Where did kind and friendly Jesus go?

Sermon preached on Sunday, August 18 at the Church of the Ascension, Munich
Jeremiah 23:23-29, Hebrews 11:29-12:2, Luke 12:49-56

If you type ‘Jesus’ into Google Images® then most of the pictures of Jesus that you are offered show a kind, friendly, welcoming (and very European) figure: often with his arms outstretched, hugging someone, or holding a child, or a lamb. They show the Jesus we call the Prince of Peace, the Jesus who said ‘blessed are the peacemakers’ (Mt. 5:9), who commanded us to love not only our neighbor, but also our enemy (Lk 6:35), to turn the other cheek (Lk 6:29), and to forgive a brother or sister who sins against us not just seven, but 77 times (Mt 18:21). After all, isn’t Christianity, especially the Episcopal version, all about love, forgiveness, reconciliation, and inclusiveness? “God loves you, no exceptions” is the text of a popular Episcopal bumper sticker and poster at the moment.

So where on earth does the Jesus of today’s gospel come from? The one who says he has come to bring fire to the earth and who wishes it was already blazing, the one who promises not peace, but division and even strife? Well the answer is that he has been there all along. This is the Jesus of righteous anger who overturns the tables of the moneychangers in the temple and who calls the Pharisees fools and hypocrites. For the love that Jesus teaches and demonstrates is not something fluffy, soft, or comfortable, but robust, sometimes aggressive, and often downright dangerous.

For some time now, ever since Luke started to describe Jesus’ final journey to Jerusalem at the end of chapter 9, our Sunday gospel reading has been about how Jesus uses this journey to instruct his followers in both the nature, and in the demands of discipleship, on what it means to follow the Way of Christ. In parables and narrative we have heard how Jesus’ disciples are to proclaim the Kingdom of God in word and deed, to heal, to show compassion, to help the stranger, to give to those in need, to trust in God, and to follow him without reservation. In doing so they also experience rejection and hostility, and Jesus warns them that more would follow. Following Jesus means not only being willing to change oneself, but also society as a whole; that is what striving for God’s kingdom means. Yet rejecting the status quo, and calling those short who want to protect it and their own positions of wealth, power, and influence, is not without danger. Both of these messages, the need to change and the consequences of change, are also what today’s gospel passage is about.  

When Jesus says "I came to bring fire to the earth” we are probably supposed to recall what John the Baptist said about Jesus at the beginning of Luke’s Gospel (3:16):  “I baptize you with water. But … he (Jesus) will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” Little tongues of fire were of course what appeared on the disciples when they received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. But fire also stands for something that cleans or purifies, just as fire burns away the dross leaving only the pure metals behind. Jesus wants this process of change to begin as soon as possible: it begins for each of us when we accept and welcome the transformation that God’s Spirit works in us.

“I have a baptism with which to be baptized.” The baptism Jesus is referring to here is his death on the cross. He knows that it is what awaits him in Jerusalem at the end of his journey and he knows that it is necessary to demonstrate just how robust, limitless and powerful God’s love is. This image of Baptism is one that St. Paul also picks up when he asks “don’t you know that all who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” (Ro 6:3)

Jesus goes on to ask “do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!”  There are of course different sorts and meanings of peace. It can just stand for the absence of conflict, for a state of tranquility, or for harmony, concord, and security. Peace in this sense can be bad if it is a means of securing an unjust status quo, of maintaining the prosperity of a few and imposing a harmony that masks inequality. That peace is not what Jesus brings. God’s peace is much more: it is health, well-being, and wholeness for all, for the whole world and never for one individual, or group, or country above others.

So, instead of a limited peace at all costs, Jesus warns that there will be division and that his followers must be willing to risk division even in their own family. Now that doesn’t sound so frightening to us. At least in my family father and son, and mother and daughter do not always agree: whether about politics, religion, or just the need to tidy up a bedroom…. And disagreements between mother- and daughter-in-law are very much part of our comedy culture. But that was not the case in 1^st century Palestine. Obedience to one’s parents, especially to one’s father, and a sense of solidarity within the family were the standard of the day: Just think of the fifth commandment to honor one’s father and mother! So like many other things he had to say, this statement by Jesus must have sounded scandalous: Following me can bring division right into the heart of your family.

Finally Jesus addresses the crowds: Recognizing the need for change, seeing that society is in crisis and cannot continue as it is, should be as easy to recognize as is the weather he tells them: “You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?”  That’s a very timeless question.

The Jesus of today’s gospel reading must be just as much an example for us, as the kind, friendly, welcoming, loving, and forgiving Jesus. Proclaiming God’s love can and sometimes must cause division. That God loves everyone without exception is divisive to those who believe that God only loves those who keep to their standards of morality or their way of worshiping. Preaching equality regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, wealth, or education is divisive to those who believe that their group has been singled out for special attention and favor. Preaching against idolatry, against putting the love of money, power, nation, or weapons above the love of God and neighbor is divisive to those who worship these idols. Welcoming the stranger, in today’s terms the refugee, into our midst is divisive to those for whom that refugee is perceived as a threat to their security and prosperity and for those who exploit people’s fear of the stranger to their own advantage.

We have no choice but to be divisive if we really want to bring about what we pray for at every service, that God’s kingdom come, on earth as in heaven. Given the choice between witnessing to the Good News or aiming for peace and quiet, given the choice between following the Way of Christ, or striving for harmony, we who have been baptized into Christ Jesus must choose the Way, regardless of the consequences! That’s what Jonathan Daniels, an Episcopal Seminarian whose death we commemorated this last week, did when he went to Selma, Alabama at the height of the civil rights struggle. He risked and gave his life for another because, in the words of the collect written for him, he would not make peace with oppression.

This morning’s reading from the Letter to the Hebrews also has a lot to say about the consequences and the cost of discipleship and faith. In that author’s long list of Hebrew heroes and what they have achieved through faith, he does not fail to mention those who “were tortured, … suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment … were killed by the sword (or were) destitute, persecuted, or tormented.”

That reminds me of an anecdote about the 16th century Spanish mystic St. Teresa of Avila. In one of her visions she is supposed to have asked God why she had to suffer so much. God’s response was: “This is how I deal with my friends.” “Well” she replied sharply, “in that case you shouldn’t be surprised if you don’t have very many friends!” 

Christianity once had a lot of ‘friends,’ when it was part of the status quo, when it didn’t seem to threaten prosperity and power, when instead the Church was often the source of prosperity and power. That is not what we promise now, thank goodness. We believe that God wants change and promises a new and better world, and we believe that we have a role in bringing this about, as Pope Francis said in his Easter message:  “Let us become agents of God’s mercy, channels through which God can water the earth, protect all creation and make justice and peace flourish.”[1]

As Jesus’ followers, we are called to witness to the Good News of God’s love for all in our lives, however divisive and dangerous that may be. That is, in the words of the Letter to the Hebrews, the race that is set before us that we must run with perseverance.” For just as we believe that death leads to new life, so we must also trust that any division is only temporary as a path to the genuine and all-encompassing unity and harmony of God’s peace. Shalom and Amen

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[1] http://franciscusi.wordpress.com/

Lasting treasures

Sermon preached on Sunday, August 4 at the Church of the Ascension, Munich
Readings for Pentecost 11: Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23, Colossians 3:1-11, Luke 12:13-21

Having had to prepare this brief sermon at very short notice – over breakfast this morning – I am grateful to the lectionary composers for their choice of readings. There really is one common theme that runs through all three readings:

·         What are our priorities?

·         Possessions, wealth, knowledge and power?

·         Or God’s values and priorities such as love right relationship with one another and with God?

Ecclesiastes is one of the books that nearly didn’t make it into the Hebrew Bible. Too pessimistic, too much ambiguity and not enough God! One reason it did make it in was that it was attributed to King Solomon, based for example on one of the verses we heard today: “I the teacher when king over Israel in Jerusalem.”

But it’s a good thing it did make it into the canon. For one thing our language would be poorer without it; we would miss phrases such as ‘vanity of vanities” or “everything under the sun.” But also because of the realistic attitude of its author. He describes life with all its frustrations and ambiguities and also reminds us that those things we sometimes think are most important such as wisdom, power, careers, wealth often only seem make us worried or anxious. We lose sleep over them although they are vanity or perhaps better translated as transient, fleeting, worthless, and temporary or literally like breath or vapour: certainly not something we should be building our lives on!

Jesus has a similar message. His parable could even be a paraphrase of Ecclesiastes, and why not. He knew his way around scripture!

While Ecclesiastes complains that “one must leave all to be enjoyed by another who did not toil for it” Jesus says “the things you have prepared, whose they will be?”

Now of course we need possessions, food, and drink. We need them to survive, we do good with them, and we perhaps even support our children with them. Jesus is warning us against excess, against possessions becoming the end rather than the means, against greed. Jesus warns us against false priorities, against worshipping these material things as false gods.

They will not make us happy and they will only remove us and distance us from the one real God and from God’s love.

Again: this does not mean that this world is not important or that we can just ignore what goes on “down here” and instead wait for some better life in the hereafter. The earth is as much God’s world as is heaven. What it means however is that we are called to live by God’s values in this world, in fact we are called to help bring them into effect.

Paul’s metaphor in Colossians is that we have already died through our baptism. Our new life in Christ has already begun in the here and now. In our new selves we must learn to abandon the greed and anxiety of this world, fleeting and vain as they are, and instead strive to live as followers of Christ in right relationship with God and one another and by God’s values and priorities.

These are the real and lasting treasures, ones worth us storing up because they will always be ours. No one will take them away.

Amen

Raising The Dead

Sermon preached on June 9, 2013 at Church of the Ascension, Munich

Pentecost 3: 1 Kings 17:17-24, Galatians 1:11-24, Luke 7:11-17

Doesn’t today’s Gospel story sound rather like a film remake, like a remake of the OT narrative from 1 Kings? We have the same basic plot: a widow’s son has died and is brought back to life again. And even some of the lines are the same: Elijah “took the child and gave him to his mother” (1 Kings 17:23); “Jesus gave him to his mother.” (Luke 7:15) But just like in many remakes, there are significant differences too. The setting changes:  from Zarephath on the coast to Nain in Galilee. We have a different main character: Jesus instead of Elijah. The son, who was a child in one story, is a young man in the other. Actually we could almost call this a multiple remake as even in the Old Testament we find two very similar events. In the one, as we heard a moment ago, Elijah healed a widow’s son, in the other in the 2^nd Book of Kings it was Elijah’s disciple and successor Elisha who had healed a young boy: in the town of Shunem, which is just on the other side of the hill from the town of Nain of today’s Gospel.

And we are supposed to notice these similarities. Luke wants us to see all of Jesus’ healing events as part of a larger narrative in which each healing is one more in a succession of saving events through or by God. The ‘supporting cast’ is also significant: A widow, an only child. In Hebrew Scripture widows, orphans, and strangers personify those who are marginalized and are powerless. These three groups of people are considered to be under God’s special protection and are therefore to be treated justly and helped by all. Jesus was always reaching out to and caring for the marginalized, for widows, those who were seen as sinners, those who were excluded in any way from the society of his day. And he was always willing to cross societal boundaries, even risking impurity and his own exclusion, to reach them. Here too he risks ritual defilement by touching a dead body. Jesus is the prefect human being, risking all to obey God’s commandments. 

But of course he is much more than this, for bringing someone back from the dead is the ultimate miracle, the ultimate proof of a power beyond human capabilities. While Elijah calls on God to let this child’s life come into him again, Jesus commands the young man to rise by his own power and authority. That’s the moment when Luke shows us that this is more than just a remake, and that Jesus is more than just another human prophet like Elijah – even if that is the people’s first reaction: “A great prophet has risen among us!” (Luke 7:16) But Jesus is not just the perfect human, he is also perfectly divine.

The motif of resurrection, of conquering death is part of our Christian faith: Christians are a resurrection people. We believe, and I’m quoting from our prayer book here, that “by the glorious resurrection of God’s Son Jesus Christ God destroyed death.” (BCP, 493) We live in the “sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life.” (BCP, 501) But that’s God’s work surely, not ours. We can’t bring people back from the dead. During my time as a hospital chaplain last year I would often pray for healing for and with those I visited. But when I was confronted with death, as I was, I did not ask God to “let life come into him again” or say to the dead person, rise! And if I had tried to use Elijah’s method of healing, by “stretching myself on top of the body three times,” I fear I would have got into a lot of trouble!

But as resurrection people we Christians not only believe in the possibility of resurrection. We must also be willing to bring it about. We are both called to and capable of bringing life out of death. God has given us this power just as Jesus commissioned the twelve disciples whose successors we all are to “heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and drive out demons.” (Matthew 10:8)

A key part of our “training” for this calling is our own experience of death and resurrection to a new life in Baptism: In the water of Baptism “we are buried with Christ in his death. By it we share in his resurrection. Through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit.” (BCP, 306)

So, how can we raise the dead, how can we bring new life?

Let’s look at the many ways in which Jesus and the apostles brought new life:

By inviting Levi the tax-collector to follow him, and by sharing a meal with Levi, Jesus gave him a new life in a new community (Mark 2:14-17). When we welcome all people into the church, when we both proclaim and show God’s love and forgiveness, we can enable anyone who is suffering from doubt, guilt, or perhaps even self-hate to find in the Christian faith and community a new life and a new perspective. 

Jesus showed compassion and love for those who mourn. We find that in today’s Gospel: “When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, ‘Do not weep” or also in the beatitudes, “blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” (Matthew 5:4) When we show someone who has suffered loss and grief that we love and care for them, and when we are patient but still persistent in bringing them back into community, we help them find a new life and a new perspective.

Again and again we read of how Jesus freed people who were possessed by demons (e.g. Mark 1:23-26). When we help someone addicted to alcohol or another drug to free themselves from these modern demons and to find their way back into the community after their treatment, then we are helping them receive a new life and a new perspective.

Many of Paul’s letters were written to heal communities that were divided, such as the Church in Corinth to whom he appealed that they may be “united in the same mind and in the same purpose.” (1 Corinthians 1:10) He did this precisely because they were not united and had very divergent ideas about their purpose. Whenever we see or experience conflict, discord, or polarization in a Christian community, let us renew our commitment to a common life as the body of Christ, so that the communities we belong to can find a new life and a new perspective. 

The early apostles sold their possessions and goods to distribute the proceeds to those who were in need (Acts 2:45). Paul was constantly asking the churches he founded to collect money for the church in Jerusalem. When we give of our time and talents and treasure to help build a community center in Rumania, to rebuild homes destroyed in an earthquake or hurricane, or to bring medicines and mosquito nets to save lives we bring others hope, a new life and a new perspective.

In his letter to the Galatians that we read from this morning Paul writes about his own rebirth. About how he is transformed from being a violent and zealous persecutor of the church of God, how he changes from one who was trying to destroy the faith, into one who proclaims and spreads the Good News. In faith he began a new life and found a new perspective.

I’m certain you can think of many more examples.

We really can bring new life, our faith in Jesus Christ both empowers and calls us to do so: To revive relationships, to bring communities back to life again, to bring people to a new life in faith, to renew spiritual and emotional lives, to make people feel whole again, and to bring life and health to the poor.

Just think what doing this says to the world about our faith! When Elijah brings the widow’s son back to life, she says: “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth.” (1 Kings 17:24). When Jesus restores the widow’s son to life the crowd glorifies God and the Word, the Good News, spreads throughout Judea. When Paul is transformed from persecutor to apostle, the churches glorify God. If we act as transformers of lives, if we show that the belief in resurrection is not only a hope for the future, but also a present reality that we stand for, if we practice what we preach, then people will say about us that the word of the Lord in our mouths is truth, they will glorify God, and the Good News will continue to spread. The Good News of a God of grace and mercy who brings light out of darkness and causes the dead to live. 

Amen

The Promise of the Spirit

Sermon preached on May 5, 2013 at St. David’s Episcopal Church, Washington, DC

Sixth Sunday of Easter: Acts 16:9-15, Revelation 21:1, 22-22:5, John 14:23-29

 

This is a sermon, albeit my last at St. David’s, and not a farewell speech. But I still couldn’t help noticing that the themes from today’s readings still seem strangely appropriate for the occasion! The passage from the Gospel according to John is part of what we call Jesus’ long farewell discourse when Jesus gets his disciples ready for his departure. He wants them to rejoice in his returning home. And in Acts Paul receives a vision telling him to cross the sea to Europe because he is needed to mission there! Do you see the connection? But let’s stop there, I don’t want you thinking that I am comparing myself with Jesus or with Paul.

Yet the fact is that the Gospel is about departure and more specifically about the disciples’ fears on Jesus’ departure. “Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid” (John 14:27) Jesus says to them. So what are they worried about? Well about questions such as how will they know what to do when Jesus is no longer with them? Or how will they know what is right or wrong when he is not there to tell them? Of course these are not just issues for the 1^st century disciples but for us too.

How do we discern God’s will for us and for the world when we do not have Jesus, the Son of God, with us to instruct us directly? Jesus’ promise to the disciples and to us is that our guidance and instruction will not cease. The Father will send the Holy Spirit in Jesus’ name to act as a teacher, guide, advocate, and companion. As an aside, and as I won’t be here to use this on Trinity Sunday, next time someone tells you that the concept of the Trinity is a later invention and not found in the Bible – point them to this section of John’s Gospel as this is where a lot of the ideas about both the differences between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and their ultimate unity come from!

But let’s stay with the Holy Spirit for now, especially as we approach the feast of the Holy Spirit, Pentecost. Where do we find the Holy Spirit and how does the Spirit of God help us discern God’s will for us and for the world? The Spirit is God within us, this is what Jesus means when he says “we will come to them and make our home with them” (John 14:23) or as Paul says in Romans, (8:9) “the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.” In John’s version of Pentecost, the story in which Jesus appears to Thomas, the disciples receive the Holy Spirit when Jesus breathes on them, which reminds us of the second of the two creation stories: Adam receives the breath of life when God breathes into him: By the way, that’s why we refer to the Holy Spirit as “the Lord, the giver of life” in the Nicene Creed.

So how does the Holy Spirit guide us, how do we access the Spirit? In Scripture, in prayer, in visions, and even in preaching!

Let’s start with Scripture. The Holy Spirit, Jesus says, will act as a teacher and help us understand the meaning of what Jesus did and taught, literally will cause us to remember what Jesus said. Scripture is how we remember all of God’s saving acts. When we say that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, we do not mean that every word was dictated to the writers by God. But we do believe that God’s Spirit was with the authors as they wrote down and interpreted both their own experiences and the stories they had heard. We also believe that the Spirit inspires us when we listen to Scripture, that the Spirit helps us find meaning and relevance in the passages we hear in church, or read at home, or study as part of a group. There is no one right way of doing this. There is a lot to be said for group Bible Study. Quoting Frank Griswold our former Presiding Bishop, “the truth Christ seeks to convey us is larger than any one person’s perspective. In order to know the truth as revealed in Christ, we must seek it together.” (Griswold 2009, 119) But sometimes we need a very personal message which a more contemplative method such as Lectio Divina might help us hear: Read a short passage of Scripture very slowly. Reflect carefully on the meaning of a phrase or word that catches your attention. Pray about these thoughts and feelings. Finally rest in silence and in the Word of God, listening for that still small voice that speaks within us.

That very conveniently brings us to prayer. There as many ways to pray as there are people who pray! We can use our own words, we can use Jesus’ words, we can use the words of prayers others have written, for example from our Prayer Book, we can pray in silence, or prayer can be also be in the form of meditation: Centering Prayer is another popular method of Christian meditation, one that places a strong emphasis on interior silence and just being open to God’s divine action within us. But in all cases it is the Holy Spirit who helps us pray as Paul emphasizes in his letter to the Romans (8:26): “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”

I suspect you do not tend to have visions, and we are often suspicious of those who claim to have had and to be guided by a vision or dream. But this form of guidance is part of the scriptural witness. In today’s reading from Acts it was the vision of a man from Macedonia that caused Paul to change his plans and to cross over into Europe. This was a turning point in his mission: the moment when the Gospel went westward. And in Acts this is only the first of a total of five visions Paul that receives and through which the Spirit guides Paul. This is how God gives him both encouragement and instruction. [Then in Revelation (21:10) we also hear of a vision through the Spirit when John of Patmos recounts how “in the spirit he carried me away to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God.”] Martin Luther King Jr. made very good use of his vision of the Kingdom in the famous ‘I have a dream’ speech of 1963. And every church is well served to have a vision, developed prayerfully with the help of the Holy Spirit, to guide and inform its mission. The vision of this church is to be “A place for all at God’s Table.” 

Last, and hopefully not least, the Holy Spirit works through sermons! I certainly pray for inspiration, for the Spirit’s guidance, when I am writing them: What message should I be taking from the text? What message do we need to hear right now? But just as the Spirit inspires us when we listen to Scripture, so too it can inspire us when we listen to a sermon, allowing us to find that particular message or meaning that we need and more importantly to recognize what this message is calling us to do. That is what happened to Lydia when “the Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said” – or preached – “by Paul.” Her heart was opened to listen, to understand, and then to act on this understanding. For her the right actions were to show her full acceptance of the Good News by being baptized together with her household and then demonstrating that hospitality to others that is a key part of the Christian ‘Way.’    

And that answers one more important question about being guided by the Spirit: How do we know that what we hear or understand is the right message, and not just something we are reading into the text?  Or as the Catechism puts the question: “How do we recognize the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives?” Our Church’s official answer is that “we recognize the presence of the Holy Spirit when we confess Jesus Christ as Lord and are brought into love and harmony with God, with ourselves, with our neighbors, and with all creation.” (The Book of Common Prayer 1979, 852)  

What sort of love is this? Just last week Robin+ preached about the different types of love in the Bible and the different Greek words: philia, eros, and agape. The love Jesus both promises, and demands in today’s gospel passage is agape, selfless love, the love that stands for the willingness to act for the benefit of another even against one’s own interest.

So the message we hear and understand and feel called to act on must be a message of agape love. Not romantic love or love as an expression of affection and friendship, but the love that can be very costly, just like God’s love for us: the love of the Cross. If this is the basis of the message we find in Scripture, in prayer, in visions, or in sermons, then we are truly hearing God’s Spirit acting within us, for it is only in love that we know God.

Amen

Bibliography

Griswold, Frank T. Praying Our Days. Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 2009.

The Book of Common Prayer. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.