Sermon: Great Rejoicing at the Lost and Found

First Presbyterian Church

March 30, 2019, Lent 4C

Luke 15:11-32

 

Great Rejoicing at the Lost and Found

 

The trouble with these extremely familiar stories from the Bible is that, after we’ve heard or read them a few times, we quit listening. For example, today in churches across this country, there are (I am quite sure) thousands upon thousands of people sitting in pews whose minds all completely checked out, or will tune out, when they read or heard the words of verse 11 of this reading: “Then Jesus said, ‘There was a man who had two sons.’” I also expect that some number of such checked-out listeners are in this very sanctuary here. Oh, yeah, this one. We know this one. So what shall we do for lunch?

In truth, no preacher can truly hope to thwart that checking-out save for the intervention of the Holy Spirit in the hearts and minds of those listening. Nonetheless, we will go forth, supplying a fuller background for this familiar story, and hope that we’re all still around at the end just in case the Spirit shakes something loose in us that perhaps we haven’t heard or understood before.

We need to take note, for example, that this oh-so-familiar story is provoked (and that is the word) by those Pharisees again (probably not the same Pharisees who warned Jesus about Herod in the lesson a few weeks ago), this time joined by members of another group of religious leaders known simply as scribes. They witness a sight that was nothing less than offensive to them: tax collectors, and that vaguely defined class known only as “sinners” in their eyes. Truly this grumbling of theirs needs tone of voice to appreciate it fully, something that words printed on a page can’t quite supply: “This fellow welcomessinners and…and…and EATS with them!!!”, so rich is their disgust.

This is what provokes the telling of this very familiar parable. Keep this in your head here, no matter what.

In fact it provokes three parables, all with some connection to the theme of things (or people) lost and found. Besides the losing and the finding, each parable is also characterized by what might be called outsized joy, joy at the finding of what was lost that spills out onto friends and neighbors who might not have even had any idea what was going on. The one who lost the sheep: did his neighbors even know, and frankly, did they even care? And yet this man, leaving behind the “ninety-nine in the wilderness” (which really sounds a little bit irresponsible) and searching all over to find the lost one, then turns and goes to his friends and neighbors (did shepherds even have “friends and neighbors”? Their fellow shepherds, maybe?). His cry is “rejoice with me!” And then, here as in the next parable, we get this “moral of the story” that so great is the rejoicing in heaven over just one sinner who repents. Just one.

The parable of the woman and the lost coin unfolds similarly. It is lost; she searches all over the house; the coin is found; she calls the friends and neighbors to rejoice. Such coins (sometimes identified as “dowry coins”) might have been, for a woman in this time period, the last line of defense against utter poverty and destitution should her husband have decided to dispose of her with the speaking of a word, which was all a man had to do to divorce a woman at this time (the woman, naturally, had no such option). So yes, it was very important to her, but the rejoicing seems outsized still. But we get that same tag line idea again: “I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” What we find suitable for indifference, or maybe even outright disdain, is cause for massive celebration among the heavenly host.

And finally comes the story we all know. There are so many details that could be unpacked. The utter humiliation that the younger son visits upon his father by making this brash and disrespectful request could be its own sermon (and frequently is). Remember what kind of land these dwellers dwelled in; it was, from ancient time, the Promised Land, the land that God had delivered to their ancestors Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all that ancient story that told of how they even came to live on that land. This son is throwing away no less than a sacred birthright, and does so in what the King James Version so memorably calls “riotous” living. That might make it sound like too much fun, as might your NIV's "wild" living; maybe the NRSV’s “dissolute” living captures the futility of it all better. 

Also, look at the son’s moment of realization, when he “came to his senses.” We might have built it up into this grand tableaux of repentance in our overwhelming familiarity with the story, but let’s be real here: as “repentance” goes this is pretty weak sauce. Where is the contrition in realizing that he’d be better off living as one of his father’s hired hands, which really is about all the son manages to think and say? He’s been reduced to tending pigs (something no self-respecting Jew would have done) and being jealous of their slop, and this is the best “repentance” he can come up with? Is it really the best he can do, memorize a line to sell to his gullible old dad?

And yet…there’s this outsized rejoicing again. The father runs to meet his son (completely undignified), orders up a new robe for him and a great feast with the fatted calf (utterly humiliating, given what this son had done to him), and generally makes a fool of himself with rejoicing over this one lost son.

Oh, yeah, that other son shows up, and calls out his father for making a fool of himself, vilifies his brother (notice that there’s something in older brother’s accusations that we are never told the younger brother does?) and also complains about how dad never threw such a party for him. But don’t miss the father’s reply: “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.” This has always been there for you, my child; did you ever accept it? (And yes, for the most part, this older brother is the character in the story that most captures us “good church folk,” if we can stand to admit it.)

But don’t miss how the first two parables inform this one. The rejoicing over the one lost son is extravagant, over-the-top, maybe even wasteful, but the rejoicing over a lost sheep or lost coin was pretty over the top as well. It provokes scorn from the father's own son and maybe even bafflement from those neighbors who got called to the feast over that one ungrateful son, but did the neighbors really get that extreme rejoicing over the found sheep and coin? It is joy that seems to us inexplicable, maybe even if (maybe especially if) we’re the son who had abandoned the father instead of the one who stayed home. And it’s done over bare-minimum repentance from the younger son at that. 

This is the rejoicing over us, when we at last come home; this is the rejoicing to which we are called over one who at last comes home. It defies summary, really; God loves us, pursues us, and rejoices over us, and so much more. 

If we can’t manage to say it for such effusive and overwhelming rejoicing, maybe we should never say this: Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #415, Come, Ye Sinners, Poor and Needy; #440, Jesus, Lover of My Soul; #418, Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling

 

Sermon: Current Events and Ultimate Things

First Presbyterian Church

March 23, 2025, Lent 3C

Isaiah 55:1-9; Luke 13:1-9

 

Current Events and Ultimate Things

 

 

The beginning of this particular passage just seems…odd. On the surface it seems very much a non sequitir. It’s as if in the middle of a difficult, intense lecture or speech or sermon with a challenging question-and-answer session, someone suddenly blurted out “hey, didya hear what happened to Uncle Milton and those boys from over in Caney when they went down to Dallas?”

Jesus has been teaching, just before in Chapter 12, about avoiding hypocrisy, not being arrogant, avoiding worry, being watchful and not being caught, Jesus himself as a cause of division, and settling grievances with your adversary. It’s difficult stuff, to be sure, all these hard teachings one right after the other. And Jesus isn’t being at all sideways or sparing in his teaching; it’s all imperative – “beware…do not…therefore I tell you…be…know.” No wiggle room, no fudging, no passing the buck to anybody else. It’s all on you, dear listener, to hear and to change.

Given that background, one could argue that somebody in the crowd miiiight just have been feeling a bit stressed by all of this talk and looking to at least provide some distraction or relief. Having heard of an awful incident in the Temple in Jerusalem, where a group of Galilean pilgrims had been massacred while there to offer sacrifices; perhaps he first told it to his companions, and maybe somebody got up the courage to bring it up to Jesus. Luke doesn’t tell us much about how this happened aside from that vivid metaphor of their blood “mixed with their sacrifices.”

One thing about Jesus in the gospels and is that he is an extremely effective teacher. A lot of folks across Galilee think so, anyway, since his teaching – not just the miracles or exorcisms, but the actual straightforward teaching – was drawing and holding crowds across Galilee for hours or even days at a time. Some of you out there know just how startling an accomplishment that is.

In this case, Jesus takes this out-of-left-field interjection and makes it a teachable moment, in two parts. 

Part I: “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no!” Here Jesus addresses a rather pervasive belief in the Jewish culture of the time. In short, without a lot of foundation, the folk tended to assume that if something really bad happened to you, you must have been really bad or done something really bad to deserve it. That belief has spread even today.

The late TV preacher Pat Robertson, for example, used to get a lot of attention for blaming natural disasters on the affected city’s or area’s sinfulness – and it was usually a “sin” that was a favorite of Robertson’s to pick on. New Orleans got that treatment from Robertson after Hurricane Katrina, for example, and it wasn’t for tolerating so much poverty. The New York/New Jersey region also got such accusations after Hurricane Sandy. On the other hand, Robertson never seemed to blame horrible tornado outbreaks on the sinfulness of Alabamians or Mississippians or Missourians.

So first Jesus takes down that old belief, but then continues to use that interjection to make a point that brings the discussion back to his sermon subject, Part II: “…but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.”

Wait, what? If those interlocutors had hoped to distract Jesus or get him to let up on them … well, it didn’t work. Jesus is right back on the subject he had been teaching, all of which can be understood as part of the broader theme he now names as repentance. 

As if this weren’t enough, Jesus himself brings a second “current event” into the discussion, one in which a tower had collapsed at the town of Siloam, killing eighteen. Unlike the previous story, in which the Roman governor Pilate is clearly identified as the villain, this looks to be a tragic accident. A tower collapsed. As far as we can know, it just happened. But again, Jesus hammers the point home: “unless you repent, you too will all perish.” 

“Repent” and “repentance” are words that get used a lot in religious circles without much definition. You get told to “repent of your sins,” which sounds as if you go down a laundry list of bad things you did and say “I’m sorry,” you’ve repented. No. What Jesus is calling for is far beyond that. 

To give one example Jesus turns to a parable, in which a rich landowner is quite done with an unproductive fig tree. The gardener, though, pleads for one more year to give some extra attention to the tree. He’ll agitate the soil and add some extra fertilizer, and if it still doesn’t bear fruit, it can be cut down.

Unlike some of Jesus’s parables, this one is bluntly obvious. We – each of us – are the tree, and Jesus is the gardener pleading for us and promising to nurture us even more. Still, though, there is that looming “promise” that our time to bear fruit is not infinite. 

And here also is the “repentance” Jesus commands of the disciples, and of us. A fig tree exists to bear figs. If it doesn’t bear figs, it’s kind of pointless not to cut it down and replace it with a tree that will bear figs. Even the gardener doesn’t pretend that the tree should be given forever to bear fruit.

So, to get to the point: what does it mean to “bear fruit”?

Again, that’s a term that gets used a lot without a lot of clarity of definition. For some, it consists solely of turning other people into "Christians" – conversion is all, nothing else matters. For others, it’s all about good deeds or charitable giving or other obvious outward gestures. Those are good things, but in Luke, “repentance” cannot be reduced to outward changes. In true repentance, everything changes, both in each of us individually and in all of us as the body of Christ. We live differently, and we live together differently.

It’s possible that one of the best ways to understand how fully a repentant life changes might just be what we see in today’s reading from Isaiah. For some this presents an utterly joyful picture, while others are probably horrified by it (the idea that wine and milk are just being given away, with nobody profiting from it? That’s socialism, right?). <note: sarcasm>

Anyway, as Isaiah’s picture unfolds, we see what is really going on; the people have, at long last, accepted the providence of God, and submitted to God’s provision for their lives. We are called no longer to chase after what cannot satisfy, but to receive the true stuff of life from the Lord. Even here, though, the theme of repentance is sounded clearly: 

Seek the Lord while he may be found, call on him while he is near; let the wicked forsake their ways, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. (55:6-7, emphasis mine)

 

Nothing changes without change. Turning away from the desire for what cannot fulfill, the desire for stuff and money and comfort; this is where repentance is found. And repentance brings pardon; we are given a double statement of this – the Lord will have mercy, God will pardon – for extra emphasis. 

And that providence of God? This isn’t barely-get-by stuff. Don’t miss that last half of verse 2, and the invitation to “eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.” To appreciate this one we need to lay aside our modern dietary scruples and understand what God provides is good stuff. We aren’t being asked to starve ourselves or deprive ourselves for God (which makes this a strange Lenten reading, I guess, but still); God wants to give good.

But repentance is still there, waiting for us to take it up. 

Our lives being reoriented, turned upside down (or inside out, more likely) and faced only towards our Lord; it may seem an odd place to end up when one starts talking about current events, but when Jesus the teacher is in charge, the lessons you learn are not always what you think.

For The Great Teacher, Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #307, God of Grace and God of Glory; #435, There's a Wideness in God's Mercy; #800, Sometimes a Light Surprises

 

 

Sermon: The Destiny of a Prophet

First Presbyterian Church

March 16, 2025, Lent 2C

Luke 13:31-35

 

The Destiny of a Prophet

 

 

What happens to prophets?

While prophets and their words are scattered liberally across scripture, we often don’t find out in scripture what actually happens to those prophets. The prophet Samuel grows old and dies, and the prophet Elijah is ultimately taken up into heaven in that chariot of fire, but otherwise we generally don’t hear what happens to the likes of Nathan, the prophet who rebuked King David, or those whose names (like Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and such) are on so many of the books of Hebrew scripture. 

Clearly, though, those in Jesus’s time seemed to have a couple of “old sayings” on the subject. Earlier in the gospel of Luke, Jesus quotes one such saying, about how a prophet would be respected anywhere but his hometown. In today’s reading Jesus seems to be citing another such popular belief when, in his answer to those Pharisees who come to warn him about Herod, he says “for surely no prophet can die outside of Jerusalem,” from which he launches into a lament for the city, “you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you”.

Much as the biblical record doesn’t tell us much about the accuracy of this statement, the historical record outside of scripture doesn’t help much either. However, Luke’s readers would have some more recent examples of potential “prophets” who did indeed meet their demise in Jerusalem. The earliest example was James, the apostle best known as the first half of “James and John” in much of the gospel. Those who read part two of Luke’s account, what we know as the Acts of the Apostles, would also know the story of Stephen, the deacon turned apologist who was stoned to death in that city. Of course, by the time Luke’s gospel was being disseminated both the apostles Peter and Paul had been executed in Rome rather than Jerusalem, but even then the agitation against them that led to their respective executions had its origins in Jerusalem. The city, and the authorities both religious and political situated there, could be deadly for those charged to speak a word from God.

Besides the saying itself, its delivery to a group of apparently helpful Pharisees is also rather baffling. In the gospels and Acts Pharisees end up with a bad reputation, often portrayed as implacable enemies of Jesus. As is usually the case, the truth is a bit more nuanced. They were the target of much of Jesus’s denunciation, and they were often portrayed as setting “traps” for Jesus hoping to trick him into saying something they could use against him. But also, Pharisees keep inviting Jesus over for a meal, and (as here), there are those Pharisees who seem to want to keep Jesus from harm or at least want to hear more from him. 

Jesus’s response here is less concerned with the messengers than the source of the message, Herod the tetrarch of Galilee. (Tetrarch = “not quite king”, a title meant to remind Herod of the limits of his authority in the Roman Empire.) The term “fox” is not a compliment; foxes were regarded as clever but destructive creatures. While this answer overall is a bit tricky to untangle, the gist of it is this: Herod can’t touch me. I have my work to do, and God is the one who controls that. And my destiny is Jerusalem. 

That last has been the case for a while in Luke’s gospel. As far back as 9:51, shortly after the Transfiguration, we are told this:

When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. (NRSV)

 

“Set his face” is about as much resolution, determination, and fierceness as one can act upon. Even from this point, Jesus knows his destiny, and it ends up in Jerusalem, at the hands of the authorities there. It won’t necessarily be that direct a route, and there will be a lot of stops on the way, such as we are witnessing here in chapter 13. There is teaching to be done, there are illnesses to be healed and demons to be cast out, but all of these things take place in the context of a determined journey with only one possible final destination. And even here how that finale will play out is foreshadowed, with that oblique “on the third day” reference that Luke’s readers could not miss. None of this was at all affected by anything Herod could possibly do.

Just because Jesus knew what was coming in Jerusalem didn’t mean Jesus held any sort of grudge or animus against that place. The oft-quoted lament, heard everywhere from impassioned sermons to the music of Felix Mendelssohn, contains some striking imagery (the hen gathering her chicks under her wings is a particularly eye-catching and provocative way of portraying God) and makes clear the distress of God at that city’s long historical unwillingness to be gathered in. His reaction to Jerusalem is one of grief, not anger.

Even if this passage makes a little more sense in the context of Jesus’s resolve to go to Jerusalem, it’s still an awkward fit in our ears in some ways. What exactly does this mean for us? What do we do about all this? What does it mean? What does it mean to follow a Jesus who determinedly “set his face” towards a violent fate?

Maybe this is where the “journey” part matters. As noted before, on this journey it’s not as if Jesus has suddenly stopped teaching and healing. There are still a lot of meals to be shared. There’s still the Lord’s Prayer to be taught to his disciples. In this last portion of Luke, after 9:51, we get the parables of the Good Samaritan; the thief in the night; the banquet, and the lost sheep, coin, and son (we call that one the “prodigal” son); the dishonest manager; the rich man and Lazarus; and many more (and that’s just through chapter 15). Zacchaeus’s story is still to come, as well as that of blind Bartimaeus. 

Maybe the point of this passage is to listen to what Jesus teaches, and to “go and do likewise.” Maybe the point is to see what Jesus does, and to “go and do likewise.” 

Maybe we are supposed to be following Jesus in order to be like Jesus, not by ending up slated for an execution but by speaking and teaching good news and ministering healing to those who suffer; by standing up for and standing with those the world deems expendable and oppressable; by being the agent of Christ’s work in God’s world. Maybe that, more than anything, is the point. It’s uncomfortable and challenging, but it’s hard to see how it’s not the point here.

The only journey we’re really interested in is Jesus’s. The only fate or destiny that really matters to us is Jesus’s, especially that “on the third day” part that is the whole reason we can even bother with enough hope to minister this way in this world, where the only ones who seem to care about our ongoing ruin of our planet are the children who have to live with the consequences. 

So, we minister, we proclaim, and we wait with Jesus, and we watch for that third day, when despite all opposition and oppression Jerusalem can muster, Jesus completes his work.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #396, Brethren, We Have Met to Worship; #213, In the Cross of Christ I Glory; #543, God, Be the Love to Search and Keep Me

Sermon: Famished

First Presbyterian Church

March 9, 2025, Lent 1C

Luke 4:1-13

 

Famished

 

Every year in the lectionary cycle, as the season of Lent commences, the first Sunday of Lent features as its gospel reading an account of the temptation of Jesus. Conveniently, all three of the synoptic gospels include such an account (though the gospel of John does not), but the three accounts given can differ in remarkable ways.

Mark’s gospel, generally agreed to be the first to be written, barely does more than mention the temptation; Jesus is in the desert for forty days, being tempted, Jesus was “with the wild beasts,” and angels ministered to him. That’s about it. Matthew’s account is more detailed, like Luke’s, but reverses the order of the second and third temptations that Luke includes. (One could almost make a sermon of that difference, but not today. Maybe another year.) Matthew also includes the angels ministering to Jesus in the wake of the temptation, which Luke does not.

One thing Luke and Matthew agree upon, though, is Jesus’s condition after forty days of this fasting and temptation. Both of the gospels make sure we understand that Jesus had eaten nothing for forty days by that time, and both use the word that we get translated here in the NRSV as “famished.”

“Famished” is a pretty visceral word. It’s one thing to say simply that you’re hungry, no matter how much emphasis you put on it – “I’m so hungry” is probably something like you have heard from your children at some point or another. “Starving” is strong, but also carries a separate, more clinical meaning – how many times were you chastised for not cleaning your plate because of those starving children in Africa? – that in some ways detracts from its immediate forcefulness.

For Luke (and Matthew too) to say that Jesus was “famished” feels different. Luke has already shown something of a flair for drama so far, and this certainly has a definite emotional and dramatic force. It cuts through the “duh” factor – well, of course Jesus is hungry, he hasn’t eaten for forty days – and brings home the raw sensation of the moment, the weakness and vulnerability inherent in a human being in Jesus’s condition at that particular moment. It also reminds us of that which we sometimes need to recall; that Jesus, Son of God that he was even walking about on earth, was also fully human, and in this moment painfully human. 

So, not a surprise that the tempter first appeals to that famished-ness, is it? Turn these stones to bread and eat up. And if you think about it, there were an awful lot of hungry people – maybe even famished – who could be fed by such a maneuver, and plenty of stones just waiting to be turned to bread. 

But Jesus turns away that temptation, as he does with the temptation to claim all worldly power (even though the tempter was not the one to hand out such power, no matter what he might have claimed) and to demonstrate divine protection (in which Jesus answers the tempter’s quotation of a psalm with his third straight citation from Deuteronomy). Absent those ministering angels in Matthew, Jesus’s temptation ends as the tempter departs until an “opportune time,” which will turn out to be three years later, when a malcontent disciple named Judas provides the means to bring Jesus down. At least that's what the tempter thought.

Still, though, we have to marvel at how Jesus swatted aside those temptations like a tall basketball star rejecting shots around the goal. And in his famished condition, it can be even harder for us to comprehend. I know I can’t think straight when I’m even moderately hungry, and I’ll be the first to admit I’ve never truly been famished in my lifetime. 

How does he do it?

Well, there is one other aspect of Luke’s account of the temptation that is different from Matthew’s and Mark’s stories. Both Matthew and Mark describe Jesus as being led out to the wilderness for this experience by the Holy Spirit. That can be hard for us to stomach, the idea that it was the Spirit that put Jesus in this position. After all, doesn’t the Lord’s Prayer specifically ask God not to lead us into temptation? Of course, one might argue that this experience is why Jesus teaches the disciples to ask for this, but that’s a topic for another sermon. Here, the Holy Spirit leads Jesus out into the wilderness. (Mark puts it even more harshly in his brief account, saying in 1:12 that the Spirit “immediately drove him out into the wilderness” when he was barely dry from his baptism.) 

You can talk about things like how this experience clarifies exactly what Jesus’s mission is on earth, or what his relationship to God is, or any number of things like that, but this idea of the Spirit leading Jesus into temptation isn’t ever going to sit easily with us. But there is one more element of Luke’s temptation account that is unique to him that we haven’t spoken of yet. 

Notice how this passage begins: “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness.” 

The Spirit doesn’t lead Jesus into the wilderness unarmed or undefended. Jesus faced the tempter full of the Holy Spirit, and that’s a mismatch every time. No matter how famished he might have been, Jesus was full of what mattered; physical hunger was no match for spiritual fullness. 

Here’s the thing, though: the same thing is true for us, when we face temptation - at least if we would simply accept it. After the famous part of John 14, the part about “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” Jesus tells his disciples this: (14:16-17)

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.

 

We are not left alone and defenseless. That Advocate, that Holy Spirit that filled Jesus out in that wilderness is with us and would fill us in that same way in whatever time of temptation or testing we might ever face. 

What is it with us, that we don’t remember this? Do we really think that our Lord abandons us in these times of trial? We are, if we will accept it, as armed as Jesus was facing this temptation. Let the Spirit do her work. Let the Spirit fill us. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #165, The Glory of These Forty Days; #215, What Wondrous Love is This; #167, Forty Days and Forty Nights

Sermon: In Light Inaccessible

First Presbyterian Church

March 2, 2025, Transfiguration C

Exodus 34:29-35; Luke 9:28-36

 

In Light Inaccessible

 

 

For our last hymn today we will be singing a pretty familiar hymn, "Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise." The opening words of that hymn put before us an image that might seem counterintuitive, on the surface;

Immortal, invisible, God only wise,

In light inaccessible hid from our eyes...

 

Think about that for a moment. Particularly in scripture or in theology or preaching, "light" is almost always about illuminating, making things seen or more clearly visible, undoing darkness in some way. Think of the prologue of the gospel of John, in which "the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." Or consider the image invoked in Isaiah 42:6, in which the people are promised that "I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light for the Gentiles..." (an image repeated in Isaiah 49:6). Or consider a simple image like that of Matthew 5:14, "You are the light of the world," after which Jesus points out that one doesn't cover a lamp with a bushel but rather puts it on a lampstand so that it "gives light to everyone in the house." That's just for starters.

Even the more general usage of our language suggests such a lean towards light as illuminating - even that word carries such a shade, not to mention such a word as "enlightened." We speak of a whole epoch of history as "the Enlightenment" because of the supposed benefit of greater learning and reason that was attributed to the age.

So what's with that phrase in the hymn, "in light inaccessible hid from our eyes"? 

Think of what happens when a solar eclipse comes around, like we had just a year ago. The one warning you get again and again is don't look directly into the sun during an eclipse. Frankly, that's not a thing you're supposed to be doing any time, but the warnings about eye damage come out especially intensely around an eclipse. 

There is such a thing, evidently, as too much light. It isn't that common, but a thing can be so brightly illuminated that the thing itself is no longer visible, only the overwhelming light illuminating it. Such a phenomenon doesn't have quite so much scriptural precedent behind it, but a telling example can be found in 1 Timothy 6:16, in which the Lord is described as the one who "alone is immortal and lives in unapproachable light." One gets a feeling that Walter Chalmers Smith might have had that passage in the back of his head in penning the words of that hymn. 

Maybe this is something we should keep in mind in approaching the two readings we have heard today. The curious reading from Exodus, in which Moses's face glows with light after his encounters with God on Mount Sinai, provides one small glimpse. Moses doesn't realize what's going on until he comes down from the mountain and to the people of Israel to find that they're all shrinking back from him in fear and puzzlement. Moses ends up having to work out a system whereby he wraps his face in a veil when among the people, taking it off when going back to the mountain. The people cannot understand that shining, and to be fair, who could blame them?

The telling of the Transfiguration of Jesus found in Luke's gospel might also point to something about that much light. We are told that while Jesus was praying, "the appearance of his face changed and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning." That probably wasn't a sight people who routinely walked on long, dusty roads were accustomed to seeing. Then Moses and Elijah enter the scene, and we already know Moses knows something about one's face changing appearance; the two of them appear "in glorious splendor" and are talking to Jesus about the events to come.

This is all strange enough; throw in that the disciples were barely awake for all of this, and one can almost be sympathetic to Peter's bungling suggestion about building festival-booth tabernacles for the three shining figures. At this, light is overcome by a cloud, a voice speaks from the cloud, and then - poof! - all of that scene is gone, with only Jesus standing there before the disciples.

Amidst all of that shining and all that dazzling and all that light, Peter, and presumably the other disciples with him, didn't see things right. In all that light, his eyes betrayed him. To be fair, he would have been raised with Moses and Elijah as "heroes of the faith," so to speak, but in that moment of illumination he saw things wrong.

It is particularly telling what the voice from the cloud (we may presume bringing instruction from God at the minimum) finally says to the disciples: "This is my Son, whom I have hosen; listen to him." Not "behold" or "see" or any of those clearly visual words, but "listen to him." The disciples have this amazing privilege that we modern Christians cannot possibly imagine, walking with Jesus in person, and their job is to listen to him, not to get blinded by the light.

A quote from Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, a bishop in the Eastern Orthodox Church based in England, offers some insight, just maybe, into what's going on here:

It is not the task of Christianity to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us progressively aware of a mystery. God is not so much the object of our knowledge as the cause of our wonder.

 

We could also turn to the Apostle Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 13, which we read just a few weeks ago: "For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part ... for now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully ... " (9, 12). 

This is a challenge for we who are steeped in the post-Enlightenment ethos of learning by observation. We see the thing, we observe it, we learn from doing so. That generally works fine in a lab or perhaps in fieldwork. But our eye cannot see through all the light inaccessible, to borrow the phrase from the hymn. 

Even our typical cultural concept of "mystery" betrays us here. If you were to see or hear the word "mystery" outside of a church setting, there's a decent chance the word might be referring to a novel, by Agatha Christie or some other such, or to endless numbers of movies or TV shows sold as "mysteries," with the implicit social contract that the "mystery" will be neatly solved and packaged within the hour or two hours of viewing time, and with the implicit reward that if you observe carefully and follow the clues you'll be "right" about "whodunit." 

That's not how the mystery of faith works. We can listen to Christ, as that voice in the cloud tells the disciples, but we're not listening for clues; we are listening for the mystery itself, the very thing that our eyes cannot comprehend.

What the disciples saw on that mountain that day was, at least in part, a mystery. This teacher with whom they had been journeying around Judea or Galilee was far more than "just a teacher," far more than "just a rabbi." To contradict the old Doobie Brothers song, Jesus is way, way more than "just alright." And this side of eternity, we're not going to grasp it all. No preacher can preach enough sermons, no teacher can teach enough lessons to wrap the faith up neatly and package it up neatly and to tie it off in a neat bow. Any "Christianity" that promises you all the answers to life's problems is lying to you, and there is plenty of "Christianity" being forced upon the public square right now that purports to do exactly that. 

We suffer a plague of people who know. Our public discourse is glutted with supposed "faith leaders" who have got God pegged. They can tell you exactly which parts of scripture are sacred and inviolable, and which can be safely ignored or tossed aside. They can tell you exactly whom you're allowed to hate and whom you must follow without hesitation. These are the ones who back "patriots" who do unpatriotic things, and who back dictators who launch utterly unjust and despicable wars for petty spite. 

Friends, no. That's not how it is, and to the degree that the Transfiguration reminds us that we don't have God all neatly packaged, this is the best possible news. We know only in part; we may know more over time, but this side of eternity we know only in part; but then, only then, we will see face to face. In the meantime, our only recourse really is to follow the instruction of the divine voice from the cloud, and "listen to him!" 

The disciples got just a glimpse of that 'face to face,' and they weren't ready for it. The mystery wasn't theirs to solve, it was theirs to wonder. So it is for us. We know only in part now. The time will come, but that time is not now. For now, we can know the One who is God's only Son, God's chosen, and listen to him. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #156, Sing of God Made Manifest; #---, Upon a holy mountain; #12, Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise

Sermon: In the Blinking of an Eye

First Presbyterian Church

February 23, 2025, Epiphany 7C

1 Corinthians 15:51-58

 

In the Blinking of an Eye

 

 

Before we get into this final message from Paul's first letter to the church at Corinth, in which the apostle has by turns chided, rebuked, encouraged, and sometimes rhetorically shaken his head at the Corinthians and their missteps of word and deed, I have a confession to make. There are times when I can, if not necessarily agree with the missteps of those followers, at least understand where they come from, and even on some occasions find some measure of sympathy for them and their processes of thought and feeling by which those missteps come.

Honestly, one such experience frequently comes to mind.

Most of you here probably know the experience of which I speak. A day of "preparation" that involves drinking the foulest concoction imaginable, followed by a particular variation of "emptying yourself" that is not at all the type contemplated in scripture or theology. Then you go to your local medical facility and get sedated while they stick cameras in you to see if anything bad is happening in your intestines. Some of you know.

I've had more than my share of those.

When I have a week like that, I can understand why the Corinthians would be icked out by the idea of our physical bodies being resurrected.

Paul's continuing instruction on resurrection probably wasn't inspired by any particular physical experience, but one could see the dissatisfaction with our physical bodies resonating with what Paul offers up here. The intervening material since last week's reading speaks of our physical bodies with such descriptions as "perishable" (v.42), "dishonor" (43), and "weakness" (43). At last in verse 50 Paul summarizes this rather convoluted discussion with the assertion that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable." This would, on the surface, seem to present a problem for Paul's whole claim of resurrection for us because of Christ's resurrection.

Of course, Paul knows that and knows what he's about to add. With a bit of dramatic flourish - "Listen, I tell you a mystery!" -- Paul makes clear that the body that rises won't remain in this precarious physical state. Perishability will be wrapped up in imperishability; mortal will be clothed in immortal. Paul even gets a little rhapsodic, borrowing from Isaiah and Hosea to celebrate how "death has been swallowed up in victory," and taunting with "Where, O Death, is your victory? Where, O Death, is your sting?"

Again, some of the in-between material is helpful here. In verses 36-38 Paul summoned up the highly apt image of sowing seeds and reaping, well, something other than seeds. The seed that is planted in the ground looks nothing like what grows out of the ground. And we expect this when we are planting and harvesting or designing a garden. We'd be mighty disappointed if we planted seed and later harvested ... nothing but more seed. That wouldn't make much of a garden either.

So as that seed is greatly transformed as it germinates in the earth, the "seed" of the physical body is greatly transformed in the moment of what the old spiritual called "that great gettin'-up morning."

All of this is quite poetic in its way, and the passage has gained a great deal of popularity as a text for funeral services (or Services of Witness to the Resurrection, to be all Presbyterian about it). But for all of this effect, for all of this sense of comfort or reassurance, this is not really Paul's point to this whole discussion stretching across this whole fifteenth chapter. Paul saves that last point for the final verse. You can guess that Paul's big statement is coming when he breaks out the Greek word Ωστε (oste), which we generally translate as "therefore."

And what's the big "therefore" point? It's pretty simple:

Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. (NRSV)

 

"Be steadfast." Stand strong. Hang on. Keep at it. Keep doing the work. And that last encouragement - "you know that in the Lord your work is not in vain." It echoes quite nicely the words from the first verse of this chapter.

All of this talk of resurrection and eternal union with God in Christ and transformed bodies and all of this isn't about what is yet to come; it's about what we do now with the lives we are given to live here on earth, in union with one another in the body of Christ, in obedience to our God, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. It's about not giving up, not deciding it's pointless or hopeless, not falling away or giving up or wavering, but keeping on and going about the work and remaining resolute about doing that work.  

Sometimes it helps for some people to peek ahead to the end of a particularly intense novel, just to be reassured that there's a good ending ahead. (I'd never do that, but I'm told some folks do.) That's kinda what Paul has given the Corinthians here: a peek ahead, something to hold on to in the face of seeming hopelessness or pointlessness. 

We don't lose hope because of the opposition of sworn enemies of God, or the opposition of God's most zealous defenders (and these days it's hard to tell the difference between the two). We don't get resigned to the ways of this world because of, well, the ways of this world. We don't despair in the face of bleak hopelessness all around or in what seems like a complete lack of progress. We don't even despair over our own broken-down, impossible-to-maintain physical bodies that find new ways to betray us every week. We remain steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord, our work is not in vain. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal unless otherwise indicated): #369, Blessing and Honor; #---, Thanks Be to God; #846. Fight the Good Fight.

Sermon: ...if Christ has not been raised...

First Presbyterian Church

February 16, 2022, Epiphany 6C

1 Corinthians 15:12-26

 

...if Christ has not been raised...

 

 

To die, to sleep;

To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub:

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause—there's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life.

--Shakespeare, Hamlet, III:1

 

 

These words from Hamlet's famous "to be, or not to be" soliloquy, are of course broadly famous as a key moment of that character's struggle with what to do in what he increasingly sees as a hopeless situation. So burdened is he that he is contemplating suicide. 

This particular portion of the soliloquy contains a particular phrase that has taken on a life well beyond what Shakespeare might have imagined. The phrase "shuffle off this mortal coil" has become a commonplace slang reference to death, and especially death as a leaving behind of the physical life. Note that the soliloquy contemplates "what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil"; while the body is dead, evidently the spirit is still kicking, at least enough to be tormented by dreams. 

Based on today's reading from 1 Corinthians, we'd have to guess that the Apostle Paul would get pretty frustrated with this soliloquy, maybe even jumping up and exiting the theater in a huff. If anything is made clear in today's verses, it is that resurrection is real, and it is not merely spiritual. If you were wondering after last week's reading why Paul was so adamant about providing that whole list of witnesses to the resurrected Christ, you now have your answer. 

It seems that there were some among the Corinthian fellowship who were perhaps still (as they were in so many things) under the influence of certain Greco-Roman ways of thinking about the relationship between the soul and the body. In much philosophy, particularly following Plato, soul and body were separate things. In short, much of that thought saw the body as a thing to be escaped; let the cludgy old flesh die and the spirit be set free upon death. Not all Greco-Roman thought accepted this - the Epicureans and Stoics were two such examples - but a good bit of such thought held that death was the chance for the soul to be free of the body, fulfilled at last. 

It should be noted that such a philosophical bent doesn't necessarily result in an outright skeptical or denialist position about physical life after death. It isn't as if Corinthian objectors were necessarily getting all riled up about this talk of resurrection because it offended them intellectually; it's also quite possible that they were offended emotionally by the whole idea. In other words, such an objection might be framed not as "that's impossible" or "that's ridiculous"; it might as easily have been framed as "oh, gross" or "why would you want that?" When one is conditioned intellectually or emotionally to see the body as an encumbrance, being taught that your body is part of the whole resurrection package can be a shock to the system.

It might be easy for us moderns to scoff at such thoughts or fears, but let's check ourselves: are we that far from such attitudes about body and soul, really?

That line from Hamlet's soliloquy, for example, and the evolved interpretation of it as being freed from the body, seems pretty Corinthian in some ways. Are our old gospel hymns and songs completely free from the whole idea of, say, our disembodied souls floating off to Heaven while our bodies remain in the grave or in whatever state they have been treated after death? Or take the whole idea of ghosts, for example - what is that spirit doing floating around all un-embodied? If we're not making popular-culture fun with ghosts as disembodied spirits, we're making horror movies about "dis-emspirited" bodies, or zombies. For what it's worth, that image of a body in, shall we say, really rough condition, wandering the earth creating terror, is probably not that far off from what those Corinthians might have thought about resurrected bodies. 

There's another way that the whole "being rid of the body" idea becomes particularly alluring: when those bodies suffer illness or pain. I know that many of you here in this sanctuary, and likely many of you on the live stream as well, have experienced that struggle, either for yourself or for a loved one or friend; I know I have. We even acknowledge this struggle in the liturgy for the Service of Witness to the Resurrection, when we offer our thanks to God that for the deceased, "death is past and pain ended." Being ready to be rid of the physical stuff is not uncommon, when we think about it.

However we frame it, Paul is having none of it. And the biggest reason for Paul's agitation is not any particular concern about disembodied spirits or dis-emspirited bodies or anything like that. No, for the apostle, horrible thing about denying resurrection is that if you say there is no resurrection of the dead, then you are saying that Christ was not resurrected from the dead. And that Paul cannot accept.

"If Christ has not been raised," all of Paul's work is in vain.

"If Christ has not been raised," the faith of the Corinthians (such as it is), or of any of those to whom Paul has ministered, is in vain.

"If Christ has not been raised," Paul and his fellow laborers are liars. If the dead are not raised, somehow, some way, some time, then Christ is not raised. Paul and his fellow laborers have done all this work in proclaiming Christ raised from the dead, which can't be so if the dead are not raised, he says. 

"If Christ has not been raised," the faith of the Corinthians, and for that matter your own faith, are not only in vain, but futile, even pointless. You are hopelessly mired in sin with no redemption coming.

"If Christ has not been raised," the dead in Christ are not even that - not even "in Christ"; they're just dead.

"If Christ has not been raised," if our hope in Christ was only about this walking-around human life, then (in one of the most heart-wrenching lines of all scripture) "we of all people are most to be pitied." 

But! "But", as Paul reminds his readers, that's not the case. But, as Paul reminds his readers, "Christ has indeed been raised from the dead." Here he comes up with the evocative phrase "the first fruits of those who have died" to describe Christ. And of course, if Christ is only the "first fruits," we are led to believe there are more "fruits" to come. In case it's not clear, that would be us, when our time comes. 

Again, you have to tune in for one more week to get how Paul envisions all this working out. Verses 21-23 give some description: 

For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being. For as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.

 

We get just a little tease there of Paul's "big finish," speaking of the return of Christ and where we fit into it. But for this point, we are reminded that as Christ was raised from the dead, the same will be true for those who die in Christ. It's worth remembering that for readers of Paul's own time, Christ's death was in living memory. 

It's a different challenge for us, nearly two thousand years after the fact, to hold on to that hope, and clearly many today who call themselves "Christians" have none of that hope, but have placed all their hope on power in this world. But Paul is insistent that this is our hope. We don't live hopeless lives. We don't live in vain. We are not cast off by God to be forgotten or to disappear into oblivion. Our future is with God. We have a future, and our future is with God. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #35, Praise Ye the Lord, the Almighty; #246, Christ Is Alive!; #250, In the Bulb There Is a Flower