Sermon: Ascension Deficit Disorder

First Presbyterian Church

May 21, 2023, Easter 7A

Acts 1:1-11; Ephesians 1:15-23; Luke 24:44-53  

 

Ascension Deficit Disorder

 

 

Before we go any farther: the title comes from a comic strip, one that circulates frequently among preacher types about this time each year.

In the strip the disciples are seen (backs to us viewers) looking up at the sky, some pointing, as Jesus ascends into heaven. One disciple, however, is crying out “Where? Where? I can’t see him!” And of course, that one disciple is labeled “Ascension Deficit Disorder.”

Such deficit of attention has been typical of the occasion for quite a while now, even in some of the church’s most liturgical quarters. Part of the issue is that, technically, the feast day doesn’t fall on a Sunday – Ascension Day was actually this past Thursday. As well, the event doesn’t really feature prominently in much of the church’s liturgy and practice – its “public theology,” if you will. Let’s face it, the most attention any of us ever pay to the Ascension is when it appears in the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed, in a terse four-word phrase. For example in the Nicene Creed we read: 

On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

 

And, really, that’s about it for the Ascension.

To be fair, it’s not as if scripture makes that big a deal of the Ascension either. Only one New Testament author takes the trouble to mention the event, but interestingly that author feels compelled to describe it twice. Luke includes a brief account of the event at the end of his gospel, but then returns to the event at the beginning of the book of Acts. And if we look closely, the two accounts…well, they’re not exactly the same.

The Ascension is described, not surprisingly, at the very end of Luke’s gospel. It shares the twenty-fourth and last chapter of that gospel with the visit of Mary Magdalene and other women to Jesus’s tomb, now found empty; Luke’s lengthy account of Jesus’s appearance to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus; and Jesus’s subsequent appearance with the larger body of disciples back in Jerusalem afterwards. The account we read from Luke earlier picks up directly after that event, after Jesus has asked for something to eat and been given a piece of fish, which he ate in front of them in a way a ghost would not be able to do. 

Luke doesn’t give us any indication of time lapse in chapter 24; so far as we know all of the events in this chapter take place on the same day – including Jesus’s opening of scripture to the disciples and their trip to Bethany, where he was lifted up to the heavens in front of them. 

At the beginning of Acts, however, Luke offers some different details. For example, in verse 3 Luke adds the noteworthy detail that after his resurrection, Jesus appeared to the disciples over the course of forty days – quite different from the seeming all-in-one-day approach at the end of the gospel. The words Luke records from Jesus are slightly different as well, and Acts also adds the two men in white robes who chide the disciples for standing around looking at the sky. 

While there are churches in this country, and probably in this town, who would accuse me of some sort of heresy for pointing out what looks like inconsistency from one biblical book to another, the explanation here is pretty simple. At the very beginning of his gospel Luke declares to his intended reader, the otherwise-unknown Theophilus, that after noting how many others were seeking to write down accounts of the gospel story as they had been handed down by eyewitnesses, that “I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you” (Luke 1:3-4). In short, Luke tells us from the very beginning that these two substantial volumes are the products of careful and thorough research. To put it in scholarly terms, Luke has taken up the task of gathering material from primary and secondary sources (eyewitnesses and those who had received the stories from them). When, by the time of writing down Acts, he had gathered information that he didn’t necessarily have at the time he wrote his gospel, Luke duly and diligently updated the record, so that “most excellent Theophilus” would be more completely informed about all these things that had taken place. 

Would that we would be so diligent in our handling of scripture. 

So, what of it? Why is this obscure lectionary event worth bothering with? 

We get some hint of that in that third reading, the one from the letter to the Ephesians. When, in verse 20, the author describes how God "raised him (Jesus) from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places," we also see that this places Jesus "far above all rule and authority and power and dominion" of the earthly variety, and head over all the church as well. In addition, the earlier verses of this reading suggest what it looks like when the church is truly living and serving together under that ultimate authority of Christ; faith in Jesus, love for all the saints, wisdom, hope. To understand the Ascension, and to what Christ has ascended, is to begin to understand our place in God's order, and perhaps to avoid getting a little too stuck on ourselves and our own importance. We live under the authority of the risen and ascended Christ; nothing we do escapes that authority. 

As to today’s story itself, maybe two points need to be reinforced. In both accounts Luke records Jesus reassuring the disciples that even as he is leaving them, he is not leaving them alone. Actually, though, the fulfillment of this promise is pretty much next week’s scripture, so let’s leave that until then, shall we?

The other striking point that we might easily overlook is almost buried in Luke 24:49, and reiterated in Acts 1:4. Even as Jesus is telling the disciples that “repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem,” (or to be Jesus's witnesses in “Jerusalem, and all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” as Acts describes), Jesus’s first instruction to the body is to … go back to Jersualem. Go home. Wait. 

Wait “until you have been clothed with power from on high” in Luke. Jesus “ordered them not to leave Jersualem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father” in Acts. 

Even as we have a worldwide call, we also have a mandate to wait upon the Lord. We are to go into all the world, but not without being made ready by the moving and shaking of the Holy Spirit. We are, in short, to hurry up, and wait, to be open and receiving and ready for the leading of the Spirit to prepare us to witness to the world.

Does the church, universal or particular, really do a good job of that? In a way that's exactly the kind of thing a church, especially a church in an interim or transitional period, needs to do most of all; wait, listen to Jesus's authority, listen for what the Spirit is saying and where the Spirit is leading.  These days it doesn't seem like many churches are all that good at this, and maybe that’s the Ascension Deficit Disorder we need to be worried about.

For even the highly neglected days on the church calendar, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal unless otherwise indicated); #267, Come, Christians, Join to Sing; #---, When Jesus knew his time had come; #---, See our Jesus now ascending

If anyone knows where this comic came from or who created it I'd love to give them credit.

Sermon: Resurrection Happens

First Presbyterian Church

May 14, 2023, Easter 6A

Acts 17:16-34; 1 Peter 3:13-16

 

Resurrection Happens

 

 

 

The climax of today’s account from Acts is set at a place called the Areopagus, in effect an open forum in the city of Athens in which, at this point in the city’s history, debates and philosophical discussions ranging from the serious to the frivolous were carried out among the Athenian public, with certain intellectual groups like Stoics and Epicureans at the forefront. The name of this forum derived from the name of the ancient Greek god of war, Ares, to whom the site was tied in their mythology. You might recognize this story more quickly if the location is cited by its Roman equivalent, Mars Hill.

The name “Mars Hill” actually caught on at times in Western Christian culture as a kind of shorthand for the open and courageous defiance that Paul is presumed to have exemplified in his speech there. A Google search can turn up a number of Christian-supported educational institutions bearing the name, the most prominent probably being Mars Hill University in North Carolina. Originally given the more prosaic name French Broad Baptist Institute at its founding in 1856, the school received the Mars Hill name shortly thereafter, with verse 22 of this chapter cited specifically. In the King James Version prevalent at the time, that verse reads “Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.” I guess this defiant tone must have seemed appropriate to the school’s early supporters, which makes me wonder just how much mid-19^th century North Carolina came off as an idolatrous spiritual wasteland to them. The name continues to this day, and private elementary and secondary schools also carry the name in various locations.

One can also find a number of churches bearing the Mars Hill name. Probably the most famous (or infamous) was the megachurch based in Seattle, which at its peak was the center of an empire of fifteen locations across five states, with a peak membership of nearly 6,500 and regular attendance over 12,000 across those locations. Revelations of improprieties on the part of its celebrity pastor, Mark Driscoll, and Driscoll’s refusal to submit to discipline over those irregularities and violations, led inexorably to that church’s decline and eventual dissolution in January 2015. (It seems that it wasn’t just the idolatrous world around him that Driscoll was intent on defying.)

What’s odd about these examples is that if those who chose the Mars Hill name had read the whole account more closely, or had read more than verse 22, I can’t help but wonder if they would really have been impressed by it at all. Far from being “in-your-face” pushy and defiant, the speech turns out to be quite a model of finding ways to work across difference and find common ground with persons of different religious persuasions, with the real stumbling block found only at the end. 

When we join the story in verse 16 Paul has been forced to leave the city of Berea due to unrest stirred up by a group of synagogue followers from Thessalonica, a previous stop on Paul’s journey. The believers of Berea sent Paul away to keep him safe. His partners Silas and Timothy stayed, while Paul was put on a ship to Athens under the presumption that the instigators were unlikely to follow them there.

We don’t generally see Paul alone in Acts; usually he is traveling with a working partner – Barnabas early in the book, Silas and others later on. But here he is in Athens, all on his own, so of course he’s going to get himself into trouble.

First, as usual, he finds the local synagogue and begins to speak about Jesus there to his fellow Jews; somewhat unusual was his appearance in the local marketplace, not to mention debating local philosophers of the Epicurean and Stoic persuasion. 

His first efforts among these locals apparently didn't go well; some are calling him a "babbler," others are puzzled by his proclaiming "foreign deities" - it's possible that when Paul spoke of "Jesus and the Resurrection," the word he used for "resurrection" was being misunderstood as the name of another deity. Also, while traveling through the city, Paul took notice of the proliferation of idols, and his education as a Pharisee from all those years ago set off a visceral reaction to these idols. At last, though, Paul fought off his gag reflex long enough to take note of one particular idol, for future reference. 

And now we’re back to verse 22, the one in which the King James Version called the Athenians “superstitious.” The NRSV chooses a less harsh translation, instead having Paul call the Athenians “extremely religious.” You could look at that phrase two ways in this context; it could be a simple opening gesture of compliment or even flattery, or it might just have a tinge of winking sarcasm in it – “I see how ex-treeeeemely religious you are in every way…” (nudge-nudge wink-wink). Either way, the audience is much more likely to be hooked in than when being assaulted as “superstitious” from the beginning. 

With that opening, Paul moves to his “hook.” Here’s where that one idol he noticed earlier comes in and becomes his opening to talk to the Athenians about what they don’t know, and what – by their own admission – they know they don’t know.

The idol Paul found was inscribed simply “To an unknown god.”

You have to wonder what prompted the establishment of such a shrine. Were they afraid they forgot one? Was it some strange way of being “welcoming” to out-of-towners? “Hey, we know you’re lonely and missing your local deities, so just in case one of our thousands of idols can’t meet your needs here’s one you can turn into whatever idol you need it to be!” Really, what was the reason for this idol?

Whichever was the case, Paul pounced on it: “what therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.”

What follows is pretty striking for what’s missing as for what’s included. All the Mars Hill schools and churches might not have noticed that in this talk, Paul doesn’t really engage in any Bible-thumping. The things he proclaims certainly are scripturally sound, to be sure. The God who created all that is, made humanity all out of one ancestor, allotting the times and seasons for the peoples of the earth – all of that you could back up from multiple sources of Hebrew scripture, but Paul doesn’t do so? Is he wimping out on “preachin’ the Gospel” or is it just possible that Paul realized that trying to confront the Athenians with scripture they probably didn’t know might not have been the best start? 

As if that weren’t enough, the two direct quotes that can be identified in this speech are not from any scripture, but from two Athenian poets of centuries past. The phrase “in him we live and move and have our being” is a pretty clear quote from Phaenomena, by the poet Aratus (about 300 years before Paul's time), and “for we too are his offspring” could be from any number of Greek sources. Paul has questioned the legitimacy of the Athenian gods using the words of their own poets. Not bad.

The stumbling block was inevitable, though, and here it comes.

First it was the idea of repentance. Huh? What’s this?  In practices that mostly revolved around paying your homage and making your offerings to your chosen deities and, well, maybe not killing anybody or being otherwise horrible, the idea of repentance – not only confessing doing wrong but changing – made no sense in Greek thought.

Even that paled in the shadow of the ultimate stumbling block – speaking of a “man whom he has appointed, … of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

Athenian philosophies, to the degree they considered life after death at all, were all about escaping the body - disembodied spirits, not 'zombies'. The idea of returning in the physical body – a body that had died, no less – that was too much. You can almost imagine some of the crowd walking away saying, “dude almost had me until that coming back from the dead bit, ewww...”. Many scoffed, a some were mildly curious, but a few even believed, including one of the Areopagus regulars named Dionysus and a woman named Damaris, who apparently joined Paul as he left Athens.

We can adapt a lot in conversations with persons of other faiths or no faith at all. More than one scholar has observed that the typical tenets of many religions bear an awful lot of similarity to one another. At some point, though, the Resurrection happens. We come up against that inescapable, indispensable, foundational rock of our faith and can do no other than say it straight, no matter what scandal it causes for those who hear us. It is what makes us, it is what makes us one. 

Christ is still risen, no matter what. Thanks be to God. Amen. 

Sermon: A Lynching in Jerusalem

First Presbyterian Church

May 7, 2023, Easter 5A

Psalm 31:1-16; Acts 7:54-8:3

 

A Lynching in Jerusalem

 

 

Preacher, what are you thinking??

I'd imagine that's what some of you are thinking right now. First official Sunday in the pulpit, congregation feeling anxious and concerned about how things are changing, and you're going to hit us with this scripture? A man getting stoned to death? 

It's an ugly scene, no doubt. The act of stoning a person to death is perhaps not as gruesome or grotesque as the act of crucifixion that Christ (and countless others across the Roman Empire) suffered. However, a stoning is hard to match for the sheer spectacle of violent, even unhinged rage that tended to motivate it. We're not talking about easily-handheld rocks being thrown; these are boulders meant to do severe bodily harm. It was a violent spectacle, one of rage; one might think of the lynchings that dotted this country during the civil rights struggle for acts with similar rage behind them.

It's hard to say exactly what Stephen did to provoke such an ending to his life at the hands of decidedly enraged enemies. We only meet him one chapter earlier, when he is one of seven members of the early Christian community appointed to oversee the distribution of food to the poor and widows of the community; this was done so that the disciples could concentrate on the Word of God and not be "distracted" by waiting on tables – yes, they really said that. (This "hospitality committee" consisted of all men; you know how well that would go today…) Stephen is noted immediately as being "full of the Holy Spirit," and also as "full of grace and power," and later as one who "did great wonders and signs among the people"; clearly, he wasn't going to be limited to waiting tables. 

This is most of Acts 6. As that chapter continues, a group from a local synagogue assembly apparently took offense at Stephen's works, and tried to play theological "gotcha" with him, only to end up thoroughly embarrassed and shamefaced at being unable to withstand his power of argument and command of the Word (apparently, he didn't have any trouble doing that while waiting on tables). Those wounded snowflakes then ginned up some false witnesses and dragged Stephen before the religious council, where he let loose with a stem-winder of a lecture/sermon that must have made Peter proud, one full of Hebrew history (Moses in particular, since the false witnesses had accused him of disparaging Moses). Stephen was only beginning to connect all of that to the still-recently-crucified Jesus when he was dragged away and killed with stones. 

We should note that in one important aspect, Stephen's death is very much unlike the crucifixion of Jesus, in more than just the method of killing. Each of the gospels gives us a detailed description of Jesus's appearances before various official figures -- Pontius Pilate most memorably, but others are included in the different gospels. 

No such official proceeding is recorded here. Instead, Stephen is brought before a religious council, one that interrogates Stephen about a number of false charges that others have made against him. It is at the climax of his defense that members of this religious council charge at Stephen and drag him out of the city and stone him to death. No officials of the ruling Roman Empire were involved at all. To borrow terms from American history, Jesus was executed, but Stephen was lynched, with stones instead of rope.

Stephen's final words have done as much to seal his place in the church's history as anything. First there's the admittedly somewhat inflammatory part about seeing the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God – you can see how his enemies might get more enraged at that suggestion. At the last, he echoes the words of Jesus from Luke 23:34 ("Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do") on the cross, asking that this sin not be held against his murderers. 

But that middle one is of most interest today. Here it is translated "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." Again, it's a lot like something Jesus said on the cross, again from Luke: "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit" (Luke 23:46). But Jesus's own words are an echo of a verse from today's psalm reading. Notice there in verse 5 of the psalm: "Into your hand I commit my spirit." 

The excerpt of the psalm given in the Revised Common Lectionary doesn't truly capture the full force of the full psalm; what we've just heard adds a few verses to that to catch more of the language of despair found throughout it. Verse 10 offers this: "my strength fails because of my misery, and my bones waste away." Or there is this extended lament in verses 11-13 (here in the NRSV):

I am the scorn of all my adversaries, a horror to my neighbors, an object of dread to my acquaintances; those who see me in the street flee from me. 

I have passed out of mind like one who is dead; 

I have become like a broken vessel. 

For I hear the whispering of many – terror all around! – as they scheme together against me, as they plot to take my life.

 

It's quite a lament, as some psalms are, and seems far from relief.

And yet…the very next verse turns: "But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, you are my God." And from there we follow into those two final verses of today's reading, with their note of trust in God's provision.

Whether Stephen was consciously echoing Jesus's words from the cross in his own exclamation, or was directly remembering the psalm on his own, we don't know. What we do see is that, even knowing that his end was near, Stephen did not despair. His trust remained fast in Jesus, and his remembering these words seems to have been a help, in that moment of final terror, that allowed him to hold on to that trust in the darkest moment.

What is it that allows us to hold on to that trust in dark, uncertain times? Where is the connection, where is the foothold that helps us to remain firm on that "rock" and "refuge" that is sung in verse 2? What is going to help bring us back in those times when, unlike Stephen, we don't necessarily seem to be quite "full of the Holy Spirit" but instead we're unmistakably full of decidedly less sanguine fears and despairs and hopelessness? 

On the other hand, what of the seeming, apparent fact that Stephen being "full of the Holy Spirit" ended up in his being brutally killed? How is that comforting at all? Is that what following faithfully and devotedly gets us? 

It's hard not to think of Jesus's own words in Matthew 10:34: "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth: I have not come to bring peace, but a sword." 

As writer Enuma Okoro puts it in The Christian Century: 

In theory, I like the idea of being close to God, intimate to the point of speaking regularly with God—and receiving clear directives. Whenever I was confused about something, I could just ask God and get clarity on the matter. I’d never have to wonder about what my next step should be. God would lead me and guide me and maybe even use me to get an important message across to other people.

It sounds divine! Except that in the Bible, an intimate relationship with God usually sends people’s lives into chaos. It makes them widely unpopular as messengers; it sends them to the margins of society. It also quite often gets them killed.[i]

 

There's the challenge: to hold on to the idea that even if this call to serve and to follow and to proclaim ultimately leads us into danger or hardship or marginalization, if it deprives us of the comforts of society to which we have become accustomed, even if all of those things happen we are still God's own, sisters and brothers with and in Christ Jesus, and as the psalmist says to God, "my times are in your hand." 

It was only a few years ago that the idea of "serving God" was best exemplified (as strange as it seemed then and seems now) by staying home, not risking being the one who brings illness and suffering to another. Who knows what form it will take for any one of us, or for this church, in the future? Are we at a point where such witness as Stephen's might yet provoke such violent reaction, even from religious leaders or those who claim religious authority (as happened to Stephen, remember)? Or, conversely, are we at a point of wondering if anyone is paying attention at all? Does anyone even know we're here, much less listen to what we say?

Oh, and one more thing, about those added verses from chapter 8: it sure looks like things are going from bad to worse. The followers of Jesus (except, apparently for the twelve) are scattered out of Jerusalem, and this Saul fellow who minded the coats of the lynch mob is inspired to go on his own personal rampage against these followers. It looks bleak indeed.

However, if you keep reading you see this in 8:4: "Now those who were scattered went from place to place, proclaiming the Word." Look at that: this wave of persecution that was meant to stamp out this "good news" ends up helping it spread far beyond Jerusalem. The rest of chapter 8 contains a couple of interesting stories about Philip, another one of those table-waiting deacons like Stephen, who ends up helping the Word spread not only into Samaria, but even down into Africa (read the chapter to see). As for this Saul fellow, we'll run into him again too, but things won't exactly go as he plans. Eventually he'll change his name and his affiliation and do an awful lot of spreading the word under the name Paul. I guess that old saying about "darkest before the dawn" might fit here.

Whatever the case may be, we know we have a place to turn for words that can guide and comfort, yes? Hear Jesus on the cross; hear Stephen at the hands of his killers; hear the cry of the lamenting psalmist; hear all of these who knew that their times were, as our times are, in God's hands.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #463, How Firm a Foundation; #432, How Clear is Our Vocation, Lord; #719, Come, Labor On

 

---

[i] Enuma Okoro, "Living By the Word: May 14, Fifth Sunday of Easter," The Christian Century 11 April 2017 (accessed 9 May 2020), https://www.christiancentury.org/article/living-word/may-14-fifth-sunday-easter?fbclid=IwAR0i0pUWH2FmJ3ahUj3kbXF-DgtvQ0gitGZM1iMwPer-bDMQ98MuACeI65U 

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