Sermon: Born of the Spirit

First Presbyterian Church

March 5, 2023, Lent 2A

John 3:1-17

 

Born of the Spirit

 

 

 

There it is. That Verse. 

I'm going to guess that a lot of ears paid extra attention when we got to, well, That Verse. It's extremely well known, even outside of church circles. You used to see mention of it at, of all places, football games, where some crazy-looking guy in a rainbow wig had positioned himself right behind one of the goalposts, so that when a team lined up to kick an extra point or field goal, you saw his sign very prominently, a sign reading simply "JOHN 3:16." After a time the reference moved to the field itself, where you might see a player on the sideline with his helmet off wearing eye black marked with "JOHN" under one eye and "3:16" under the other.

Such demonstrations depended for their effect on one simple presumption: that everybody knows what John 3:16 says. While I'm sure there were a few here and there who didn't, you can guess a lot of people reflexively started reciting in their head "for God so loved the world...". As for those who didn't know the reference, the hope was that they would go look it up. 

In short, this is about as famous a verse of the Bible as there is. I suppose maybe that first verse of Psalm 23, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want," might come close, but really, verse 16 from this reading is about as widespread as a Bible verse gets.

There are two problems for us preacher types when the lectionary offers up such an overwhelmingly well-known verse. One is that sometimes such verses get weaponized. Some Christian types take that phrase "that whosoever believeth in him" (to acknowledge the King James Version in which so many people have the verse memorized) and turn it into a cudgel with which to batter those outside the church, or maybe even those inside the church whose faith is somehow judged lacking or in error. Sometimes it's as little as a "nyah nyah nyah" taunting - "I'm going to heaven and you aren't" or some equally childish sentiment, or sometimes it becomes part of a more serious assault on another's beliefs or even basic right to exist. This isn't good, and it's pretty clearly contrary to the spirit of the verse in its biblical context.

That points to the other problem for us preacher types; a verse that stands out so famously on its own is rather frequently stripped of its context, and its public interpretation goes far astray from a reading of it in context. That context - that is, all the verses around it that make up the story of which it is a part - gets forgotten or ignored. 

And in the case of this passage of scripture that's indeed unfortunate, as there is much in this passage that should instruct us about being children of God and followers of Jesus. And as much as it might sound blasphemous to say, verse 16 might not even be the most important verse in this reading. 

If we remember anything else about this passage besides verse 16, there's a good chance it's Nicodemus. Clearly he's one of the higher-ups in Jewish life, so his coming to talk to Jesus is, as we might say, kind of a big deal. Nicodemus showing up in the typical clothing of Pharisee would be intriguing enough; that he does so at night only heightens the intrigue. Is he trying not to be noticed? Is he coming against the wishes of his religious order, or is he doing so on their behalf? Is he actually genuinely curious about this Jesus fellow, or is he there to warn him against getting out of line with the religious leadership, or is it something else? 

About the only coherent thing that Nicodemus gets to say, though, is his opening statement, which at least reads as a gesture of respect for Jesus and what Jesus has done so far in his brief ministry. Jesus's answer apparently sounded to Nicodemus like gibberish, and things only got worse from there. 

As we've already noted, Nicodemus was a member of the religious sect known as the Pharisees; that carried with it a particular emphasis on Mosaic Law and in some cases particular and very scrupulous interpretation and following of that Law; in verse 10 Jesus also acknowledges him as "a teacher of Israel." It's hard not to suspect that Nicodemus's purpose in visiting Jesus was somehow related to this role he played; whether it was to try to suss out Jesus's understanding of the Law or perhaps to correct Jesus on some such point we can't know. But it seems awfully likely that Nicodemus was there to talk about Law, and Jesus came at Nicodemus with something different. 

Being "born from above" clearly didn't fit into Nicodemus's framework of studying the Law, and then being "born of water and Spirit" doesn't seem to fare much better. When Nicodemus fumbles around about being born from the mother's womb a second time, it's clear these two have no point of connection.

Jesus's construction of being "born of water and Spirit" is an interesting one to unpack. The "water" part can be read many different ways; some take it as a reference to physical birth, some to the water of the earth as a reminder of our earthliness, and some jump ahead and read it as a reference to the waters of baptism. It seems, though, that the part about being "born of ... Spirit" was maybe even more flummoxing to Nicodemus. His helpless response "How can these things be?" makes it pretty clear that he is completely uncomprehending of anything Jesus has said. 

Our existence is physical. We are earthly creatures. We get reminded of this often enough, I suspect, particularly when those earthly bodies let us down in some way, from the aches and pains of getting out of bed in the morning to the exertion of exercise or participating in some game or sport, to the more destructive effects of any number of illnesses or injuries that harm the human body. Our existence is physical.

Our existence is physical, but it is not only physical. We are also creatures of spirit, tied up with and inseparable from that physical existence as that may be. And while the Law might well govern and regulate that physical life, if that's all we're governed by then we're missing something. To be "born of the Spirit" is a different kind of governing; it is not predictable, it is as capricious and unpredictable as the wind. The Spirit guides us in ways the Law cannot comprehend. 

At this point Nicodemus has more or less disappeared; Jesus's teaching has moved from dialogue to monologue. It also shifts from the talk of being "born of the Spirit" into Jesus's own purpose on earth. Slipping into the language of descending from heaven and "the Son of Man" Jesus has now turned to things to come. Borrowing from the account in Numbers 21 of the bronze serpent that Moses had fashioned in the wilderness at God's command (for the healing of those bitten by poisonous snakes over complaining against Moses - it's a long story...), he now speaks of how the Son of Man must be "lifted up," which is hard to separate from the image of Jesus's crucifixion. 

And finally, that brings us to That Verse. Again, I suspect a lot of folks have it memorized, albeit in the King James Version, but it still works so well even in a more modern translation like the New Revised Standard Version. It is decisive, it is hopeful, it is all about God's love for us and eternal life and all sorts of good stuff. If any verse of scripture needs to be That Verse, this one is definitely a good choice. 

However, you will notice that That Verse is not the last word. One can read verse 16 and get something not quite right if one isn't careful. It's too easy to read that phrase about "everyone who believes in him" and turn that into limitation, into exclusion. This is where too often that "weaponizing" of this verse comes in. It's too easy for too many people to make the leap from "everyone who believes in him" to some kind of presumption that only certain people can believe in him. The account of Peter and the Roman centurion Cornelius in Acts 10 (and 11) is just one example of how Jesus's followers, even his closest followers, had to learn for themselves that "everyone" really does mean everyone, or as you might hear it expressed further south of here, "y'all means all." 

This is where verse 17 comes in, making the vitally necessary point that this Son of Man's coming into the world is not about condemnation. The point of Jesus's coming, of all of the talk about being "born of the Spirit" and being "lifted up" and God so loving the world is that it is not limited in any way. These things can be received and accepted and confessed by anyone, no exceptions. The point really is that the world, the whole world, "might be saved through him." 

The whole world. Not just the people who look like us. Not just the people who talk like us, or dress like we do, or who are part of the same country or club or whatever little places of privilege or belonging we carve out for ourselves. The whole world. And when we Christians fail to act as if that's true, we're at cross purposes with the God who really does that the whole world be saved. And we would not want to do that, would we?

"Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #634, To God Be the Glory; #321, The Church's One Foundation; #720, Jesus Calls Us 

Sermon: The One Who Showed Mercy

Grace Presbyterian Church

July 10, 2022, Pentecost 5C

Luke 10:25-37

The One Who Showed Mercy

It is such a familiar story, what’s a pastor to do with it? 

It is maybe the most well-known parable Jesus told, rivaled only by the parable of the prodigal son. It’s a full-fledged story, with plot and development and conflict and all the good stuff that makes a story compelling enough to hear. 

Well, one thing we can do is back up and remind ourselves that the story didn’t just come out of thin air; Jesus is – cue the dramatic music – being interrogated. By a lawyer. 

The lawyer is, as Luke tells the story, testing Jesus. Throughout the different gospels different parties at different times do just that, trying to trap Jesus in some kind of bind that would either set him up to be found in error theologically or cause him to fall out of favor with the people. The lawyer (not the kind of lawyer we think of nowadays but an interpreter of the law) seems to be probing Jesus for some kind of theological misstep about the commandments. 

Instead, Jesus (as he so often does) turns the question on his interrogator, who could hardly get away with declining to answer – it was his job to answer questions about the law. So, he answered, and did so appropriately, turning to words from Deuteronomy 6 (with the "mind" added to the heart and soul and might - here given as "strength" - found in that passage). That's the part of the scripture reading covered in that first hymn we sang, and it also shows up in different contexts in the gospels of Matthew and Mark. 

In this case, with the famous parable coming right after it, it's easy to overlook this summation of the "greatest commandment," but we shouldn't. While here it is quoted by Jesus's interrogator, in those other gospel context Jesus himself states it as "the greatest commandment" and "one like unto it," to use the King James style of speech. If you were seeking to summarize the faith in as few words as possible, this isn't your worst possibility. 

Jesus more or less congratulated him and invited him to go his way in peace and security. This of course left the lawyer stewing in the same kind of humiliation that Jesus’s would-be interlocutors typically endured; their questioning turned against them, their duplicity exposed. 

But in this case the interrogator can’t leave well enough alone, and – using a long-favored legal tactic – tries to recover himself by questioning the terminology in the answer: “And who is my neighbor?” 

The novelist and Presbyterian pastor Frederick Buechner offers this take on the lawyer and his question:

He presumably wanted something on the order of: "A neighbor (hereinafter referred to as the party of the first part) is to be construed as meaning a person of Jewish descent whose legal residence is within a radius of no more than three statute miles from one's own legal residence unless there is another person of Jewish descent (hereinafter to be referred to as the party of the second part) living closer to the party of the first part than one is oneself, in which case the party of the second part is to be construed as neighbor to the party of the first part and one is oneself relieved of all responsibility of any sort or kind whatsoever."

Instead Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan, the point of which seems to be that your neighbor is to be construed as meaning anybody who needs you. The lawyer's response is left unrecorded.

Well, not that I want to be in the position of questioning a Pulitzer Prize nominee like Buechner, but one small part of the lawyer’s response actually is recorded for us. And it’s a pretty revealing answer. 

Upon finishing the parable, Jesus again turns on his would-be interrogator. Having told the story in which a Samaritan steps up, above and beyond the call of duty, to aid a badly wounded man who had been passed over by members of the religious elite, he again questions the lawyer, asking him to identify which of the three travelers in the story had been a neighbor to the wounded traveler. Do pay attention to the lawyer’s response:

“The one who showed him mercy.”

On one level, of course, the lawyer has answered rightly. Now the way the Greek is constructed in this particular sentence, a more literal translation would read something like “the one who did mercy to him.” That’s actually a theologically superior way to put it, if not so wonderful grammatically. “Mercy”, like so many of the loaded theological words we use, is active. It’s not a feeling or emotion or empathetic reaction. Mercy is, even if English doesn’t quite capture it, something you do. And this traveler had indeed “done mercy” to the wounded man, unmistakably so. And Jesus’s answer to the lawyer acknowledges this, as he leaves him with the command “Go and do likewise.”

But notice the lawyer’s answer again, even in the theologically superior but grammatically awkward version:

“The one who did mercy to him.”

The three passing travelers in this story didn’t get names, but they did get pretty clear identifiers that Jesus’s listeners would have immediately recognized. One was a priest, a religious authority, and the second was a Levite, a member of that tribe set apart since Moses’s time for service in the Temple. Two figures to whom would be attributed qualities of righteousness as a part of their standing among the people.

The third man was a Samaritan. And the lawyer couldn’t even say the word.

In the time of Elijah and Elisha, the prophets who figured into the scriptures and sermons the past three weeks, Samaria was simply a region of Israel, the northern of the two kingdoms that had resulted from the machinations of those who succeeded Solomon as king after his death (the other kingdom was Judah, which was centered in Jerusalem). The city of Samaria sometimes served as the seat of government of that northern kingdom, and a lot of Elijah's activity was concentrated there. By the time of today’s story, though, all of the region is simply lumped into a larger Roman province called Palestine. Yet over the centuries a virulent schism had erupted between those Jews (whose worship was centered on the Temple in Jerusalem) and the Samaritans, who were, technically, Jews, but whose practice had evolved to worship on Mount Gerizim in their own territory. That site was, they claimed, the original holy place in Israel, dating to the time of Joshua, as opposed to Jerusalem, which only became prominent during the era of King David. In short, a disagreement over what might seem to outsiders an arcane theological point had become a hard-and-fast schism, with Jerusalem Jews literally going out of their way to avoid even passing through the region of Samaria, much less actually having anything to do with Samaritans.

For Jesus to invoke the third, merciful traveler as a Samaritan no doubt provoked agitated bristling, and probably an oath or two, among his listeners. That’s if they were a well-behaved group. And let's be clear; had the parable been told in Samaria, and the identity of the third passerby been Judean, reactions would most likely have been extremely similar. Vitriol ran both ways.

It was a two-sided provocation that Jesus put before his listeners. By no means would any self-respecting Jew of what we might call the Jerusalem party even think of defiling himself by dealing with a Samaritan at all; being a neighbor to a Samaritan was out of the question. At the same time, no such self-respecting Jew would conceive of a Samaritan being a neighbor to a Jew. It would never happen, they might say, the way a plantation overseer of the 1850s might say that a member of the same skin color as the slaves he ruled over would never be President of the United States. 

Such was the vitriol that our lawyer couldn’t even vocalize that “the one who did mercy” could even possibly be a Samaritan. 

It’s easy enough for us to grasp the main point of the parable, and to apply to it Frederick Buechner’s point that a neighbor is basically anybody who needs you. But it’s not always easy or comfortable - or, frankly, desirable to us - to get Jesus’s point that “anybody” really does mean anybody. We live in a world that isn't prepared to give up our grudges, our ancient hostilities, our prejudices or superior attitudes or whatever ruses we use to divide ourselves and keep ourselves set apart from and above others. It would never happen. It can’t happen. 

I won’t let it happen.

Our society is pretty good at demeaning and dehumanizing “the other.” The world out there calls them job-stealers and threatens to build a great big wall to keep them out, never mind who’s going to pick all those tomatoes and strawberries in south Florida. Or people call them terrorists and yell "go back where you came from" even if they were born here, never mind that they are much more likely to be the ones that the actual terrorists kill first.

Or, when they get shot, people just call them thugs.

Jesus has this nasty habit of not caring one whit about our preferences or prejudices or whatnot. The world tries to respond with “but Jesus, they’re…” and Jesus cuts us off and finishes the sentence “your neighbor.” Society protests “but he’s a…” and Jesus won’t let us finish but says “the one you should imitate.” See, the kingdom of God doesn’t honor those divisions we create. The kingdom of God sees need and moves to meet it. End of discussion. If we want to claim to be part of that kingdom of God, if we call ourselves disciples, we’d better move that way.

Which one … was a neighbor to the man who fell among the thieves?

The one who did mercy to him.

Go and do likewise.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal unless otherwise indicated): #---, O love your God with all your heart; #707, Take Thou Our Minds, Dear Lord; #757, Today We All Are Called to Be Disciples 

Sermon: Do the Easy Thing

 Grace Presbyterian Church

July 3, 2022, Pentecost 4C

2 Kings 5:1-19a; Luke 4:21-30

 

Do the Easy Thing

 

 

We were introduced to Elisha last week, as he doggedly held on to Elijah until the very last, taking up Elijah’s prophetic mantle as well as his clothing mantle in the process. As we come to him this week he has been in that role for a while now, and aside from that angry cursing at a group of young boys who taunted him over his baldness, his prophetic term has been rather calmer than his predecessor’s. He has his quirks, to be sure; when a trio of kings came to him for an oracle in 2 Kings 3, he refused to speak until a musician was provided to play – perhaps making Elisha the first beat-poet prophet. (That scripture reading tells us that once that musician began to play, "the power of the Lord came on him." Maybe some of us preachers today ought to give that a try.)

In today’s reading from 2 Kings, Elisha remains almost a background character, only appearing in person at its close but deeply involved in events nonetheless. While a powerful army commander and multiple kings are involved in the story - people who expect to be important - some of the biggest roles in the story are played by people who are anonymous to us, utterly insignificant in the social strata of the time; the servants of the general Naaman and his wife. 

Take the young servant girl who served Naaman’s wife, for instance. She had apparently been taken captive from her home in Israel, presumably during one of many skirmishes between Israel and Aram. One might guess that she was fully homesick for the land of her birth. In this servant role she would have been well aware both of Naaman’s military prowess and of the skin condition that threatened his stature, no matter how successful he was in the field. It would have been easy for her to say nothing. It would also have been easy for her to rejoice in Naaman’s potential downfall (quietly, to be sure; no point in chancing punishment); after all, he had defeated her homeland. How the mighty hath fallen and all that, you know.

Is it possible that this servant girl remembered her first calling? Such gloating, or even simple refusal to offer help in that time of suffering, simply was not reconcilable with what she knew of Israel’s God. Yahweh was a God who heals, and she remembered the prophet of that God in her homeland who healed others. With all of this in mind, she spoke up to her mistress, telling her about that prophet in the region of Samaria, which set in motion the events of today’s story. To her, that was the right thing and the easy thing to do.

Elisha himself also shows us what it is to remember whose we are. Like any good prophet, Elisha has had a testy relationship with the monarchy so far, apparently getting along better with Jehoshaphat, then the king of Judah, than with the ruler in his own land of Israel. Nonetheless, Elisha reached out to Israel’s king at a moment when that king was apparently forgetting whose he was. By his intervention, Elisha helps avert a potential disaster between Israel and Aram, and incidentally reminds that king that there is indeed a prophet of the one true God in the land (Israel's king Jehoram was an idol-worshiper like his father Ahab). Later in the story Elisha will also demonstrate whose he really is as well, refusing Naaman’s very generous offers of reward for his healing.

For Naaman, though, first he has to learn whose he is, which goes against everything he has been taught to believe. He was a man of power and accustomed to wielding authority over others even as he also served his king. The humiliating spectre of his disease threatened that. Being so desperate as to take the advice that a foreign servant girl gave to his wife was bad enough, but to get shuffled off from the king to some prophet out in the Samarian backwoods, only to be handled by some messenger boy was too much. I am the general of a great military power, he must have thought. Who are these people, these mere Israelites, these nobodies, to treat me this way? He might well have started thinking about how to bring these insolent people down once and for all. 

Fortunately, more of those anonymous servants are there to save the day, persuading Naaman that it only made sense do the extremely simple thing that the prophet asked of him. Finally he takes his Jordan River bath and is “over-healed”, his skin being made like that of a young boy.

It seems that a lot of people overlook an important point in this story: Naaman converts! He declares his profession of faith in verse 15 – “there is no God in all the earth except in Israel.” He’s still a little confused about some things, not realizing that that same God would be with him even in Aram and wanting to take along some Israelite dirt, but it’s a start. After Elisha rebuffs his attempts to pay, Naaman confesses his dilemma; his job required him to support his master, who still worshiped that foreign non-god, even physically in that act of idol-worship. He seeks pardon of Yahweh through Elisha, who sends him on his way in peace. Whatever else he may have had to learn, Naaman had picked up one important thing: he knew whose he was, he knew the Lord who held not only his healing but his very life in his hands, and that this Lord would still be whose he was, first and foremost.

But let's not overlook this central point in the story, and just how much Naaman's pride almost undid everything. Look again at Naaman's ranting after Elisha has first given him the instruction on how to be healed. First, this one: 

"I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy?

 

Naaman was expecting a big production number, something of a spectacle to be made over a Very Important Person like himself. It's not hard to imagine that Elisha's predecessor Elijah might have given exactly that kind of spectacle if he had deigned to intervene at all. But Elisha doesn't even leave the house; he sends these instructions via messenger - another servant, in other words. How in the world could a general who could crush Israel if he so chose be expected to take instruction from a mere servant?

Then there was this bit of ranting:

"Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters in Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?"

 

Here's where his Aramean nationalism is showing. Why do I have to dunk myself in this podunk river when there are great and mighty rivers back home I could immerse myself in? Who does this jerk think he is, anyway? Fortunately those servants (we have no idea if they were Aramean or were captured from some other foreign nation) talked some sense into Naaman, and he finally went to the river and obeyed the instructions he had been given.

It's worth noting that something like a kind of nationalism attaches to our gospel reading from Luke when Jesus recounts this event in his first visit to his hometown after starting his public ministry. All he has to do is mention this healing, along with Elijah's help to a widow in Sidon during a famine, and the crowd literally tries to throw him off a cliff. Elisha's intervention here might have gotten Israel out of another battle with Aram (roughly equivalent to Syria today), but it probably didn't win him a lot of fans in Israel.

Anyway, not only was Naaman healed by the time his seventh dip was done, but he was even over-healed; his flesh was cleaned "like the flesh of a young boy" which we can safely assume Naaman was not. It's enough to cut through all the pride and bluster and bring Naaman to a completely different understanding of ... well, of everything. He makes haste to return to the prophet and deliver that remarkable confession noted above. All of this comes about because a man who was looking for some great thing to do was finally talked into doing the easy thing he was given to do.

Do we fall into this trap sometimes? Does the church get obsessed with doing some big public spectacle of a thing to the detriment of carrying out the basic work God has given the church to do? 

One of the initiatives of the Presbyterian Church (USA), also taken up by the St. Augustine Presbytery of which we are a part, is the Matthew 25 Initiative, taking its inspiration from the well-known parable at the end of that chapter known as the "parable of the sheep and the goats." The three focus points developed from that scripture for this initiative are:

·      Building congregational vitality.

·      Dismantling structural racism.

·      Eradicating systemic poverty.

That sounds rather intimidating, to be sure; but go back to the source and look at those things Jesus talks about in Matthew 25:

"I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me."

 

How much of that do we already do? Not all of it, but a good bit.

There will be times when the church, or maybe some of us as individuals, are called upon to do harder things. But the first thing is to do the basic, easy things that God has set before us, some of which we do almost by reflex here. 

Sometimes the hardest thing is to do the easy thing. Naaman almost ruined everything by being unwilling to go dunk himself in a river. Let us never get so caught up in anything that would distract us so that we fail to do the most basic things God has set before us.

For the obedience to do the easy thing, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #298, Lord, You Give the Great Commission; #312, Take Us As We Are, O God; #719, Come, Labor On

 

they launched a rocket tonight

they launched a rocket tonight

seventy-four miles north of here

 

we were promised a big show

by very enthusiastic resort staff

and so

a small but notable crowd

perhaps a dozen and a half

maybe two dozen

gathered on the overlook by the beach

which promised (we were told) an excellent view

 

the numbers gathered on the overlook

while the moon

stood stalwart sentinel

slam-dunking its reflected sunlight 

onto a lightly ruffled ocean

 

a plane fooled everybody for a moment

 

but sure enough

at 9:02 p.m.

a reddening glow blossomed low on the northern horizon

from which emerged a large red spot

larger than the stars anyway

not as large as the moon

standing stalwart sentinel

 

to the delight of all 

the newly launched large red spot 

turned south 

toward us

and eventually passed right in front of us

still climbing and growing smaller

its vaguely comet-tail-like trail changing colors 

and eventually fading away 

as the rocket climbed higher and faded into the sky

on its way to disgorge forty-something satellites

 

eventually

the smallish but notable crowd drifted away 

as the rocket could no longer be seen with unaided eye

 

and yet the moon 

still stood stalwart sentinel

slam-dunking its reflected sunlight

onto a lightly ruffled ocean

Sermon afterthoughts: The Deceptiveness of Light

What came into being in him was life, and that life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

--John 1: 3-5 (NRSV) 

"Very well then, we must corrupt it. No doubt you often practice transforming into an angel of light as a parade ground exercise, now is the time to do it in the face of the Enemy."

-Screwtape to Wormwood, The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis

My sermon on John 1 today got hijacked along the way by the sentences above quoted from verses 3-5. Mostly this was because, as noted early in the sermon itself, I found myself wondering a lot about the particular ritual that closes so many Christmas Eve services involving the congregation holding up lighted candles in a darkened sanctuary. As written there, in cold hard computer-screen text, it doesn't look very impressive, does it? In practice, people tend to be transfixed. If other pastors are like me, they might worry that nothing else from the service will stay with anyone in the congregation once that's all over.

I couldn't let the sermon pass without noting how that light/dark dichotomy gets misused to treat, say, darkness of skin (or any other darkness) as tantamount to darkness of spirit or absence of light. There's a long history of that, behind justifying slavery and a whole lot of other civil rights abuses. What I didn't have time to get to, on the other hand, is the observation that the opposite can also be true; lightness of skin (or any other kind of lightness) as automatically good or perfect or right or holy. And goodness knows, that's just not true.

The quote lifted above from The Screwtape Letters riffs on Paul's admonition to the Corinthians about false teachers and deceivers. Goodness knows there's enough of that among us in the church, frankly pointing supposed followers of Christ towards all manner of falsehood and wrong theology and frankly evil-doing. We're only four days away from the anniversary of one of the most egregious and grotesque examples of such falseness in the 'Christian nationalism' that drove many participants in the attack on the Capitol.

'Christian nationalism' is particularly pernicious at the moment, but it is hardly the only false light luring people away from genuine faith, is it? The prosperity gospel has been eroding the church for decades. The strictures of "biblical manhood" and "biblical womanhood" have been breaking lives and hearts for at least as long if not longer. (Mandatory plug for Kristin Kobes du Mez's Jesus and John Wayne and Beth Allison Barr's The Making of Biblical Womanhood on those subjects.) The false lights, and the fake angels of light pushing people towards those false lights, are thick on the ground these days, and some of them are mistaken for real followers of Christ way too easily.

Light, indeed, can be deceiving, even without such false prophets and wrongdoers posing as angels of light. To bring in my favorite bit of Christmas-season public theology, A Charlie Brown Christmas, where do the brightest lights appear in that little parable? I think one might have to point to CB and Linus's journey to the Christmas tree lot, the one with all the big shiny aluminum Christmas trees. Remember the big spotlights that led the two to the spot? 

Or one might think of the brightly lit stage with all the kids dancing in lieu of rehearsing for the Christmas play:

This one stands out most in contrast to that same stage when Linus finally steps up with Luke 2 in answer to Charlie Brown's desperation:

John's seemingly simple dichotomy masks the much more demanding task of discernment that we face: which light is the true light? Seeking the "true light" as John calls it in verse 9 requires sorting out a lot of fake or artificial light. John doesn't really address that so much, outside of course of spending his entire gospel trying to portray that Light.

Maybe the difference is that the "true light" is the one that actually does shine in the darkness, that isn't unplugged or turned off so easily. The "true light" is the one that the darkness did not, could not, cannot extinguish.When other false lights have shorted out or burned away, the true light still shines. 

One of my former seminary professors, when the occasion arose, frequently (OK, almost always) pronounced a benediction that included something along the lines of this: "and may light, love's own crucified, risen, incarnate light guide each and everyone of us out of every darkness and all the way home." What does a "crucified, risen, incarnate Light" look like? Maybe more to the point: what does a "crucified, risen, incarnate Light" not look like? Perhaps in the end this is the thing that points us towards the true light and away from all the parade-ground devils practicing their transformation-tricks on gullible souls.

What I can't unsee tonight

Went down south from Richmond to enjoy dinner tonight after the day's activities. Making my way home traffic on Huguenot/River/Cary Street Road; the traffic unexpectedly comes to a near-standstill. 

Soon, it becomes clear; a law enforcement vehicle is sitting in the right lane ahead, lights flashing. I need to merge into the left lane. Fortunately it doesn't become a contentious thing, and I am able to get over, and eventually to creep ahead. 

Finally alongside the law enforcement car, I can see what has happened. A deer has apparently been struck by a vehicle. The deer is stretched out across that right lane. The officer is standing between his car and the deer, looking on helplessly.

This is a bad enough sight, but that's not the worst thing.  

The deer is not dead. 

He's trying to lift up his head and look around, maybe even trying to get himself up, to no avail, but trying anyway.

I'm pretty sure I swore every swear word in existence for the next ten minutes of the drive.

Nature really cannot survive us, can it?

Sermon afterthoughts: the "Get Out of Hell Free" card

 There's a lot of stuff to think about in Mark 10:35-45, and especially in that last verse. It's a verse that has been appropriated for the development of a theology of atonement, even substitutionary atonement, in a way that doesn't really work with the material Mark has given us here.

The sermon for this scripture explores this challenge to a degree. Much of that atonement talk hinges on how modern users ("modern" here applying to several centuries' worth of interpreters, not just us "modern" American types) apply a definition of "ransom" that doesn't really fit. The "ransom" in Mark's usage doesn't imply anybody getting paid for the release of those held captive, which doesn't fit with the notion that some price had to be "paid" for our release from sin, that price being Jesus's life in such theology. (Really, though, would not Jesus's resurrection somehow equate to a breach of contract in such a theology?) 

An awful lot (yes, there are two possible ways to interpret that, and both are valid) of theology has been spilt trying to fit this passage with other bits of scripture, such as some of the "suffering servant" verses from Isaiah, to flesh out this theology of a price to be paid. I'm not sure, though, that it's this bit of interpretation that causes the most damage. 

It's possible to be incredibly narrow in defining the word translated "life" in this verse. As noted in the sermon, the word in question (ψυχην, "psuxen") goes far, far beyond any definition of "life" that can be reduced to "not death." The word wants to embrace all the stuff of living, not just a biological definition of being alive. And this is the biggest problem for a lot of theologies out there.

Like John and James in this passage, it's easy to talk tough. When Jesus challenges their seating request, asking if they can really endure all the suffering he's about to endure, they have the cheek to respond "we are able." Were they counting on some kind of divine intervention to head off the very suffering and death Jesus had tried to teach them three times now? Were they just stupid? What is it? 

Like many of the January 6 insurrectionists, who are now sounding a lot less brave with prison time looming as a real possibility, one can't help but notice that these two brave-talking disciples have, later in this gospel, bolted and deserted Jesus by the time he is nailed to the cross. Eventually the book of Acts reminds us that James, willing or not, did eventually drink from this cup of suffering; he is noted as the first of the twelve to be martyred (of course Judas died first, but not a martyr's death). John apparently doesn't die such a death, but the tradition that he spent years in exile does suggest suffering did come his way. 

Even so, for an awful lot of human beings, giving up being alive is a far easier promise to make than giving one's life, particularly in the way Jesus gave his life, particularly in the way Jesus came to serve and not to be served. Being "manly" or "tough" or a "warrior" has become the default way of being "Christian" for an awful lot of men who claim that name. (Many, but not all, of such men are affiliated with church traditions that can be described with a five-syllable word starting with "e".) If you're willing to twist your brain enough I suppose that can be passed off as a kind of "service," but let's get blunt: there's nothing Christlike about it. 

Right there is a word - "Christlike" - that needs to be recovered and put to work a lot more than it typically is in the church of whatever stripe these days. In the current state of society, where the word "Christian" as adjective has been so stretched and distorted as to be nearly useless for anything meaningful, I still say it's worth breaking out "Christlike" in its place and seeing just how much of what we describe as "Christian" really measures up. 

Following a Savior who steadfastly refused to rack up power on earth loses its luster real fast for a great many people. Signing up for a fight sounds better. Even better is the promise of being "ransomed" - getting the great "get out of Hell free" card - without having to follow the example of Jesus, to give your whole life, your inner self, your soul, your everything. Talking as if your "salvation" is in the past tense is a lot easier and more fun than talking about your service, your following Jesus, as an ongoing everyday thing. 

Resist this. 

It might just be that the allure of the "get out of Hell free" card is the biggest problem with the misuse of verses such as this one. Anything that implies that the Christ-following life, or any part of it, is an over-and-done thing is a disaster for actual discipleship and Christ-following. And it's not just those e-word people that are the problem; all corners of Christianity, including the mainline, have severe problems grasping all this. 

The call is not to volunteer to die; the call is, like Jesus, to give your whole life, your inside and out life, all of you. And that goes on every day of your life. 

And that's really hard.

Ugh.