The Biblical Critique of Rulers

Robert Berra

Sermon at St. Augustine’s, Tempe

Proper 12 Year B

2 Samuel 11:1-15

Psalm 14

Ephesians 3:14-21

John 6:1-21

You may have noticed that since Trinity Sunday we have been reading the stories of the first kings of Israel. 

To briefly recap the last eight weeks: The people of Israel are tired of never having a king like other nations, so they ask the prophet Samuel to anoint a king for them.  Saul is chosen as the first king.  But Saul didn’t obey God, so God sent Samuel to secretly anoint a new king:  David.  Well, David and Saul get close after David slays Goliath; David is invited to live with Saul.  But Saul became jealous of David and repeatedly tried to kill him.  David escapes and lives as a wandering bandit for a while, pursued by Saul.  Eventually Saul dies. David comes back from the cold to be made king officially; and he brings the ark to Israel.  Last week, God promised to David that David’s kingdom and line would continue in perpetuity.

What I love about this particular track of Bible readings is that it begins with a bit of satirical foreshadowing.  Let’s return for a moment to that moment that Israel asks for a king eight weeks ago:[1]

All the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel [the prophet]…and said to him, "You are old and your sons do not follow in your ways; appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations." [Samuel wasn’t too happy about this, so] Samuel prayed to the LORD, and the LORD said to Samuel, "Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. Just as they have done to me, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so also they are doing to you. Now then, listen to their voice; only-- you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them."

So Samuel reported all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, "These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots... He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers [not to mention concubines]… He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers… He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the LORD will not answer you in that day."

But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; they said, "No! but we are determined to have a king over us, so that we also may be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles."

God told Samuel to paint a dismal picture of kings, and that speaks to the cynic in me.  So that is what Samuel did, basically saying that if Israel wants a human king instead of a protecting God, that is what Israel will get.  And it will not be fun for anyone.  This is an example of some of the earliest political critique in the Bible, and will form the basis from which all of the kings of Israel will be critiqued and judged, all because Israel wanted to be like every other nation.

And this week… we have a story in of Hebrew Bible reading that, while it is brief, has all the drama of an episode of Game of Thrones.    

The reading begins by saying that in the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent his soldiers to war.  How kingly.  You can kind of hear the writer saying “See?  He’s like every other king, sending his people to war, in the spring, as kings do.”

Well, In the midst of this, David (who we are told is not leading from the front) has an indiscreet moment with Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife.  

[Note:  It's worth saying that what happened between David and Bathsheba would be most accurately categorized as rape or sexual assault.  There was probably no meaningful way for her to say 'no' in such a situation...as such there was no meaningful consent.]

She conceives,so David tries to find a way to cover up the whole matter.  He calls Uriah back from the front, presumably to ask him how things are with the army, but then basically sends him to be intimate with Bathsheba so the child will be thought to be Uriah’s, saying "Go down to your house, and wash your feet [wink, wink]."

But Uriah, being the pious and patriotic eager beaver that he is, says "The ark and Israel and Judah are in tents; and my commander and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field; shall I then go to my house, to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives [he says to David] I will not do such a thing."  Soldiers in Israel at this time had to maintain purity by avoiding intercourse while at war. David knew this too; in his earlier days, he enforced this purity on the warriors who rode with him.[2]  But, these were desperate times, and his secret needed to be kept.  David even tried getting Uriah really drunk, hoping he’d forget himself and go home.  That didn’t work. 

So, David does something quite drastic.  David sends a letter to the commander of his forces, saying “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, so that he may be struck down and die."”  And that’s not even the worse part.  David has Uriah unknowingly deliver his death sentence in that letter to the commander.  That’s cold.  That’s exactly how Uriah died, too.  Bathsheba probably didn’t know the full story of how her husband died, but after her mourning, David brings her to his palace and marries her.  Insult upon injury.  The story will be continued next week.

David’s epic continues, but one can see in this story the beginning of Samuel’s warnings coming to fruition.  Eventually the monarchy fails Israel as kings disobey God and abuse their own people.

Let’s fast forward nearly 1,000 years.  One of David’s descendants is roaming the Galilean countryside and getting quite a bit of attention.  In our reading today, Jesus miraculously feeds thousands out of the limited resources he was given.  He had been performing signs and wonders as a way of pointing to his identity.  But what draws my attention today is that:

“When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.”[3]

The crowd reacted in a way that is completely understandable.  At the time, it was that that a prophet and messianic king would come with signs and wonders, and these signs were marks of the promise of the messiah’s arrival.  The messiah would then bring about the liberation of Israel from Roman control.  I’m sure the crowd would have been confused by Jesus’s refusal to take the power they were handing him. 

But why would he do that?  Why would he turn that power down?

I think the key to understanding Jesus in this passage, and indeed his whole project on earth, is to keep in mind both the biblical and prophetic estimation of earthly rulers (such as Samuel’s low opinion of kings) and Jesus’s confrontation with the representative of Roman authority:  his interrogation by Pilate before his execution. 

When Jesus goes before Pilate in the Gospel of John, the interrogation never really gets beyond Pilate asking Jesus who he is.[4]  “Are you a king?  Where are you from?” Jesus only answers cryptically before eventually falling silent. 

As Jesus falls silent before Pilate’s questions about his identity, Pilate asks “Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?”  That is a terrible power—the power given him by the state.  But Jesus knows something else, and it becomes evident as the drama unfolds.  The threat to use this power is a sign of fear.  It is a grasp for control of the situation.  It is the way earthly power works, then and now.  Earthly power is borne out of the desire to control our own fear.  The torture and crucifixion Jesus would endure—and so many other uses of force both great and small— are examples of this worldly power.  The desire to control others.  To control circumstances. To bend the will of a person to our own use. Its use is borne out of fear.  This power is used when the lie of control we continually tell ourselves fails. 

It is this same fear and grasping for control that led Israel to demand a king in the first place.  The people did not trust God, and for good reason they did not trust Samuel’s sons.  The people desired to take their chances with the same rules every other nation lived by.  And it was this lie of control and domination borne of fear that Christ came to expose as a poor substitute for the fuller truth of God’s gracious reign. 

These justifications and rationalizations of worldly power are the lies of control that Jesus exposes by not bending to Pilate’s threat.  It is the worldly power Jesus exposed as a fraud through his resurrection—his resurrection which shows that the worst that worldly power can do will not have the final say.  It is the power Jesus was tempted with when Satan offered him control of all the kingdoms of the world.[5]  It is the worldly power Jesus refused to take up when the crowds surrounded him to make him a king by force.  It was the power that David relied on, thinking he could hide his misdoings.

What does this mean for us today?  Well, you might not have heard about this—we’ve been keeping it kind of hush-hush and there’s barely a word about it in the media—but I hear there is an election coming up.    

We are still more than a year away from the elections, and still candidates of every stripe are already making promises and presenting us with worldviews that may or may not come to actual policy.  And as some candidates—of every stripe—begin to point to their religious affiliations to appease voters who claim a faith—or surround their policies in a patina of holiness as though their position papers fell like manna from heaven—or claim their presence in the race as the humble following of God’s will—it is worth noting that the Bible is deeply skeptical of worldly power and its exercise.

Instead of recommending that an outgrowth of the skepticism is to shy away from the political process in an effort to remain untainted, I think it is more likely the case that we are asked to consider how our political decisions are an outgrowth of Christ’s command to love God and our neighbors in concrete ways.  I believe, just as we see in David the possibility of great failings, and as Christ called out the death-dealing limits of worldly power, we are called to sober discernment of what we are promised in our life together as a nation.

But beware.  The cheers of crowds and the blaring campaign songs are sometimes loud enough to drown the still, small voice calling us to forgo the calculations that keep us estranged from everyone around us and grasping for control.  Yet there are candidates who rely on worldly calculations of power and appeal to fear to make their case of a world in which we exert more control.  And there are politicians who produce counterfeit visions of God’s kingdom come in the hope of attracting those of us who believe in the better world.  With both of these positions comes the all too common occurrence of declaring one’s opponents wrong in the best case, and demonic at the extreme.

May we all, following Christ’s example, escape the pull of worldly power and see through its abuses.  May we all be wary of trusting too much the devices and desires of our own hearts when we are promised their fulfillment at the expense of our neighbors.  And may we hold accountable to God those who aspire to power, whatever its exercise.

Let us pray,

Almighty God, to whom we must account for all our powers

and privileges: Guide the people of the United States

in the election of officials and representatives;

that, by faithful administration and wise laws, the rights of

all may be protected and our nation be enabled to fulfill your

purposes; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.[6]

---

^{[1] 1} Samuel 8:4-11, (12-15), 16-20, (11:14-15)

[2] See 1 Sam 21:5 and Deut 23:9-14.

[3] Jn 6:15.

[4] Jn 18:28-19:16.

[5] Luke 4:5-8.

[6] BCP, 822.

"Something there is that doesn’t love a wall"

Robert Berra

Sermon, St. Matthew’s, Chandler

Proper 11, Year B

Track 1
2 Samuel 7:1-14a
Psalm 89:20-37
Ephesians 2:11-22
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

A photo of the barrier separating Palestine from Israel, taken by a fellow pilgrim (who I would credit if I could remember who took it!).

Rain quietly spattered on the windows of the bus as we made our way west from Jericho to Bethany on our way to Bethlehem.  This was day 4 of our trip. We had left the north of Israel and our time around the Sea of Galilee, and we were coming to spend two nights in Bethlehem and then three nights in the Old City of Jerusalem.  The politics surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were present on our first days of the trip, but muted.  In the Galilean countryside, the conflict seemed far away.  Now, as we set our faces to Jerusalem, we had some idea that our guides were going to take us square into elements of the conflict.  This pilgrimage was going to be political as well as personal.  As we traveled from Jericho to Jerusalem, we left the main highway for a side trip. There is a church along the road that commemorates the raising of Lazarus and the conversation Jesus has with Mary and Martha about choosing the better way.[1]  Going through the urban area, I noticed a lot of trash piled near the crowded streets.  Many of the buildings looked like they were suffering from deferred maintenance.  It looked like an economically depressed area.   After we finished our worship and tour of the church, we pulled our rain gear over us to re-board the bus and be on our way.  As we traveled, we saw more of the same.  A lot of men standing and talking.  Grocers trying to sell their goods at curbside markets.  We then came to what our guides wanted us to see.  On the most direct path from the church we visited to Old City Jerusalem stood a wall of grey concrete nearly 30 ft. tall with an imposing guard tower in the distance.  As we stared at this wall through the rain-beaded windows, and as the driver turned us around on a path to the nearest checkpoint, our guide read this bit of scripture: 

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us…that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.

It was a calculated move on the part of our guides, and knowing that it was intentional felt like some of us to be manipulation for dramatic effect.  Perhaps it worked; I’m telling you this story today. 

We had to go back the way we came to swing west and then south through Jerusalem to Bethlehem.  It was then that I realized and confirmed with our guides what I suspected.  The path we had taken which would have lead from Jericho to the Old City of Jerusalem was at one time a major thoroughfare.  Now, with the wall in place, the entire community was essentially turned into a cul-de-sac and cut out of the tourism trade.  What used to be a 10-minute walk from Old Jerusalem to that community can now be a 3 hour drive; that is, assuming you are allowed through the military checkpoint.  As a result, few people pass through, and the major industry of that area has shriveled, Folks are cut off from services, such as one’s doctors, from one side of the wall to the other. That, among other things, explains the economic depression we saw along the way.  The barrier was ever-present for the rest of our trip as we drove through both Israeli and Palestinian territory.

And lest we think that we can claim some sort of moral superiority over either side, it is worth noting that our nation currently has one of the largest walled borders in the world, portions of which run through our very state.  And lest we be tempted to think that we can sit back and claim that the barrier is an overreaction, or a sign of collective madness, let me say this.  From 2000 to 2003, 76 suicide bombings occurred in Israel. That is a land space that roughly covers a triangle from Tucson to the Grand Canyon, through Phoenix to Globe; but all of those attacks occurred in urban centers.  After the building of portions of the wall, from 2003 to 2006, only twelve suicide bombings occurred, and the number has gone down from there.[2]  

As a father, if I were in a similar situation and someone promised me that I could send my children out in the world more-confident that they would not be blown up in a suicide attack, I would face a difficult decision.  While I like to think I’d be brave enough to live boldly in a dangerous world as a sign of my trust in God’s good purposes and ends, I may indeed be willing to trade the human dignity of many (reducing their freedom, stopping their movement, taking their land) if I receive a sense of security for my family. (We, sitting in this sanctuary, have certainly benefitted from the historical taking of other people’s land by our forebears who wanted that security and felt entitled to take what they wanted by force.) It might be worth it to think that I’ve done what I can so that when he’s old enough I can send Colin shopping without wondering whether he would be blown up by a suicide bomber. 

I have some very definite ideas about the morality of these situations, but at the moment I simply say that the decision-making process is not “crazy” or “delusional.” Reserve those words for actual psychological diagnoses, because what we are talking about is the human instinct of survival.

Survival is the human instinct that drives us to build walls.

And there are so many walls. 

International borders. 

Occupied territories. 

No man’s lands.  

Demilitarized zones. 

Gated communities. 

Ghettoized neighborhoods (which in the U.S. are the legacy of white flight and the practice of redlining).[3] 

Our own notions of race, class, sex and gender identity, and religion.  

Our political leanings.  

Our propensity to wall ourselves from those who have wounded us or disagree with us.  (How long is your list of those people?  My list is in the double digits, I think.)

Walls keep us safe.

In fact, their existence is touted as a virtue.  Benjamin Franklin once quipped “love thy neighbor, yet don’t pull down your hedge.”  The poet Robert Frost is perhaps most credited with how we often hear this wisdom from his poem “Mending Wall”: “good fences make good neighbors.”[4]  And this is a notion that one can find expressed in many different cultures.[5]

However, Frost’s poem begins with this line: “Something there is that doesn't love a wall.”  Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, would agree.[6]

In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, Paul is writing to a church community primarily made up of Gentiles.  In so doing Paul is making the case that God has done something radical and new in Jesus Christ.  On the one hand, there are the gentiles, strangers and aliens, far from God and unaware of God’s covenant and promises made to Israel.  On the other hand are the children of Israel, near to God in covenant and law, but are indicted by that very law as disobedient.  “Both groups, Gentiles and Jews, for different reasons, are estranged from God.  And both groups are estranged from and live in hostility to one another.”[7]  The heart of the text is Paul’s reminder these two distinct people, Jews and Gentiles, have become one new humanity, writing that “Christ might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.”[8]  Christ brought down the dividing wall.  This is the reality of God’s ministry of reconciliation, and it would have been a shocking image.  These two groups would not even deign to eat together.  And yet, “when the neighbors in ancient Ephesus saw who was eating together in the little church, they were shocked.  And when the preacher in that infant congregation saw those shocked faces, all that needed to be said…was “you are witnesses to God’s kingdom come, God’s will done.””^[9]  No one is thrown out.  No one is cast aside.  Everyone is invited.

Even though Paul is speaking specifically to the separation of Gentiles and Jews, this passage speaks to our separations today, our situations that need reconciliation.  We are not invited to reconcile ourselves to God and consider our life’s work done; our space in paradise reserved.  That is a purpose too small for God—who desires no less than the reconciliation of all to all, so that God can be all in all.[10]  And God has given us the ministry of reconciliation that not only brings us into a more perfect communion with God but to make us one through Christ with those we once called enemies.[11] 

But even more audacious than the claim of a new humanity is Paul’s other claim.  Are you ready for this?  Because Christ is our peace, bought through the cross, we Christians proclaim that peace has already been made.  Just as death has been destroyed, just as death is no longer the end; hostility, and war, bloodshed are not the final destiny of humankind.  Aggression and hatred are shadows, intended to pass away.  As Paul wrote, “Christ is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall…the hostility between us.”[12]

It is this abiding peace of Christ that we are called to witness to, and it is this peace that creates the conditions for the walls to come tumbling down.  It is God’s desire for this peace that propels Christians into the world, into situations that seem hopeless.   But the work is difficult.

You see, even at their best, walls do not create peace.  They are the tools of temporary cease-fires, of truces that may end, of stand-offs that can last years and decades, in situations both political and personal.  They are testimonies to humankind’s inability to effect reconciliation and a just peace, and so instead we stall.  The situation still exists, but building the walls allows us to think that we have a solution, and that our attention is now better spent elsewhere.  And when the walls we built seem insufficient, we build bigger and better walls.  Bringing down the wall, however, is not good enough, nor does the simple demolition of boundaries create peace.  The walls we create are symptoms of the hostility behind them. Peace comes only when that hostility is eliminated, and that is the work God calls us to participate in and witness in action. This is bitter, difficult work, well worth the effort and joy that comes with its completion.

“Something there is that doesn't love a wall

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, 
And spills the upper boulders in the sun, 
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.”[13]

And God commends the same to us.

----------------

May we consider these questions:

Where is God inviting us and equipping us to confront a hostility within ourselves or within our world?

Where might we rejoice to take a stone off the walls we have built?

Where might we point with joy to crumbling walls, and testify to God’s work?

---

[1] Luke 10:42.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_West_Bank_barrier .

[3] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghetto#History, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining, and http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/05/28/evidence-that-banks-still-deny-black-borrowers-just-as-they-did-50-years-ago/.

[4] Robert Frost, “Mending Wall,” http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/frost-mending.html.

[5] http://quotes.yourdictionary.com/articles/who-said-good-fences-make-good-neighbors.html.

[6] Paul’s authorship of Ephesians is contested in modern scholarship.  It is possible that a follower of Paul’s school of thought wrote the letter.  This sermon is written assuming the tradition of Paul’s authorship while noting the uncertainty of that authorship.

[7] George Stroup, “Ephesians 2:11-22: Theological perspective” in Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 3,  256.

[8] Eph 2:15-16.

[9] Edwin Searcy, “Ephesians 2:11-22: Homiletical perspective” in Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 3,  257.

[10] 1 Cor 15:28.

[11] 2 Cor 5:18.

[12] Eph 2:14.

[13] Robert Frost, “Mending Wall,” http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/frost-mending.html.

"Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?"

Many of you know that I am from Mobile AL on the Gulf Coast.  That was where Laura and I called home for the first 20 or so years of life.  It’s the center of gravity that pulls us back to see family once or twice a year.  Like monsoon season here, the summer brings to the Gulf Coast its own character and rhythm.  Nearly every afternoon in the summer, a rainstorm rolls in from the gulf—so much so that the Gulf Coast, around Mobile Bay, averages between 100 and 110 days per year with thunder reported. 

Now, Laura and I were once in a boat on Mobile Bay when a storm was rolling in.  It is true what they say about the calm before the storm, we completely lost the wind, and I was worried about being in a 12 foot sailboat, with a metal mast, reaching for the bolts of lightning wrapped in dark grey clouds that were approaching.  Eventually the wind picked up and we were able to steer ourselves back to shore, tie-off the boat, and race back inside the house with the rain following three feet behind us in a torrential downpour. 

And you know what?  I’ve used that illustration to talk about this passage before. I could turn that story into some sort of morality tale about how I know storms—the disciples should have had faith but they didn’t—so let’s learn our lesson from their disbelief and be better. It is so easy to skip to that lesson:  Have faith no matter the storm, with a side of calling the disciples silly for doubting.

But that rings so hollow for me this week. 

That’s not what I’m here to say this morning.

Taking the Gospel lesson seriously means reading it as it is:  which is to say that a boatful of experienced fishermen and sailors were at the limit of the abilities, and they were going to die.  This was not a situation of nervousness; this was existential panic.  And I think it is disingenuous to treat the disciples' words as the silly expressions of those who don't really trust in Jesus' love.[1] I think if we want to grasp this situation in a modern context, perhaps we ought to imagine ourselves in an airplane that has lost its engines.  I think if we want to grasp the storms we’ve seen this week, we can imagine gunshots ringing out in our sanctuary and bullets ripping through flesh.

Now, let us explore panic and piety together.

The disciples, at their limits, cry out, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”  This is no mere intercession to God. This is a cry of anguish, is it not?  It is a cry that carries resonance.  It is a cry replete through calamity, exile, and genocide in our sacred scripture.  It is on the lips of Christ’s own disciples at what could have been the hour of their death.  It has been the cry of the forgotten throughout history—the cry of many who receive a terminal diagnosis—the cry of communities facing violence at the hands of religious extremists—the cry of communities in our own country who bear the brunt of a racist society under the watchful eyes of a majority who more often than not think mere civility can cancel out centuries of pain.  In our interior lives, in our relationships, in our communities, in our global states of affairs, we can look and see so many storms forming, so many heading our way, so many storms on top of us.

"Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” 

For me the disciples are those with whom I can totally relate.  We are all finite.  In the face of the power of nature, they met their limit.  So have many others before them and since who have been swept away by the awesome power of nature. So many before and since have found themselves swept away by the desire of more-powerful others to possess what is not their own, and exert control for the benefit of a few at the expense of many.  So many of us have weathered storms with all that we could muster. So many of us have watched the storms of our lives take down others.  We watch, we warn, we do what we can to steer ourselves from trouble.  Anything we can do to avoid those storms that send us into a panic.  Yet it seems to find us. 

And there are times when I have wondered what would be worse:  if God did not exist, or if God exists and does not care.

"Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” 

Hope in the gospel passage comes in the form of Jesus waking up in midst of it all and calming the storm.  And I think it is important to note that Jesus was with them all along, and bringing the disciples along on a journey that would ask so much of them all.  In that sense, may we be comforted by that presence of God even when the reality of the presence seems muted.  Even when we think God must have fallen asleep at the rudder.

But that does not seem like enough.  And worse still, following the example of the disciples has its place, but a comparison that tells us how we should act at the expense of the disciples remains at a surface level and leaves God as a reality wholly outside of ourselves that we hope we may conjure by our faith.  However, the reality of the Christian faith and relationship we are offered in Christ is much more audacious.

So I’d like to suggest that while it is a more common interpretation to see ourselves as the disciples in this story, it is also the case that we must see ourselves in Jesus.  The ability to enter into the storms of our lives and in the world and say, “peace! Be still!” is always a possibility.  It may even be our responsibility.

You see, I relate to the disciples. I see my own humanity in theirs.  But there is a deeper reality than the bond of humanity and we only follow the disciples insofar as they show us by example what it means to live like Christ.  Beloved, we carry with us the spark of the Divine, the image of God that not only forms a basis for our common humanity but our connection to all creation, and the light of Christ which connects us to each other in ways that led Christians to be known of Christ’s own body in the world.  As St. Paul wrote, we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.[2]

By the Holy Spirit, we are the continuation of Christ’s incarnation in the world and so are keepers of a vision of God’s holy reign.  Through the same Spirit, we have access to reservoirs of mercy, of grace, of love, of patience, of hope, of encouragement.  These are things we can find by asking God; these are things we share with others; and these are things we can ask of each other when we think ourselves empty and at our end.

What would it mean to see ourselves as the one who would say in the storms of our lives, “peace! Be still!”?  What would it mean to see ourselves as the emissary of the one who hears the question “do you not care that we are perishing,” and answers “I care, and I can act.” Might these questions illuminate a vision worth pursuing?  If we were to say ‘yes,’ what do we know, and what promises do we have in our work?

We know the fragility of life; and the myriad of ways life may end or change forever. 

But we carry Christ within us, who has ultimately defeated death; knows the power of resurrection; and promises us that our view is fixed much further than the horizon of mortality.  And when we find in our moments of panic, of doubt, of uncertainty, that the person who needs to hear words of stillness and peace are our very selves, may we listen for Christ within us and hear the same encouragement from others.  May we share this stillness and peace with others broken on the wheels of living. 

We know state of the world we live in and that it is not as God would have it.  The events of this week, including the attack in Charleston, show a world in which fear, hatred, division and lust for control find violent expression.  But we carry Christ within us, and we are beckoned to speak in love the possibilities of a world in which goodness and mercy reign.  Entering into the stormy confrontations the world shows us is a frightful proposition.  To utter words of God’s peace and stillness can be a comfort to those who are broken on the wheels of living, or it can be a chastening word to those who prefer a disordered status quo to a peace which passes all understanding.  Take heart.  We are to go forth with a promise in trust and prayer that Christ goes with us, even to the end of the ages.[3]

So, let us seek Christ within; and let us pray that we be delivered from the presumption of seeking Christ for solace only, and not for strength.  Let us seek prayer that will stir our hearts to the courage and tasks God sets before us.  Let us seek the Spirit who can inspire within us a word of stillness in the midst of our storms, whatever they look like.  For God did not give us a Spirit of fear, but of power and love and discipline and wisdom.[4] And we, beloved, are invited to live into the glory and work and purpose of the One who does indeed care that we are perishing.

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[1] I owe this thought to D. Mark Davis ("Piety and Panic." Left Behind and Loving It. June 15, 2015).

[2] Philippians 4:13.

[3] Matt 28:20

[4] 1 Tim 1:7

Sermon: "Who are we that we might hinder God?"

St. Matthew's, Chandler AZ Sixth Sunday of Easter

Year B

Acts 10:44-48
Psalm 98
1 John 5:1-6
John 15:9-17

"The student looked up from the Gospel reading and said "Thomas is a punk!"[1]

She used considerably stronger language.

Tuesday nights at the ministry house on campus were our community’s opportunity to gather for a meal and worship; and while I would occasionally give a sermon or a reflection, I most often left the space for an impromptu Bible Study on the texts for the coming Sunday.  I might have some interesting tidbit about the text or a comment about some theme, but I most often asked those gathered questions like:

What phrases struck them in a strong way?
What new ideas did the text inspire them to think about?
What is God doing in this passage and how are we called to respond to that action?

I am always interested to see where people might take these questions, and I knew we were doing something right when we got to a place of an unvarnished, raw, reaction to something in the text—be it a testimony to God’s action in one’s life in a way strikingly similar to the biblical situation, a disagreement with something in the Bible, or an outburst about one of the people in the passage we had just read.  Those raw reactions make me sit up and take notice; they make something of the divine come alive within me.  God acts frequently in the midst of disruptions, and casting aspersions on the disciples we are told in subtle ways by the tradition to emulate or see ourselves as like isn’t the way smooth bible studies are supposed to go, but whoo-boy God shows up in those moments.  I also have the type of personality that responds to sass with sass.  You can find God there too, it turns out. 

And to be fair, the student is right. Thomas is a punk—and I swear that I’m not recycling a sermon on Thomas—but think about it.  We talk about Thomas as though the only thing he’s known for is that he doubted.  First of all, all the disciples doubted the resurrection until Jesus showed up in the locked room.  We remember Thomas like he somehow different from them.  

But that’s not even the worst thing Thomas did.  Before Jesus and his entourage even arrive in Jerusalem before the crucifixion, it was known that going there will mean death because the religious leaders were looking to kill them.  And Thomas said, in his first sentence in the Gospels, that they should “go and die with him.”[2]  Sounds pretty brave, right?  

But guess who does not end up on a cross with Jesus?  If Jesus was the passive-aggressive type, you can imagine that the last words from the cross could have been, “Gee, who said they would follow me all the way to my death, and who is nowhere to be found?  Thomas and Peter.”  So, Thomas didn’t follow through with his promise.  

He punked out on Jesus.  

Thomas is a punk.

But here is where the student seemed to have the real problem.  Jesus’ forgiveness of Thomas and the other disciples came too easily.  Jesus just shows up and forgives.  And Thomas gets exactly what he asks for:  to see Jesus again in the flesh. 

Jesus could have just said, “If Thomas won’t believe the other disciples, then tough for him.  Out he goes, the unbeliever.” And, if you’ll remember, the disciples had received the Holy Spirit at this point from Jesus, and they keep the unbelieving Thomas around for a week in the same house.[3]  That’s a long time to keep someone who disagrees with you around when you do not have a smartphone to distract you.  The disciples as bearers of the Holy Spirit and Jesus could have just written Thomas off, but they do not.  They stay with Thomas and the truth is revealed to him (even though he was a punk).

See, here’s the thing:  we are so used to conditions being put on love, on affections, on friendship, on religious life, on all of our interactions, that witnessing the indiscriminate love God has for us and for others is often difficult—even offensive—to us.  The forgiveness and love of God is given to us freely, and because of this, we sometimes think it comes to too easily. 

Father Robert Capon, an Episcopal priest, once wrote a prayer that encapsulated the difficulty of living with the reality of God’s freely-given love and grace.  He said:

“Lord, please restore to us the comfort of merit and demerit. Show us that there is at least something we can do. Tell us that at the end of the day there will at least be one redeeming card of our very own. Lord, if it is not too much to ask, send us to bed with a few shreds of self-respect upon which we can congratulate ourselves. But whatever you do, do not preach grace. Give us something to do, anything; but spare us the indignity of this indiscriminate acceptance.”[4]

The ironic thing about this prayer is that even though it shows how we may grasp at something—anything—we can control about the relationship we have to God, this is the one prayer God will never answer.  This love and grace God gives us is outrageous, but to allow us to carve out a space of our very own, to pretend that we can continue to struggle in this world on our own, God will not allow that.  To do so would be abandonment, and God will never do that. Nor will God respect our claims to set the conditions of the love God offers to us or to others. 

This is the sixth Sunday after Easter.  And all throughout this Easter season our readings have been pointing us to the nature of this love that God has for us—our readings from the Acts of the Apostles, from the Gospel of John, and from especially from the first Epistle of John, which is in part a treatise on love.  Through Jesus’s resurrection appearances, we see a love that reconstitutes broken relationships, a love that pursues even when we think the object of God’s love is unworthy, even if that object of God’s love is one’s self. 

Though the Acts of the Apostles, we see the Holy Spirit constantly a few steps ahead of the disciples, showing them that Ethiopian eunuchs and Roman gentiles are within God’s grasp and loving purpose.  All the disciples can do is breathlessly make official the radical, barrier-breaking movements of God’s equal regard for all.  All the while the disciples--Peter especially--have to get over the revulsions engrained in them for profane animals and profane persons.  After the baptism we heard about today from Acts, Peter has to return to Jerusalem and explain to the offended disciples what happened, about which he said, “If God gave [those gentiles] the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?’[5]

The image of love scripture gives us is as wonderful as it is terrifying.  Assenting to it as a philosophical proposition—maybe that is possible. But how do we accept it?  Our relationships, our acquaintances, our common lives, our economics, all of these have a sense of quid pro quo so firmly rooted in them that it is so hard to imagine something so freely given and so unearned that also sometimes seems invisible.  

But there is also something attractive about this love.  Something that calls us to experience a reality greater than the one we see around us.  Something beyond the mundane, something that ignites holy desire and pushes us beyond our limits.  Something that strikes us a freely given but demands so much.  Others sense that attraction; even if it isn’t always clear that Christians act according to it.  Will we share what we know of such a mystery?

Beloved of God,

Who are we that we might hinder God?

Who might we prefer to set God’s love as conditional for?

Is it a particular person?

Is it a group of folks?

Is it yourself?

Where might the Holy Spirit be calling on each of us to break a boundary on God’s love we would rather keep in place?

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[1] Of the many definitions for ‘punk,’ in this context the word refers to a cowardly individual.

[2] John 11:1-16 (particularly v.16).

[3] At least in John (20:21-22).

[4] Robert Farrar Capon, Between Noon & Three: Romance, Law & the Outrage of Grace.

[5] Acts 11:17.