Podcast
A few words from Father Kemper
Hosted by Fr. Kemper Anderson · EN
Weekly homilies delivered at St. James' Episcopal Church in Cedartown, Georgia
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Who is my neighbor?
Jul 1300:15:46Tap to summarizeLuke 10:25-37 Who is my neighbor? That is perhaps the central question raised in today’s Gospel story. And that issue was complicated in Jesus’ day, as it is in our own. In Hebrew tradition, the original meaning of neighbor was “associate,” and connoted a fellow Hebrew within the community of Hebrews. Israelites were to treat such persons fairly and kindly and were not to cheat or rob them (Leviticus 19:18). The same level of courtesy was to be extended to aliens (gentiles) living within a community of Hebrews: We read in Leviticus, “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God” (19:33). Failure to love one’s neighbor as oneself was sure to lead to civil strife… and invited God’s judgment (cf. Isaiah 3:5-6, Jeremiah 9:4-9, Micah 7:5-7). Of course, Hebrew tradition stopped short of extending neighborly courtesies to outright enemies. Enemies you could hate… and treat in ways you’d never treat a neighbor. And boy-oh-boy, did the Jews hate the Samaritans. And, in the interest of full-disclosure, the Samaritans hated the Jews right back. You see, the Jews and Samaritans were parties to a “bad divorce” that began around 930 BC when Solomon divided his Kingdom between his two sons, Jeroboam and Rehoboam. Ten of the original twelve tribes of Israel constituted the Northern Kingdom, which retained the name of Israel, and the remaining two tribes formed the Southern Kingdom of Judah. The relationship between the estranged kingdoms was “not cordial” during the succeeding three centuries… the books of the Prophets are rife with stories of intrigue and backstabbing, perpetrated tit-for-tat, by the “former lovers,” each against the other. It wasn’t pretty, and the distance between the two kingdoms continued to widen… it seemed that the only thing they shared in common was a propensity for idolatry.All of this unpleasantness ended in around 709 BC, however, when the Assyrians swept in and snapped up the struggling Northern Kingdom, scattering most of its inhabitants to the four corners of the known world. Judah was to suffer the same fate at the hands of the Babylonians around a hundred and twenty-three years later. You know what they say about a house divided…. But wait, wait Fr. Kemper… you’ve talked about the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom and the Assyrians and the Babylonians… where do the Samaritans come in? I’m glad you asked. When the inhabitants of the Southern Kingdom were overrun by the Babylonians, they were marched off to exile in Babylon en masse. Pretty much no one was left behind. When they returned to Jerusalem around fifty years later, they found that some of their estranged northern kin had managed to remain in their former homeland (the former Kingdom of Israel), living more-or-less “under the radar,” while the Jews from Judah had been suffering together through their long exile in Babylon. To make matters worse, they had interbred with local Assyrians and Elamites and had adapted their religion to their new circumstances, modifying Hebrew tradition to suit their new reality, and had even built their own temple on Mount Gerizim, about 32 miles north of Jerusalem near the present-day city of Nablus in the West Bank. So, there you have it: not only had there been a nasty divorce, but one of the parties had remarried. There was no longer any chance of reconciliation. The nations of Judah and Samaria were now irrevocably estranged. They were now the worst of enemies. The lawyer who stood up to “test” Jesus provided a rather glib response to Jesus’ initial question, quickly reciting the summary of the Ten Commandments that constituted the foundation of Hebrew Law: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” Law was his specialty, after all. But then, to “justify” himself, he followed-up with another question that he hoped would cause Jesus to stumble: “Who is my neighbor?” he asked. And in true form, Jesus refrained from lecturing listeners on the legal definition of who was and was not considered to be a neighbor under Hebrew Law, instead relating a story about the true meaning of neighborliness. It was a good story about a good man who happened to be, shut my mouth, a Samaritan! The scandal of it all! Luke doesn’t tell us about the reaction of the lawyer… or the crowd… but likely there was a collective gasp: Surely, we needn’t treat Samaritans as our neighbors! Perish the thought! But Matthew’s Gospel provides us with some amplifying language in this regard. During the “Sermon on the Mount,” Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor, and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…” (Matthew 5:43-44). It was no accident that Jesus leveraged the enmity between the man beaten and left for dead on the side of the road (who was presumably a Jew) and his Samaritan benefactor in the parable in today’s Gospel story. Jesus was giving his listeners—and us—a “worst case scenario” about who we are to love. And if you believe what Jesus is saying, as far as God is concerned we are to love everyone… even our worst enemies, as we love ourselves. Are we good with that? We’d better be. Back in the day, I taught an introductory-level course in Criminal Justice at Kennesaw State University. Most of my students were young and had just finished completing their core curriculum… though they had yet to declare a major. The course was designed to provide a broad overview of the Criminal Justice System: some history… a discussion of the various components of the System: law enforcement, the courts, and prisons… some of the societal problems that the Criminal Justice System was created to address, and various strategies undertaken by police, judges and corrections officials to promote public order. There are whole fields of study dedicated to each of these topics so, in the course of a semester, we could only really “scratch the surface” of any of them. Towards the end of the semester, after students’ heads were filled to bursting with various theories about crime and punishment, past and present, organizational diagrams, flow charts and statistics, I’d ask them this question: “What do you think is the most urgent threat confronting society and the Criminal Justice System today? There was usually an initial silence… they knew all the easy answers… and they knew that I probably wasn’t asking an easy question. So, I’d let them “dangle” a bit. Slowly, hands would come up… was it drugs? or the break-down of families? or the creeping secularization of society? Perhaps society’s ills were the result of all the hatred and bias people carried around inside of themselves, hatred and bias that would occasionally explode into acts of unrestrained violenceand carnage. When the flow of ideas slowed to a trickle, I’d acknowledge that all of these things were certainly threats to the peace and stability of society. And that while they were outgrowths of the real threat, they were not the threat itself. The real threat, I told them, was anomie: the breakdown of social bonds between an individual and the community. 19th century French sociologist Émile Durkheim popularized the term anomie in his book Suicide in 1897. He had a lot to say on the topic… you can read up on it if you want to… but for our purposes here today, the breakdown between an individual, or group of individuals, and the wider community, or anomie, is the inevitable result of our failure to treat every member of society with the kindness and love due a neighbor. Anomie is a sickness… both individual and societal, and we are all culpable for its spread. Anytime we turn a blind eye to injustice… anytime we fail to offer solace and comfort to brothers and sisters in need… anytime we...
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Of priorities and plows
Jun 2900:10:24Tap to summarizeLuke 9:51-62 “Let the dead bury their own dead . . . no one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” Don’t you just hate it when Jesus says things that sound mean? He does that sometimes: he says stuff that, on the surface, sounds insensitive or even cruel. Like that time he told his disciples what they should do if their hand… or their foot… or their eye causes them to stumble. You remember, right? Cut it off! Pluck it out! (Mark 9:43-47) But we know Jesus isn’t cruel, and that he loves us. So, what are we to make of these rather stern-sounding admonitions to a couple of would-be followers in our Gospel story today? I wonder if Jesus is talking about priorities. Jewish funeral custom requires that the deceased be buried as soon as possible… on the day of, or in any case no later than the day after, their death. So, I’m pretty sure that Jesus wasn’t disqualifying the fellow who felt called to “bury his father” before he could become a follower simply because of a few hours delay. Jesus was speaking to the man’s internal conflict about earthly, versus heavenly, priorities. And we all have those. Sometimes we’re afraid to let go of our earthly priorities because they’re so… tangible and rewarding. They touch every aspect of our daily lives: where and how we live, what we eat, what we drive, who we associate with… how we spend our leisure time. And there’s nothing wrong with having goals and plans for our lives. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying life. We stray into sin, however, when our earthly priorities become so all-consuming that they constitute a barrier between us and God. We sometimes feel the need to “clear the decks” of temporal distractions: finishing our education, finding a career, getting our finances together, raising our children, ensuring that our retirement plans are in order, all those pesky logistical issues connected with our earthly sojourn, before fully giving into God. We want to learn to become responsible, successful humans before we start thinking about all this “God stuff.” And there’s nothing wrong with being responsible… God wants us to be responsible. But what God has in mind is our learning to be responsible with a capital “R.” What God wants for us is that we learn to fully-embrace our role as Kingdom-bringers. We must always remember that the purpose of our earthly sojourn is to leverage all our learning and success for the sake of the Kingdom. We must never forget that everything we do… everything we have… every blessing we’ve ever received… has a purpose: and that purpose is to help us spread the Good News of God’s salvation. If you haven’t figured that out yet, you may be in trouble. You may be on the wrong path. And if you have figured it out—or think that you’ve figured it out: that all of the blessings you’ve received in this life are to be paid forward by spreading the Good News of God’s salvation… and if you are working at putting those blessings to work every day for the sake of the Kingdom… then good on you. But don’t get complacent… keep thinking about it… keep working to discern God’s movement and purpose in your life. Our God is not a God of the status quo. People are hungry for God and for the Kingdom, whether or not they know it or admit it to themselves. And God hears the cries of his people… and has a plan for their salvation… and that plan involves you. Before you were born, God made you to be a Kingdom-bringer. Never forget that. The second fellow that Jesus spoke with wanted time to say farewell to family and friends at home before setting out with Jesus. And Jesus told him, “Unh-uh,” don’t look back. That sounds pretty harsh, doesn’t it? After all, God gave you your family and friends… they were (and are!) integral in your becoming the person you have become. How can Jesus ask you to just walk away from them… without even saying goodbye? Again, it’s a matter of priorities… I’m pretty sure that Jesus wasn’t asking the man to abandon the people he loves. What I hear Jesus saying is, “OK, so you want to make a commitment to do God’s work. That’s a good thing… and it’s plenty. It’s going to take everything you’ve got. So, get to it, and quit worrying about earthly stuff. You do what God is asking you to do, and let God take care of the rest. Speak the Good News of God’s Kingdom far-and-wide. Never let anyone or any thing distract you from that work.” Jesus’ metaphor of “putting our hands to the plow” is helpful to me in this regard. None of us can plow a straight furrow when we are busy looking backwards… over our shoulder. We plow the earth to prepare it for sowing… to help turn it into “good soil” that will yield “thirty and sixty and even a hundredfold” (Mark 4:8). Of course, if the ground has not been properly prepared, the harvest will suffer. And the harvest we’re talking about is God’s harvest. I remember something our own Bishop Wright wrote a few years back, when he reflected on the nature of God’s harvest: “Harvest” is how Jesus describes the world – how he speaks of innumerable opportunities. Harvest is what God wants us to pray for. Harvest is God’s purpose for God’s people in the world. Harvest is a positive use of time. Harvest is how God says, “be my friend.” Harvest is the work God needs partners for. Harvest is how Jesus says, “this is an urgent matter, please focus.” The Church is harvest made for harvest. Too few laborers focused on harvest is Jesus’ sadness and the Church’s sin. The Church was not breathed into existence to tend itself, the church was made for increasing God’s harvest. So, we have our marching orders. The world is often worldly… full of idols and false paths. Keep God and God’s purposes for your life your number one priority. We are sent forth to be in the world… but not of it (cf. John 17:14-16). Don’t get distracted from the work God has given you to do. There will be times when worldly cares and responsibilities may tempt you to hesitate in following your vocation as a Kingdom-bringer and Christ follower. Don’t give in! Stay the course. Put your worldly concerns in God’s hands. Keep your hands on the plow, and your eyes on the work that God has given you to do… and your faithfulness will help bring about an amazing harvest.
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Come as you are
Jun 2200:12:39Tap to summarizeLuke 8:26-39 Well, well. My, my. Here we are… back in liturgical “ordinary time” again… returning to the chronological and “orderly” account of Jesus’ three years of active ministry according to Luke, after a nearly four-month hiatus encompassing the seasons of Lent and Eastertide. So, let’s take two or three minutes to get back on track. It seems ages since the end of Epiphany, when we stood “on that level place” with Jesus and began to grapple with the implications of his “Sermon on the Plain.” There on the plain we learned that suffering in this life will lead to great reward in the next, if we trust God to see us through. We learned what it truly means to do what Jesus would do: to stoop and help those in need… to love and bless our enemies… to refrain from judging and forgive… and that the measure we give here will be the measure that we get back in the hereafter (Luke 6:17-38). He spoke in parables about the blind leading the blind (vv. 39-42)… trees being judged by their fruit (vv. 43-45)… and the importance of building one’s house on a solid foundation (vv. 46-49). From there, Jesus went on to Capernaum where he performed a couple of healing miracles, including the resurrection of a poor widow’s son (Luke 7:1-17). It was at about this time that messengers from John the Baptist came to town asking if Jesus was really the Messiah… or should they be expecting someone else? To which Jesus responded, in essence: “Really, Cousin? After all we’ve seen and been through together? You’re killin’ me!” (vv. 18-23) Then there was the story about the big dinner party at the home of Simon the Pharisee where a woman “who was a sinner” washed Jesus’ feet with her tears, dried them with her hair and then went over-the-top anointing them with expensive ointment. Old Simon got pretty upset (maybe as much for being upstaged at his own dinner party, as anything else), but Jesus used the opportunity to school him on the relationship between forgiveness and love (vv. 36-50). We’ll circle back around to this story in a minute. Since then, Jesus has been out in the countryside teaching… and telling parables… like the one about the sower and the seed that produced a hundred-fold (Luke 8:4-15)… and about what happens to folks who put their lamps under a bushel (vv. 16-18). Jesus explained to his disciples that his true family, his true mothers and brothers, were those who “heard the word of God and did it” (vv. 19-21). It was on his way to the “country of the Gerasenes,” featured in today’s Gospel lesson, that Jesus calmed a storm on the Sea of Galilee that threatened to swamp the boat in which he and his (very frightened) disciples were sailing. Where’s your faith? Jesus asked them. The disciples responded in awestruck wonder: “Who then is this, that he commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him?” (vv. 22-25) Apparently they, along with John the Baptist, were still having trouble figuring that out. So now, we’re caught up! Whew! Scholars believe the country of the Gerasenes was on the southeastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, opposite the town of Capernaum, in the region of the Decapolis, in modern day Syria. If you want to look at it on a map, see me after class. The area was inhabited primarily by gentiles who were not bound by Jewish purity codes, which explains the presence of all the pigs. We don’t know the precise number of demons that inhabited the man in today’s story… only that they were many. In the vernacular of the time, a Roman “legion” consisted of four to six-thousandsoldiers so, when we read that the demons were named “Legion,” we can assume that they were very many, indeed! I’ve heard a few homilies over the years on this passage from Scripture. I expect y’all have, as well. For instance, in ancient tradition, it was believed that knowing the names of people and things gave one power over them. Hence, the focus of a sermon will sometimes be on the power Jesus gained over the demons when they told him their name. OR… a preacher might spend some time talking about the fear experienced by the neighbors of the possessed man after Jesus had healed him. The demons, they could understand… and deal with, albeit crudely, with chains and shackles. But a God, mighty to save… whoa! That was too much! I’ve also heard a few preachers use the occasion of Jesus allowing the demons to take possession of the local livestock to remind listeners that God’s grace and will for humanity may not always be “good for business.” And all of these are worthy “rabbit holes” to explore… on another day. But today, I’d like to return briefly to the relationship between forgiveness and love, which I mentioned a minute ago in the context of the woman who washed and anointed Jesus’ feet while he was at table with the Pharisee, Simon. Simon was a “goody-two-shoes” kind of guy, who held himself to be relatively-blameless in the eyes of God. The woman, on the other hand, knew herself to be a rank sinner and yet she presented herself before the Lord with all humility—and was forgiven her sins. All of them! As Simon looked on (probably with his mouth hanging wide-open), Jesus told a story about two debtors, both of whose debts had been completely forgiven by their creditor. One had owed fifty denarii, and the other ten times that amount. Jesus then asked Simon which of the debtors would love the creditor more? And Simon guessed correctly: the one who had owed more would love more. But Simon never realized that the story Jesus had told was biographical. Simon, fine upstanding Pharisee that he was, believed he was better than most… and had little to forgive… and so he missed an opportunity to offer the full measure of his love and devotion to the Creator and Redeemer of the world. And the more you love, the more you can allow yourself to be loved. Too bad for Simon. And this brings us back to today’s Gospel lesson. Luke tells us that, “As [Jesus] stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him.” Notice that Luke did not say, “Jesus met a man with demons.” No… the man with demons met Jesus. Despite his nakedness and poverty of spirit, the man had dragged his pitiful self… along with all his demons… to the shoreline to stand before Jesus as he got out of the boat. And Jesus took him just as he was… made him whole… and told him to stick around and spread the word about how much God had done for him… so, the Gerasene demoniac became the first Apostle to the gentiles! Ha! I bet Paul was jealous. Are you sometimes afraid to stand before God just as you are, warts and all? I wonder if most of us don’t have demons of one sort or another… demons that whisper lies and lead us into the spiritual wilderness of uncertainty about our worthiness in the eyes of God… and about how much, under the circumstances, God could ever love us. It’s said that the most pernicious and convincing sort of lie is one that is partly true. And what our demons tell us about our unworthiness is all too true. We will always fall short of God’s will for us, but that’s what grace is all about: it’s un-deserved… and un-reserved. Jesus’ message to Simon and to us is: Come as you are. More love and forgiveness awaits you than you could ever ask for or imagine. You just gotta know you need it… and open your hands and your hearts to receive it. And, yeah, you’ll fall short from time to time, but keep getting back up and giving it all to God. You’ll be forgiven and made whole. In the immortal words of Rick Warren, founder and senior pastor emeritus of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California: “God is not asking you to make a promise you can’t keep. God is asking you to believe a promise that only he can keep.”[1] ...
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The Blessed Trinity
Jun 1500:09:44Tap to summarizeThe Podcast Listen to the hymn “Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!” In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Trinity Sunday always rolls around about this time of year. It’s the first Sunday after Pentecost… and helps ease us out of the Great Fifty Days (between Easter and Pentecost) and into “ordinary time,” that long green season encompassing the period between late Spring and early December, and the new Advent, in the liturgical calendar. It’s a major feast—which is why Episcopal Church altars around the country and around the world are dressed in white one last time before All Saints’ rolls around again in November. The Blessed Trinity… what’s it all about? What does it mean? Interestingly, the word “Trinity” does not appear in the Bible. Jesus never used it. In fact, although Jesus makes repeated references to God as the “Father,” and to himself as God’s “Son” throughout the Gospels, it’s only towards the end of the Fourth Gospel that Jesus speaks of the coming of an Advocate… a helper… a comforter… who will be present with the Apostles after he is gone (John 14:16, 26). And it is only in Matthew’s Gospel that Jesus ties the “Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity” together in the Great Commission, telling his followers to “go… and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…” (Matthew 28:19). So, the “Doctrine of the Trinity” is, in one sense, something that seems to be implicit in Jesus’ teaching, but also a concept that the Church expanded upon and “standardized” during the first few centuries of its existence in an effort to make sense of what Jesus was trying to teach us about the nature of God. In the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds, we affirm that we believe in God the Father, in his Son Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Spirit, among other things. Of course, the language of the Creeds we recite today did not “leap full-blown” from the minds of the Patriarchs into Church doctrine—they were developed and amended over time to meet the needs of believers… and the Church hierarchy. Interestingly, the First Council of Nicaea that took place in 325 AD (and from which the Nicene Creed derives its name) addressed primarily the “coequality” of God the Father and God the Son. The “Holy Ghost” is mentioned only in passing, and it wasn’t until the First Council of Constantinople, 56 years later, that the Church Fathers formally defined the “third person of the Trinity” and inserted corresponding language into the Nicene Creed. Me? I’m pretty sure the Holy Spirit was co-equal all along… and we, the Church, were just a little bit slow on the uptake. Typical. But, all snarkiness aside… the point is that this is complicated stuff and lots of smart people—who lived a whole lot closer to the time that Jesus lived and taught—had a lot of head scratching and parsing of words to do before they felt like they had it even close to right. And so, we are left with a complex concept of God in three persons, which is the Blessed Trinity. What might this look like? You may recognize the triquetra (or three-cornered knot) depicted in the graphic to the left. The triquetra has its roots in Celtic art and symbology and has grown in popularity, from the nineteenth century to present, as a sign of the Christian Trinity. The representation of the triquetra you see before you consists of the arc of a circle passing through the three interconnected loops of the knot, emphasizing the unity of the three persons within the endless, all-encompassing arc of God’s love. I’ve found the graphic to the right to be helpful in understanding the relationship between the three persons of the Trinity. It uses the form of the triquetra to illustrate that God is Father. God is Son. God is Holy Spirit. But the Father is neither the Son… nor the Holy Spirit. And the same is true for the other two persons of the Trinity. Each is distinct from… and yet, in perfect union with the others. It’s pretty elegant… and also pretty mind-boggling. No wonder it took the early Church three- and-a-half centuries to finalize the words of the Nicene Creed! “Trinitarianism” is not a part of the belief systems of other Abrahamic traditions: in fact, many religious scholars within Judaism and Islam have openly questioned whether or not Christianity is truly monotheistic. And even certain Christian denominations, such as the Church of Latter-Day Saints (Mormonism) and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, disavow belief in a “triune” God. But here’s the thing: I’m pretty sure God isn’t all that concerned with church doctrine. Doctrine is something we humans develop to help us get our brains wrapped around mysteries we’re having a tough time coming to terms with. Mysteries like: how can the same God that created the world, and everything in it, from dust… the God who thundered the Law into being from atop Mt. Sinai… the God who has, over-and-over again, shown that he is mighty to save… how can that same God who was “the Word” from before the beginning of time… stoop to become Immanuel, God with us, born of a woman, to laugh and cry and hurt and love with us… to redeem us from sin and error, and show us that death is not the end? And how can the God who has done all these things still be with us? Comforting us, guiding us, helping us discern God’s movement and purpose in our lives each and every day? How, indeed? Sometimes, when I think about it too hard, it makes my head hurt. But it’s a mystery. Like I said, I’m pretty sure that God doesn’t spend too much time worrying about church doctrine. I think God wants us to know that we are loved… and that he’ll do pretty much anything to be in relationship with us. He is, at once, our Creator, our Redeemer and our Sanctifier: God above us… God beside us… God inside of us. God will be our everything, if we’ll only allow it. Please pray with me Anglican Bishop and Theologian N.T. Wright’s T...
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Learning to love like Jesus
Jun 800:13:38Tap to summarizeActs 2:1-21 Happy Birthday Church! It’s been nearly two millennia since the disciples, all gathered together in a house in Jerusalem, heard a sound coming from heaven like the rush of a violent wind… and were visited by—and imbued with—the fire of the Holy Spirit. Some of you may have had the experience of being in church on Pentecost Sunday when the congregation has done a special reading of the passage from Acts that we heard in our lesson today. Folks whose first language is not English, and even folks who studied other languages in school, stood and read the Pentecost story together, at the same time… but in different languages! The reading would begin in English, to ground listeners in the familiar. Then non-English speakers would rise, and add their voices and tongues, one by one, to the recitation until the sound truly did begin to resemble a “great rushing wind,” a cacophony of praise and prophecy building to a climax and then diminishing, as one voice after another dropped out until only the original speaker remained, reassuring listeners in English that, in the end, despite the trials and tribulations of this life, “. . . everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Pretty cool, huh? At least for those of us who knew what was going on. For others, who may have just dropped by to visit on that particular Sunday, it might have been a little overwhelming. Maybe that’s why some in the passage today sneered and assumed that these Johnny-come-lately disciples of Jesus Messiah were “full of new wine.” Maybe that’s why the Apostle Paul discouraged members of his congregations from speaking in tongues (also known as glossolalia) during worship… because it can sometimes divide rather than unite. Perhaps that’s why we, in the Episcopal Church, are drawn to common prayer… something we can all say and do together. And so, as much as I enjoy the multilingual reading of the Pentecost story, I wonder if it might send a bit of a mixed message. I wonder if some of us revel in the novel cacophony of the reading, rather than in truly hearing and experiencing this call to action in words that might convict and hold us accountable. We do love our cacophony (and drama) don’t we? Maybe I’m reading too much into it; but here’s something I know: we Christians have a long history of segregating ourselves into discrete denominations (Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and a plethora of Protestant sects, including our own), based less upon Jesus’ message of unconditional love and forgiveness, and more upon our human proclivity to want to make our church somehow different—and better—than everyone else’s church… which is crazy, by my way of thinking. We have complicated our faith lives to the point that they sometimes seem to have become nothing more than a cacophony of competing polities and priorities. We wrangle about the nature of God: is he a loving father… or a judge and taskmaster? Is he a “he” at all? Are we saved by our works… or by grace alone? How should Holy Scripture inform our faith? Is the Bible infallible? Or the Pope? What would Jesus do? And I’m pretty sure none of us knows, or would have the wisdom or courage to do, what Jesus might do most of the time. And all this debate is fine is fine and dandy until we begin hurting or denigrating one another in God’s name. That’s when things get ugly. That’s when, what should be our cacophony of praise, gives way to sectarian infighting and ecclesial one-upmanship. If we’re honest, we must admit that we have a tendency to create God in our own image… rather than allowing ourselves to be formed in the image of our Creator. Is it any wonder that the un-churched often view self-described “people of faith” a little suspiciously? A good friend once confided to me, “Oh, I believe in Christ… I just don’t believe in Christians.” I’m pretty sure that this is not what Jesus had in mind when he came to show us the way to the Father (cf. John 14:8). When he ascended, Jesus left us with work to do. You might call it “going-home work.” And that work is following The Way: the way of love… for God and for neighbor. Unconditional love… the kind of love Jesus has for us. Jesus said, “Love one another the way I have loved you” (John 15:12). Fortunately, Jesus left us with an Advocate, the Holy Spirit, to guide and strengthen us as we grapple with this most difficult of all work… the work of learning to love like Jesus. I can’t tell you precisely what loving like Jesus will look like in your life. Each of us has our own stuff—our own “cross of love” to take up… daily (cf. Luke 9:23). But I can tell you that learning to love like Jesus is life-giving in the truest sense of the word: Eternal. Life. Giving. How’re we doing with that? How’re we doing on living into the sole purpose for which we were created: which is learning to love each other the way that Jesus loves us? Yeah, it can be hard… and confusing… and maybe even a little bit inconvenient at times. But whatever the challenge, how confusing the conundrum, whenever we feel baffled by the cacophony of competing polities and priorities in the world, and in our faith, and wonder what’s expected of us as Christians, we should always take a step back, and ask ourselves this question: “What does this (whatever ‘this’ might be) have to do with love?” Because nothing else really matters. Our time here on earth, even the span of Earth herself, is nothing more than a “cosmic eye-blink” in the grand scheme of things… and God’s plan for the world, and for each of us, surpasses our wildest imaginings. So, we’ve got a bunch of work to do. Being church… is learning to love like Jesus, and we won’t really be church until all the children of the earth, brothers and sisters from every tribe, every tongue, every nation of the world, are united under one language, which is God’s language of over-arching, never-ending love. That’s the “Great Commission” in a nutshell: “Go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:16-20)… show them the way to the Father. Show them the way to Love. We, as Church, have been given our marching orders, and temporal time is finite. How long will it be before we truly give in to love… and to the call of the Holy Spirit in our lives? I’d like to share a prayer (or perhaps it’s more of a Christian manifesto) with you. Some of you may be familiar with it… it’s called “A Zimbabwe Covenant,”[1] and I can’t tell you much about where it comes from. But it speaks to me as a powerful reminder of our purpose and calling as Christians… and as Church. The Covenant reads… “I am part of the fellowship of the unashamed. I have Holy Spirit power. The die is cast. I have stepped over the line. The decision has been made. I am a disciple of Jesus and I will not look back, let up, slow down, back away, or be still.My past is redeemed.My present makes sense.My future is secure. I am finished and done with low living, sight-walking, small planning, smooth knees, colorless dreams, tamed visions, worldly talking, cheap giving, and dwarfed goals.I no longer need preeminence, prosperity, position, promotion, or popularity. I do not have to be right, first, tops, recognized, praised, regarded, or rewarded. I now live by faith, lean on God’s presence, walk by patience, am uplifted by prayer, and labor by power.My face is set, my gait is fast, and my goal is Heaven. My road is narrow, my way rough, but my Guide is reliable, my [Com]mission clear.I cannot be bought, compromised, detoured, lured away, turned back, deluded, or delayed.I will not give up, shut up, or let up. I will go on until Christ comes, and work until Christ stops me.I am a disciple of Jesus.” [1] https://thisisericcase.com/2010/04/14/a-zimbabwe-covenant/
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Whom do you serve?
Jun 100:15:51Tap to summarizeActs 16:16-34 A lot has happened since Saul, Pharisee extraordinaire and chief persecutor of Jesus’ followers, got knocked off his high horse on the road to Damascus, and gave his life over to the cause of Christ. As is often the case with converts, Saul initially made quite a spectacle of himself preaching and “speaking boldly in the name of the Lord” in Damascus and Jerusalem, exhorting Jews and Gentiles alike to join him in his conversion (Acts 9:28). Apparently, Saul’s manner was so annoying that pretty much everyone who heard him wanted to kill him. So, the leaders of the Jerusalem church sent him away to Tarsus where he would be safe… and out of earshot. And the nascent church seemed to do well for a while… all eyes were on Peter “the Rock” who was making quite a name for himself as leader, healer and evangelist. The converts came rolling in. At one point, a disciple named Barnabas went and retrieved Saul from exile in Tarsus and brought him to Antioch (in modern-day Syria, far enough away from Jerusalem to keep him out of everyone’s hair) to help him proclaim the Word. And, apparently the two worked well together, for the better part of a year, winning many new believers for the church. In fact, it was in Antioch that the followers of The Way of Jesus first became known as Christians. Of course, not everyone was happy with the increasing popularity of this upstart religion. Herod caused our patron James, son of Zebedee to be “killed with the sword”—the first of Jesus’ original twelve Apostles to die for the cause. Sadly, he would not be the last. Peter was arrested and imprisoned, awaiting execution when he was miraculously “sprung” from his cell… by an angel, no less! As one might imagine, Herod was pretty hard on the guards, who were all put to death. But what goes around comes around, and Herod, himself, died shortly thereafter… something having to do with being eaten from the inside by worms. Yuck. (Read Acts 12) Meanwhile, Saul (who was becoming known as Paul) and Barnabas, accompanied for a time by another disciple named John Mark (who, many scholars believe, was the writer of the Gospel of Mark) set out on what would become known as “Paul’s First Missionary Journey” through Cyprus and Turkey. Over the course of two years (~44-46 AD) and fourteen-hundred miles, Paul and Barnabas visited cities around the region including Seleucia in Syria, Salamis and Paphos on Cyprus, Perga, Antioch in Psidia, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe, Pamphylia and Attalia proclaiming the Word of God, debunking false prophets, healing the sick and winning large numbers of converts for Christ. As the popularity of Paul’s message increased, so too did the anger and resentment of Jewish elders in synagogues throughout the region. Paul was rockin’ their boat… over-cooking their grits… interfering with their efforts to convert Gentiles to Judaism, and even causing decent, God-fearing Jews to stray from the path of Hebrew orthodoxy. And Paul, as a reformed Pharisee and persecutor of the church, knew precisely how far the synagogue hierarchy would go to maintain the status quo. So, whenever it looked like people were beginning to search the ground for rocks big enough to throw, Paul and Barnabas would move on to the next town, leaving behind the nucleus of a brand new church to spread the Good News of God in Christ in that particular corner of God’s creation (Acts, Chapters 13 and 14). Today’s reading from Acts takes place during the first half of Paul’s Second Missionary Journey… which took him through Turkey, Greece, Judea and Syria over the course of four years (~49-52 AD) and a distance of around twenty-eight hundred miles… twice the distance of his previous journey. At one point, Paul and Barnabas had a bit of a falling out… Paul wasn’t all that easy to live with, after all… and Barnabas went his own way. So now, we find Paul in Philippi, in Macedonia (northern Greece) where he and his new traveling companion, Silas, were staying in the home of a woman named Lydia who, we understand from last week’s reading, was a “worshiper of God” (with a capital “G”) and also “a dealer in purple cloth.” As the apostles moved about the city, preaching, teaching and winning converts for Jesus, a slave girl with “a spirit of divination,” a fortune-teller if you will, began following them… making quite a spectacle of herself as she continually cried out that Paul and Silas were “slaves of the Most-High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation” (v. 17). Well, I guess Paul didn’t like the idea of being merely the second most annoying person on the street, so “ZAP!” and the demon vamoosed. The slave girl’s owners got pretty mad… and complained to the magistrates, who first flogged Paul and Silas before putting them practically under the jail. There would be no escape. Then, in the middle of the night, there was the sound of prayer… and singing… and then of the earth moving. It wasn’t quite as cool as being sprung from jail by an angel… but it was close. I suppose the jailer could be forgiven for believing at that moment that his life was over… though he was soon to find that it had just begun. The jailer brought his former prisoners into his home and offered them hospitality: water to cleanse their wounds and food to nourish their bodies. Paul and Silas, in return, offered the jailer and his family the living water of Baptism, and the Bread of Life that never becomes stale. There is much to ponder, here, about the nature of slavery, imprisonment and liberation. Certainly, the slave girl in today’s reading was, first, a prisoner of those who owned her… and also of the demon that lived within her, never allowing her to speak for herself or to be at peace with herself… until she was freed by Christ, through Paul. We don’t know what happened to her after the demon departed, but I like to think that she, herself, became a slave to the Most-High God, and began walking the way of salvation opened to her by Jesus Messiah. Maybe. Paul and Silas were stripped, beaten and shackled by temporal magistrates, but being slaves to Christ allowed them to rise above such worldly imprisonment and continue preaching their message of liberation and salvation through a life fully-lived in Christ… in an area of the world that, as far as we know, Jesus never visited… yet, which remains a bastion of orthodox Christianity to this very day. The jailer was a prisoner of what some might argue was a misplaced sense of duty. He had been prepared to take his own life for fear that he had failed his worldly masters and yet… upon hearing the Good News of the Gospel, he understood that he had a higher calling, as a servant of a new master: God… with a capital “G.” Perhaps you remember a song written by Bob Dylan, back in 1979, in which he catalogs all sorts and conditions of people: from preachers to rock & roll junkies… from expats to business men… from city councilmen to the heavyweight champion of the world… and everyone in between. And he reminds them (and us) that no matter who we are, no matter how much money and autonomy we think we have… that we’re still gonna have to serve somebody. “Well it may be the devil or it may be the Lord…” sings Dylan, “…but yes, indeed, my friend, you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”[1] Good stuff. So, here’s a question: Whom do you serve? To whom or what are you indebted? What captures you? What imprisons you? Like the slave girl in today’s reading from Acts, we are all beset by people… or organizations… or ideologies that seek to own us, that seek to impose limits on what we think and say and do. And most of us have our demons.Perhaps, like the jailer, we are held captive by “shoulds” and “oughts” and fears for the future. Maybe we don’t even realize how imprisoned we have become, through years of struggling and disappointment, to the status quo of lives not fully-lived in Christ. Do you have any habits that you know aren’t good for you… but that you’re having a hard time breaking? Do you sometimes spend too much money on stuff that doesn’t really matter? Or does fear of not having enough stuff sometimes prevent you from truly “paying forward” the gifts that God has given you? Are you captive to a destructive relationship that sometimes makes you forget that you are a unique and unrepeatable creatio...
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Our Father’s business
May 2500:14:11Tap to summarizeJohn 5:1-9 “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” Another day, another healing… another way in which the writer of the Fourth Gospel demonstrates to his readers the awesomeness of Jesus the Christ, the Messiah. For some months now, Jesus has been shuttling back and forth between Galilee, Samaria and Judea performing signs and miracles… healing the sick and infirm… teaching people about the nature of God… and of himself. On this particular day, Jesus is just outside the “Sheep Gate” of Jerusalem at the pool of Beth-zatha. The gate itself is thought to have been located in the eastern wall of the City, across the Kidron Valley from the Mount of Olives… and the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus probably used it often. It was the first gate to be rebuilt after the Jews returned to Jerusalem after the Babylonian Captivity, and it is believed that this was the gate by which the offerings or sacrifices were brought into the Temple. The name of the pool is likely derived from the Hebrew and/or Aramaic language “beth hesda (בית חסד/חסדא),” meaning either house of mercy or house of grace.[1] So it’s not surprising, perhaps, that in 1938, the National Naval Medical Center was sited in a city in Maryland bearing that name. Perhaps some of you have heard of Bethesda Naval Hospital. But there’s a twist: in both Hebrew and Aramaic the word could also mean “shame or disgrace.” Isn’t it interesting how both of these meanings might have resonated with believers of the time. Since illness and infirmity were often thought to be punishments sent from God in retribution for sinful behavior, the location may have been seen, on one hand, as a place of disgrace… but also as a place of grace and healing for penitents. Our New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) translation of the Bible leaves out about a verse and a half of text you may remember from the old King James Version. After covering the bit about all of the invalids: blind, lame and paralyzed, laying within the porticoes, King James adds that they were all “waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had” (NKJV vv. 3b-4). For me, at least, that provides a little context. The man who had been lying on his mat for thirty-eight years wasn’t just hanging out in the shade! He was putting himself in the way of a miracle. And he got one… finally! There are a couple of “rabbit holes” we might explore in pondering this particular passage from Scripture. One is that Jesus often answers our prayers in unexpected ways. In this case, he said to the man (who didn’t even know he was praying): You stand up. You take up your mat. Youwalk. The synoptic Gospels contain a variety of accounts of Jesus telling miracle-seekers that God’s saving grace was all around them… and that what they really needed was faith. You know some of these stories… like the one about the woman suffering from a twelve-year hemorrhage… who reached out and touched the hem of Jesus’ robe. When she ‘fessed upand told him what she’d done, Jesus said, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed . . .” (Mark 5:25-34). Or the one in which Matthew tells us about two blind men who approached asking for healing. Jesus asked them if they believed if he could really do it. They said “yes,” and Jesus told them, “According to your faith let it be done to you” (vv. 9:27-31). In Luke’s Gospel, we learn of ten lepers who cried out to Jesus for healing. He told the men to go and show themselves to the priests, and when they did, SHAZAM!!! They’d been made clean. One of them (who was a Samaritan, by the way) returned to thank Jesus and prostrated himself at his feet. Jesus told him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well” (vv. 17:11-19). The takeaway, I guess, is that sometimes the real miracle lies in our learning to rely on faith to open the way of God’s grace. OR… we could talk about the significance of the Sabbath. Since the Jewish leadership was rarely able to condemn the substance of Jesus’ miracles… things like healing the sick, casting out demons and raising the dead, they were quick to quibble with his methodology. In today’s Gospel story, a man who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years had gotten his life back and… and… and… dang it Jesus, you shouldn’t be working on the Sabbath! I suppose it didn’t help when Jesus rubbed it in a little bit, a couple of verses later, when he told the elders, “My Father is still working, and I also am working.” That really made ‘em mad (John 5:10-18). Apart from Jesus’ pointed reference to God as his Father, the point he made about the Sabbath is this: God’s commandment to the Israelites to “Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy” was followed by an explanation: “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it” (Exodus 20:8-11). When Jesus made reference to his Father still being “on the job,” he was reminding the Doctors of Jewish Law (and us) that sabbath is less about a particular day of the week, than it is about maintaining boundaries between what we do to live… our work, our mundane toil… and the things we do that are life-giving… fruits of the Spirit… gifts from God… that allow us to live into our vocation as Kingdom-bringers (cf. Galatians 5:22-25). Jesus schooled the Pharisees in similar fashion on another occasion when they criticized the disciples for plucking heads of grain and eating them as they walked through the fields one sabbath. Jesus responded by reminding the Pharisees of a time when young King David was running from his arch-nemesis, Saul, and the priest at the Tabernacle had given David and his companions the Bread of Presence (normally reserved for priests only… on pain of death!) to eat because that’s all there was to sustain them in the purpose that God set before them. Jesus was inferring that his disciples were also about the Lord’s business as they traversed the fields that particular day, and needed sustenance to complete the work they had been given to do. The sabbath was made for man,” said Jesus, “…not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:23-28 NKJV). How about one, last rabbit hole? If you read on in John, Chapter 5, you’ll notice that the more hostile the Jewish hierarchy becomes towards Jesus, the more persistent Jesus becomes in spreading the good news of the Kingdom, and of God’s salvation: “Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me… has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life . . . the hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live . . . I say these things so that you may be saved” (vv. 24-25, 34b). Our Gospel story today takes place about two thirds of the way through Jesus’ period of active ministry. Jesus understood all too well where he was headed, and how it was all going to end, and yet he remained steadfast in his mission to spread the good news of God’s love and salvation to people in need of hope. Some received Jesus’ message of love and forgiveness, and it changed their lives… and the trajectory of human civilization. Others heard the message and decided that the world (at least their world) would be better off without Jesus. And Jesus saw it coming, but he never stopped preaching love. We are living during a period of history in which identifying ourselves as Christ followers, or in the words of former Presiding Bishop Michael Curry: members of the “Jesus Movement,” might be a risky proposition. Christians are being persecuted around the world right now with an intensity that hasn’t been seen since before Christianity was adopted as Rome’s state religi...
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A Possum’s Tale
May 11, 202500:11:01Tap to summarizeJohn 10:22-30 Welp, it’s Mother’s Day… so I’m going to re-tell y’all one of my favorite Mother’s Day parables… one that concerns this very Parish. Once upon a fine spring morning, as I turned off Bradford Street onto the St. James’ campus, I saw something a little unusual: a fair-sized possum crossing the gravel driveway headed from the area of the Parish House towards the wood line on the edge of the property. Now, seeing a possum isn’t all that unusual in this part of the country… they’re pretty common. What made this particular possum encounter a little uncommon was, first and foremost, the time of day: possums are generally nocturnal. And second, as the possum crossed the drive (moving pretty quickly, because it saw me coming), it made a little “hop” about mid-way across the gravel before disappearing into the undergrowth. As I looked more closely, I could see something else: small and gray and furry moving on the gravel about where the “hop” had taken place. When I got out of the car to see what it was, I found that it was a baby possum, not more than five inches from nose to rump, making its way with great difficulty across the uneven gravel toward the wood line, following what I realized must have been its mama. The “hop” had probably been more of a forceful nudge. The baby’s coat was thin… just beginning to grow in, and its eyes were not fully-open. Too big to be in the pouch… too small to be out on its own. As it moved, it made a continuous “chuh… chuh… chuh…” sound almost like a prolonged series of stifled sneezes. Perhaps it was sick, I thought. In any case, the way things were looking, it probably wouldn’t be long before it was snapped up by a hawk… or a cat. Even a churchyard can be a dangerous place for a baby possum separated from its mother. Looking past the baby towards the wood line, I saw mama watching and waiting in the shadow of the undergrowth. She wasn’t going anywhere. I didn’t want to touch the baby, partly because it I didn’t want to frighten it, and partly because I didn’t want to transfer my scent to it. So, I found a small twig that had fallen from a tree, allowed the baby to grab ahold of it with its little pink claws and then, gently, carried it to the edge of the undergrowth and lowered it to the ground within a few feet of its mother. The baby had been pretty quiet during its airborne transit from the driveway to the wood line, but as I walked away, I could hear it starting up that odd “chuh… chuh… chuh…” sound again. Later, I Googled “possum sneezes” and learned that baby possums, known as “joeys,” don’t mewl or squeak like many other baby mammals. They call out to their mothers by making that “chuh… chuh… chuh…” sound. So now you know. I’m glad I was able to help reconnect mom and baby, and I hope they are doing OK. God loves possums too. I tell you this story to illustrate the point that we all need help sometimes… some mothering, or nudging, or “shepherding,” if you will, to make it from where we are… to where we need to be. Jesus once spoke of wanting to “gather the children of Jerusalem together as a mother hen gathers her brood under her wings” (Luke 13:34 and Matthew 23:37). And both the Old and New Testaments are full of metaphors that invite us to compare the relationship between God and God’s people with that of a flock of sheep and its shepherd. Isaiah, one of the prophets most-often quoted by Jesus, describes the way God cares for his people: “He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom. . .” (40:11). Both Moses and David had some early shepherding experience before they became famous, and David used a sheep metaphor in writing the words of our Psalm today: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want” (23:1). Chapter 10 of the Fourth Gospel is positively brimming with metaphors of Jesus as Shepherd. We only read a smidgen of the chapter today, but in it Jesus refers to himself as the “gate keeper,” protecting the entrance to the sheepfold and ensuring that the sheep are not led astray by false shepherds (vv. 1-10)… and as the “Good Shepherd” who freely places himself between the sheep and the wolves, willing to lay down his life for the sake of the flock (vv. 11-18). Some of these metaphors made folks back in the day scratch their heads. “He has a demon!” said some. While others wondered, “Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?” (vv. 19-21). In the end, Jesus had to spell it out for them: “Everything I do, I do in my Father’s name… that’s Father with a capital ‘F.’ We are together. My sheep get it… they’re saved. You guys… not so much.” So, they tried to stone him… again (10:31-39, cf. John 8:59). Jesus was pretty insistent about the importance of the flock following the voice of the shepherd. Flocks exist for a purpose, and an effective shepherd leads them in the way of that purpose. When sheep stray, they’re not living into the purpose for which they were created… and that’s when things inevitably begin to fall apart. Elsewhere in the Bible, we read of the consequences of sheep straying, and being led astray, by false shepherds. Ezekiel railed against “shepherds” who were leading their “sheep” astray in Judah in the years leading up to the destruction of the First Temple, and the Babylonian Captivity (34:7-16). Later, after the Jews had returned to Jerusalem and rebuilt the Temple, the prophet Zechariah warned that God would take a sword to the (ineffective) shepherd and (once again) scatter the sheep… so that the flock could be culled… and then rehabilitated over time (13:7-9). You’d think God’s people would have learned from their experiences in Babylon, but they apparently still had some work to do. Later, the Apostle Paul would urge the elders of the nascent church in Ephesus to keep careful watch over themselves… and the “flock” with which the Holy Spirit had entrusted them, in order that the wolves might not come and prey upon it (Acts 20:28-29). The Apostle Peter referred to the Church as a “priesthood of all believers” (1 Peter 2:4-10). As such, we are all shepherds… and we are all sheep. Like the elders of Ephesus, we must guard ourselves—and one another—from the predations of the Evil One… from the wolf who seeks to scatter and separate us from each other and from God. And with that in mind, I’ve come to believe that the real danger is less in our straying from religious tradition and orthodoxy—whichever flavor happens to suit our fancy—and more… much, much more… when we become estranged from God and from our neighbor. Like the Hebrews of Biblical times, when we stray from The Way of faithfulness to God and to each other—that’s when things begin to go wrong. Love God. Love your neighbor (and everyone’s your neighbor). And don’t judge. It seems so simple… and yet, success in following these commandments often eludes us. The Good News is that we have Jesus, the Good Shepherd, to help keep us straight… leading us in The Way of God’s righteousness—strengthening us with words of comfort and guidance… and showing us The Way to live into the purpose for which we were created… if only we will listen! We know his presence. We know his voice. And just as we know his voice, so too does the Good Shepherd know our voices: the emanations of our hearts and souls and minds, as we make our way… sometimes with great difficulty… through this life, half-blind, yet straining forward, hungry for a truth greater than this world can ever satisfy. And just as mama possum stayed close by her struggling joey as it made its way from a place of danger… to the safety of the wood line, so too will Jesus be with us every step of our earthly sojourn, with all of its valleys and shadows. No matter how dark it gets, no matter how...
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Peter and Paul
May 4, 202500:13:44Tap to summarizeJohn 21:1-19 You know how to make God laugh, right? Tell him your plans. Welcome to the Third Sunday of Easter. I think it ought to be called “Saints Peter and Paul Sunday,” for the conversion of St. Paul and the redemption of St. Peter. Both were good men, with strong personalities, and yet, they were also different in so many ways. One was a fisherman, the other a “doctor of the law.” Both were honorable, with strongly held beliefs about how they should live, and plans for what they wanted to do with their lives. But God had other plans—plans for the redemption of the world!—and both Peter and Paul were destined to help play a part in that mighty work. Simon Peter features prominently in all the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life and ministry. He was a leader and an example-setter… sometimes for the good, and sometimes by demonstrating what not to do or say… by “taking one for the team,” if you will. He was one of the first to be called as an Apostle, and the first to confess Jesus as Messiah (Luke 9:20). With John, Peter was present for the Transfiguration of our Lord (Luke 9:28-36), and at many other pivotal moments of Jesus’ ministry. And Peter was brash. Sometimes he said things and did things without really thinking them through. He almost walked on water once (Matthew 14:22-33). The Gospels are full of references to things Peter said and did, some of which probably caused Jesus to roll his eyes. And on those occasions when Jesus called out his disciples for their lack of faith, Peter was usually one of the main culprits. And yet, Jesus loved him… and named him “the rock” upon which the church would be built (Matthew 16:18). For all Peter’s faults, scholars often refer to him as “chief” among the apostles. But I’m pretty sure that Peter wasn’t feeling all that great about his relationship with Jesus at the outset of today’s Gospel lesson. Let’s rewind a bit to the events leading up to Jesus’ arrest and execution. During Jesus’ last meal with his disciples, he had strongly admonished Peter about his resistance to having his feet washed, pointing out that failure to submit to such washing constituted a barrier to Peter’s ability to love and serve others (John 13:1-20). Peter had dozed off when he was supposed to be keeping watch with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, waking confused and bleary eyed, just in time to cause injury to one of the High Priest’s slaves… an injury Jesus would then have to heal (Luke 22:39-53). Another reproof. And then the denial… not once, not twice, but three times…. just as Jesus had predicted, despite Peter’s loud protestations of his faithfulness (Luke 22:54-62). He wasn’t there to help Jesus carry the cross. He wasn’t there to stand with him on Calvary. He wasn’t there to help bury him. Those had been dark days for Peter, filled with guilt… regret… and shame. That golden day on which Jesus had called him “the rock” must have seemed but a distant memory. Then there was Mary’s news of the empty tomb, a foot race with John… and the dawning reality that Jesus had kept his promise. Against all odds, he really had returned from the dead (John 20:1-10)! I wonder if Peter felt a combination of overwhelming joy… mixed with dread. He seems to have been “lying low” during the early post-resurrection appearances. He’s not mentioned in either John’s or Luke’s account of Jesus walking through walls to appear to the disciples in the upper room, which seems odd given how large Peter looms in so many other Gospel stories. Perhaps he was there, perhaps he wasn’t… in any case he (atypically) wasn’t calling attention to himself. Peter was having a tough time, and as many of us might agree: when the going gets tough… the tough go fishing. I guess there’s just something about “fooling fish” that helps make us feel a little better about ourselves. But I also wonder if Peter was regressing a little bit… he had been a simple fisherman before meeting Jesus and, now that he had proved (to himself at any rate) that he was patently unworthy of being one of Jesus’ followers, maybe it would just be best if he could just slip back into his former obscurity. Only, Jesus wasn’t about to let him get away with that. “Children, you have no fish, have you?” Perhaps Peter thought back to the last time someone had given him fishing advice, and about how that person had changed his life when he said, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people” (Matthew 4:19). And that’s all it took. All of Peter’s guilt, regret and shame melted away in an instant… and he jumped into the water and swam to meet his Savior. I can imagine the other disciples watching Peter thrashing his way towards the shore to meet Jesus, saying to themselves, “Peter’s back.” And he was. Oh, he still had some work to do… some repentance and reconciliation to be undertaken—Jesus wasn’t going to minimize Peter’s shortcomings—but he would forgive them… and set Peter on the road to becoming the leader that the future church in Jerusalem needed him to be. And let’s not forget Saul. While he may not have been brash in the same sense as Peter, he was certainly just a wee bit cocky… or “confident in the flesh,” as he put it: “circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless” (Philippians 3:5-6). Pharisees typically get a pretty bad rap in the New Testament. They were, in essence, Jewish “fundamentalists” who ascribed to, and promulgated, a very strict interpretation of Mosaic Law. Pharisees were among the most educated and literate members of Hebrew society, and Jesus often singled them out (along with the Scribes) as hypocrites for their prideful-ness and for failing to “walk the walk” when it came to adhering to the divine Law that they espoused. All that said, being a Pharisee was a pretty big deal. Most Pharisees tended to view themselves as the sole arbiters of what was good and proper in Hebrew society. I expect we all know a few of those… right? And Saul was a Pharisee’s Pharisee… a stickler for detail and zealous in harassing and persecuting this upstart Jewish sect who believed that their Messiah had come… and that his name was Jesus. Saul was present for the stoning of St. Stephen (Acts 7:54—8:3). Heck, he might even have been handing out rocks for people to throw. And yet… and yet… God had a plan for Saul, who would become Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles. And it began with a blinding flash of light that knocked that Doctor of the Law off his high horse and left him blind and helpless on the ground… but with ears newly-attuned to the voice of Jesus telling him what he needed to do to live into the purpose that God intended (Acts 9:1-20). And you’ll hear more of Paul’s story over the few Sundays… if you find yourselves in the pews for worship… but here’s my question for you today: What plans do you have for your life? Are you pretty sure, as Paul was, that you have it all figured out? You’ve decided what you want to do, and who you want to be, and you won’t let anyone or anything turn you from that path? Look out. Or you might be wondering if life has passed you by: maybe your ship came in, but somehow you missed it. Maybe you think, like Peter, that you’ve managed to make such a mess of things that you’ll never be able to get back on track. Think again. Perhaps you’re afraid that you’ve accomplished whatever it was that you were sent to this earthly schoolhouse to do, and now you’re just marking time. Unh-uh. If you’re still here, then God isn’t through with you. God. Never. Wastes. Anything. And that includes your time. Each of us has a part to play in God’s redemption of the world and, like Peter in Jerusalem and Paul in Antioch, and Ephesus and Corinth and a whole raft of other fai...
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Peace is with you
Apr 27, 202500:11:47Tap to summarizeJohn 20:19-31 Our Easter Sunday Gospel ended with Jesus revealing himself to Mary outside the empty tomb and telling her, “Don’t hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord;’ and she told them that he had said these things to her.” In fact, all of the Gospel accounts tell us of Jesus’ admonition to Mary to tell the disciples the good news of his resurrection. Luke informs us, however that, “the words seemed to [the disciples] an idle tale and they did not believe them” (24:11). All but Peter, perhaps. Neither Matthew nor Mark mentions the disciples’ reaction to Mary’s news at all. It is now the evening of the day of the resurrection. The disciples are gathered “in a house . . .” we aren’t told whether or not it was the house in which they shared their last meal with Jesus a few days before. But it could have been. We do know that this faithful remnant of Jesus’ followers were frightened, fearing that they too might become victims of the mob that had put their Master to death. We can only imagine the diversity of feelings on display on that particular evening: confusion, fear, anger, resignation. There would likely have been rumors of hope, the empty tomb and Mary’s claimed encounter with their Teacher, their Rabbouni. The air was probably thick with emotion. And then, from out of nowhere, “Peace be with you.” This was not a simple greeting; it was a statement of fact. Peace was, indeed, with them. Despite all of the locks and bars and the great stone that had separated death from life, Jesus was in their midst, bearing visible scars from his victory over the grave. And the disciples rejoiced… and rejoiced… and rejoiced, until Jesus stopped them: “Peace be with you.” This time it was a command. Certainly, some of the disciples recalled Jesus’ words spoken after the Last Supper, “A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me . . . Very truly, I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy” (John 16:16, 20). Jesus had kept his promise. “As the Father sent me, so I send you.” A breath… and then, an invocation: “Receive the Holy Spirit.” We will never know exactly what the breath of Jesus felt like… perhaps it was like God breathing life into the first human (Genesis 2:7). Perhaps it might be compared with the breath to which Ezekiel prophesied in the Valley of the Dry Bones: “Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live” (Ezekiel 37:9). Or perhaps it was more akin to the breath of Aslan, in C.S. Lewis’ Prince Caspian, comforting and fortifying young Susan Pevensie for the work she had been given to do:”You have listened to your fears… Come, let me breathe on you. Forget them. Are you brave again?”[1] What we do know is this: the Holy Spirit became present with the disciples as Jesus added specificity to their commission, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” Viewed in the broader context, this commission is not limited to acts of granting absolution through penance, or even excommunication, but includes, in the words of Johannine scholar Raymond Brown, “partial manifestations of a much larger power, namely, the power to isolate, repel, and negate evil and sin, a power given to Jesus in his mission by the Father, and given in turn by Jesus through the Spirit to those whom he commissions.”[2] This is pretty heady stuff. In John’s Gospel, the time between Easter and Pentecost was compressed into a few brief, but eventful, hours. God had a plan and a mission for the disciples and there wasn’t a moment to lose. And then there’s Thomas. This is the same Thomas who, when Jesus had announced his intention to go to Bethany to resurrect Lazarus said, “Let us also go, that we may die with him” (John 11:16). You’ll recall Bethany is near Jerusalem, where there was likely a price on Jesus’ head. In any case, Thomas missed Jesus’ first appearance, and had reacted to the news in much the same manner as had the disciples in Luke’s Gospel… “Unless I can see him with my own eyes and feel him with my own hands, I will not believe” (v. 25). Interestingly, there is no indication in Scripture that any of Thomas’ colleagues “tattled” on him. Some may have argued with him, while others simply rolled their eyes, looked at each other and said, “That’s just Thomas… bless his heart.” But no one said anything to Jesus, as far as we know. Yet, a week later, when the disciples were again gathered in the house, Jesus once more came among them, reminded them that Peace was with them… and then went straight to Thomas. We’ll never know exactly what was going through Thomas’ head (and heart) as Jesus met him face-to-face, offering him the very thing he needed to strengthen his faith. It appears, however, that Thomas no longer felt the need to touch, only to look upon the one who knew what he needed before he could even ask. “My Lord and my God,”he said. Could there be a more powerful and complete confession of faith? And despite all of Thomas’ frailties, Jesus loved him. After all, he had chosen him as one of the Twelve… chosen him to spread the Gospel. Jesus’ gentle admonishment: “Have you believed because you have seen me?” could have been addressed to any of the disciples. All (even Mary) had needed to see in order to believe. And they had. And now their pain had turned to joy, just as Jesus had promised. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” This is less a dig at Thomas, I think, than it is words of encouragement for us… we who are not able to meet Jesus face-to-face… not on this side of life, at any rate. “Blessed” (Gr. makarios), as it appears in this passage, means happy.[3] We’re not better than Thomas… we’re able to experience the joy of being in relationship with Christ because of Thomas, and the other disciples whom Jesus commissioned to “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). We owe a lot to Thomas. The Good News of our Lord Jesus Christ is God’s promise of salvation to those who give in to his movement and purpose in their lives. And just as God had a plan and a mission for Thomas and that first generation of disciples, so also is there work for us to do in our own generation: to continue spreading the Good News of Jesus Messiah to a world torn by strife and in great need of hope. The challenge often seems as daunting for us as it must have been for those disciples huddled fearfully behind locked doors, tenuously awaiting the miracle promised by their Master. But just as Jesus recognized and provided for Thomas’ unspoken needs, so too will we receive whatever may be needful to accomplish the work God has given us to do. Peace is with you, my brothers and sisters. [1] C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian (New York: Macmillan, 1978), 148. [2] Raymond Brown, The Anchor Bible: The Gospel According to John XIII-XXI, Vol. 29A (New York: Doubleday, 1970), 1044. [3] Brown, 553, 1027.
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