Sermon: Can These Bones Live?

First Presbyterian Church, East Moline, IL

March 22, 2026, Lent 5A

Ezekiel37:1-14; Psalm 130; John 11:1-45

 

Can These Bones Live?

 

 

You might be caught off guard by the tone of that psalm we read earlier.

It's a psalm, at least until those last two verses, that is about as frankly bleak and despair-laden as anything you might see in scripture. That opening phrase - "Out of the depths" - has proven awfully alluring for many kinds of artists seeking to portray a state of despair or darkness. It shows up on four different Sundays in the Revised Common Lectionary, has been set to music many times (sometimes under its Latin heading "De profundis"), and has inspired writers such as Elizabeth Barret Browning, Oscar Wilde, Federico Garcia Lorca, and C.S. Lewis.

It's probably not an accident that this psalm is paired with these two scriptures offered up for the church on this fifth Sunday of Lent, readings that come a little bit like a slap in the face (or maybe a slap in the faith) at this time of the liturgical year. Both of them have the temerity to offer up, two solid weeks before the observance of the Resurrection on Easter Sunday, stories of new life being brought to that which was dead. "Out of the depths," indeed.

The obvious move, the one most pastors I know are likely making, would probably be to go to John’s account of Jesus’s raising of Lazarus. After all, that’s a whopper of a reading, both in terms of its sheer length (forty-five verses!) and the impact it has on the story of Jesus’s earthly ministry. Honestly, one of these years I might be tempted to take this story and break it up over the first five weeks of Lent; I honestly think there might be about five sermons in there.

You get Jesus dawdling about going to see Lazarus, and he gets a bit of what-for over that - "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." You get what was in the KJV the shortest verse in the Bible – “Jesus wept” (every kid I knew was quick to claim that as one of their "memory verses" in Sunday school). You get the warning that if Jesus really goes through with having the tomb opened after four days, it would, well, smell, as un-embalmed bodies do after a while, even today. You get, above all, Lazarus coming out of the tomb. If you push later into John's gospel, you find that his raising of Lazarus is part of why the religious authorities are so intent on getting rid of Jesus. There's so much possibility in this account, and I have no doubt that a lot of those sermons getting preached today are going to be about the best sermons that those preacher friends of mine are going to preach this season.

But I still can’t look away from Ezekiel’s story, the one that prompted James Weldon Johnson to create the song "Dry Bones" and get his brother to set it to music.

Ezekiel is, to put it in modern vernacular, one messed-up dude. He was a priest in Jerusalem who got carried away in the first wave of exile to Babylon, when the occupying forces chose only to “cut off the head” of Jerusalem – that is, take away its leaders, including its religious leaders. The puppet king installed after this turned out not to be quite such a puppet after all, and when he stopped paying tribute the Babylonians returned and destroyed the city.

This experience seems to have taken a particular toll on Ezekiel. Ezekiel was most likely, in modern terms, a victim of psychological trauma, most likely resulting in what we would call clinical depression. The outlandish nature of some of his visions (including this one), some of his prophetic behaviors that make even Jeremiah look tame by comparison, and his sometimes-extreme tone in calling out his people and their kings for their sinfulness and rebellion suggest a man who would at minimum be deep into therapy in modern times, if not something more intense.

And it is to this broken, traumatized old priest that God brings this deeply creepy, and yet deeply hopeful, vision of death being raised up into new life. Actually, that’s not quite right. This isn’t Lazarus still more or less in one piece just waiting for the call. This is not mere death; this is a destroyed, desiccated, disassembled, dehydrated kind of death, way beyond any kind of haunted house or Hollywood horror movie. And before this scene of absolute lifelessness, God asks old messed-up Ezekiel, “Mortal, can these bones live?”

There’s a lot of wisdom in Ezekiel’s answer: “O Lord God, you know.” God was clearly up to something, and Ezekiel (perhaps all the more because of his trauma) had the wit not to get in the way. God gives Ezekiel the command to “prophesy to these bones,” and maybe only someone who had seen too much, someone as broken and hurting as Ezekiel, could take such a command seriously enough to carry it out. He does, and behold, the bones find their way back to each other, they take on all the tissue and flesh that had long ago dried up and rotted away, and there are…bodies.

Not people, not yet: just bodies, bodies that were reconstructed and whole, but “there was no breath in them” – no wind, no spirit. It’s not quite like in the account from John, in which after Jesus called to Lazarus he was indeed alive, but still all bound up in the burial cloths in which he had been wrapped. Lazarus needed release; he still needed to be cut loose from the old trappings of death that still clung to him. These bodies in front of Ezekiel still needed breath, spirit, life itself. They aren't just dried-out old bones anymore, but there is still no life in them.

So, of course, God tells Ezekiel to “prophesy to the breath.” Ezekiel obeyed (what else was he going to do at this point?), and from “the four winds” came the breath that breathed life into these lifeless bodies. As Ezekiel recounts it, they stood up, a “vast multitude,” waiting.

Waiting. Is that where we are?

Verses 11-14 bring Ezekiel's bizarre experience home. In this vision, for that is what all this has been, those dried-up bones are nothing less than God's people, the ones conquered and exiled and occupied and crushed and living without any kind of hope whatsoever. All that Ezekiel has been commanded to do before the valley of the dry bones, God will do for God's people, says God to Ezekiel. It's not just about the bones taking on flesh; it's about the breath, the spirit, being placed within them. It's about being brought back to life again.

That message of hope has come through across the centuries, not least as that previously mentioned song that connected to the still-developing civil rights movement in the United States in the early twentieth century. In the early 1920s the great poet and dramatist and author James Weldon Johnson seized upon this story to evoke a movement that was itself still coming together, complete with lyrics about the foot bone connecting to the heel bone and the heel bone connecting to the ankle bone and you know how the rest of it goes. His brother Rosamond Johnson created the tune, and the rest is history (it certainly got altered in later years).

So, where are we in this trio of readings? Are we the psalmist, reduced to crying "out of the depths" but still waiting on the Lord despite it all, still not quite letting go of hope? Are we Lazarus, newly alive again but waiting to be freed from the bonds that keep us from moving and doing? Are we Martha and Mary complaining that Jesus didn't come quickly enough? Are we the dried old bones, without hope? Are we the reassembled bodies made physically whole but without breath, without spirit? Are we the newly breathing and living, standing ready, waiting for whatever God calls us to do?

Or, maybe, are we Ezekiel? Seen too much, been broken too much in too many places by too many things? Are we too broken to hope even a little bit, and yet so broken that we have nothing left to do but hope? Are we so broken that the moment we see or hear any little thing, any sign or word from God, we're going to cling to as if our lives depend on it, because maybe they do? Can we respond, along with the old prophet, with that kind of obedience to the most ridiculous or insane-sounding commands (I mean, really, "prophesy to these bones"?)? Are we desperate enough for that?

Or are we still too sure of ourselves, too much in control, too "sane" to think that any such outlandish (and kind of gruesome) command of God could be real? Are we too much "good church folk" to find a thing to hold on to in such horrific scenes, to hear God, to hear any word from God in such bizarre circumstances?

“Mortal, can these bones live?” “O Lord God, you know.” Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal unless otherwise indicated): #424, Out of the Depths; #---, Rise Up; #286, Breathe on Me, Breath of God

 

Sermon: The Church Under Repair

First Presbyterian Church, East Moline, IL

October 26, 2025, Reformation

Psalm 46; Jeremiah 31:31-34; 

         Romans 3:19-28; John 8:31-36

 

 

The Church Under Repair

 

Today we are celebrating the anniversary of the Reformation.

Of course this is not strictly correct. We are celebrating the anniversary of one particular branch of the Reformation, or more precisely yet, one key event in one particular branch of the Reformation – an event which, to be sure, may not have happened quite precisely in the way it is often depicted, and which (if it happened that way) happened more than five hundred years ago this coming Friday, not today.

But, to keep things accurate: it was on October 31, 1517, that Martin Luther, then a young-ish German monk assigned to teach classes on scripture at the University of Wittemburg, first promulgated his ninety-five theses, or arguments, on the corruptions of the church and the need for reform. The theses were definitely sent to his superiors at the Vatican; popular lore also says he nailed a copy of those ninety-five theses to the door of the church at Wittemburg, as depicted in a number of popular paintings, though more concrete documentation of that event is not so easy to come by.

It would not, contrary to some portrayals of the story, have necessarily been a scandalous thing to do to use the doors of the church for such a purpose; in a still-rather-medieval town like Wittemburg, those doors were quite possibly a virtual bulletin board for the town, and Luther’s biggest difficulty might have been clearing a space to post his own rather substantial document. 

The corruptions charged by Luther included such practices (under the guise of raising funds for building projects) as the selling of indulgences, something that smelled way too much like buying forgiveness of sin to Luther. His theses enumerated scriptural and moral arguments against that and other practices and called for a sweeping reform of the church to eliminate such corruptions.

Luther was a pretty unlikely candidate to trigger such an upheaval; much of his adult life had been consumed with nearly crippling self-doubt, he being convinced that he could never be good enough for God. The supreme irony of Luther’s career is that the study of scripture his new teaching vocation demanded of him had the effect of convincing him, ultimately, that he was right; of his own efforts he never would be good enough; a passage like today’s reading from Romans (as well as several others from that book) showed him that he was saved not by any work or effort of his own, but only by the great gift of God’s grace. So liberated, Luther found the nerve to bear witness against the all-powerful church even at the cost of his own excommunication, and thousands of others found similar courage to follow into something new and unknown,

Luther does teach us a lesson, one applicable even to us modern Christians; things don’t change if we don’t speak up. Whether perpetrated by church, corporation (an entity unknown to Luther, of course), or government (or by the thoroughly unholy alliance of all three), injustice and corruption aren’t simply going to go away by themselves. Followers of Christ are obliged to bear witness – to speak out – against those injustices, no matter how pervasive or powerful, and no matter how much it costs us our standing in our community.

Let me repeat: followers of Christ are obliged to bear witness – to speak out – against injustices, no matter how pervasive or powerful, and no matter how much it costs us our standing in our community. Otherwise we’re fooling ourselves. After all, the word “protest” is embedded in the name “Protestant.” It’s in our spiritual D.N.A., so to speak.

Of course, Luther’s “reformation” was not the only one that took root in the church during this period. John Calvin was all of eight years old when Luther promulgated those theses, but by 1536 (at age 27) he produced his monumental theological treatise Institutes of the Christian Religion, which became a bulwark of the branches of Protestantism that bear the term “Reformed” in their names, as well as our own Presbyterian tradition via Calvin’s Scottish admirer John Knox. The work of Ulrich Zwingli and others also played a role in Reformed theology: the Second Helvetic Confession found in our own Book of Confessionsis a Zwinglian document. The Anglican Reformation would take root some decades later, and Methodism would evolve out of that tradition about two centuries later under the leadership of John and Charles Wesley. In short, the Protestant Reformation was no one-time thing. 

Sadly, no branch of the Reformation can claim any innocence of its own corruption. For many centuries Lutheranism drank far too deeply of Luther’s own anti-Semitism, which long outlived him and was useful to the Nazis in their consolidation of power in twentieth-century Germany. The theological extremes of Calvin and Zwingli (predestination comes to mind) were easily twisted into harsh and destructive theologies that we are only now coming to grips with.

Calvin might look at passages such as those from Jeremiah and John as evidences for the sovereignty of God – the absolute freedom of God to do as God wills, unbound by any theological or other bind. It is ironic that his descendants have preached some of the most oppressive theologies against that sovereignty, claiming God to be “bound” to send person X to hell or give you great riches if you just say the magic scripture and pray the magic prayer. (I exaggerate, but not as much as you think.) Where such preachers seek to bind, the scripture found in John points to quite the opposite – “if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” It resonates in such doctrinal ideas as the “priesthood of the believer”, the idea that every person is both free and responsible to minister to one another in the name of God and to, in the words of 2 Timothy from a couple of weeks ago, to present himself or herself to God as “a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth.” It’s an idea that every Protestant tradition somehow manages to claim as unique to itself. 

In fact, the history of pretty much every reformation is one of taking such words of scripture and, often after a good start, failing to live up to them. Hence Calvin’s famous instruction that the church was to be “reformata et semper reformanda” – “reformed and always being reformed”; to be brief, we are – or always need to be – under repair. Being composed of fallible human beings, churches will fail and must be constantly challenged to return to the scriptures and to be under the charge of the Holy Spirit to reclaim our calling, in order to live into whatever challenge might await God’s church over, say, the next five hundred years or so.

If we take today’s reading from Jeremiah seriously, we are under the watchful care of an all-sovereign God, a God who yet in the midst of such sovereignty and power knows us, and places in each of us nothing less than knowledge of God, writing on our very hearts.

If we take today’s psalm seriously, we have in our God a strong fortress, a “bulwark never failing” in the words of the famous hymn we sang earlier. We are never abandoned by God no matter how much we abandon God. 

If we take today’s reading from Romans seriously, we know that despite our deep sinfulness, we are preserved and redeemed by Christ, who is faithful to be the mediator of divine grace even unto death on a cross – a death that could not in the end keep him.

If we take today’s reading from John seriously, we are free. Free, that is, in Christ – we are freed from sin, freed to continue in the words and work of our Savior, free to know the truth. 

None of these were new at the time of all those reformations. All of them are as old as the scriptures those reformers fought to put in the hands of followers of Christ and to teach and preach. It’s fair to say, though, that perhaps those ideas had faded a bit from the church’s collective memory and needed to be refreshed. The same is true for us. It’s on us – all of us – to reclaim all of those legacies, as well as the legacy that give us our name “Protestant.” It’s time to speak up. After all, a little reformation now and then is a healthy thing.

For a legacy, and for the ongoing repair of that legacy, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #275, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God; #329, God Is Our Refuge and Our Strength; #---, O hear this word today

Sermon: No Shame at the Table

First Presbyterian Church, East Moline, IL
October 5, 2025, Pentecost 17C
2 Timothy 1:8-14

 

No Shame at the Table

 

 

{sing} I know whom I have belie-ved

and am persuaded that he is able 

to keep that which I've committed 

unto Him against that day

 

That's one I remember from my childhood. I'm going to be honest with you; I had no clue in the world what that was supposed to be about. It made no sense to young me whatsoever. I know people get all sentimental and attached to the King James Version of the Bible (and some folks more than that, quite viciously combative about it), but had you showed the young me verse 12 from today's reading and said that this was the verse that this old gospel refrain came from, I wouldn't have believed you one bit. This is one case where I'm quite grateful for modern translations.

This comes to us in a strong and admirable bit of testimony from the author of this letter, acknowledging the struggles he has faced and yet declaring his continuing trust in God and encouraging his reader(s) to do the same. But getting to this testimony takes us through some challenging territory.

[Quick note: even though Paul's name and Timothy's are both on the letter, it is extremely unlikely that Paul actually wrote this letter or 1 Timothy. The roles of bishop and other church leaders described in 1 Timothy simply didn't exist by the time Paul had died, and the writing style is frankly alien to the rest of Paul's letters. This was not uncommon practice at the time. For the sake of convenience in the rest of this sermon, I will refer to writer and reader as "Paul" and "Timothy" anyway.]

The author, who we're calling Paul, seems to want to make a big deal of his imprisonment, and seems awfully concerned that his young reader might be feeling some shame over Paul's situation, whether for Paul directly or for how it might reflect on himself to have his teacher and mentor in jail. Perhaps as a result, this dynamic duo of "shame" and "suffering" pops up twice in this brief passage. First, in verse 8, Paul is encouraging Timothy not to be ashamed of Paul's testimony or of Paul himself, but to "join with me in suffering for the gospel." Later, in verse 12, Paul, having spoken of his call to apostleship, acknowledges that he suffers for this, but again encourages Timothy not to be ashamed. 

For anyone who knew Paul's career, suffering was almost a given. Paul had been jailed so many times that under modern marketing practices he would probably have earned a free stay somewhere. He had faced any number of arrests, tortures, and harsh punishments for his proclamation work. Speaking of suffering simply was talking about life for Paul. This business of shame, though, is something different. 

Paul's most well-known statement on suffering came back in Romans, where he proclaimed that "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of salvation...". In other epistle passages there is talk of others being ashamed for various misdeeds they might have done. This business of whether "Paul" might feel shame over his imprisonment is new, and frankly odd. 

The idea that Timothy (or whatever reader might see this) might be ashamed of Paul for this is still farther afield. Actually, this might make a decent argument for why Paul did not write these letters, as such attitudes about Paul (while not unheard of in his lifetime) became much stronger after his death, as different leaders with different ideas and attitudes came to the fore in the church. 

Still, whatever its sources, this does raise some questions that it's worthwhile for the church today to consider. What brings about shame these days? 

You would think that, say, reports of rampant sexual abuse and subsequent coverups by Roman Catholic priests some years ago, and Southern Baptist pastors more recently, would be the kind of thing that might provoke some degree of shame. But no, the only responses seem to be more coverup, more hiding, or sometimes "doubling down" and endorsing the leaders exposed for their wrongdoings. Somehow, shame at the abuse of other human beings doesn't seem to enter the picture; the only ones who end up being shamed are the victims of abuse, shamed for not forgiving their unrepentant and unpunished abusers. 

One might think the church's past complicity in the eradication of Native American peoples from their lands and erasure of their Native identities might also be an object of shame. There have been some fitful and tentative gestures towards acknowledgement and apology, and some church bodies have very recently returned lands to the native tribes or nations from which they were taken, there isn't a whole lot of evidence that any church so involved has experienced much shame for their actions in those times. 

So what do churches "get shamed" for these days?

Maybe for being small? 

You ever see that, or hear it? Someone affiliated with a larger church maybe being a little bit pitying, a little bit patronizing toward someone who goes to a smaller church? What are the automatic assumptions about a small church, the default words used to describe it? Maybe "struggling"? Maybe even "dying"? Maybe the higher-ups in that church's denominational struggle get into hushed conversations about how to gracefully ease that church aside and devote more resources to the bigger, more "successful" churches? (Or maybe that just happens among pastors...)

Well, for one thing, small churches are trendy now. There's even a book on the subject of the trend towards very small churches - even smaller than us in some cases[1]. For another, small ain't necessarily dead. I've been in small churches that crackle with activity and mission, and large churches that are - bluntly put - dead as a doornail. Seems from here that one church shaming another over size needs to worry less over the one finger pointing at the small church, and the three others pointing right back at them. 

In short, there are reasons churches should be ashamed, but they seldom are. And there are things about which churches don't need to be ashamed but sometimes get told they ought to be. Neither is good - the first because something very bad has clearly happened, and the second because one church trying to shame another for no good reason is, well, frankly, something to be ashamed of. 

Whatever shame was being experienced by Timothy (or whatever reader of this letter) was doing no good and probably distracting from the work that needed to be done. The same can be said for us. Getting caught up in shame over being small or over being ostracized by some fundamentalist church types doesn't help anything and probably gets in the way of the work that is before us. So, let's not waste time with that, okay?

And let's certainly not waste any time with that on World Communion Sunday. On a day (first proposed and carried out by a Presbyterian minister and his congregation) when we are reminded that the table is something we share with all of God's children, we certainly have no reason for shame. 

For not getting caught up in pointless shame, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns: (from Glory to God: the Presbyterian Hymnal unless otherwise indicated): #310, I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord; #---, I'm not ashamed, whate'er my trial; #503, Lord, We Have Come at Your Own Invitation; #641, When in our Music God is Glorified

---

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Microchurches-Smaller-Way-Brian-Sanders/dp/1088455662

Sermon: Who Tells Your Story?

 First Presbyterian Church. East Moline, IL

September 14, 2025, Pentecost 15C

1 Timothy 1:12-17

 

Who Tells Your Story?

 

 

The groundbreaking Broadway musical Hamilton was noted upon its arrival for its deft blending of many different popular musical styles (of which hip-hop was most frequently noted) with solid dramatic technique and casting to create a riveting show, one which still commands audiences and popular acclaim even ten years after its premiere. (As if to make the point, a filmed version of a theatrical performance that was supposed to run for this past week was extended through this coming week by popular demand.)

The most arresting moment in the show, though (at least according to one viewer - raises hand) is quite the opposite of those characteristics; for all its brashness and volume-up theatricality, the show ends with a moment of near-silence, courtesy of Hamilton's widow Eliza. She retells, in the finale, how after his death she took up the work of preserving and telling his story; interviewing soldiers with whom he had once served as well as going through his voluminous writings to sort out how they might be preserved, not to mention raising funds for the Washington Monument, speaking out against slavery, and finally starting an orphanage in respect to Alexander's own orphan status. At the last, though, she can't help but wonder if she did enough; the company brings the show to a close with an almost-whispered restatement of the questions that have recurred throughout this finale: who lives, who dies, who tells your story?

I'm pretty sure that when we saw the show at a packed theatre in Orlando, no one in the audience made a noise for ten seconds. I'm not sure anybody breathed. I know I didn't.

So what does all this have to do with Paul and with this letter from which I've just read? 

Clearly this reading is about Paul himself. While it doesn't directly repeat the account of Paul's conversion experience (you can read that in Acts 9), the circumstances and characteristics ascribed to Paul in this letter are clearly developed from that account of Paul's blinding encounter on the road to Damascus and his subsequent healing through the hands of Ananias. 

It's not uncommon in Paul's letters to see him refer to his experience on that road, and he also describes in some cases just what kind of non-follower of Christ he was in the time before that encounter. He will in some places get quite dramatic in describing his state before the event, although in at least one case, in Philippians 3, he takes a seemingly opposite tack: 

circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee' as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. 

 

Yet in the very next sentence Paul brushes that righteousness aside with the declaration "Yet whatever gains I had, I have come to regard as loss because of Christ."

While the two are not necessarily incompatible, one might wonder if the passage in 1 Timothy is in any way informed by Paul's self-description in Philippians. One might be forgiven if one feels as if the two passages, while not at all contradictory, don't quite seem to line up with each other. It's not an end-of-the-world contradiction by any means, but it just doesn't quite sound the same. It still speaks of God's grace and redemption as experienced by Paul. It still speaks of the transformation in Paul, and of Paul's gratitude for God's work in him. But to be honest, when you've taken a few spins around Paul's letters, there are times such differences start to show. 

Now here's where that finale from Hamilton comes in.

1 Timothy is, along with its partners 2 Timothy and Titus and possibly Ephesians and Colossians, increasingly regarded in biblical scholarship as unlikely to have been written or composed by Paul, even if his name is attached to the letter. Such letters are called the "deutero-Pauline" epistles. There are various reasons for such evaluations; sometimes the Greek is extremely not like Paul's writing, sometimes it's a lack of evidence that the letter was even written during Paul's lifetime (which ended at the hands of the Roman Empire around the year 62). 

Whichever the case, most likely the letters were written by someone who had been associated with Paul, or perhaps a student of such a person. Such individuals likely sought to preserve Paul's reputation as years passed and other leaders came to the fore, or to apply Paul's teaching to situations in the church that had arisen since his death. It wasn't an uncommon practice at the time and was not remotely limited to the fledgling Christian church, even if it might feel a little bit ethically "icky" to us today. 

So, if this letter is not actually written by the actual apostle Paul, what's happening here? 

Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?

Paul's significance in the early church was tremendous and widespread. As time passed and that presence waned, those of his students and coworkers who felt that loss sought to share that wisdom, that teaching, that presence that had made so much difference in their own lives and work and, at least in this portion of the letter called 1 Timothy, one such student of the apostle's work did so by telling Paul's story - not in the way that Paul would have told it, by any means, but as best as they could in an age where they felt that loss. 

It's not like we don't see this play out in different settings, even in our own day. For example, every time you see in the news a conflict over the raising or lowering of a statue of a Confederate general, or the naming or renaming or re-renaming of a fort or camp for such a figure, you are seeing a struggle over who tells the nation's story. Even in this week of violence, we already see a struggle in which one side not only insists on the right to tell the shooting victim's story but also moves to silence anyone who dares tell a different story. Stories matter an awful lot. 

We, the church, are historically the body charged with, among many other things, telling Christ's story. The church has sometimes done this well, and other times it has done so poorly as to make a mockery of that story. Of course, we are also charged to live that story, and frankly we sometimes struggle mightily with that task too. Then, when those who come behind us are charged to take up the task, what story will they tell of us? 

It may well be that one of the great challenges we as the church face is what kind of story do we leave behind. Do we leave a story that can be easily twisted for darker or more nefarious purposes? Or is the story, the legacy we leave so intricately bound in the life and work and teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ that it cannot be turned for false ends? For all of Paul's failings and fumblings his story inevitably led to the story of that Christ who so blindingly reordered Paul's life on that road to Damascus. Paul's story pointed to Christ. May that also be true of each of our stories and of our story as a church. 

Who tells your story? What story do they tell of you?

Thanks be to God. Amen. 

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #620, PraIse, My Soul, the King of Heaven; #12, Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise; #634, To God Be the Glory

 

Sermon: In the Presence of the Betrayer(s)

First Presbyterian Church

April 17, 2025, Maundy Thursday C

1 Corinthians 11:23-26; Luke 22:17-34

 

In the Presence of the Betrayer(s)

 

 

In hearing the reading from Paul's letter to Corinth, we are reminded of those words we typically hear as part of what is liturgically called the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving, words that typically precede the breaking of the bread in the sacrament of communion. Paul felt it necessary to write those words to the Corinthians because their practices at the meal had degenerated badly, more closely resembling the reckless practices of the Greco-Roman world around them than Jesus's last meal with his disciples, the one which church's meal was meant to remember.

Paul's letter was written well before Luke's gospel (Paul was dead by the time Luke wrote it), and his bare essentials account differs dramatically from Luke's fraught description of Jesus's meal with his disciples. While not quite to the degree that the Corinthians' meal went far off track, it seems that the disciples weren't on their best behavior as they shared this final meal before his crucifixion. Indeed, one can spot three distinct hints of betrayal.

We do hear in Luke's storythe familiar words we continue to associate with the Lord's Supper - "This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me." He starts to speak the words about the cup but can't even get to the "do this in remembrance of me" part before he breaks down, with the chilling announcement that "the one who betrays me is with me, and his hand is on the table." After another moment he again sounds like someone who knows what is coming but concludes with "woe to that one by whom he is betrayed!" 

No surprise that the disciples are alarmed by this and start wondering who among themselves could do such a thing. But if we read only within the framework of this passage, we share their uncertainty. Who could do such a thing, indeed?

So who at this table with Jesus - one of whom Jesus says "his hand is on the table" - is the betrayer? This is where we have to both look backward and forward, and when we do that, we are almost compelled to ask "who is not the betrayer?"

Let's take the obvious answer first. Back in verse 3 of this chapter we are told that "Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot" and that he sought out the authorities who had wanted Jesus dead. All he needs now is the opportunity to give Jesus up to them. The betrayal is already set in motion. That's the technically correct answer, but maybe not the only answer.

By verse 31 we know something is up with Simon Peter. Jesus calls him out seemingly without provocation, as if to charge Peter with encouraging his colleagues when all this is over. Peter has glorious martyrdom on his mind, though, saying (probably quite loudly) "Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death!" Jesus's response is almost cutting, telling Peter that he'll swear he doesn't even know Jesus - not just once, but three times before sunrise. Of course, as we continue to read Luke's account, it really does happen just as Jesus describes, even before we move on to chapter 23. Peter is left weeping at his own failure.

But is that all? Right there in verse 24 we read: "A dispute also arose among them as to which one of them was to be regarded as the greatest." Really, right after Jesus has announced that someone would betray him, after Jesus has been talking about how he's never going to eat or drink of these things again "until the kingdom of God comes," you start arguing about who is greatest among you? Has anybody been paying attention to Jesus? Has anybody really been faithful at this point? 

That table was not the place for the disciples to try to show off their greatness or their superior faithfulness. It isn't that place for us either. At this table Jesus calls on his disciples to take on the humility of servants. And Jesus makes this call in the very presence of the one who would betray him (or should that be the ones who would betray him?). We don't come here to show off how righteous we are, how much more faithful than someone else we are, anything like that. We come as servants, as Jesus came to the table as a servant; we are served so that we might serve. We come to follow only Jesus, and only to follow Jesus, no matter what others at the table or other tables around the world on this night might do. We come knowing our own weaknesses, our own faults, and our own small betrayals, and Christ serves us, and we go serve.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Sermon: What Jesus Really Gave

First Presbyterian Church

October 20, 2024, Pentecost 22B

Mark 10:32-45

 

What Jesus Really Gave

 

 

I am old enough to remember The Andy Griffith Show, not in first-run but in the daily-rerun pattern of syndication. When you see a show that often, you learn certain patterns of the show. One of the more obvious patterns was that Barney Fife, the seemingly hapless deputy, would inevitably bungle something and Sheriff Andy would pick up after him. Another was that Barney would get far too agitated and want to do something rash or extreme, and Andy would have to reign him in. These two patterns, often in combination, constituted one of the show’s regular tropes.

I’m guessing that I’m not the first to wonder if Jesus’s disciples, at least as portrayed throughout the gospel of Mark, have a bit of Barney Fife in them. And yes, that would put Jesus in the role of Sheriff Andy, having to clean up after them (as in chapter 9, when the disciples can’t manage a healing without Jesus around) or rebuke them for their rashness (as in earlier in chapter 10, when the disciples were turning away those who were bringing children to Jesus). Perhaps the most prominent examples of this dynamic in Mark’s gospel are Jesus’s three proclamations of his coming suffering and death, and the inept response of the disciples in each case – such as Peter’s rebuke that in turn got him rebuked with “Get behind me, Satan!” in chapter 8, and then the chapter 9 argument among the disciples over which of them was greatest. Today’s reading seems to offer an echo of that second incident. 

The verses immediately preceding today’s reading make up the third of those disturbing proclamations by Jesus. John, who got all hot and bothered about a man casting out demons in Jesus’s name after the previous event, drags his brother James into the mess this time. They come to Jesus with the schoolyard-taunt request to be appointed to sit at Jesus’s right and left “in your glory.” You can imagine that if Jesus had acceded to their request, the two of them would have immediately gotten into a fight over which one got to sit on the right or the left. When this tiff comes to the attention of the rest of the disciples, more dissention breaks out. Deputy Fife has messed up again, and Sheriff Andy has to clean up after him. 

In short, the disciples still don’t get it.

One of the other features of that Barney/Andy pattern on the show was that no matter how badly Barney messed up, Andy never did give up on him. Andy never fired Barney (at least not for good) or ran him off in any way. Andy kept him on, kept putting him back to work. 

So it is, as we see, with Jesus and these dunderheaded disciples. No matter how badly they messed up or got crosswise with what he was teaching them, Jesus never did cut them loose. He continued to teach them, continued to lead them, and continued to love them. 

To understand the final portion of this reading is to understand – or perhaps to begin to understand – why that is. It is a deeply important statement from Jesus about his very reason for existing, his very purpose on this earth. And as with many such statements, we often interpret it poorly.

Jesus begins by drawing a contrast between the community of Jesus’s followers and the world around them, or what such a contrast should look like. Out there in the world the powerful lord it over the powerless, but that’s not how it works here. You want to be the greatest? Be the servant of all. You want to be first? Be the least of all. That’s why I’m here. 

Verse 45 then supplies the critical understanding, in two parts. It’s not that hard to grasp “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve.” We’ve seen Jesus use that term for himself in Mark’s gospel, and the reversal of “not to be served but to serve” is clear enough, if rather unsettling to we who have lived in the world of social-climbing and career ladders all our lives. 

It’s the concluding phrase where we tend to get off track, and our misunderstanding tends to hinge on two words that jump out particularly strongly in this phrase. I know I’m not supposed to get heavily into the business of translating Greek in these sermons, but we need to get the words right here. In the spirit of Jesus’s argument here, we’ll take the last word first.

The Greek word λυτρον (Lutron) is translated here as “ransom,” and that would be a typical translation in most contexts. However, our modern concept of that word is narrower than the Greek meaning. Our minds most quickly associate “ransom” with a kidnapping or hostage-taking situation, in which some amount of money is demanded for the release of those held captive. This causes many to interpret this phrase “gave his life a ransom for many” as some kind of transactional ransoming; the forces of evil get to kill Jesus so we can go free. 

That’s not how the Greek usage of “ransom” works, though. That Greek word λυτρον doesn’t involve a transaction; there’s no payee. Instead, the “ransom” involved here (going back to the Greek verb λυω ‘luo,’ the root word from which λυτρον comes) carries the image of removing a hindrance or obstacle, or perhaps of loosening bonds or releasing one held captive. It’s not about our modern image of paying ransom; a closer modern metaphor might be one in which Jesus breaks us out of prison. Being ransomed is being set free. Being ransomed is being delivered from that which oppresses or destroys us. It’s not a prisoner exchange; it’s a total jailbreak.

The other word that often messes us up, tied into the whole modernized “ransom” idea, is ψύχην (psuxen), here translated as “life.” In this context Christian thinkers have long tended to use the rather shallow definition of ψυχην as basically what makes us not dead, whatever biophysical condition would tell a doctor that we are in fact living. Therefore, in this way of thinking, to say that Jesus “gave his life” has to be about the part where Jesus died, the part Jesus has been foretelling to his disciples three times now.

But that’s not all there is to ψυχην. It also carries the meaning of “life” as “that which is integral to being a person beyond mere physical function.” We might think of this as our inner self, or even what we call our soul. It’s the difference between “being alive” and living, one might say. 

And understanding this as what Jesus gave hopefully opens our eyes to what is really going on in this passage, and why Jesus keeps cutting the disciples so much slack. 

Jesus gave his living. Jesus gave his whole inner being, his very soul, everything that he said and did and felt and thought and lived for the ransom – the setting free, the breaking out, the releasing – of many, of us, of all of us here. We are cut loose from the chains that bind us by everything Jesus said and did. 

And when Jesus is giving his living, his whole life, his whole being for our redeeming and liberation, Jesus is going to hang in there with those dunderheaded disciples in ways far beyond anything Sheriff Andy had to do for Deputy Fife. 

Yes, the suffering and death are part of that whole life. If anything, Jesus’s suffering and death were the inevitable result of a life so completely devoted and committed to our redemption and liberation. You can’t go upsetting the tyrannical order of things, “the way the world works,” without coming to the kind of end that Jesus did at the hands of imperial power. And Jesus faced it head-on, embraced it even, as part of coming to serve and giving his whole being to liberate us all. Then of course there’s that resurrection part as well. But if you’re looking for scripture to justify some doctrine of substitutionary atonement, this isn’t it. Not at all.

A Jesus who gave everything that he was for our redeeming is not going to give up on us because we bungle it once or twice or a few times or several dozen times. A Jesus who came to serve with his whole life, every minute of his very being, and to teach us so to serve, isn’t going to bail out on us no matter how backward we get it. We aren’t abandoned, we aren’t given up on, no matter how much we still don’t get it. And that, friends, is our hope. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #299, Ye Servants of God, Your Master Proclaim; #65, Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah; #450, Be Thou My Vision