters, friends. It must, if we are to be the church that Jesus' mother prophesied. Thy kingdom come, He Himself taught us to pray, on earth as it is in heaven. This kingdom of God, which Mary described in Luke 1, is the heart of biblical justice.
The kingdom of God is where God’s people take seriously God’s plainly stated preference for the poor, the stranger, the refugee, the dispossessed, the prisoner, the oppressed. The kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven is also where God’s people take seriously God's plainly stated promise that from us who have been given so much, much is expected. Biblical justice is lived out in three-way partnership between God, humanity, and the non-human creation. God and the non-human creation have kept their part of this covenant, while humanity's record is . . . spotty – having risen to great heights now and then, but mostly doing too little too late. Because, at the end of the day, the work of justice is hard. It take lots of time and energy – time and energy that those of us with time and energy to spare might otherwise spend feathering our own nests or binge-watching Netflix. Justice Matters, friends. It must, if we are to be the church. But if being church doesn't matter, then neither does justice. In which case let us at least tell the truth – and change our sign to University Baptist Country Club and Democratic Caucus. But if being church matters, and I know that it does to you, then my hope, prayer and intention is that 2018 will be the year in which justice matters to us more than it ever has before – the year we take bigger steps in: ~ our understanding of biblical justice; ~ our identity as a people committed to biblical justice; ~ our activity in the work of biblical justice in our own time and place. In my preaching binder I have a page for every preaching week of the year. At the top of each one I’ve written JUSTICE MATTERS in green sharpie. I want it in view as I start every sermon. I'm going to go back and write DO THE MATH! in red on every page too, because I believe there's not a case of injustice that is not, at its root, economic. We shall see how it goes, beginning in John, chapter 2, with a text so full of sermons a deadbeat preacher can milk it for a year and a working preacher never run out. Jesus had no intention of starting His ministry at this wedding. Cana was even more of a no-place than Nazareth. No one even knows where it was. Scholars have three spots in mind it might have been; the closest is less than a mile from Nazareth, the furthest about 12 miles – all of which count as walking distance. If Nazareth had 200-400 people and we can still find it, how small do you suppose Cana was? But to its people it was home, and they were having a wedding. And by design or default, the wedding family had not ordered enough wine. Given how people – folks related to me, at least – behave around free food and drink, I know how easily this can occur. Still, hospitality requires a host to anticipate such enthusiasm by their guests, and plan accordingly. These hosts – Mary's friends – didn't. For whatever reason. And now they are about to be really embarrassed. The guests who've had nothing will not think poorly of the early guests who've been through the line three or four or five times. But rather – their host. They will think him stingy and inhospitable – which again is the LAST notion the fathers of a bride or groom want thought of them by their friends and neighbors. It was the greatest of shames. So Mary makes it her business. As would I, not because I am bossy or a busybody, mind you, but because I am HELPFUL. She finds Jesus and His friends – in the food or wine line no doubt – pulls Him out and tells Him, the wine is going to run out. Someday I'm going to spend a whole week just thinking about this partnership of Mary and Jesus. He is her son and her Lord. She is His mother and His disciple. They are both servant to and authority over the other. So few words pass between them. The ones that do scratch my ears, begging to be softened – for my sake only, though. Not Mary's. Not Jesus'. She doesn't tell Him to DO anything. She doesn't have to. Like good mothers of good sons, she knows He knows what she wants Him to do. And He does. John says only the servants and the disciples knew the truth – that it was Jesus' first sign. It revealed His glory, and the disciples believed in Him. The glory, it seems to me, is in the math. Friends, I want not simply to suggest, but rather to insist, that this math is a sign of God's notion of justice. The math tells us something central to biblical justice. To do the math, I first had to read up on wine. I found a blog called WinoWoman.com WinoWoman is a graduate of the French Culinary Institute of California and Yale University and is a master sommelier. Assuming you are serving beer but no liquor, she recommends two glasses of wine per guest. Knowing most guests will drink only one glass, she says. I literally wonder, has this woman ever been to an actual wedding . . . and if so, whose? I can guarantee it was not in Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri or Arkansas. But nevertheless . . . . Most wine is sold in 750 ml bottles like this one made by my cousin Dick, in his basement in Terre Haute, Indiana. WinoWoman says there are six glasses of wine in here. Again – don't know who is pouring for her, but we'll go with her math, as she graduated from Yale. John says that after the initial stock of wine ran out, Jesus delivered 180 MORE gallons of the best wine any of them ever tasted. Do you have any idea how many 750 ml bottles are in 180 gallons? I do: 900. My favorite wine is Dry Red Blend from Oliver Winery. I doubt it is the best wine ever made in the history of wine, but I like it. It costs $8.99 at Sam's Club and $12 at Oliver Winery – however, there's a 30% discount if you buy more than three cases. I know this because I called them – not because I’m in the habit of buying more than three cases of wine at a time. 900 bottles = 75 cases. 75 cases would cost $7,560.00 at the Winery. The 2017 winners of domestic wines cost about $75 a bottle OR $67,500 for 900 bottles. 900 bottles = 5,400 glasses of wine at WinoWoman’s pour. Not Carl Briggs’ pour. At two glasses per guest – WinoWoman's generous estimate – plus-2700 guests were at the wedding at Cana. Which is absurd. The population of Galilee within walking distance of Cana wasn't 2700. Besides, nobody living in Cana at that time could have afforded that. OR, nobody who could afford that would have lived in Cana. Everyone knew Jed Clampitt couldn't stay in Tennessee once he got rich, right? Galileans were poor: peasants, heavily-taxed subsistence farmers and workers. That they had never tasted such amazing wine was not exactly remarkable. A huge wedding in Cana would have been 200 guests. 5,400 glasses of wine for 200 guests? Even the way Carl Briggs pours, that's more than 20 glasses per guest. Of course I'm being silly. I wish I could be as outrageous as I want. I wish I could stack 5,400 wine glasses around this room. I wish I could open 900 bottles of red wine and let that smell fill this room. Because I really, really want you to get the same sensory experience those first disciples had of the grace of God poured out for us. Because it's right here in the math! Abundance! Generosity! This is the nature of biblical justice! When human beings make a mess and Jesus fixes it, He doesn't go around with a ruler measuring out precisely one glass of wine per person, like WinoWoman.com. He doesn't double that and call it generous, like we do when we give poor people our nice old clothes. He gives the poorest, most forgotten people on the planet (Cana is literally forgotten!) better than they would ever have known to ask for, and more than they can ever, ever, ever use in this lifetime. The math of human justice says everyone gets one. The math of human generosity says everyone gets two. But because human beings are both stingy and greedy, our ideas of justice OR generosity rarely work to anyone's advantage. Either we are passive- aggressively obliging others to accommodate our stinginess. Or we are soaking up our privilege like we deserve it because we got here first. Or because we followed the rules and worked hard. Or certainly are not as rich as so many other people. All those reasons are only useful to people who are NOT interested in being church. We are not here to justify ourselves, but rather to exercise biblical justice in this time and place. So we find ourselves as the hosts in this wedding story in the land of scarcity – a bed we made for ourselves by design or default, but one that we most definitely DO NOT want to lie in. What does that have to do with me? Jesus asks. Fair question. We Protestants all grew up knowing that “God helps those who help themselves." Amen? Hard work ALWAYS precedes prayer. Thus needy people are people who haven't worked hard enough. God helps those who help themselves. We think it without even meaning to. Except that's not the first sign of His glory, is it? Jesus agreeing with us that those greedy guests should have been more grateful for the two glasses allotted to them. After all, it’s free, and they were really only entitled to one. The flash of the first sign of His glory was however-much time and energy it took however-many servants to schlep 180 gallons of water from the spring to the jars. (180 gallons of water weighs 1501 pounds, by the way.) It was however-much time and energy it took however-many stewards to draw and deliver 5,400 glasses. It was however-much time and energy it took however-many guests to raise however-many glasses of this new wine they'd just been handed, however-much time and energy it took to tip those glasses and discover what biblical justice tastes like when it's drawn up, measured and poured out by the hand of God. Later, Jesus will describe it as “living water so satisfying we will never be thirsty again.” The math of biblical justice is the math of abundance, of generosity and of grace. Remember, the wine is only a sign of what Jesus is going to do. He didn't come to improve our parties. He came to save our souls, that we might have more life than we ever dreamed a human being could have. Not more years – more life! Gallons and gallons and gallons of life! Extravagant life. For those of us already drowning in the securities of this world, we've been offered the privilege of extravagant service. Of never withholding from others for fear of our own losses. Of never hoarding joy or lying awake heart-broken with worry. Speaking to the Anti-Defamation League in 1963, President Kennedy spoke of the United States as a country built by 40 million immigrants. Except for failing to mention all who came by slave ship – no small omission – his speech is wonderful. He spoke of OUR responsibility to BE the country they imagined and built. "We are equal to this great inheritance," he said. I found it healing after this week's vitriol. Because at the end of the day, friends, biblical justice is not born of what we think or what we say. Biblical justice comes to life on earth as it is in heaven, because of what we do and how we live. May Jesus find us generous and ever confident of the abundance of grace and courage with which He has already supplied the church in this time and place. Would you pray with me? If your mama or daddy ever said, “I seen what you done and I know what you're up to,” was that good news or bad? Did it prompt fear and anxiety? Or relief and joy? Jesus wasn't telling Nathaniel that he “saw what he done” so much as, I know what you were up to. I know what you were praying for. I've always known. And here I am.
Because knowing that a holy man was probably under a fig tree is something like knowing that Kelley School of Business professors can be found at Lennie’s on Friday afternoons. It is what they do. Holy men pray under fig trees; it’s what they do. Nathaniel, naturally, was struck down. “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel.” Struck down in that he spit out treason like it's nothing in the world to him if Roman soldiers hear him say it, “Son of God” and “King of Israel” being titles reserved for the Emperor, not Galileans. Struck down that a man knows about himself not just what everyone else knows, but what is in his heart and mind. Two sentences earlier Nathaniel himself insulted Jesus. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” — Nathaniel asks the air, the way folks do when we believe everyone in the room agrees with us. Nathaniel was Judean. Judeans thought themselves better Jews in general than Galileans. More racially pure, more sacrificial. More devout. Not unlike American white people. Once when I was a child my grandmother was looking at the school pictures of my cousin’s kids and she said, “Somebody in that bunch jumped the fence.” It was her not-so-subtle racist description of an interracial child. Her own great‐ grandchildren, mind you. But I had no idea what she meant, so I asked my mother. My mother having to explain was worse than hearing Mamaw say it. Yet I loved them both, cringes and all. But can you and I say we don't have our own Nazareths? People or places or parties we've written off; dismissed; decided are not worth a look or listen? Can anything good come out of ______ ? What? Surely you can fill the blank. The White House . . . Congress . . . the Republican Party . . . the Democratic Party . . . the Southern Baptist Convention . . . the Evangelical Church . . . Sudan . . . North Korea . . . Alabama . . . the IU men's basketball program. Come and see, Philip answered. But he was not the first to say so. Jesus was. When Andrew and his friend (both disciples of John the Baptist) heard Jesus speaking, they wanted to hear more. Where are you staying? they want to know. Come and see, Jesus said. This word for staying is important for John. Elsewhere it gets translated "abide." Abide in me as I abide in you is nearly the whole message of John 15 as well as the pastoral letters of John. But Jesus doesn't say I abide in you here in chapter 1. That would have been too creepy. It wasn’t time yet. He cannot tell them; he can only show them. Come and see. And so they peel away from John the Baptist to follow Jesus. Too bad for preachers, John the Baptist isn’t our role model: the more disciples he lost, the better job he was doing. Andrew and this other fellow listen for a day, and Andrew finds his brother Simon, whom Jesus renames Peter. Off, the four of them head to Andrew and Peter's hometown in Galilee, where Jesus finds Philip, and Philip finds Nathaniel. Here’s when Nathaniel insults Jesus. And Philip bids him come and see. But before Nathaniel can open his mouth, Jesus shouts a greeting. “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” Did Jesus just insult most of Israel? As if this is an unusual thing to see – an honest Israelite. If I had a quarter for all the times people have said to me, “Wow, you don't look like a preacher,” I could buy new shoes – nice new shoes. The thing is, I can't tell whom they are insulting – or complimenting. So I just say “thank you.” What is Jesus doing here? He is doing, it seems to me, what Jesus always does, welcoming whoever is willing to come and see. Nathaniel isn’t hiding anything from Jesus. Jesus knows him through and through, his devotion AND his bigotry. Nathaniel is just one human being, and when he comes to Jesus he comes as a whole package. Coming to Jesus, he is not instantly free of his past – as Judean, as Jew, as a male. Or any of all the bits and pieces of his history that make him who he is now. And Jesus takes him all. I love how Jesus acts the gospel out in the minutiae of a conversation. How he flexes his thick skin and his tender heart simultaneously. Nathaniel has just insulted Jesus. But not just Jesus himself: Jesus’ kinfolk and his hometown. Now I know Christian people who could not get past that. They’d get offended. They’d have to talk it out – talk about nothing else until that was worked out. Not Jesus. In response to insult, Jesus chooses to praise Nathaniel's great faith. Friends, let it not be lost on us that Jesus will bid these same disciples – AND US – to come and die with him. And here is his first lesson: Let other people's insults die; when others insult you, let those insults fall into silence – silence deeper than a grave. As for me, I’m perfectly capable of receiving an insult without returning fire . . . out loud. Instead, I like to absorb the insult and nurse it like a wound, until it festers and infects the relationship. Which, I suspect, is not exactly the lesson Jesus was trying to teach. So yeah, I have some room to grow on letting insults die. While Jesus, apparently, has better things to do, like turn these men (and, eventually, women) into friends and partners in the work he is setting out to do: saving humanity from sin and death. Go figure. “How do you know me?” “I saw you under the fig tree. Not just what you were doing. I saw every nook and cranny of your heart. I know what you are up to. Here I am.” “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel.” Nathaniel's confession of Jesus as Messiah is John's first proclamation of the gospel by a human being, a doubter who was a little bit racist. Nathaniel may have thought his day couldn't get better, when Jesus, like every game show host ever, says, “But wait – that's not all! Very truly I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man!” Whose vision is Jesus recalling? We read it early back in the fall. In this “lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,” Jacob's vision has come to pass. Remember the stairway to heaven with angels ascending and descending? Only now, there is no stairway. The Son of God has replaced the very road between heaven and earth. “You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man!” is language that will eventually get him killed by far more powerful men than these four, these men from No-place, Galilee. And yet, of all the people in all the world whom Jesus might have chosen, these are the folks God chose as friends and partners in the most important work anybody ever did this side of heaven: rescue folks from sin and death. Jesus finds them. They find their friends. Jesus welcomes all of them to “come and see.” Come and see the one who “seen what you did.” Come and see the one who “knows what you're up to.” Come and see the one who invites you to imagine that such a thing can be ALL good news. ![]() "At peace without spot or blemish" is Bible talk for being ready. Prepare! is the word in Mark's gospel. He's quoting Malachi and Isaiah here at the very beginning, as he sets out to tell his tale – the good news of Jesus Christ the Son of God; his book title, if you will. Mark wants his story set in the context of biblical prophecy, in the voice of a wild man named John who promises that the one coming after him is going to change positively everything. Don't you wonder what folks thought, watching and listening to John? That if this camel-hair-wearing, locust-eating nut job was the warm-up act, what in the world was the real guy going to be like? Tom Hanks is how I picture John the Baptist now, ever since the movie Cast Away came out. ![]() Sermon ~ Pastor Annette Mark 13:24-37 For the First Sunday of Advent, the lectionaries always have a text like "Wake Up!" or "Get Ready!" or "Prepare Ye!" – like Mark 13, where Jesus tells his listeners, "Keep awake!" Mark 13 is called The Little Apocalypse, for how much it reads like Daniel and Revelation, that other apocalyptic literature in the Bible. I think Little Apocalypse sounds like a band name, but turns out it isn't. It is, however, an album title for a Bob-Dylan-sounding alt-country band called The Schramms. . . . the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, 25 and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. 26 Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. 27 Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven. ![]() I Am Everything Annette Hill Briggs John 8:31-59 In John chapters 7 and 8, Jesus is in a protracted fight with religious Jews who supposedly believe in him – which is not to say they were his disciples. I'm not sure what they were, exactly. The opposite side of the aisle maybe. Men ideally trying to work with Jesus… but they just cannot get there. Jesus and the Jews insult each other repeatedly. He suggests their scholars are stupid. He calls them Satan. He calls them murderers and Haters of God. ![]() Isaiah 9:1-7 Why do the Christmas Eve liturgies never begin with verse 5? For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be tossed into the fire. Instead, they always begin at 6: For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. But never, For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood. Maybe because we cannot bring ourselves to tell the truth about what an unholy, disgraceful mess we’ve made. It wasn’t for nothing that the world required a Savior. Has human sin ever been summed up better than “all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood”? n a letter to his wife Julia in 1862, Ulysses Grant wrote, “Soldiers who fight battles do not experience half their horror. All the hardships come upon the weak, the women and the children. Tossed into the fire.” What fire? I have wondered all this week. Is the fire God’s last nerve snapping? God’s patience no longer wearing thin but through? Nope. It’s the unholy mess before here mentioned: the wars and the greed that drive the mess. The deprivation and the abuse of the innocent. The abuse of power by those in place to lead. The day is coming, Isaiah 9 predicts, when all the makings of the fire will be tossed upon the flames and the whole thing finally turns to ash. The fire is us, a broken race. The reign of Christ is the reign that puts the fire out. The book of Isaiah covers 400 years of Bible history, beginning with Isaiah ben Amoz around 783 BCE. He was a near contemporary to Amos. His name stuck to the work of a certain line of prophets who came after. Isaiah was a royal counselor in Judah, to the king and to the people, reminding them that only Yahweh could be trusted to defend Zion – that is, Israel and Judah. Isaiah once walked naked through the streets of Jerusalem to illustrate his point on the futility of the king’s policy of alliances with foreign nations. Remember this, next time I march on Washington. You might not like it, but at least I keep my clothes on! Assyria had invaded Israel by the time of this writing. The tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali had fallen. The question is no longer IF but WHEN Judah will be overrun as well. The faith question is how the people of God shall live from now. . .till then. . .and thereafter. Isaiah 9 speaks of faith beyond the time of war, at a time when the war has not reached the people listening to him. He preaches of the remnant who will survive and the peace to come, before the battle has truly begun – redemption not only in the midst of suffering, but in the dread of suffering not yet upon them. The prophet speaks to every phase of human experience in the space of a single text. His listeners hear of their salvation before the hammer even falls. He calls them to courage to endure whatever happens with hope and faith. Is it any wonder that Isaiah was Jesus’ Bible? the text He quoted more than any other? And the one the Church chose to introduce Him to us: For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. I had so much more planned for you this morning – Bible history, linguistics. I know how disappointed you are that I have such a sore throat. I’m skipping it all to look briefly at Isaiah’s four monikers for Messiah: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Each describes the nature of Christ’s own self. But also, I am proposing, each describes a quality of the life of faith and our life together as the church. Wonderful Counselor: The one who makes life make sense, who explains it all to me – and not always in words. The one who lives within and alongside us in our lives and life together, teaching us to recognize justice and righteousness and compassion and decency; to honor those things in ourselves and each other; and to tell the truth when and where we find them lacking in this world. Counselor is guide and teacher and spirit and presence and truth teller and friend – the companionship of God in a world that doesn’t know God. “Nanny” is one English translation of the Apostle Paul’s word for this – the one who carries us along and teaches us the most basic skills of being human. Mighty Counselor – the One we cannot do without, who also teaches us to walk together through this life, treating each other with gentleness, patience, kindness, decency, encouragement. Mighty God: God is the able one, the one unbounded by all the things that bind us humans: fear and greed, confusion and self-interest. Could it be that our perception of the mightiness of God and the helplessness of humans coalesces into the stalemate of injustice we see everywhere? What if our confidence in God’s greatness were matched by faith in God’s confidence in us? What if we believed about ourselves what God believes about us? What if we took God at God’s word? What if we practiced what we preach – that we are capable of far more with God than we are without God? What if the mightiness of God is meant to be most obvious in the radicality of our faith? in our courage to do things we’d never do apart from faith? Will Campbell was a Baptist preacher from Mississippi in the 1950’s. I want you to read his book, Brother to a Dragonfly. Brother Will went to work for the National Council of Churches to work on issues of race relations in the South. He got death threats from white citizens’ councils all the time, until he decided the Lord meant for him to work and preach among white racist groups. Then it was the liberals who shunned and threatened him. I appreciated the story Lucas told last Sunday night, about friends of his who are not where liberals think they ought to be in affirming gay and lesbian believers, and yet put their bodies and their reputations between LGBTQ people and ones who would do them harm. “That looks like Jesus to me,” Lucas said. The mightiness of God shows up where justice and compassion and decency are boosted by the faith and courage of believers like you and me. Sometimes I think the church is waiting on God to mobilize some heavenly D-Day against evil, as if there isn’t a well-funded, well-trained, well-supplied army on the ground already. We wait upon the Lord while the Lord is waiting on us. Number Three: When you google “Why do dads. . .?” guess what the #2 hit is? Why do dads sneeze so loud? How about #3? Why do dads hate boyfriends? Number One is Why do dads leave? Everlasting Father is the dad who doesn’t leave, ever. Everlasting is a Bible word for the dad who stays and stays and stays and stays. The Everlasting Father is the one who never messes up so badly that he thinks his kids are better off without him. Nothing we could ever do or say can drive away the Everlasting Father. We belong to him no matter what. Every human parent messes up. We all have cause to tell our kids we’re sorry now and then. Apparently fathers everywhere are sneezing far too loudly. And moms – guess what moms are doing? If you google “Why do moms. . .?” the #1 hit is Why do moms drink wine? Apparently it bothers kids enough to ask. So all of us will fail, but all of us can try to imitate this everlasting quality of God in our walk with one another. I think about it as trying to grow a thick skin while keeping a tender heart. Love people, sharp edges and all, as best we can. Number Four: I don’t know if Isaiah chose Prince of Peace because it alliterates so well, but it seems unlikely since he didn’t work in English. Maybe it was because Old Testament princes were always going to war. In the Christian rendering, Jesus is always the Prince of Peace who went into the heart of human hate and evil, the war between life and death. He was Life. His battle plan, entirely, was submission to the enemy. Verbal, physical and otherwise – utter non-resistance. I read a fair bit of American military history. Every once in a while an army will retreat and burn everything behind them as they go. Some surrender. None stand and let themselves be overwhelmed without a fight. Yet this was Jesus’ plan for peace – to break the back of war at war’s own game. Put death to death by letting death do its best against Him, then losing by death’s own demise. Herein is the gospel, friends. Jesus died and we will too. Jesus rose and we will too. It’s so, so, so, so, so tempting to focus on the fire, to locate it precisely and measure its dimensions. But the fire has been condemned to ash already. Christ’s reign has put the fire out. Whatever coals still smolder, He has made us able to put out. Life has won, and we are saved, and there is nothing left to fear. We’ve only to believe the Word that tells us we belong to Him. Would you pray with me? ![]() Flee from a Lion to Be Met by a Bear Amos 1:1-2, 5:6-24 Amos preached about the mistreatment of the weak and poor of society in his day. If he were preaching today, can you think of anything current in our society he might find to talk about? He wasn't from Israel, you know? He was a southern preacher, from Judah. And not a preacher by choice. By choice he was a sheep rancher and a dresser of sycamore trees. We looked that up in Bible study. A dresser of sycamore trees went around and pricked holes in the fruit so bugs wouldn't eat it up. “Dresser of sycamore trees” does have a better ring than “pricker of sycamore fruits,” don't you know. ![]() Thursday night this week I dreamed I was in a shop in Europe where I bought a calendar with pictures of lavender on every month – for the next 34 years! "I'll be 87 when it runs out," I thought, "I might not live to flip every page.” "Yes, but what do you want to write on the pages?” the dream asked the dreamer, who was me. “What do you want to write in the 12,240 little boxes on the 408 pages of your 34-year calendar?” Because the calendar isn't a dream at all. It's real. However many pages it actually contains I don't know. But I know it's reality, yours and mine. Because whether we planned for them or not we are spending out those boxes and those pages – here and now, a day at a time. Dreams are one of the still-small-voice ways God speaks to me. Sometimes I can hear the sound of it – though the sound of it isn't like any other sound, as if God wants me to pay attention but doesn't want to be recognized too easily. Sometimes it can be a little exhausting to be God's friend. The prophet Elijah had stories to tell about that. Elijah was a preacher and prophet the likes of which are rarely seen anymore. My son wears a t-shirt that says “crimpin' ain't easy.” I asked what it meant. Oh, just a kind of hiking, he said. One of the half-truths good sons tell their mothers. But I have Google. Not hiking. It’s rock climbing. Called “crimping” because one's fingers get so crimped; “ain't easy” for how it tears up one's hands. Ben says he only boulder-climbs at the quarries around here. Like this: His childhood friends, however, now live out west, and they do this: If crimping were a metaphor for preaching, here’s me – falling to mats: But Elijah? Preaching – or “propheting” – ain't easy for any of us, but Elijah may very well get killed doing it the way he does it. I Kings 19 finds him in a desert in Beersheba under a broom tree wishing to lie down and die there before Queen Jezebel's assassins find him. Which calls for a bit of context. Last week King Solomon got the Temple built. The upkeep on the temple and his other projects required him to tax the country so heavily that the people began to complain, particularly the ten tribes of the north. When Solomon's son Rehoboam became king after him, the ten tribes came to him and said, "Listen, you have to lighten up or we are going to be our own country.” So Rehoboam went to his father’s advisors, who told him the same thing they had been telling Solomon: “This policy is unsustainable. Do as they are asking.” He didn’t like their advice so he got his own advisors. They told him, “Crack down harder.” He cracked down, and we can summarize the next ten chapters by saying things went to poo. Israel became two kingdoms: Israel in the north, Judah in the South. Rehoboam ruled from Jerusalem in the south; Jeroboam ruled from Shechem in the north. Wars. Wars. Wars. In addition, foreigners still mad from a genocide during the reign of David are itching for a fight with Israel. And Syria has a treaty with Judah but not Israel, so Israel is provoking them to break it and join them to help them fight Egypt. In addition and not unrelated to all this war, the litany of kings since and including Solomon have been marrying foreign women. Women with gods of their own. With the story of Elijah, we come to King Ahab of Israel (North, remember), about whom it is written in I Kings 16: as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, he took for his wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and went and served Baal and worshiped him. He erected an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he built in Samaria. Ahab did more to provoke the Lord, the God of Israel, to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him. Along came the prophet Elijah – crazy, brave, major prophet Elijah. Almost immediately he is in King Ahab's face. He provokes a fight with the prophets of Jezebel's god, Baal – an amazing story in which Elijah says things like “hmm, what is your god up to? Maybe he's in the toilet.” The God of Israel totally shames the god Baal. Elijah slaughters all 450 prophets of Baal. Which really ticks off Jezebel, and she issues the death threat upon him that starts our story here.
But somewhere in all this faithful work, Elijah – a major Old Testament prophet, someone you'd expect to know better – made the most basic error a prophet (not just a prophet but any preacher) can make. Any preacher or professor or project manager or parent; any doctor or dentist or dietitian or Disney performer; any lawyer or librarian or landscape architect; any teacher, tiger tamer or telephone salesman; any nurse or nanny or nuclear scientist. The most basic mistake ever made by Any Human Being Anywhere Who Is Responsible For Getting Anything Important Done. While he was doing all of that really critical, necessary, holy work, Elijah failed to H * A * L * T. Do you know HALT? I should have learned it in seminary, but I didn’t. I learned HALT from my friends in addiction recovery. Elijah let himself get too hungry, too angry, too tired and too lonely. Failing at any one of these is a bad plan; Elijah failed at all four at once – which is easier to do than we like to believe. And failing to HALT, Elijah was completely untethered from his calling, which makes me wonder if Elijah wanted to die because he was so frightened or simply because he was so tired. Anyway – until hungry and tired are fixed, angry and lonely can't be touched. The angel feeds and waters Elijah and puts him back to sleep. Then feeds and waters and puts him back to sleep again. It's for the journey ahead, the angel says. The long, long walk to Mt. Horeb. It isn't clear to me whose idea Mt. Horeb was. I suspect it was Elijah's, given God's question, “Elijah, what are you doing here?” Mt. Horeb was Moses' spot, the place Moses received the Ten Commandments. Elijah already prayed to die saying, I'm no better than my ancestors. Is that what drove him here? But this is Moses' spot, not Elijah's. What could he hope to accomplish here? God asked and Elijah answered, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.” That sounds to me like why he's there. But what he's doing, seems to me, is hiding. And it is possible that I’m projecting here, because I have been in my own similar spot of Too Hungry/Angry/Lonely/Tired. But I wonder if Elijah is not only hiding from assassins, but also from a life and calling he has gotten sick and tired of. Not because God hasn’t been faithful, but rather because Elijah himself hasn't yet learned to live faithfully. He's working really hard and getting good things done. He knows what else needs doing. But as best he can tell it is impossible. Because he does too much and others do too little. The people HE thinks ought to be working as hard as himself – simply aren’t. And that makes him angry. And tired. And, if he could admit it to himself, lonely too. He walks forty days and nights. I would argue it wasn’t far enough to heal up all the angry and the lonely still flowing in Elijah. I have worked hard for you, God, and have done everything you wanted me to, Lord, while everyone else did as they pleased and didn't even try to help; they disobeyed you, and ignored me, and saved themselves, and now I AM THE ONLY ONE LEFT who is even trying to do right. And for that I am being hunted and about to get killed!!!!! Married people recognize this speech. It’s part of the “who is working harder here?” fight. But married or not, who doesn’t have their own version of that prayer? I don’t have enough help to do what you have called ME to do, Lord! "Go outside," God says. Outside is another still-smallvoice-of-God way that the sound of God comes to my eyes and ears, and heart and mind too. "Go outside.” And Elijah did. First there was a wind, a wind strong enough to split mountains and shatter rocks. Then there was an earthquake. And after the earthquake, a fire. When Moses met the Lord at Mt. Horeb, there was wind and earthquake and fire. And God was in them all. But each time they passed over Elijah, the text is so careful to say that God was not there. Then came the sound of sheer silence. Some English translations cannot bear the phrase “sound of silence” and use “low whisper.” Something about that sound of sheer silence made Elijah cover his face and step out further in the open, where he heard the same question again. "What are you doing here, Elijah?” If this time Elijah had wept and sighed like contemporary Christian artists and said, "Thank you, Lord, now I see," the text would be easier to preach. The sermon could wind up here neat and tidy as a hymn. But weirdly, Elijah answers the exact same answer again – his same complaint reissued word for word. Does he not know what else to say? Does he get exactly what God is trying to tell him, and yet know what waits for him back in his prophet's life? Have you ever known exactly what God meant for you to do, but you just didn’t want to – because it was too hard? Does Elijah say these words because the true ones are just too hard to say? What am I doing here – are you kidding me, Lord? I'm hiding! I’m hiding because I don’t like confronting kings and I don’t like creepy queens. I don't like killing prophets and I don't like being chased by assassins. All of which seems fair to me. I prefer to preach with a mat below me, remember. But the call of God upon Elijah will not be relaxed. Which is not to say God didn't hear his prayers. “Go back,” the Lord says. “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus; when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael as king over Aram. 16 Also you shall anoint Jehu son of Nimshi as king over Israel; and you shall anoint Elisha son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah as prophet in your place. 17 Whoever escapes from the sword of Hazael, Jehu shall kill; and whoever escapes from the sword of Jehu, Elisha shall kill. 18 Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.” It makes more sense if you've read ahead, but the gist is this: God is replacing Ahab and Jezebel. God is getting Elijah some help, a new prophet named Elisha. And God is reminding Elijah he is not, in fact, alone in Israel; 7,000 other faithful Israelites are waiting to help him when he returns. The good news is this: things are not as bad as they seem. Elijah is not alone. The bad news – or good, depending on the light in which we read it: God is not finished with Elijah. Not by a long shot. He has room to grow in learning the hardest lesson the Bible ever teaches: faith comes to us like manna in the morning – one day at a time. It comes in part as food, but also as rest and companionship and prayer. And if we neglect to feed and rest ourselves, trouble like Elijah's is sure to follow – however good the work we do. I like my calendar dream. But I'm glad we don't have to figure out the next twelve thousand days. Just the next few. As we read earlier in Galatians 3, we belong to Christ – the one who did only that which matters most, then mostly goofed off with his friends, eating, drinking, telling stories, playing with kids, going for walks, being the voice of God to whoever would get still enough to listen. |
Scripture index
All
Archives
September 2020
|