Not what I want, but what you want

Mark 14:22-42

“Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want.”

I’ve always found that single verse to be one of the most astounding insights into who Jesus was as Son of God, Savior, and, yet, still human being.

Jesus goes off to pray while the disciples stay in the garden and nod off contrary to his wishes, and the one remnant of Jesus’ prayer that we have is this line. “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want.”

For the better part of his ministry Jesus has been forthright and focused on the idea that the Son of Man must die and then he will be raised again. In Mark’s Gospel this has been the entire point of the story. It’s been why he’s told people to be quiet about the healings and even when he raised Lazarus from the dead. It’s why he’s consistently battered the disciples for their ignorance of what was to come. He has had one direction and it has been toward the cross, like a freight train with one set of tracks. And yet, here on the precipice of the crucifixion, what does he pray but “remove this cup from me?” Take it away, God, if at all possible.

I believe this is a seminal moment in the history of what it means to be human.

Jesus is showing us what humanity can be through his vulnerability. The Son of God is vulnerable. But, contrary to how we imagine vulnerability, it is precisely that vulnerability that is his strength.

Postgame Interview Christianity

Psalm 40

 If you continue reading Psalm 40 to its conclusion, which I recommend you actually do if you’re looking for something Bible-y to read in the coming week, one thing you’ll discover is that the Psalm finishes with this declaration, “As for me I am poor and needy, but the Lord takes thought of me. You are my help and my deliverer; do not delay, O my God.” This got me thinking… on this business of being poor and needy versus rich and blessed, how often do we prefer to label ourselves as the ones in need rather than the ones with power, and what does that say about us?

            There is one place where this shows up again and again, and that is when athletes are interviewed after a game. Some of you have undoubtedly had the pleasure of being that person with a microphone shoved in your face thirty seconds after an emotional high, dripping in sweat, and with muscles drenched in lactic acid, so you know it is exactly in that moment that you want to explain how you are feeling. We all know there is nothing more pointless than athletes being interviewed after a sporting event.
            In that moment, has any anybody ever said anything the least bit enlightening? It’s always “I’m just glad the team won” and “I just want to thank God for this opportunity” or “We left it all on the field/court/diamond/pitch today” or “We’ll get them next time.” Real enlightening stuff. But the funny thing about this is that if an athlete answers in any non-approved way; in essence, if they say anything that doesn’t stick to this boring, repetitive, pointless script that tells us absolutely nothing original; we bring out the pitchforks and insist that they get hanged from the nearest pole. This is all very stupid, but it’s also very interesting because we insist that our heroes stick to what is often an outright lie in their faux humility. We want them to downplay their success and to lift up how good the other teams are; we want them to play the underdog card, the “nobody believed in us” card, even sometimes when the vast majority of people believed in them. We don’t want the truth; we want a narrative that makes us feel good.

Reclaiming the "p" word: Praise as humility put into action

Psalm 113

As many of you know, words sometimes mean something a little different in some places than they do in the rest of the world. For example, today’s Psalm is about praise. In most places in the world—with most people—praise is a word that evokes images of joy and worshiping with abandon, but in this part of the world I’m come to find that praise is looked upon with something else—something more like suspicion. So, today, I’ve invited my cultural translator, Samantha, to translate Psalm 113. I’ll read. She’ll translate.

Ready?

Frank: ¹ Praise the Lord!
Sam: Sit still and think good thoughts.

Frank: Praise, O servants of the Lord;
   praise the name of the Lord.

Sam: Sit very reverently. Don’t make eye contact. God doesn’t like eccentricity. Just chill.

Frank: ² Blessed be the name of the Lord
   from this time on and for evermore.

Sam: <whisper> God is good all the time… just as long as I don’t have to talk about it.

Frank: ³ From the rising of the sun to its setting
   the name of the Lord is to be praised.

Sam: At least ten times a day I will consider saying something about God, then reconsider because I don’t really know what to say, because it’s better to be silent than to say the wrong thing.

Frank: ⁴ The Lord is high above all nations,
   and his glory above the heavens.

Sam: God is way up there somewhere, so dancing and clapping and whatnot are kind of pointless, because God hears me whether I whisper or carry on like a lunatic, amirite?

Frank: ⁵ Who is like the Lord our God,
   who is seated on high,

who looks far down
   on the heavens and the earth?

Sam: Rhetorical question! Like all the ones the pastor asks!

Frank: ⁷ He raises the poor from the dust,
   and lifts the needy from the ash heap,
⁸ to make them sit with princes,
   with the princes of his people.

Sam: Good, good, raising up the poor. But I’m not sure about this prince thing. That sounds like something for those people on the coasts. I mean, what would the neighbors think?

Frank: ⁹ He gives the barren woman a home,
   making her the joyous mother of children.

Praise the Lord!

Sam: <monotone> Amen. Hallelujah.

           

Thank you to Sam, my cultural translator.

John the Baptist makes Lutherans nervous

Matthew 3:1-17

Whenever John the Baptist and Jesus share the stage in the Gospels it demands our attention because nobody is as brash and straightforward as John, and nobody matters as much as John when it comes to setting the record straight about who Jesus is. But John is also—how shall I put this?—not very nice, and, being the Minnesota-nice people that we are, we aren’t very sure what to do with a person like that.

For one thing, John didn’t understand hospitality. If you’re likely to lash out and call people a “brood of vipers” then perhaps you shouldn’t be a church greeter; instead you might fit in better volunteering at Confirmation. And it’s worth noting that this is what John says to the ones who actually showed up. You can imagine what he thought of those who didn’t even bother. Then he hits the Pharisees and the Sadducees where it really hurts, questioning the importance of their lineage. This is the kind of thing that really doesn’t play well in small towns, which is why I’m not so naïve as to tell you that your history doesn’t give you any special standing; I’m just going to reread verse 9, “Do not presume to say to yourselves, "We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham,” and I’m just going to leave that there to do with what you might.

Does fear of the Lord still matter? (And other leading questions)

Scripture: Micah 5:2-4; 6:6-8

The book of Proverbs reminds us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Now, that doesn’t get much play these days. I suspect most people would say that the beginning of wisdom is found in college, or the beginning of wisdom is discovered in the process of aging, or the beginning of wisdom is starting a career, or having a family. Fear of the Lord may be biblical but we rarely consider fear of a thing to be good—not today—and certainly wisdom must start somewhere else. “Why should we be afraid of God?” we might ask in our best modern voices. We love God, or we have faith in God, but fearing God? No, no. That’s something for less civilized folk.

We’ve done our best to make God into the flavorless communion wafers that we serve as his body. He can be loving, and powerful, and good, but fearful? Nope, no good. We have become afraid to ascribe to God any attribute that we do not consider proper in our fellow human beings, and the end result has been a kind of arrogance in our understanding of who God is and what God does. We first decide what it is that a good God will look like, then we decide which parts of our God fit that description, and finally we only believe those things we have already decided befit the God of our choice. In this way we make God in our image. God has all the traits we like and likes the people we like.

Because this Old Testament God doesn’t act like the God we have created in our image we make this God out to be a different God that, because of Jesus, we can ignore. We do this even though Jesus seemed perfectly happy to pray to this God whom he called “Father” and even though our creeds confess this God to be one and the same with the Son and the Holy Spirit.

This is important when it comes to reading the prophets, like Micah, because our weakened images of God mean that we are tempted to take shortcuts and find in the prophets what we want to find. When Micah says, “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” we read that as if it is a moral-ethical imperative. Do these things and you’ll be right in the sight of God. Perfect. After all, that’s exactly what Jesus says when he’s asked what a person has to do to inherit eternal life: “Be perfect like your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).

True humility vs Minnesota nice

Scripture: Philippians 2:1-13

             Sometimes I long for the good old Puritan days when I could read scripture like this, do my fire and brimstone sermon about your selfish ambition and conceit, and then return to my seat and sing “Amazing Grace.” That would be so easy. Lift up Paul saying “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus” and let that sit in your stomach and see how well you do with it. The only problem with the straightforward, law-heavy approach to this scripture is that Paul ends this rambling exhortation to good behavior by saying “it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure,” which is kind of frustrating, because it means that, in spite of all the advice Paul is giving you, the only good you will ever do is not because you’ll be able to observe the law, but because God sees fit to actually do good with you. So, you’re all sinners that will never measure up without the grace of God—yay! (I love my job)

But this is what humility is. In a world of self-sufficiency it's so backwards that we don’t quite know what to do with it. True humility—the kind that takes no credit and honestly expects nothing in return—is beyond us most of the time, even if it’s the kind of thing we hope for our children. It goes beyond the don’ts: Don’t brag. Don’t talk only about yourself. Don’t rub it in when you win. Don’t blame others when you lose. The problem for Scandinavian Lutherans is that we tend to think that since we follow the don’ts we have this one covered. We don’t brag or rub it in; we don’t often talk ourselves up or others down. Sure, we might occasional forget all this at sporting events, but for the most part we’ve got Minnesota nice covered… and Minnesota nice must pretty much be close to humble, right?

            Actually, I’m thinking no.

"What is truth" part II, the conclusion

For the first sermon of this title, see "What is truth?" Questions and Answers in John's Gospel, December 29, 2013

Scripture: John 18:28-40

            This is what it’s all been leading to. I’ve only mentioned this moment about a hundred times since we started the Gospel of John at Christmas: Jesus before Pilate and Pilate’s rhetorical question, echoing across time and history: “What is truth?”

            It’s a question behind how we think and act and order our lives. Is truth a series of true events that have happened? Is it a series of things that can be claimed as “facts?” Is truth an unapproachable ideal? Or is truth something beyond comprehension? For those of you who have listened these past few months, you already know the answer to the question—at least according to John’s Gospel—but rather than just giving you that answer and moving on I’m going to spend some time today talking about why the other answers to the question are insufficient.

            Let’s start with truth as a series of historical events. This is probably the most common way we think about what is true. If something happened, then it’s true. If it didn’t, then it’s false. Academics use this approach to address everything from historical events to scientific hypotheses, but Christians use this approach as well. For example, every time a movie or TV show about the Bible makes its way into the public sphere—like, I don’t know, Noah—there is always debate about to what extent the movie accurately portrays what the Bible portrays. Usually what people mean when they critique a movie like this is that it does not follow the history of the Bible; less often do you hear critiques about the meaning of the story. I haven’t seen the movie, Noah, but it’s pretty predictably not the Bible’s version of history—even if its themes may be biblical through and through. This is fairly predictable, because Hollywood is interested in making movies that involve explosions and battle scenes and Russell Crowe standing around shirtless. The Bible tends to care less about the particulars—even the epic battle scenes—than it does about what the story tells us about God and about human beings. The particulars of the story matter but only insofar as they tell us about God and about us. However, in the modern world, we are taught from a young age that the most important thing is how events took place, and never mind what they mean until it has been firmly established that they happened as portrayed.

John 3:16 and the virtue of humility

Scripture: John 3:1-21

            I’ve pondered at some point of my life going to a pro or college football game, standing in the end zone, and holding a sign that says, “John 3:14” or “John 3:17” or something along those lines, but since this would require going to a football game that’s probably not going to happen.

            If you stop and think about it, John 3:16 is probably only one of a handful of verses that can be considered widely known in the general public. I can think of only the 23^rd Psalm and maybe the first verse of Genesis as other examples of this. “For God so loved the word that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” That’s great and true and very worthy of sharing, but it is kind of arbitrary that this is the verse held so highly in public esteem. Why not John 3:14 and 15? “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” It’s very, very similar. Or then there’s John 3:17, “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.” Again, very similar.

            Or, going a step further, why don’t we make a big deal of the light and darkness imagery, or the condemnation and salvation language that is everywhere in John? What is it that John 3:16 does that really works for us?

            This week when I read John 3 again for the first time in awhile I wrote down the first thing that came to my mind: “Oy, John’s Gospel… oy, oy, oy.” This is not a good sign for a pastor when that is the right at the top of your notes. Seriously, if you think preaching is hard when the scripture doesn’t seem to say anything important try preaching when the scripture says so much that I am going to need you to free up your schedules for the rest of the week to get to it all.

"What is truth?" Questions and answers in John's Gospel

Scripture: John 1:19-34

            The only thing more annoying than a person always asking “why?”—and, yes, some parents with young kids during the Christmas season can probably argue there’s nothing more annoying than that—is a person who always has an answer. That’s really an unfair statement (some people who give answers are compelling and many people who ask questions are doing us a favor), but I want to start there because we have this natural reaction both to questioners and know-it-alls that I find fascinating. Firstly, we have all had that person, hopefully a child, who is a perpetual “Why?” machine. “Why can’t I do this? Why not? Why? Why? Why?” Eventually, no matter how hard you resist, you will get down to the heart of the matter and the answer to “Why?” will always be “Because!” If you’re like me you hate that moment because the truth is I just don’t know, or I just don’t have a good reason, or I’m not willing to enter into a philosophical debate with a four-year-old. I want to suggest that there is more going on here than petty annoyance. When we dig deep enough underneath all of the questions, our only answer is ever really “because,” because all of our answers hinge only on guesses that lie under the assumptions on which we base our lives.

7 signs you're doing Christianity wrong

It's hard to be a Christian sometimes in this aggravating world that sometimes spits in the face of what you believe. I get that. I struggle, too, with how to live and love God in the best way that I can. I also read what other Christians write, listen to what other Christians say, and reflect on my own presuppositions about the faith, which has led me to this: there are some terrible ways to show your Christian faith and the internet has basically blown all of them up for the world to see.

So, here it is: a non-definitive list of signs that you're not doing this whole "being a Christian" thing very well. I hope it helps.

Seven signs you're doing Christianity wrong

Shocking and Humble

I'm not preaching on John 10:22-30 as many preachers will be this coming Sunday--I'll be in Acts with Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch thanks to the Narrative Lectionary--but as we were talking about John's Gospel at our local text study one subject that came up was the radical nature of what Jesus was saying: "The Father and I are one." That is a stunningly bold statement. Honestly, I'm not surprised that the immediate response of the Jews was to pick up rocks to stone him. Jesus was without a doubt violating the first commandment--openly and blatantly. Any observing Jew would have felt the same way those early ones did--in fact, in their shoes I would have been the first one picking up stones.

Time and again in the gospel witness, Jesus does and says a thing that is utterly shocking, which is an important thing to remember for we Scandinavian pastors who are so utterly not. It's astounding how we make a message that is so radical and earth-shattering so completely normal. Each of us are called to proclaim Christ crucified and risen, as Paul says, "a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles" (1 Corinthians 1:23). Well, how have we made that message so utterly lame? Why are our words not equally shocking? I don't doubt that our people are sometimes complacent, but we're fooling ourselves if we don't believe that there are things we believe that will shock them. The Gospel I want to proclaim is utterly absurd; it absolutely flies in the face of the way that pretty much everything in our world works. It should be absolutely jarring to hear. So, why won't I preach it?

The Courage to be Humble

From the Hallock ecumenical men's breakfast. Theme: Courageous men in scripture 

 

            I begin just about every one of the sermons I preach with our reading for this morning from Psalm 19:14: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” Well, that might not seem like a verse that has much to do with courage, but courage in the Bible is a lot more than picking up a rock and killing a giant. It’s more than going before Pharaoh and saying “Let my people go;” it’s more than following Jesus out on to the water and more than a night in a lion’s den. Those are our primary images of courageous men in scripture. We don’t have biblical sports stars, but we do have King David, Moses, Daniel, Abraham, Solomon—religious and political leaders.

            And then there’s Jesus. Of course, it’s easy to talk about courage and Jesus. Savior of the world, died on a cross for us, gave the ultimate sacrifice; courageous, no doubt. But the way that Jesus was courageous was not the same as David or Moses. Jesus was courageous in denying the need to so desperately hold on to life, humbling himself to the point of death. It takes profound courage to be humble, especially when you are on the right side of a question, especially—one would assume—when you are the God of the world.