Sermon: Ascension

Grace Presbyterian Church

May 10, 2015, Ascension B

Acts 1:1-11; Luke 24: 44-53

Ascension

It’s right there, in the Apostles’ Creed, the one we use most Sundays for the Affirmation of Faith. The same line is also found in the Nicene Creed, the one the church typically uses when the Lord’s Supper is celebrated. It’s a pretty basic statement, made without much elaboration or development. It goes like this:

“He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father…”

That event is the subject for today. Actually, if you want to be precise about it, it is the subject for Thursday, which (ten days before Pentecost, or forty days after Easter) is marked as the day for observance of the Ascension of the Lord. As most Protestant churches have no service planned for Thursday proper, some of them will observe the Ascension next Sunday, while many will let it pass unobserved. As New Testament scholar Brian Peterson observes, “we really don’t like goodbyes, and we don’t quite know how to celebrate this one.” Forgive me for jumping the gun and observing the event a week early.

For an event that shows up in creedal statements and gets its own separate day on the liturgical calendar, it’s curious that only one biblical author actually describes the event itself. As we discovered on Easter Sunday, the gospel of Mark offers no accounts of Jesus’s post-resurrection appearances at all, and while the gospels of Matthew and John both cover at least some of Jesus’s time on earth after the resurrection, somehow neither of those authors saw fit to describe the event in which Jesus departed from earth to be with God the Father.

On the other hand, the one author who did cover the event apparently felt that it was so important that he actually recorded it twice. Both at the end of the gospel of Luke and the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, this author includes an account of the ascension. It’s not completely unlike an author writing a sequel to a novel in which he or she finds a way to recapitulate events from the first book, or a television show picking up where its last episode left off with a few scenes from that episode with the foreboding introduction, “Last time, on…”. Of course we’ve just heard both accounts.

It seems that in Luke’s second account of the ascension, found in Acts 1, the author felt the need to fill in a few more details than had found their way into the first. For example, in Luke 24, the author makes no mention of the forty days Jesus spent appearing with and among the disciples that are mentioned in Acts 1:3. There is a bit more dialogue between Jesus and the disciples as well, and Jesus leaves the disciples with a much more direct and clear commission in verse 8, not unlike the “Great Commission” found in the last two verses of the gospel of Matthew. Perhaps most notable is the appearance, after Jesus has ascended and been caught up in a cloud, is the appearance of two men, dressed in white robes, chastising the disciples for staring up into the sky and leaving them with a promise that Jesus would return in they way they had just seen them leave.

As our reading from Acts describes the event, there are important things happening here that we could wish our co-religionists would heed. While the disciples were promised that they would be “baptized with the Holy Spirit,” they were also told that they had to wait for it. Their commission wasn’t to charge off into action immediately; they were to stay in Jerusalem and “wait there for the promise of the Father.” 

Waiting, to put it precisely, stinks.

It isn’t in our nature to be patient. We are conditioned, by our culture or our own personalities or by need, to charge off into action. No time to wait; we have to take action now, before it’s “too late.” Churches, maybe even churches like ours, face this temptation routinely in a time in which there is no branch of the church that is not seeing its numbers in decline. We’ve got to do something. We think we can’t wait. And the church rushes off and does something rash or even destructive.

Our time, as we are reminded in this story, is not God’s time. Even Jesus himself says, for example, that “it is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.” Aside from being a rebuke to those wannabe preachers who appear at regular intervals claiming to have deciphered the exact time and date when the “rapture” will happen or when Jesus will return, this is a rebuke to us as well, when we as the church charge off without the time for discernment or listening for the moving of the Spirit.

I get it; that’s hard to do, not just because waiting is hard, but because we probably feel like we don’t even understand what we’re listening for. If you had asked the disciples what it would be like to be “baptized by the Holy Spirit” as they stood there watching Jesus lifted away from them, I doubt any of them would have come up with the kind of event that happened a few days later, the day we call Pentecost. We don’t know what it means to listen for the Holy Spirit, and we don’t know where that will lead us. When what is safe and familiar has been pulled away from us, and we don’t know what’s next, waiting, discerning, and being patient is the hardest thing. We are, you might say, in the “in between time,” and no human being can usually exist there comfortably. Still, the church, or a church, or even our church is still called to listen, to discern, and even to wait.

There are other key points to glean from this story. It is this story of ascension, the story of God the Son going to God the Father, which ultimately changes the way we understand God. Another scholar, Mark Travnik, describes the change this way:

The ascension of Jesus into heaven alters our picture of God. We can no longer define God in a way that leaves God completely detached from human experience. The ascended Jesus, who sits at God’s right hand, reveals a God who is vulnerable and even approachable. When we turn to God in times of distress or temptation we are not addressing a deity aloof and unfamiliar with our struggles. God knows our trials intimately well and not only comforts us by identifying with our pain but also assures us that affliction will not have the final word because it is the risen and ascended Christ who intercedes for us and nothing can separate us from his love (Romans 8:34).

The presence of Jesus at the right hand of God means that God is not a distant, unfeeling God; because Jesus, who has lived among us and with us and knows our weaknesses and our sorrows, God the Father knows our weaknesses and our sorrows.

We are also reminded that even as we wait in the “in between” time, we do have a charge. Verse 8 puts it in terms that are unambiguous; we will be witness to Christ, in every reach of the earth – “in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” While the urge to do something is strong with us, it’s also true that such an expansive and formidable commission as this can stop us in our tracks a bit. We have enough trouble conceiving of being a witness to Alachua County. How can we possibly be a witness to “the ends of the earth”? Look at us. We are, by any official metric you can find, a small church. We’re not particularly rich. And for many of us, getting around ain’t what it used to be.

Obviously we don’t go it alone. We are one church, part of the church, the body of Christ. The church, the whole church, answers the commission. We are all in it together. We work as one. Even so, it’s a daunting commission. Where do we start? Where do we fit into this commission? What is our place? See, this is why patience and discernment is important. We have a role to play, as a church within the church, and our task, in this “in between” time, is to discern where God is leading us to be witnesses, to find whatever “end of the earth” is in need of the ministry we are prepared to offer.

We also need to remember from this story that the absence of Jesus from the earth physically does not equate to the absence of Jesus from human life. Because God the Son goes to God the Father, Jesus is able to send God the Holy Spirit to be with us and among us, to be our comforter, our Paraclete. All of this gets heavily Trinitarian, which is a subject we will get to explore in a few weeks, but for now let us take note that Jesus’s physical departure may be discomfiting to the disciples, but it is our preservation; it is the reason we can claim the presence of God among us. Pentecost is coming, and our God will be among us.

And this continues to be our comfort even today. Because Jesus is ascended to the right hand of God the Father, the Holy Spirit continues to be among us and minister to us even now. We continue to encounter the risen Christ in worship, in preaching, in sacraments; through ministering to the world around us; and in the fellowship and support of one another. Because Jesus has ascended to God the Father, the ministry of Jesus continues. “All that Jesus began to do and preach” – a frankly more accurate translation of verse 1 – continues because of the ministry of the Holy Spirit among us.

On this day, however, we are “in between.” We are waiting. We are listening. We are seeking to hear, to understand, to know, and to be prepared for whatever unpredictable and unknowable thing the Holy Spirit is going to do among us.

For patience and trust in the “in between,” Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns (PH '90): "Christ, Whose Glory Fills the Skies" (462), "You, Living Christ, Our Eyes Behold" (156), "We All Are One In Mission" (435)

Sermon: A Table That Rejects Rejection

Grace Presbyterian Church

May 3, 2015, Easter 5B

Luke 15:1-2; 24:13-35

A Table That Rejects Rejection

“A riot is the language of the unheard.”

These words, spoken in an address by Rev. Martin Luther King in March 1968 (only a few weeks before his own assassination), have gained fresh currency and citation in the wake of numerous events in the past year, from the disturbances in Ferguson, Missouri to this past week’s events in Baltimore.

The statement gets at some truth; rioters in most cases don’t riot in expectation that anything will change; quite the opposite – riots happen precisely because those rioting are convinced that nothing will ever change. And they are convinced that nothing will ever change because they are convinced that no matter what they say, no matter how desperate their situation or how many promises are made, no one in fact is hearing their concerns, no on is interested in their troubles; no one listens.

In truth, though, I’m not quite sure that this applies to all such situations. What were the unheard cries of those who rioted in San Francisco last October, after the Giants won the World Series? Or in Lexington, Kentucky, just a few weeks ago, after the Kentucky Wildcats were eliminated in the NCAA Final Four in basketball? Oh, I forgot. We don’t call those “riots.” We call those “unruly behavior.”

For now city officials in Baltimore are looking at weeks of not only pursuing charges related to the riots or the police-custody death that served as the immediate trigger (though by no means the underlying cause) of those riots. At the same time, those same officials can no longer look away from the crushing economic inequities that generate despair and anger, hopelessness and resignation, and (when some triggering event occurs) violence. Promises made and forgotten can no longer be deferred.

We have to acknowledge, though, that “the unheard” do not always come to our attention because of events like those in Baltimore. Unless someone in congregation has harboring plans to climb Mount Everest, it’s unlikely that this congregation has spent much time, collectively or individually, thinking about the nation of Nepal before this week. At last report the death toll from last week’s earthquake in that country had reached a horrifying threshold of more than six thousand lives lost. Beyond that staggering toll, the loss to that nation is incalculable; countless homes and other structures have been destroyed, and numerous artifacts of Nepali culture – temples and artworks, for example – have been lost.

It’s probably not unfair to speak of the people of Nepal as “unheard” – though there may not necessarily be any hostility involved, Nepal is simply a long way from the everyday average concerns of most Americans, including most American Christians. And let’s be honest; if it doesn’t involve us, our immediate family, our local church, or our immediate community, we Americans are prone not to think about it, whatever it is. And so the people of Nepal go unheard until an earthquake devastates their country and their lives.

There is one other example of “going unheard,” one that indicts us perhaps most strongly. Sometimes the cries of others go unheard because we’re too busy yelling at each other.

For the past several years the Presbyterian Church (USA) has faced a number of disagreements and controversies, hard choices and decisions that have caused some churches to pack up their toys and go elsewhere. Now that the dust has settled, to some degree, the churches of this denomination are awakening to a harsh and startling reality; mission giving in the denomination has fallen so precipitously that unless more funds come in, PC(USA)’s Presbyterian Mission Agency, Office of World Mission, will be forced to call home as many as forty mission workers from the field over the next two years.[i] In this case, the cries of our own have gone unheard.

We need to face this. We as a church universal and a church particular need to own up to our own failure to listen, to open our ears to the world around us. I get it; it’s far more comfortable to settle in among our own and enjoy the fellowship of those we know. It’s comfortable, but it’s not Christlike, and that’s the challenge that is put before us today as we come to this table.

The brief reading from the fifteenth chapter of Luke speaks volumes about the Jesus we claim to follow. It comes not in Jesus’s own words, but in the words of Pharisees and scribes, religious leaders, observing Jesus’s teaching and the number of “undesirables” who flocked to hear it. You know the type…sinners. Tax collectors. Those people.  And at the sight of all those people, these righteous types (you can practically imagine them holding their noses or something like that) couldn’t restrain their shock and offense. “This fellow welcomes sinners, and eats with them.”

This isn’t a new charge against Jesus; as early as chapter seven Jesus is mimicking these same religious leaders making this charge against him. In short, this is Jesus’s reputation. Among other things, Jesus is known for eating with sinners, with those people.

Backing up to the previous chapter we see that this very exchange is taking place in the context of a meal; apparently Jesus had been invited by one of the Pharisees to a meal, on a Sabbath day. On the way he had stopped to heal a man, a violation of Sabbath rules in the eyes of some. Upon arriving and observing the jockeying for position at the table, he had offered some trenchant observations on honor at the table, suggesting it was wiser to choose a seat of less honor and let your host bump you up to a more honored position. He then suggested that it was better to invite the poor and paralyzed and generally outcast to your feasts, and told a parable of a man whose invited guests bailed out on him, leading him to do exactly that. A couple of random parables later, we come to the incident in our reading. Right there in the context of the meal, Jesus is welcoming those whom the good righteous folk don’t want to be next to or associated with.

It’s a small token of a theme that gets bigger and bigger as our Bible goes on. As far back as the prophet Isaiah, we’ve been told that the Lord’s temple would be “a house of prayer for all nations.” Jesus would echo these words in the incident known as “the cleansing of the Temple,” the one where he flipped the tables and let the sacrificial animals loose. The book of Acts will continue to expand on the theme of expanding the reach of God’s table, so to speak, as first the crowds at Pentecost, the Ethiopian treasurer in Acts 8, the centurion Cornelius and his family, the Philippian jailer, and numerous other Gentiles – those people – are added to the church, sometimes to the great consternation of the original, Jewish followers of Jesus.  The limits that Jesus’s followers set up, almost reflexively, keep getting broken down, right after Jesus spent so much of his ministry “welcoming sinners, and eating with them.”

This pattern, this repeated and ongoing practice of Jesus, eventually became not only his reputation, but also the way his own disciples would recognize him at what seemed to be the darkest time they had ever known.

We are of course familiar from this story at or immediately after Easter.  Two disciples, identified as “disciples” even though not among the numbered twelve, are walking from Jerusalem to the nearby town of Emmaus on Easter evening, their world shattered.  There was that strange report from the women in their group about the tomb being empty and angels being there, but no one else saw that (the angels at least).  The stranger appears and enters into conversation between the two; they tell their story, and the stranger responds with a staggering knowledge of the scripture, arguing that the events of crucifixion they described were exactly what had to happen, which they’d have known if they weren’t so foolish and slow of heart.  With day fading, the two stop and entreat the stranger to stay and be their guest, which he does.  The stranger then, surprisingly, takes the role of host: he takes the bread for the meal, blesses it, breaks it and gives it to them.  Then – and only then – did they recognize that the stranger was none other than Jesus himself.  When he disappears, the two disciples rush back to Jerusalem to report to the others, and to describe how, as verse 35 puts it, “he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.” 

We could evoke the feeding of the five thousand, or to many other shared meals recorded in Luke’s gospel. We can also recall, and do so at each observance of the Lord’s Supper, that awful night, just a few nights before, the last night Jesus spent with the disciples. The gesture of breaking bread to share was characteristic of Jesus. What we need to remember when we come to this table is that this wasn’t some esoteric, unusual event that Jesus chose to imprint upon his followers as a memorial to him; it was something they had seen him do over and over again, time after time sharing bread with them and with all manner of other undesirable characters.  If he asked his disciples to “do this in remembrance of me,” it’s at least partly because he had done exactly this with them so many times in their years together.

But what is fascinating about this Emmaus Road story, as well as a bit depressing for preachers, is that it is this gesture, this breaking of bread, that opens the eyes of the two disciples to see Jesus for who he is.  All of that amazing expository preaching that Jesus did?  Nope.  If you felt like reading the story tongue-in-cheek, you could even say that all it did was give the disciples heartburn.  But the act of breaking bread was one so characteristic, so typical of Jesus that their fogged and shrouded eyes could no longer conceal from them their Lord. 

The message came to these two disciples, not in a barrage of words and scriptural exegesis, but in the rather simple medium of bread.  Stuff of the earth, harvested, ground into flour, mixed and kneaded and baked into the most basic staple of the disciples’ diet.  But in that medium indeed was a message that had been witnessed and lived so many times by Jesus that it was one the disciples knew by heart; a message of welcome, of hospitality, not just to the good folks but to the worst sinners society could dredge up, even sinners like us.  And this medium of bread, being broken, still shapes and forms that message even today, whenever we come to the table. 

On that Maundy Thursday Jesus paired the breaking of bread, a token of humanity’s most basic needs, with a cup of wine poured.  If bread represented the basics of life, wine no doubt served as a token of celebration.  The reading from the Gospel of John reminds us that the very first sign Jesus performed in the presence of his disciples was one of turning ordinary water into wine, a sign that became the rescue and continuation of a wedding feast, one of the most joyous celebrations that culture knew. 

Bread broken, a cup filled.  These are still signs of welcome and celebration to us today.  They still point us to a Life of welcoming and making welcome, a Life that celebrated and rejoiced even as it grieved and mourned and got angry a time or two.  They point us to a Life that was so dedicated, so insistent on bringing everyone in and ministering to all, that it poured itself out in death rather than suffer any one of us not to be guests at his table for eternity. 

Perhaps the bread and cup seem a curious choice of medium, but the message that bread and cup shape for us in this sacrament is still one we need to hear, as many times as possible.  Christ calls us to come; he welcomes us to the table; he bids us be his guest.  Let us not be blinded to the message in this humble, yet exalted medium. 

The table is made ready; Jesus our host bids us – all of us, even those people – come and eat.

For the bread and the cup, Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns (PH ’90): “God Is Here!” (461), “Let Us Talents and Tongues Employ” (514), “Now To Your Table Spread” (515), “Draw Us In the Spirit’s Tether” (50

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[i] https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1CDwhIwE3wcbE9OoKBImsk_ir8f3UH-b-t-jkfChjgjs/viewform

Sermon: A Time For Sheep and a Time For Goats

Grace Presbyterian Church

April 26, 2015, Easter 4B

Psalm 23; John 10:11-18; Acts 4:5-12

A Time For Sheep and a Time For Goats

It’s beautiful stuff, to be sure.

If John 3:16 is the most memorized and most immediately familiar individual verse in the whole Bible, I’d guess that Psalm 23 is the most immediately familiar longer passage. It’s almost impossible not to know if you’ve spent even a small part of your life in the church. You can go in your average “Christian” bookstore and be bombarded with books about this one psalm. If you were to thumb through your hymnal you’d notice that the hymn we sang a few minutes ago is far from the only version of this psalm in the hymnal; in fact there are six different versions, total, and they are hardly exhaustive of the number of settings of this psalm that have been made. I’ll bet that a lot of you had trouble with the responsive reading earlier in the service, not because the psalm wasn’t familiar enough, but because it was too familiar – it was hard not to slip into the old King James Version of the psalm, with all the “thy”s and “thou”s, wasn’t it?

Just as the lectionary for the second Sunday of Easter always points us towards the story of Thomas, this fourth Sunday of Easter always features Psalm 23, and always pairs it with some portion of the tenth chapter of John’s gospel; this year, as you have heard, the passage that begins with Jesus’s “I am the good shepherd” declaration is featured. So sometimes this Sunday gets called “Shepherd Sunday,” and sermons and songs about the shepherd-ness of Jesus are preached. This is of course highly appropriate; the care Jesus shows to his “flock” – comfort in time of fear, laying down his life for his sheep – are the stuff of faith, and should be preached and taught.

But, as is almost always true with these extremely familiar verses or passages of scripture, the scripture – or more accurately, our treatment of that scripture – can become a problem.

In this case, we get caught reading these passages about Jesus, full of attributes of Jesus, as if they are somehow about us. John’s passage really doesn’t address us at all. There is some contrast with the “hired hand,” one who is not the true shepherd and does not know the sheep, who cuts and runs when the wolves show up. Aside from a brief “I know my own and my own know me,” there really isn’t much in this passage about us, the presumed sheep under the care of the shepherd.

Psalm 23 is not quite as focused, but even there the way we respond to the shepherd is framed in response to the shepherd’s care for us. We fear no evil because the shepherd is with us. We will dwell in the house of the Lord forever because the Lord is our shepherd. What the psalmist sings is the goodness of the shepherd.

Where we get confused is in the unspoken, yet no less powerful, assumption that if our Lord is the shepherd, then we’re supposed to be sheep. Other psalms are complicit here; Psalm 100:3 goes there explicitly, saying “we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture,” and other verses from other psalms make similar claims.  Christians have naturally taken such a leap of logic and run with it.

How many of you know, for example, the children’s song called “I Just Wanna Be a Sheep”? That’s the title, for real. Anybody? [sing] “I just wanna be a sheep….I just wanna be a sheep…” And if you really want to do it right, you “baa” like a sheep between those phrases: “I just wanna be a sheep (baa baa-baaaaaa baa!) I just wanna be a sheep (baa baa-baaaaa baa!)…”

Our two scriptures for today, though, don’t particularly direct us to go there. Even that passage from Psalm 100 is pretty clearly an isolated reference, not even part of an extended metaphor like Psalm 23 or John 10.  Our first warning, you might say, is not to read into scripture what isn’t actually there.

This is probably a good idea in this case, because sheep are not really very good role models.  I don’t know how many of you, if any, have much background with livestock. I certainly don’t, but you don’t have to be an expert to know that sheep aren’t something you want to emulate.  Perhaps the best way to say it is that sheep are very problematic animals. They aren’t necessarily stupid – for one thing, they’re actually incredibly good at recognizing and distinguishing faces – but they are possessed of so strong a herd instinct that whatever capacity for judgment they have is overwhelmed.

They go astray. Remember the parable about the man with a hundred sheep, and one of them gets lost, and the man leaves the ninety-nine to find the one? Well, the man would be lucky if only one got lost. All it takes is a good-looking clump of grass ready for munching, and if you aren’t keeping the herd together well it’s gone.

On the other hand, if not distracted by all that grass, a sheep will follow whatever’s in front of it, no matter what, even if it leads it right off a cliff.

Sheep literally have to be made to lie down for their own good. As long as the grass is available they’ll keep munching away even when the weight of all that grass threatens to hurt them.

They are largely helpless against any kind of predator. No real defenses.

They are largely helpless if they get into water, particularly running water. That wool picks up a lot of water, and sheep can’t swim. If that sheep isn’t rescued it will drown.

When you get right down to it, it seems like the reason that the shepherd metaphor works so well is that we humans are a little too much like sheep for our own good. We go astray—boy, do we go astray. We’re not above excessive physical indulgence. And we are prone to follow bad leaders, right off a metaphorical cliff sometimes. Being sheep is not an aspiration; it’s the problem with us, one it takes a Good Shepherd to solve.

Now all of that is one potential problem with being careless with such popular passages as these. Here’s another; if you spend much time at all in the Bible, you end up running into a lot of examples in which Christ’s followers, when at their best, are anything but sheep-like.

Our passage from Acts today is a pretty good example of this. You might remember from last week’s scripture that Peter and John had drawn a crowd after healing a man who had been paralyzed from birth, and that Peter had launched into a restatement of his Pentecost sermon. This was happening in one of the porticoes of the Temple, and it did not escape the notice of the Temple authorities.  The authorities showed up and actually had the two arrested and held overnight! The next day the two were brought before the council, with all the big names present – not just the current high priest, but the whole high priestly family – and interrogated as to how this healing had happened: “By what power or by what name did you do this?”

Peter and John stick to their story – this man was healed in the name of Jesus, whom these same Temple authorities had induced the Romans to crucify. No backing down.

Not very sheeplike, is it?

Not only is Peter preaching the very same sermon that had gotten him and John arrested, he’s doubling down; not only was the man healed in the name of Jesus (verse 9), there is no other name besides the name of Jesus by which such healing can happen (verse 12). Peter, “filled with the Holy Spirit,” is being bold and headstrong in the face of the very authorities of his religion. The religious authorities tried to intimidate Peter into backing down, but Peter and John were having none of it.

Not very sheeplike at all. If anything, Peter and John are acting a lot more like goats than sheep here. Where sheep are regarded as docile and easily led about, goats are anything but. Headstrong, rebellious, difficult…that’s a goat for you.

Are they following Christ in obedience to the Holy Spirit? You bet. But doing so in this case is anything but sheeplike behavior.

Biblical scholar Walter Wink makes this point;

Christians have been instilled with a sheepish docility that has played into the hands of the Powers for centuries. Obedience has been made the highest Christian virtue, obedience that was to be paid to Christ's representatives on earth, the rulers and the clergy. As a result, Christians have colluded in their own injury. They have accepted without resistance totalitarian rulers. They have been submissive in the face of tyrannous hierarchies in church and state, corporations and schools. Women have submitted to battering, economic exploitation and wage inequality. Men have been led off to war like sheep, flocking to their doom without resistance, as if to do so were the height of glory.

Sheep. Bah![i]

Wink goes on to observe that not only were Peter and John being anything but sheeplike in their behavior, but that this behavior was actually pretty characteristic of both Jesus and those who had been his followers. Verse 13 adds the observation that the Temple authorities saw the two as “uneducated and ordinary” men – in fact, the Greek word here translated “ordinary” is the word from which we get our modern insult “idiot” – and yet were being extremely bold before people of whom they were supposed to be afraid. And that, they had already seen, was characteristic of these followers of this crucified Jesus. 

They weren’t living fearfully – these disciples were a long way from the people who had been hiding back on the day of the Resurrection. They weren’t being intimidated. They were speaking boldly, proclaiming the name of this crucified Jesus. They weren’t sheep. They knew their scripture, and didn’t let the authorities intimidate them into accepting their “authoritative” interpretation.

And remember: they were showing this boldness, this “goat-like” stubbornness, to their own co-religionists. We Presbyterians can be a little bit intimidated sometimes in the face of a larger church that has some of its authorities who are really highly willing to tell the word that they are the only ones who Really Know Their Scripture. We have it, and we’re going to tell you how you have to read it. We’re going to tell you what you have to believe about it. Listen, folks: I am really, truly NOT INTERESTED in you “believing in the Bible.” I’m really not. I’d much rather you grab your Bible and read it. Read it whole, and when those authorities start to sell you some soap about what this verse says, you be ready to throw a whole bunch of other scripture at them.

Boldness, not sheeplike docility. Following the prodding of the Spirit, not the orders of the authorities. Being faithful to the life and teaching of Jesus, no matter how much others might distort his witness.  When it’s time to call out whoever – be it the world at large or our fellow Christians, when it’s time to be led by the Spirit, let us never be anything less than bold. But let us know that we are being led by the Spirit.

For the ability to be a goat instead of a sheep when the Spirit calls, Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns (PH 90): “I Greet Thee, Who My Sure Redeemer Art” (457); “My Shepherd Will Supply My Need” (192); “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” (276)

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[i] Walter Wink, “Those obstreperous idiots: Acts 4:5-12,” Christian Century (April 13, 1994), 381

Credit: bradwhitt.com

Sermon: Of One Heart

Grace Presbyterian Church

April 12, 2015, Easter 2B

Acts 4:32-35; John 20:19-31

Of One Heart

One of the curiosities of the modern design of the Revised Common Lectionary, that guide or starting point for planning worship or sermons that most pastors in the Presbyterian Church (USA) work with these days, is that out of all of the twelve disciples, the only one who could really be said to have his own “day” in the lectionary is Thomas. Peter certainly shows up more in scripture, in Acts as well as the gospels, and James and John are certainly more prominently featured, but Thomas’s rather spectacular moment in the days after Jesus’s resurrection somehow proved so compelling that in all three years of the lectionary cycle, the Sunday after Easter is given over to the story that, combined with some of his other appearances in scripture (mostly in John’s gospel), give him for decades the somewhat dubious nickname “Doubting Thomas.”

For modern preachers, the constant return of this story seems to have provoked a particular reaction; rather than piling on Thomas, look at the story from a different angle. Is that label really fair? Does Thomas deserve to be labeled a doubter any more than the rest of the disciples, for example? What exactly was Thomas guilty of, anyway?

To be sure, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It is perfectly appropriate to point out that for all the grief we give Thomas for his declaration that “unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe,” he wasn’t really asking for anything more than the other disciples had already received. It’s not as if Peter and John had come back from the tomb shouting at the tops of their voices about the resurrection; they saw the empty tomb and…went home.

It remained for Mary Magdalene to be the first to see the risen Lord in John’s telling of the story. She was the one who remained, weeping, while the other disciples had gone home. Only that evening did they see Jesus, behind locked doors. We don’t get any indication that they had been terribly responsive or enthusiastic about Mary Magdalene’s report.

So, when the disciples told the absent Thomas what had happened, his reaction wasn’t necessarily all that different than the reaction of the disciples themselves had been to Mary Magdalene’s report.

Something we often overlook in this story is that Thomas had a whole week to chew on what he had been told; verse 26 tells us it was a week later when the disciples were gathered together again in that same house, Thomas present this time. Once Jesus appears to them again, he goes right to Thomas (or brings Thomas right to him) and puts him on the spot: you wanted to see, did you? wanted to touch the nail scars in my hands and side? well, here they are.

And to be fair, Thomas goes from skeptical to worshipful, instantaneously; he is the first of the disciples to make the theological leap from Jesus as Messiah, as Son of God, to the point that “Son of God” equals, well, God. It is a dramatic moment of confession and worship – “My Lord and my God!” is hard to beat as confession. 

For all of the Thomas redemption one can see in much modern preaching and commentary, I don’t think we can completely let the fellow off the hook.  Yes, it’s a little unfair to dump on him for wanting to see what the other disciples had been given the opportunity to see, but there is still one question that can be laid at Thomas’s feet:

Why wasn’t he there in the first place?

When the disciples were gathered in that house on the evening of the first day of the week, where was he? We don’t know why he wasn’t there, and in a way that’s a problem. Somehow the other disciples managed to come together – whether in response to what Mary Magdalene and Peter had seen or for some other reason – and were thus available for the miraculous appearance of Jesus. Thomas wasn’t there, and wasn’t available.

The point is not to turn Thomas into a pariah again. You and I cannot possibly imagine the heartbreak, the fear, the confusion and paranoia and terror that the disciples and other followers of Jesus must have been experiencing. But at the same time, Jesus’s followers had been told this was coming. Had Thomas forgotten all that Jesus had said? Or had he simply decided it had all been a fantasy, a nice dream that had collapsed when confronted with the reality of The Way Things Are?

Whatever was the case, Thomas missed out. There’s a warning for us in this. I am not going to promise you that miracles are going to happen in every Sunday morning service. (On the other hand I’m not going to promise that they won’t either—who knows what the Spirit might decide to do?) Nor am I going to condemn people who go on vacation – I’m going to take vacation myself sometimes, so knocking you for doing so would be pretty hypocritical. And if you’re contagiously sick, you really shouldn’t be here.

But withdrawing from the fellowship, pulling away from the body of Christ, weakens both that fellowship and especially the person who pulls away. We aren’t there to support one another; we aren’t there to grieve with one another; we aren’t there to rejoice with one another, and we all suffer for it – both those present and those absent.

It seems as if the nascent church learned this lesson pretty quickly. The description of the fellowship found in today’s reading from Acts frankly sounds wildly idealistic to our modern, jaded ears. Actually there are some who find such a description threatening, especially that stuff about having their goods in common and nobody claiming ownership of their possessions – that kind of thing goes rather badly against the modern grain, you know.

But see how the fellowship is described; “the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul…”. What a beautiful description. What a beautiful way to appear to the world. What a beautiful way to respond to the resurrection, which, after all, isn’t very far in the past at this point.

What this little dropped-in description of the fellowship – not even a church yet, really – also tells us is that this closeness, this unity was noticed. When the apostles gave their witness to the resurrection, it wasn’t just their message that was making waves in the world around them; it was also this unity, this being “of one heart,” that made an impression on those who saw this community, this “group of people who believed.” As the author speaks of “great grace” that was upon them all, it reflects the fact that this group was being noticed for its own grace, its own cohesiveness, its unity and compassion and care for one another. People saw that, and what they saw from these people (who weren’t even being called “Christians” yet) gave credence to the message that the apostles preached. It wasn’t just the apostles bearing their witness to the resurrection, it was that this group of people who were gathered around this witness to that resurrection were living in community in such a way that this whole resurrection story suddenly seemed to matter. It seemed like something that people wanted to know more about. If this group has been so dramatically changed by what they witnessed, by what they experienced, can I be part of that? I want to be part of that.

I don’t think I have to tell you that churches don’t always have that impact on the world around them today. If anything, churches are getting pretty good at giving off the opposite message – we don’t want you here. You’re not good enough. You’re not our type. Churches are more concerned with keeping out those who don’t look like us, don’t think like us, don’t act like us than they are with being ‘of one heart.’

Notice that it doesn’t say “of one mind,” or “of one belief.” We have no idea what disagreements might have existed at this point. A few chapters later we’ll see disagreement over how certain widows in the fellowship were getting left out of the provisions, according to some; in response, the apostles appointed a group to oversee those provisions and the community continued on. 

But for a time, this little group was a striking example of what could be. In time some of the leaders would be killed or arrested, and many of them would be scattered away from Jerusalem. But for this time, however long it might have been, this group lived so completely with and for one another that their whole culture had to take notice. They stayed together. They stayed in the fellowship.

I like to imagine that Thomas was there, fulfilling his apostle role, encouraging the members of this “group of those who believed” to stick together, to be there for one another, to be there. “After all,” he might have said, “you never know what you might miss when you’re not here.”

For “one heart,” thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns (from PH '90):

#121 That Easter Day With Joy Was Bright

#114 Come, Ye Faithful, Raise the Strain

#507 I Come With Joy To Meet My Lord 

#123 Jesus Christ Is Risen Today

Sermon: The Unfinished Gospel

Grace Presbyterian Church

April 5, 2015, Easter B

1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Mark 16:1-8

The Unfinished Gospel

Really, this is the word of the Lord. No fooling.

OK, I’ll admit it’s not the most satisfying ending, but there it is. Every shred of evidence insists that Mark, or the author of what is in fact an unsigned gospel, ended his account with what we label the eighth verse of this chapter, with the announcement that the women who came to the tomb and saw it empty were on the run because they were afraid.  Yes, you can probably look at your pew Bible and see a bunch of other verses, but you can also see some the longest footnotes in your Bible explaining that the best evidence shows that these verses were added later, by another author.  So, despite the title on this sermon, this gospel really does seem to finish with this strange ending.

C’mon, pastor, is this really the scripture to preach today? I mean, there might be visitors present. 

Just hang on, folks.  Not only is this most likely how Mark meant to end his novel, but if you spend time with it there’s a really good reason he did so. But in one way this gospel of Mark is a lot like those tricky mystery novels my wife likes to read so much; you really do have to remember what happened in previous chapters for the ending to make any sense.

It helps if we spend a moment with verses six and seven of this chapter.  The unnamed messenger waiting at the tomb breaks the news to the women – “he has been raised; he is not here” – and even invites them to see the place where he had been, now empty.  It’s simple enough, and not unlike similar accounts in other gospels Matthew and Luke. 

But the messenger doesn’t leave the news there; there are instructions.  “But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” “Just as he told you?” Here we need to look back to several verses from this gospel; from chapters eight, nine, and ten, in which Jesus repeated his warning that he must be rejected by the religious authorities and be crucified and raised again.  We also need to look back to chapter fourteen, the night when he was betrayed, the night he broke bread and poured a cup of wine to give those disciples a sign and seal to hold them (and us) together as the body of Christ.  It was that awkward moment when Jesus told them that “you will all be deserters; for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.” But even here, Jesus instructs them again, “but after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.”  Even in that bleak and despairing moment Jesus is preparing them for what is to come, for a resurrection – one that at this point is just assumed, “after I am raised up” – and the order to go out to Galilee to meet him.

Now I’m not going to pretend that after this, verse eight and its portrait of fear is anything but a disappointment.  After what should be news both joyful and familiar, we get instead something quite the opposite.  Still, as strange and uncomfortable as it sounds, it might be exactly the message we need to hear this day of all days.

For one thing, in the context of Mark’s gospel it completes a theme that was apparent from its early chapters; the ones closest to Jesus repeatedly don’t get it.  Just to give a few examples; in those three examples in chapters eight, nine, and ten in which Jesus foretells his death and resurrection, in every case the disciples immediately reveal themselves to be more concerned with very earthly ideas of power and influence.  Another example follows after not one, but two miraculous feedings recorded in the gospel.  The famous feeding of the five thousand with five loaves of bread and two fish is recorded in Mark 6, and two chapters later a second feeding, in which four thousand are fed off of seven loaves and a few small fish.  Still, just a few verses after that second feeding miracle, the disciples think Jesus is lecturing them over forgetting to bring bread on a boat trip across a lake. If anything happens here, these women who had been following Jesus from very early in his ministry have their moment of weakness every bit as much as the twelve who fled when the authorities arrived to arrest Jesus in the garden.

And if these disciples, these women, who shared so much time and so much travel and so many meals  and so many miracles and experiences during the ministry of Jesus, if they failed and fell short so spectacularly in the time of trial, we who follow at a remove of so many centuries, cannot necessarily expect to do better. When we fall short in following we can at least know that we aren’t the first to do so, and that we are preceded in this failing by those closest to Jesus.

Of course, logically we can guess that at some point, somebody must have said something.  After all, if nobody had ever announced that Jesus was out of the tomb, if nobody had ever followed up on Jesus’s command to meet him in Galilee, why would Mark even be writing this gospel? Why would there even be some community, some church to whom Mark would be compelled to write?  The word is out, and people are gathered together in community around the life and teaching, the death and resurrection of Jesus.  Mark has his reasons for not sharing these things, or relaying the kind of post-resurrection appearances that Matthew and Luke and John do.

Our reading from 1 Corinthians also points out that there are stories about the life and death and life again of Jesus that our gospel authors don’t necessarily tell.  In his letter to the church at Corinth (which was actually written down before any of the gospels) Paul, in this chapter near the end of his first letter, lays out the most basic tenets of the faith as shared by Paul and countless others, “that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, 4 and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.” Then, to support this story, he cites witnesses; Cephas (or Peter), and later to the twelve; and then Paul mentions an appearance to “more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time,” and another to James (whether the apostle or to his earthly brother Paul does not say).  Some of these we can possibly equate to appearances recorded in the gospels, but they don’t contain anything quite like that appearance to more than five hundred. 

So if Mark is choosing to withhold any stories of Jesus appearing to his followers, what is his purpose? What’s he’s trying to do? Maybe the answer has to do with what Mark wants to do in response to this gospel.

The women were charged to tell the disciples – and Peter, even Peter, poor foolish Peter who denied Jesus three times – that Jesus was going ahead of them to Galilee, and that they should get on their way. What if that’s our challenge as well?  What if we come to the end of this gospel, and we are confronted with the question of whether we will follow Jesus who has gone ahead of us, not content to wait around an empty, useless tomb?  What if that’s our question to answer today, this holiest of days?

What if, instead of a comfortable, happy ending, Mark is intent on provoking us to action?  What if our calling is not to linger at that empty tomb, but to go where Jesus is leading us? Not to seek closure, but to continue the story?

For indeed, in perhaps the most important way, this is an unfinished gospel after all.  Mark has no intention of wrapping up the story and putting a pretty bow on it so we can feel good that it “all came out right in the end.” We, like those original followers, like those in the community to whom Mark writes his gospel, have a job to do. We have a living Christ to follow back to the place where it all began, to following and living with Christ and living with one another in a Christ-like community of faith.  Death took its best shot, and could not keep Christ down. So for us, it’s time to get back to work, to get back to proclaiming the good news, to be about the business of telling the world about how “the kingdom of God is near,” as Jesus proclaimed back at the very beginning of Mark’s gospel, and how now is the time to “repent and believe in the good news.” 

Ultimately there is joy and celebration at this news, but unless we are following where Jesus is leading us, breaking through the surprise and fear and telling this good news, that joy and celebration ends up a bit pointless. This tomb is empty, and Jesus is gone ahead of us; it’s time for us to follow, to continue this unfinished gospel and live out and live into this kingdom of God come near.

For the empty tomb, the unfinished gospel, and Jesus gone ahead of us, Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Hymns: (PH ’90): “Christ Is Risen! Shout Hosanna!” (104); “Christ Is Alive!” (108), “The Day of Resurrection” (118)

Sermon: Betrayal At the Table

Grace Presbyterian Church

April 2, 2015, Maundy Thursday B

Exodus 12:1-14; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; Mark 14:17-25

Betrayal At the Table

Sometimes the dinner table is the place to share big news.  Julia and I have used it that way before.  Once we used a dinner with her mother and sister down at Disney World to spring on them the news that I had finally landed my first non-temporary teaching job, and in West Palm Beach to boot – not quite two hours from her parents.  Springing the surprise and sharing the good news was fun, although perhaps not for other guests at the restaurant, since the shriek let out by her mother was such that it probably disrupted radar buoys in the Gulf of Mexico.

Even in this age of meals on the go or devoured in front of the television or distracted by other electronic gadgetry, I suspect most of us probably can understand the idea of a meal shared together as a place for sharing good news, celebrating a special event, or simply enjoying the company of those with whom we are sharing the meal.  Sharing food and drink lends itself well to that kind of exchange with one another. 

On the other hand, we may have also known the experience of more difficult or stressful meal occasions.  Perhaps it was a holiday gathering, in which family that has moved to different places across the country starts to chafe under the strain of unaccustomed togetherness; or maybe it’s a gathering that includes an unexpected and unwelcome encounter with an ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend or even ex-spouse; or possibly the somber meals that follow in the wake of the loss of a loved one.

Although the gospel of Mark does not describe it as often as other gospels do (he tends to tell stories about things happening when they were traveling), this kind of fellowship around a meal was a common part of the life of Jesus and his disciples.   Only a few verses earlier in this chapter Jesus was “at table” in the home of Simon the leper when an unknown woman broke open that container and anointed Jesus.  And it is the gospel of Mark that records not one, but two feeding miracles – five thousand are fed in chapter six, and four thousand in chapter eight.  As early as chapter two Jesus is disparaged by the scribes and Pharisees for “eating with tax collectors and sinners” (2:15-17), for dining at the home of the tax collector-turned-disciple Levi. At least it’s enough of a history to suggest that things happened at the table.

Nothing like this, though.

Nothing like this announcement – “one of you will betray me”.  Nothing like the frenzied, panicky reaction of the disciples, each one trying to convince himself the he wasn’t capable of that sort of thing. Nothing like the pall of gloom that kind of announcement casts over a room, knowing that a traitor is in their midst and not knowing who it is. 

We, the readers of this gospel, have the advantage.  We know, because Mark told us so back in verse ten of this chapter, that Judas has already conspired with the religious authorities to betray Jesus to them.  We know, because Mark has told us that all twelve of the disciples are there, that Judas is among those around the table, maybe even among those crying out “Surely, not I?” We know what’s going to happen, in a way that the disciples do not and cannot know, even though Jesus has told them at least three times over the course of this gospel. 

And yet, even with this weight of uncertainty and fear hanging over the room, the word of betrayal is not the last word in this last meal together.  The last work of Jesus in this place is to bind the community together, even as one tries to tear it apart.

Amidst the commotion of the meal, and amidst the observance of the meal associated with the first night of Unleavened Bread, or Passover, Jesus reached out to the disciples with one last sign, one last gesture for the disciples to hold on to in the days and weeks and years to come, one last way to bind these fractious and sometimes rather dense followers into a family. 

The means by which Jesus does this are pretty ordinary, especially in this context.  It’s not as if Jesus has never broken bread or shared wine with the disciples before; as we’ve already noticed they’ve seen Jesus do an awful lot of bread-breaking in at least two settings, and the company of disciples and other followers has probably lost count by now of the number of meals they’ve shared.   Loaves of bread or cups of wine have passed among the group plenty of times. 

It is this commonplace, even routine gesture that Jesus gives to the disciples, but in doing so in this place, on this occasion, these ordinary objects are given a new life, invested with new meaning. They become the markers both of something they’ve heard before, and of something new.

In one way this is one last foretelling of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection.  Jesus has already done this three times, in chapters eight, nine, and ten of Mark’s gospel.  Each time the disciples failed to understand; once Peter rebuked Jesus for even suggesting such a thing, and got called ‘Satan’ for his trouble; the second time the disciples fell to arguing among themselves who was the greatest; and the third, James and John had the nerve to asked for preferred seating at Jesus’s side in glory.  This time, the disciples won’t have a lot of time to misunderstand; events have already been set in motion that would bring the crucifixion to pass.  Even so, in verse 25 Jesus also points beyond the crucifixion to a time “in the kingdom of God” when he would taste of the fruit of the vine again.

But there is also something new in Jesus’s words; a “covenant, which is poured out for many.” The language of “covenant” itself is not new; it echoes all the way back to Exodus, to the covenant God made with Moses and the Hebrew people, even to the events that are marked in the observance of Passover itself.  For Jesus to speak of a “covenant” here points to something new, something different about the way God would be among and with humanity.  It was still not something that the disciples were ready to understand yet, but it would not be too long before they were living in it.

With time rapidly sliding away, with the specter of betrayal looming, with the unspeakable agony of crucifixion drawing ever nearer, Jesus’s last gesture to his followers was one meant to forge a bond between them, one in which Jesus’s own life and traveling and teaching with them, meals shared and miles walked, would continue to be lived out among the disciples and all of Jesus’s followers and those who would join them in later days and later years, all demonstrated with the simplest of elements, bread and wine. 

And even to this day, it is in this act that the church in worship is most the church in worship.  For all the other things that happen in a worship service, nothing else quite captures what it is to be followers of Jesus, the body of Christ, than this simple act instituted by Jesus among his followers.

And remember, Judas was there.  In a time when so many calling themselves “Christians” cannot wait to show the world their belief by refusing to do business with someone, or by harassing persons of different faiths, or by otherwise pushing people away, we are confronted in this text with the fact that Jesus extended this covenant, shared this final act of grace and fellowship and binding together and, yes, love, with his own betrayer seated at the table.  Knowing that Judas was going to go and betray him, that his disciples would run away from him in fear, that Peter would deny him, not just once or twice but three times, Jesus pulled them all together in this act of communion, pulling them back together even before they had fallen apart.

And it’s not as if we’re immune.  As the novelist and pastor Frederick Buechner put it, “Judas is only the first in a procession of betrayers two thousand years long.”  We followers have turned to betrayers too frequently and too easily for those two thousand years, and there are many followers out there as betrayers even today.

And yet the table is still spread, and the bread is still broken and the wine still poured, and all of us, followers and betrayers alike, are still called to come to the table.  All our denials, all our failure to live in anything like the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit cannot and will not ever cause Christ to dis-invite us from this table.  The new covenant poured out for many will not be defeated by hatred, by jealousy, by anger, by shame, or even by death itself.  No matter our failures, Jesus bids us come and dine. 

And this is, in short, the good news on this heavy, sorrowful night.

For a table always spread for us, Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Hymns (PH ’90): “An Upper Room Did Our Lord Prepare” (94), “For the Bread Which You Have Broken" (508), “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross" (101)