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Second Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 6B (RCL)
1 Samuel 15:34 — 16:13
Psalm 20
2 Corinthians 5:6-17
Mark 4:26-34

The fourth chapter of Mark’s Gospel has always bothered me. The sower who goes out to sow at the beginning seems to me to be a particularly sloppy farmer — some of the seed falls along the foot path, some in stony ground, some in the thorns and only some in good soil. Was he not watching what he was doing? Did he not prepare the soil beforehand (remove rocks, dig up thorns)? Then, Jesus explains the parable to his disciples and explains the purpose of the parables: “so that they (those outside his inner circle) may look and see, but not know; hear and listen but not understand; in order that they may not be converted and forgiven.” (quoting Isaiah 6:9). A mission whose purpose is failure.

Then we have this parable. The sower sows, and then does nothing, goes to sleep, wakes up, and the grain grows. Most farmers I know irrigate, cultivate — there is plenty to do while the grain is growing. And then the idiot sows mustard seed on the ground. No one is his right mind sows mustard seed. It’s an aggressive weed. But here at last is the hint. The mustard becomes the largest of the garden herbs, with strong branches (says the gospel writer, but I’ve not seen mustard like that) so that the birds of the heavens may make their nests in its shade. That’s a quote of Psalm 104:12, and an allusion to Ezekiel 17:23, 31:6 and Daniel 4:9, 18. In those passages, the cedar or the cypress in which the birds of the air make their nests stands for the kingdom of Egypt, of Nebuchadnezzar, and for the kingdom which God will establish on the return of the Exiles from Babylon. The trees of Egypt and Nebuchadnezzar, whose tops reach above the clouds will be cut down, but the sapling that God brings back from Babylon will grow strong.

So, the mustard bush, a scrappy aggressive weed, which no one wants, has supplanted the cedar. God’s kingdom is no longer imagined as a majestic tree, but a scrappy weed, living at the edges of the field, in the ditches and along the roadways. The kingdom flies below radar. No wonder the farmer doesn’t cultivate. We’re not aiming here at the standard definitions. This thing is going to have to catch on by itself. All we can do is live in it, and hope people get it.

God does sorta the same thing with David. The people had wanted a king, just like the other nations around them. God reluctantly gave them Saul, and set him up to be a bad king, so they would figure out what they had asked for. Then, when the time came to replace Saul, he opts for David, the youngest, out if the fields with the sheep. Or Paul, who boasts to the Corinthians of his weakness.

The kingdom of God is not judged according to the world’s standards. When we, as the church, look to succeed, whatever that may mean, we’ve departed the path. The farmer in Mark 4 displays an absolute lack of interest in results. Those are in God’s hands. Some seed produces 30-fold, some 60-fold and some 100-fold, but we’re never told how the farmer reacted. A frightening thing in this economic downturn, when it is really easy to be anxious about budgets — will we have enough; while the farmer is busy throwing seed here, there and everywhere, and then not worrying about it.

What are we to do? Especially when we think we can begin to feel the bottom of the seed bag?

Trinity Sunday, Year B (RCL)
Isaiah 6:1-8
Psalm 29
Romans 8:12-17
John 3:1-17

Early in the history of the American Episcopal Church, there was a controversy over whether to include the Athanasian Creed in the American Prayer Book. The proposed book of 1786 did not have it, and the English Church was afraid we had gone off the rails. 1789 included it. Now, it’s in small print at the back as one of the “historical documents” along with the 39 articles. The problem with the Athanasian Creed is it leaves you with the impression that the Trinity is “incomprehensible,” which, in a way it is, but that’s not very useful.

At the very least, we can say that community is at the heart of the deity. One of the first christian trinities was Father/Mother/Son. I like it. Gives the impression of human love, and not just two people mooning over each other, but a creative and expansive kind of love. If this is the love that we find at the heart of the deity, creation makes sense. The divine love seeks expression.

The readings for this Sunday are wonderful. In the John passage, we have the famous John 3:16. It does really stand out in its context like a sore thumb. The whole discourse up to this point has been about authority (you are a teacher come from God), possibility (no one could do the signs you do; how is it possible for a person, grown old to enter into the mother’s womb) and about the Kingdom (it is not possible for anyone to see the kingdom without being born of water and spirit). It’s about knowledge and testimony, and ascending into heaven. And all of a sudden, you have: “For God loved the world so, that he gave his only begotten Son.” In the words of Tina Turner, what’s love got to do with it?

This is the only instance in John’s Gospel where God ‘gives’ his Son. In all other instances, God sends his son into the world. Nicodemus thinks the discussion is about authority (by what authority do you cleanse the Temple?). In the fight between John’s community and the Synagogue, the question of Jesus’ authority would be paramount. Jesus indicates that Nicodemus has asked the wrong question. It’s not about Jesus’ authority, but about seeing the kingdom (what we know, we say; what we have seen we testify). The question becomes, how do we live seeing the kingdom.

The answer is that God loved the cosmos so, he gave his Son, that who ever trusts him has the life of the ages (now). The life of the Trinity is one of self-gifting, and of gifting the divine life to the cosmos. The godhead is a constant dance of the giving and receiving of self, and of gift to the cosmos.

When we receive the spirit, we enter into that divine life, giving and receiving self. That same spirit cries with our spirit, Abba, Father, and we take our place as joyful children within the divine household, not slaves of fear.

And it all happens at worship. When we cry, “Holy, holy, holy” with the seraphim and with all those who have gone before, and all those throughout the world who sing it with us, we enter that divine dance. We may think we are not worthy to be part of the dance, but God assures us otherwise. Our lips have been made worthy of singing that song, and we respond with a willingness to be given to the world to include the world in the divine household (here I am, send me). Worship includes the world in the divine dance of giving and receiving self.

Easter 6B (RCL)
Acts 10:44-48
Psalm 98
1 John 5:1-6
John 15:9-17

Last week, I preached about the eunuch, who wouldn’t have been allowed in the temple, but whom Philip baptized, showing that the christian community was open to those considered “unfruitful” by the rest of the world. I went on to talk about the passage from John’s first letter, about how hard it is to live in community. It’s easy to love God, because God will never annoy me, but you on the other hand . . . So John tells us that if we say we love God, but don’t love our brothers and sisters, we are liars. We must learn to love in the real world. The passage from the gospel then talked about fruitfulness, and being grafted into the community as the only way to be fruitful. Advent, not unlike many other pastoral sized congregations, ties up much of its identity in size: we like the fact that the rector knows everyone’s name. Consequently, we don’t grow any bigger. Fruitfulness usually means making more of something. Evangelism means getting more bodies in church. I suggested that if we changed our identity to being mission oriented, we’d stop caring what size Advent was, and others, like the eunuch, could find their way in. We needed to concentrate on living sappy, juicy, fruitful lives by ministering to others (doing the works of God, as John says so often in the gospel).

So, now, we have more fruitfulness language, and love language. Bearing fruit and being disciples is the same thing, and if we are bearing fruit, then whatever we ask God, God will do. And the commandment that gets us to this point is, “Love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, than to place one’s life in the trust of one’s friends.” (to lay down one’s life for one’s friends is a really bad translation — the Greek says literally, “to place one’s life (or soul) over (or on behalf of) one’s friends.” Julian Hill says it comes from Greek military poetry and accompanied the act of surrendering one’s sword to one’s comrade, hence entrusting one’s life).

My experience in Lui is the most profound instance of this for me: I had to entrust my life to the other missioners and to my friends in Lui. Once I did that, I had a fruitful time there, learned and taught many things, made deep relationships and had a transformative (one could even say, conversion) experience.

As we minister to other people, especially those outside our safe community, we are forced to give up our false sense of security, and entrust our lives to others and to God. When we have aligned ourselves with others in this way, could we even say that we have invested our lives with them? That our fruitfulness or salvation is tied up with their fruitfulness and salvation? Is that what it means to love one another as Jesus has loved us, and to “lay down one’s life” for others?

This is a very different kind of messiah than we often expect, a very different kind of ministry than we often expect to do. We expect the messiah to “save” us and others, and we expect to “save” others through our ministries, to improve their condition. But Jesus doesn’t “save” us in that way. He invests his life with ours, surrenders the divine life into our care. That’s why the writer of the letter has to say, “Whoever trusts that Jesus is the messiah” conquers the world. It takes trust to see things this way, to entrust ourselves to others.

Peter is speaking to Gentiles when the spirit falls on all who were in the conversation. First Samaritans, then a eunuch, now Gentiles! Where does it end? When we are engaged in holy conversation with others about salvation, theirs and ours, when we have entrusted our life alongside theirs, the Spirit will fall on all involved in the conversation, no matter where we may have drawn the line.

Easter 4B (RCL)

Acts 4:5-12
Psalm 23
1 John 3:16-24
John 10:11-18

More of Peter’s nasty preaching in Acts. Not at all sure why we’re reading this.

In the other two readings, lots of mention of “laying down one’s life for” one another. In Divinity School, we were puzzled by the Greek expression, which translates literally, “place one’s soul over” one another. The preposition “hyper” can me above, on account of, for — a whole range of meanings. We called our preceptor over, and asked him what the expression meant. He wasn’t aware that we were reading scripture — we just asked him what “tithein ten psyche hyper” meant. He said it was an expression taken from Greek military poetry. Soldiers were encouraged to have “friends” in the army, lovers, whose backs they would watch carefully. They were said to place their souls in the care of their friends, sometimes accompanied by an actual exchage of swords. So, I translate it now as “entrust one’s life to” one another.

Jesus entrusted his life to us, the flock of sheep in his care. That’s a pretty up-side-down image, and then expects us to do the same for one another. And ultimately, for the purpose of bringing other sheep not of this fold into the one flock. Learning to see the world from another’s perspective requires a kind of love that entrusts self into the care of the other, stepping out of our perspective can be fearful. The various flocks cannot coexist without this willingness to entrust ourselves to the other’s point of view.

Easter 3B (RCL)
Acts 3:12-19
Psalm 4
1 John 3:1-7
Luke 24:36-48

O.k., so one drawback of the RCL is no option for the Acts of the Apostles during Easter. I know we are supposed to read the Acts to learn of the infant church in the light of the resurrection, but could Peter preach any more inflammatory sermon? “You killed Jesus!” he thunders. Oh, I know you did it in ignorance, but that hardly softens the blow. Of course, by the time Luke is writing, all that’s left of Judaism (at least in the headlines) would have been the violent hold-outs. Perhaps Luke is trying to tell his Greek readers, “We Christians are not those kind of Jews.” Still, what a legacy.

So, what to make of the other readings? The passage from Luke’s Gospel follows (literarily) on the heels of the story of the road to Emmaus. In this reading again, Jesus opens the eyes of the faithful to understand the scriptures about the messiah, and then eats with them. There are many parallels here to John’s appearance stories: Peace be with you; see/touch my hands and feet; even the fish lines up with the barbeque on the beach in John. These must have been messages the new community needed to hear.

The bread of Emmaus and the fish of this appearance remind me of bread and fish in the wilderness — perhaps an early christian eucharist associated with the resurrection rather than the passion. Bread and fish, according to Jewish literature of the time, was to be the messianic meal at the end time. God would destroy Leviathan, the sea monster, and feed it to his people. Also, no sacrifice involved (no blood). Jesus’ community is already eating that meal.

Troubling, however, is that resurrected bodies eat. I don’t think we usually include that in our picture of “heaven.” Bodies are loci for relationships. So what gets resurrected is the whole set of relationships I carry in my body. Food, of course, is perhaps the densest signifier of relationship there is — it connects us to the earth, the sun (all food is ultimately sunshine, water and dirt), with the economies that bring it to our tables, to the hands that prepared it and to the gathering that eats it. It structures our whole universe. All that gets resurrected!

John’s letter tells us that now, we are God’s children, but what we will be, we don’t know. What we do know is that when he is revealed, we will be like God, because we will see God like God is. We will see God reflected in bodies, in food, in the connections that entangle us with the whole cosmos, and all of it will be transformed. How poor is the belief of the immortality of the soul in comparison to resurrected bodies that eat broiled fish.

Easter 2B (RCL)
Acts 4:32-35
Psalm 133
1 John 1:1 — 2:2
John 20:19-31

I think that the first version of John’s Gospel ended after the appearance to Mary Magdalene. Jesus had ascended to his Father and our Father, his God and our God — what was left to say? We knew that the way was now open to God through the tomb, into the Holy of holies, and the garden had been restored.

But, then things changed. John’s community got itself thrown out of the synagogue, and closed in on itself. Jesus had to show up to authorize a change in the life of the community. In each of the string of appearances after the first end of the Gospel, Jesus authorizes some shift in the community. In today’s reading, we learn of two shifts.

First, the community had closed in on itself out of fear, after being thrown out of the synagogue. The doors were locked. Jesus shows up and says “peace.” Then he breathes holy breath on them and tells them that the sins of any they forgive are forgiven, and the sins of any they retain are retained. Time to move on — quit blaming the folks who threw you out and get on with life.

Thomas, however, wasn’t there. John’s community was tempted to veer into gnosticism. Jesus hadn’t really suffered, only appeared to. If that were true, then none of us need to suffer when asked to sacrifice to the Emperor. Just cross your fingers behind your back, burn a little incense, and know that it doesn’t count. Thomas doesn’t doubt. He refuses to believe, without seeing the wounds. Any community of christians, he is saying, that doesn’t have wounds is not the Body of Christ. Only when I see the wounds. When he sees them, he calls Jesus “Dominus et Deus”, just what the emperor was insisting on being called, when receiving cult. Thomas is saying, not Caesar, but Christ. You can’t cross your fingers behind your back. This costs something.

In the first letter of John, the author tells us he is proclaiming to us things that we have seen and heard and handled. Our faith is not strictly a mental attitude, not an opinion we have, but a way of living in the real world. And again, it’s about forgiveness of sin. If we say we have no sin, we’re fooling ourselves. Living in the real world means we are going to wound the Body of Christ. Putting gas in our cars, drinking coffee farmed on land stolen from peasants, eating bananas grown on plantations bought below market value from Central American nations, eating strawberries harvested by underpaid migrant workers, the list could go on. If we say we have no sin, we’re fooling ourselves. But, that’s no excuse for giving up in despair; we have an advocate with the Father, who propitiates not just our sins, but the sins of the whole cosmos (others sins against us?). The Body of Christ is tangible, real and present. How are we living in it? Are we looking for it? Listening to it? Touching it? Strawberries are sweet, and we should enjoy them. But they are sweeter when we see and touch the Body of Christ, and see its wounds transformed, revealing our God to us.

Lent 5B (RCL)
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 119:9-16
Hebrews 5:5-10
John 12:20-33

I got to thinking about Nathaniel’s sermon last week, and had something of an epiphany. Nathaniel re-told the story of Nicodemus coming to Jesus at night as a way of framing the famous John 3:16. He then spoke of learning to see Christ in even the worst situation, and spoke of the woman in Wandi getting on her knees to present a gift to Deb, and Deb getting on her knees to accept it. They saw the Christ in each other. When Nicodemus comes to Jesus, he says, “We know you are a teacher come from God, because no one could do the works you do if God were not with him.” Of course, Jesus replies with a complete non-sequitur: Unless a person is born anew/from above, that one will never see the kingdom of God. What?! Finally, after all these years, it dawns on me. John (or whoever wrote the gospel) is saying, “What difference does it make who Jesus was? Unless something happens to you, dear reader, you will not see the kingdom.” Why all this effort into recovering the historical Jesus? he would ask.

So, on to this weeks reading. There were some Greeks among those who went up to the festival. They find Philip and say “We want to see Jesus.” Philip finds Andrew, and together they go to Jesus. Then, the Greeks drop out of the story completely. Jesus replies, “Unless [get ready folks — this always leads into the payoff for us] a seed falls into the ground and dies, it bears no fruit. But if it does, it bears much fruit.” Strikes me we are reading the Gospel in Greek. We are those Greeks.

John’s community could have chosen to stay Jewish, a splinter from the synagogue, bitter about being thrown out. Instead, they chose to fall into the ground and die, and bear much fruit — just what Jesus says over and over is the work of the followers of Jesus.

Jeremiah says in the new covenant, there will be no rules, only a covenant of the heart. We can’t say, “But, we’ve always done it that way!” What cherished aspects of ourselves, of our idenities, need to fall into the ground and die before they can bear much fruit. On the congregational level? On the denominational level? On the personal level?

My sorta smug self-reliance had to fall into the ground and die in a pretty painful way in Lui, but I think that change is bearing fruit. It’s always a scary thing. Pushing Advent always risks pushing some people away, and it sometimes feels pretty arrogant to say, “This is what we need to do.” Then, says John, a voice came from heaven. I guess it’s all part of our baptism.

Lent 3B (RCL)
Exodus 20:1-7
Psalm 19
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
John 2:13-22

All of these lessons seem to me to have to do with the Wisdom myth of the second temple period. Certainly the psalm speaks of Wisdom present in creation and present in God’s way of life for us, and asks that the psalmist might live by that Wisdom. Wisdom, of course, departed from creation at the fall of humanity, and came to reside in God’s people, in the Torah and in the Temple. At the Exile, Wisdom departed again, and returned, some thought, to the second temple. There were many who did not agree, and found the second temple, at least in the Herodian period, far too deeply in bed with the Roman Empire. They were waiting for a further return both of Wisdom and of Jews in diaspora. Jesus’ “temple act” in all four gospels, but especially in John, seems to speak of Wisdom departing the Temple and coming to dwell in Jesus. John’s community makes the claim that it is the true Israel (in which there is no guile), and Jesus is the mode of encounter with God.

Paul also functioned within that second temple universe. But God has made foolish the wisdom of the wise, in the Word of Christ crucified. What a strange way for God to bring about God’s plan of the inclusion of everyone within the people of God. That was the intent from the beginning, and finally only accomplished in Christ, the Wisdom of God.

The Exodus reading gives us the Ten Words. The psalmist speaks of God’s wisdom ordering creation, and God’s wisdom in Torah ordering human community and relationship. The ten words sum up that wisdom for the ordering of community. What strikes me is that the word that gets the most words is the word about sabbath rest. Of all the words, it is the one most obviously present in God’s creation, since God created in six days, and rested on the seventh.

It also seems like the one we may need most to hear. How busy are our lives? We have scheduled ourselves to within an inch of our lives. People who have lost their jobs feel useless because they aren’t busy. If Jesus’ body replaces the Temple, and we are part of the body, we are part of the Temple, the mode of encounter with God in the world (Paul uses the lovely image of us as stones built into a temple). What busy-ness needs to be swept out of our bodies, out of our Body so that it might be a house of prayer? Perhaps our lenten discipline this week should be to take a nap!

Lent 2B (RCL)
Genesis 17:1-1, 15-16
Psalm 22:22-30
Romans 4:13-25
Mark 8:31-38

In the adult forum, we have been reading Paul’s letter to the Romans. Much of the discourse of Second Temple Judaism focused on the figure of Moses. Moses was the perfect lawgiver, the type of the King, of the prophet and just about any other category. Wisdom lived in the Law given by Moses, and in the Temple. Of course, after the destruction of the Temple, for many Jews, she lived exclusively in the Law.

Paul, of course, is seeking a new way of being Jewish, or part of the covenant people besides adherence to the Law. He wants to set aside the exclusive parts of the law that limit the possibility of righteousness to those within the confines of the law. Moses won’t serve Paul very well as the type of the person of the covenant. So Paul reaches back over Moses to the figure of Abraham, whom God called to be the father of “many nations” not just one. What to do about those Jews who didn’t join the Messiah’s movement to open the promise to all? Well, there were the descendants of the flesh, and the descendants of the spirit. The descendants according to the flesh would come around at some point in history, but for now, the descendants according to the spirit, whose righeousness looked like Abraham’s, based on God’s faithfulness to the promise and Abraham’s trust in God’s faithfulness, lived in the promise.

Paul wants to draw the circle wide enough to include any who have the obedience of faith to the gospel. No “fleshly” category is sufficient for defining the circle: Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free — these distinctions no longer exist. God’s promise is open to all.

So, what about Peter? In Galatians, Paul tells us he opposed Peter to his face for drawing back from eating with Gentiles. Peter was expecting a Messiah (so Mark would want us to think) on the Jewish pattern — who would set things to rights again for Israel. When Jesus begins talking about suffering many things at the hands of the leaders of Israel, Peter can’t accept it. But Jesus sees this as satanic thinking; a misunderstanding.

So, calling together the crowds and his disciples, Jesus says, “Anyone who wants to follow me, let that one deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Following Jesus is not limited to the disciples, nor to Jews nor any other limiting factor. Anyone who wants can leave all behind, take up the cross and follow.

What does it mean to take up the cross? I’m on this kick after coming back from Lui. It means recognizing our dependence on God and each other, being willing to serve and be served, to let go of our self-reliance. If we hold on to that myth, if we think we can go it alone, if we mortgage our soul for that fine house, if we sell off our future for this quarter’s dividends, and focus only on the bottom line, what will we give in exchange for our lives? There is joy in letting go of all that, in being part of the family God calls into promise.