The immortality of love

This week I'm posting the sermon I am preaching for the hospice memorial service, rather than the Sunday morning sermon, because A) I like it better, and B) I don't have a manuscript for Sunday morning and pulling it together after the fact is a lot of work I may or may not do. So, enjoy!

Revelation 21:1-4

Most of our lives are spent tiptoeing around death, sometimes pretending like it isn’t there, sometimes putting other things in its way, and sometimes intentionally minimizing it, as if any of those options put death to death. This is true of our own mortality but even more-so when it comes to those we love. Parents, brothers and sisters, friends, even our children. We tiptoe around it because we’re scared of it, because we absorb messages in our lives that tell us life is always good, death is always bad, so best to flee from it however much you can. When J.K. Rowling was crafting her primary villain for the Harry Potter series she could think of no better name to give him than “Vol-de-mort” which, in French, means “flees from death.”

            So, it is at first jarring, sometimes uncomfortable, but ultimately a tremendous blessing to have people—nurses and social workers and retired people, as well as people who have vocations that don’t seem to have a thing to do with end of life care—who nonetheless give of themselves, their time and energy, to those whose life is ending, who do not flee from death out of fear but who stand alongside the dying, because that is what human beings are called to do. These people are the hands and feet of Jesus, it is most certainly true.

            Last month I was eating with a friend whose son had recently died unexpectedly—not a hospice situation, more of the tragic accident type—and during the course of the conversation we were talking about the ways that we face our mortality or flee from it. We talked about how Ironman triathlons are overrun with people in their 40s and 50s, trying desperately, it seems, to remain young forever. Perhaps if they do just a little more and just a little more they will never get old. We talked about regrets and living with grief, figuring out how to truly live when the imagined future is gone and we are confronted with a real-present that isn’t what we imagined. We talked purpose and what the good-life looks like. We talked about love, without using the word.

The last enemy is death: What Harry Potter taught me about being Christian

1 Corinthians 15:1-26,51-57

The year was 2001 and I was a high school sophomore with a pretty good idea that what I wanted to be in life was a pastor, which is not exactly the typical thing a sophomore in high school wants to be so I wasn’t one to talk much about it. I also had many ideas about what a good Christian pastor looked like— the kind of interests he had, the kind of music he listened to, the things he should be doing and not doing. I had all these things floating around my head, and one of the particular things I believed was this idea that a person can choose either to live in reality or escape from reality, and that Christians are supposed to live in the real world. I had just read The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway and The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald and found myself disturbed that people would choose parties and alcohol and casual relationships as an alternative to a purposeful life. As a Christian I felt not only that I should be doing the right things but also that I need not bother wasting any time reading fanciful stories or watching many movies or anything that might suggest an alternative to that good, Christian life. I believed, in short, that everything should be explicitly Christian for it to be good.

            So, here I was a sophomore in high school when my family decided to go to a movie on Thanksgiving following our family get-together, as was often our custom. And they decided we would see the newly released Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone. I knew a little about this movie. I had occasionally heard my mom and my brother reading from the Harry Potter series; it was the most popular series of books in the world at the time, but I had more or less completely ignored it to that point. My disinterest didn’t have so much to do with witchcraft, which I knew that some Christians were upset about, though maybe that was in the back of my mind too, I’m not sure. But I think I didn’t really care about it because I thought there was nothing here of redeeming Christian value. It wasn’t explicitly Christian; it wasn’t telling me about Jesus or about how to live as a person who follows Jesus, so it seemed like a distraction from reality.

            So I went to this movie expecting not very much. Well, about halfway through I found myself having an unexpected experience: I was becoming deeply affected by the characters and themes of this movie. Maybe some of you have had this experience with different things in your life. It might have been a book or a movie or a TV show or a play or a piece of music or something else—something that was like an onion, which, when peeled away, gave you a better and better understanding of life. In that theater, that day, I realized, even if I couldn’t have ever put it into words as a 15-year-old, that I was living the Christian life in the wrong way. I was trying to isolate myself from everything bad in the world in order that I might be a good Christian when a Christian is actually supposed to go toward what is rotten and point to Christ where you least expect him, because the true radicalness of the gospel is that death and life are turned upside down by Jesus.

‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’
‘Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?’

-1 Corinthians 15:55

Saying nothing in the face of resurrection

Mark 16:1-8

            On Thursday of this week, as we recalled the Last Supper and the Garden of Gethsemane, I focused my message on Jesus praying for God to remove this cup of suffering from his lips, “Yet, not what I want, but what you want.” Then on Friday, as we meditated on the crucifixion, Jesus’ death at the hands of all of us, I focused my message on Jesus’ final words on the cross, quoting Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Well, today I am going to focus on Jesus’ words following the resurrection, which, according to the Gospel of Mark are:

…

…

…

Nothing, actually.

            In Mark’s Gospel not only do we not see Jesus raised from the dead; we also have this unexpected, Christopher Nolan-esque finale, where the disciples have the following reaction to the resurrection: Chapter 16, verse 8, “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

            End of Gospel.

            It’s like that spinning top at the end of Inception where the scene cuts out just as we are about to find out if he is dreaming or not, leaving us all asking, “Wait, what the heck did I just see?” That’s what happens on Easter morning according to the Gospel of Mark, and that, again according to Mark, is the end of the story. A giant cliffhanger.

            For those of you who haven’t been with us since Christmas, and for those who maybe haven’t been paying too close of attention as we’ve read through Mark’s Gospel each Sunday, there is a repeated theme in the Gospel of Mark, which is Jesus telling his disciples to be quiet and not to tell anybody about him. No matter how often he heals people, even when he raises Lazarus from the dead, even when he does things that are impossible for human beings, he orders them clearly: Do not say anything to anybody.

            And he does this in order that they might wait on the big miracle that’s coming. Everything is directed to the cross. Every little bit of the action is heading toward the cross and the empty tomb. But, if you know a little of the story, you probably know that the disciples never listen to Jesus when he tells them to be quiet. They are always disobeying his orders and telling everybody about what he has done. And it’s the same with all the people that Jesus heals. He sternly orders them: Don’t say anything to anybody! And what do they do? They go off telling the world what Jesus has done! Of course. Who wouldn’t share about the man who cured them of incurable disease? Today you’d make a movie about it and people would go see it because they love this healing stuff. They know someone, or they themselves have been faced with a disease, and they need to know they have a healing God. I get it. Jesus did, too, and yet he told them again and again: Do not say anything to anybody. And they never listened.

Little resurrection versus big resurrection

Mark 5:21-43
 

Today’s reading is about little resurrection anticipating a big resurrection to come.

Today’s story from the Gospel of Mark is about Jesus on his way to heal a little girl, daughter of one of the synagogue leader. So, unlike most other times in the Gospel, Jesus is setting out here to help one of the people in power. Along the way he is confronted with a crowd that slows him down. Everybody, it seems, wants his power, even if they are in less dire need than this girl on death’s door. You can imagine the girl’s father’s desperation that these people get out of Jesus’ way.

Jesus ends up healing a woman who touches his cloak, unintentionally it seems. He stops to have a brief chat there about faith. Again, you can imagine the father’s consternation. Well, I can. If my daughter were dying I would be pushing all these lowly people out of the way. I mean, Jesus can heal them later! If the girl dies, she’s dead.

So, it is that the father finds out from an adviser that his daughter has died while Jesus is hung up with the crowds on the road. “Why bother the teacher any further?” asks the adviser. See, this is one of those great misconceptions that people have about Jesus up and down the stories we find in the Gospels. They imagine him a teacher—a rabbi. Then, when he heals, they imagine him a physician. What they don’t have is the imagination to believe that, perhaps, maybe, he is something greater. Perhaps, maybe, he is the Messiah. Perhaps, maybe, he is even the son of God.

None of that enters the grieving father’s mind, of course, because his daughter is now dead. Perhaps it was the crowds holding Jesus up or perhaps it wouldn’t have mattered. Either way, the scene is now set for Jesus to blow everyone’s expectations for him out of the water—again.

Just noise

Mark 1: 21-45

Bits and thoughts, excerpts and ramblings on today's sermon topic.

The Messianic secret

What is going on here? Why does Jesus not want knowledge of the Messiah spread from one end of the earth to the other?

Because Jesus is not about healings, not about signs of power as we define them. Jesus has one purpose, one destination, and he doesn’t want to distract from the significance of that moment—not even a little.

The good news of the Gospel is not the healings. Don’t suggest that the Gospel is the healings. Those people will someday die. “Shut up, demons!” Jesus says. “Don’t pretend like that’s what it’s all about.” Don’t tell anybody. Demons, shut up. You don’t need to tell the world that Jesus is the Son of God. The world values words so little, anyway. You need to show it.

The only way to show it is the cross. The cross, the cross, the cross.  

Jesus knows that healing testimony is weak testimony; it’s too personal, too flimsy. Were you really healed, or did you just get better? You don’t believe because of healings. You don’t believe because of the demons. If you do, you’re only one failed healing away from a lack of faith, or, just as badly, suggesting that the lack of healing is part of God’s plan. It says right there in Mark’s Gospel that Jesus healed “many” who were sick. Not all. Even in the presence of Jesus in the flesh not all those who were sick were healed. Is it because God had a different plan for them? Is it because they were less worthy? No! This isn’t a story about healings.

We tend to put emphasis on the parts of the Bible we need. So if we’re sick then the healings become increasingly important, but this is a kind of self-centeredness. All of it is temporary; all of it is occasional. The real sickness is deeper and harder to believe. The real sickness lies in our heart.

When Jesus heals it seems to be spur-of-the-moment, random, and specifically done not to testify to his holiness. Shh! He says. This is not really what it’s about. So, when we are in need of healing we turn to God in prayer as these people ran to Jesus, but we do so not because we know God will heal us, but because sometimes God does. Miracles happen. They just aren’t the reason we believe.

And, yet, when faced with a miracle the healed can hardly help but preach about it. It’s interesting that the first thing these people do after being healed from a terrible disease is to break a commandment direct from Jesus: Do not tell anybody. Don’t tell anybody, because, as much as you experienced something incredible, this is still not what it is all about. We need something better than healing. We need better even than raising Lazarus from the dead, because Lazarus died again. So will those who are healed.

The cross. The cross. The cross.

Jesus has one destination and one purpose only. To heal not occasionally but once and for all, and to heal not our bodies but all our limitations—and the way this is done is through death. Not healing, actually, but resurrection.

Jesus tells the healed to be quiet because he is not really in the healing business; he’s in the resurrection business. Healing just happens in the presence of the resurrection. It’s a side effect, sometimes even accidental it seems (like the women who touches Jesus’ robes). Healing is just an appetizer; the main course is accomplished on the cross. So, don’t go about testifying about how good the bruschetta is. Wait on the steak. That’s what Jesus is up to. But the appetizer is so good that the people run off, having not yet tasted the main course.

Cross. Resurrection. All the rest of the Gospels merely set the stage. At best they add context; at worst they are a distraction. Don’t be distracted. This is about the cross. It’s about an empty tomb. From the beginning. Mark has no cute birth story, nothing charming about being born in a manger. He doesn’t have the political and social morals of Matthew or Luke. He doesn’t go out of his way to talk about lifting up the poor or go on long rants about being morally right before God. He doesn’t add a deep poetic tone the way John does; he doesn’t waste time on metaphors of light and darkness. Those things are distractions. What matters is the cross. So when Jesus does all manner of increasingly miraculous things Mark has Jesus saying, again and again, “Shh…” Don’t speak. Don’t say a word. Be healed, but be more than that. Be assured because something new is coming. Something extraordinary.

The cross. The cross. The cross.

Everything else is just noise.

Wake up! An Easter sermon for a sleepy church.

Matthew 28:1-10

For months now we’ve been reading through Jesus’ parables: stories about resurrection out of death and stories about God seeking out the least and entering into the most hopeless, most deathly places. We’ve dwelled on the mystery of God-incarnate and come through Holy Week from a procession with people waving palms, to a Last Supper, to death on a cross, and we’ve found ourselves here on Easter Sunday (just as we do every year) as if this is the most natural thing in the world. But it’s not. It’s bizarre. God came down to earth to save it by doing the least weakest-looking thing in the world: By dying.

            This backwards God we have in Jesus makes being a Christian challenging, because we live in a world that works one way almost all the time while holding to a faith that promises that, in the end, everything will be flipped upside-down. As we go about our daily business, we like to hang out with people who are trustworthy and charming and attractive; Jesus liked to hang out with sinners, and people who did unsavory work, and the deranged. We value our freedom and liberty, we like being non-conformists; Jesus preached submission and conformity to the way of the cross, which is about as unattractive as conformity gets. We like family and friends; Jesus said to leave them behind without a second thought. We like being alive; Jesus said that to take up our crosses and die.

            All of what Jesus said is crazy if not for Easter morning. Without resurrection, all the parables are meaningless and all the healings are temporary; without Easter morning Jesus is, as so many claim, just another prophet—and a pretty poor one at that. Today is the day most important to our faith, because it is on the resurrection that everything else hinges. All our beliefs about salvation, our understandings of brokenness and sinfulness, and our hope for new life after death—all of it is predicated on an empty tomb.

            And the crazy part of it is this: You can’t prove it. That’s maybe not the thing you’d expect to hear on Easter morning, I know. You might expect me to say that it’s true because the Bible tells me so, but the truth is that you’re either going to believe that or you won’t. You’re going to take it on faith or you’re not. There is an ever-growing portion of the population who wants me to produce a proof, to argue for the invisible with the visible, to use miracles and after-death narratives of people who were mostly dead but not quite as evidence of the divine, or to wait on the History Channel to explain what really happened. If these folks want to believe in Jesus at all it is because they want to hear that Jesus blesses his followers by healing the sick, sparing the endangered, feeding the hungry, and finding the lost remote control that disappeared into thin air somewhere between the couch cushions. We don’t have a God who does those things as “proof.” Yes, God might heal the sick, God might work through an addict to bring about new life, and God may even do that for you, but that is no proof of anything other than cosmic chance. The only event that stands alone as a testimony to this God we understand to have entered into human form is the resurrection. All else is commentary.

Every sermon I've ever given (at least this is what this one feels like)

The following is a not-so-perfect transcript of this sermon.
 
Scripture: Matthew 18:15-35

Forgiveness is an impossibly challenging thing to talk about, because, being the human beings that we are, we are always acting like human beings, and the forgiveness Jesus is talking about is God’s kind of forgiveness—a kind of forgiveness that we not only fail to understand; we also find it offensive and downright stupid.

This requires some context.

Today's reading starts out with advice about how to point out faults to another. It seems like practical advice at first glance: Give them three chances. One on your own, one with others, and lastly with the church as a whole. Churches have followed this model. It seems practical, but it's also a bit strange coming out of Jesus’ mouth. After all, this story comes immediately after the parable of the lost sheep. Jesus just went from seeking out of the one lost sheep to the possible detriment of the 99, and now he's talking about a kind of limited forgiveness. What's going on?

So Peter asks for clarification: How many times should human beings forgive? 7? 77? Or is it 70 x 7? 490? Infinite?

Apparently, it's not so clear. So, Jesus clarifies by means of a parable, which is typical Jesus, illuminating by means that seem to obscure, and this is the brunt of what I'm going to talk about today.

Blessed are the meek: Another reason God doesn't care who wins the Super Bowl

Matthew 5:1-20

Russell Wilson, the quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks, created a minor stir this week—nothing as serious as deflated footballs, mind you, but a minor stir nonetheless—when he said that God prepared his team to win, that God wanted him to go back to the Super Bowl, and that this is “my season for Grace & Favor.” This is about as normal as sports clichés get, but, given our focus on the Beatitudes this week, I felt like maybe it’s the perfect intro into blessing.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, the hungry and thirsty, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted and the reviled. That’s a pretty long way from “Blessed are the Seahawks.”

For those of you who attended the event at Maria on Wednesday where Ben Hylden spoke about his experience I’m going to expand on some of the themes he talked about, but you should all know a little of the story. Ben was a high-schooler who was an athlete first, and a family member and Christian far after that, until a terrible accident and the repercussions of it pushed his life in an entirely different direction. One of the moments that hit me in his talk was when he decided he was done playing basketball, which was a decision he made not because he absolutely could not play anymore but because it just wasn’t worth the risk. He felt that God did not save him from his accident to play basketball, but for something much better.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with giving God credit for what we have or what we achieve, but there is a subtle line between doing that out of humility and doing it out of a different kind of arrogance—a Christian kind of arrogance that transforms the language of “I did this because I’m great” into “I did this because of my great faith”—and Russell Wilson’s comments probably strayed somewhere in that latter direction. So people rightly bristled. It’s a question of humility. To be humble requires more than giving God credit with your words, since that can be just as arrogant as claiming credit yourself. To imply that God blessed me because of my faith and because of my hard work is a humble brag par excellence.

If Christ is risen, nothing else matters. And if Christ is not risen--nothing else matters.

Matthew 4:1-17

“If Christ is risen, nothing else matters. And if Christ is not risen—nothing else matters.” - Jaroslav Pelikan.

            I had someone come up to me this week with an article and wanted my opinion of it. First off, I should say that these requests are always very difficult because A) I don’t know everything, B) I usually need a good deal of time to think about new ideas, and C) if it’s an article that’s gotten a lot of attention it’s usually because it’s particularly brazen, because, in this age, brazen will get you attention. Everybody and their mother is writing a blog these days; what gets hits is being brazen, attacking particularly people or views; doing the kind of thing that I, personally, don’t want to respond to at all.

            So, anyway, this particular article was written by a group called “Jews for Judaism” and it is entitled, “Why Jesus is NOT the Jewish Messiah.” This requires a lot of context. First, this is a group who is writing against “Jews for Jesus” which is another, sort-of-kind-of Jewish but also sort-of-kind-of Christian group. They are writing against this group because Jews for Jesus likes to proselytize Jews—meaning they like to go around and tell Jews they should essentially become Christians. So, naturally, “Jews for Judaism” doesn’t much care for that. Secondly, this article is obviously not representative of all of Judaism anymore than something that I write is representative of all Christians. There are plenty of Christians who would openly disagree with much of what I say. We have a big tent. It’s the same with Judaism. In fact, their tent might be even bigger than ours because they have ethnic components as well as religious. So, this article does not mean all, or even most, or even many, Jewish people feel this way. It’s one stance in response to another.

            OK, have I done enough couching of what I’m about to say? Probably not but let’s go for it anyway.

Downstream of the flood: Water, Death, and Resurrection

Scripture: Genesis 9:1-17

           This morning’s readings are bookends to the very familiar story of Noah’s ark and the great flood. They are a perfect new beginnings text for a September day when school has started, Sunday School and Confirmation are in short order, and we are all beginning to settle back into the familiar rhythm that the summer seems to take away. We all know the story: People were bad, God sent lots of rain (maybe this hits too close to home), the world floods, and then the water recedes. What’s left is just Noah and family, the creatures on the ark, and God’s promise to Noah, signified by the rainbow, that he would never again destroy the world—at least by means of a flood. This is a story about a promise, and it’s a more wide-reaching promise than we often consider. This is the only covenant God makes anywhere in the Bible that is with not only human beings but also with every living creature that lives and breathes and moves on this earth, above, and below it.

            Every time I read this story, especially with young people, there’s always that one kid who looks at you skeptically, because this is a story that elicits many, many questions. For goodness sake, when Noah gets off the ark the first thing he does is sacrifice a handful of birds. After 40 days on a boat, you can imagine what the birds were thinking, “Oh boy! We made it!” …

Then there’s the matter of the people who appear on the scene after the Noah story. Who are they and where did they come from?

            And then there’s the question that’s more on the subject I want to talk about today, which is the one you get from the smart kid who knows a bit about earth science, and asks: “Where did all the water come from?” This is about when I long for the glory days when pastors just told kids like these to shut up. The problem is that this is a great question, because if you understand nature a bit you know that water doesn’t just appear from space. We have evaporation and precipitation. Sometimes water is in the ground, or in the air, or in glaciers, but water doesn’t just appear. So, how do you flood the whole world?

Grace-filled insanity: Easter and the way of the cross

Scripture: John 20:1-18

             So, I have the thankless task of figuring out what to say on another Easter Sunday, and, like many who do this, it sometimes feels like the Holy Spirit just says, “Shut up and let the service speak for itself today.” And I probably should do just that, because I’m not sure I’ll really add much—sleep-deprived and hopelessly caffeinated as I am; like the kid who chases his ritalin with an energy drink. But, knowing the tradition as I do, I'm guessing there are some reading this who did not follow through Thursday and Friday of this week, and it strikes me that maybe my role is to tell you about where we’ve been, so you can fully appreciate where we are today.

            As such, I’m going to let you in on something crazy: Jesus died. On Friday. And not just operation table flat-lining but like bleeding out and embalmed and utterly stone-cold gone. So, that’s crazy.

This is a sermon on dualism, but I don't use the word so I think we're OK

Scripture: John 6:35-59

            The Jewish leaders in John’s Gospel remind me of those characters from the old Scooby Doo cartoons who nonchalantly appear at the beginning of each episode, but since there are only ever one, or at most two, new characters introduced in an episode it becomes painfully obvious who the bad guy is going to be in the end. Like any good Scooby Doo villain, I can imagine the Jewish temple leaders shaking their head at the end of the Gospel and saying, “And we would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for that meddling Jesus.” (For those of you who think I use too many current pop culture references, understand that everybody in high school has absolutely zero idea what I’m talking about right now)

“The Jews,” as John frequently calls the group of temple leaders who interrogate Jesus, are never going to accept anything divine about Jesus—it’s just not going to happen. He’s going to keep telling them things like “I am the bread of life,” or “I am the light of the world,” or, as we heard with Nicodemus a few weeks back, “I am the Son of Man.” Sorry to ruin the end of the story if you’ve never read John’s Gospel, but “the Jews” are never going to get it. They’re always going to despise that meddling Jesus. And it’s for reasons like the reading we have today.

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 are we looking for?" Turns out it's probably Jesus

Scripture: John 1:35-51

            Last week I spent some time on John’s use of questions, specifically the question “What is truth?” Today, we get another completely loaded question—this was kind of John’s thing—and that question is “What are you looking for?”

            Isn’t this a question we could ask any one of us? What are we looking for? We all have expectations about what we’re getting when we go to church. Maybe we come to be spiritually fed; maybe we come out of a sense of duty; maybe we come because our parents make us; and maybe we come because it’s 30 degrees below zero and it seems like a warm place to be. I suppose there are probably as many reasons why we come as there are people in the church. All of us are looking for something slightly different.

            But there are even more people not here—people who have other things happening on Sunday mornings, people with work, who have busy lives, people who want nothing to do with organized religion; or, on days like today, people who have a little more sense than most of you. What are they looking for?

Who mourns in lowly exile here: Dry bones and resurrection

Scripture: Ezekiel 37:1-14

In the winter of 2006, our Augustana Choir did our Christmas Vespers on the theme of the O Antiphons. An antiphon is a musical response by a choir or congregation, and the “O Antiphons” are the responses attributed to the last seven days before Christmas—called “O” Antiphons because they all begin with the word/letter “O.” Anyway, I think you’ve probably heard of these before even if you’re thinking that you haven’t. In fact, I can almost guarantee you have.

            So, I realize this is a blog, and audience participation is limited, but here's what I want you to do: I want you to think about the Advent season (not Christmas, Advent)—and I want you to think of any piece of music that represents this season to you. Now, I want to be clear again: we’re looking for a piece that represents Advent, not Christmas, so if you’re thinking of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer you might want to think of another one—in fact, if you’re thinking of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer you might want to think of a better Christmas song, too, but that’s another matter.

The end of the world and fleeing from death: The one with Will Smith fighting aliens, Voldemort and angels pouring out bowls of wrath

Scripture: Revelation 15:1-8

In this summer of reading through Revelation, I would be remiss if I didn’t take one Sunday to talk about the end of the world. And not just new creation, which we’ll get to by the end of the book, but the actual end of the world—you know, the Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum, and Bill Pullman fighting off aliens kind of end of the world, or the Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck on an asteroid kind of end of the world. Hollywood gets these visions of the end of the world, but probably already many of you have no idea what I’m talking about, so… back to Revelation!

The book of Revelation gives us several visions of the end of the world—in fact, it probably offers too many visions to give us an accurate, unified impression of it—but there are some general themes. Firstly, there are going to be some disastrous events. This really shouldn’t come as a surprise, because whether it’s global warming, nuclear winter, meteors, aliens or angels pouring out bowls of wrath, most ways that we imagine Armageddon are not very pleasant. Secondly, these disastrous events are going to unfold in quick succession. Again, this is something Hollywood has figured out for us. Every movie about the end of the world seems to take place within a matter of days from start to finish.

And lastly, this whole end of the world business? We aren’t going to like it.

Remembering our past: Easter-life

Text: Luke 24:1-16

The History Channel’s six-week mini series on the Bible is wrapping up tonight and, in spite of the fact that it’s gotten good reviews, I won’t be watching in large part because when Jesus rises from the dead there is no way the producers of that series are going to capture the look that I imagine on the disciples’ faces. Somebody in charge of production is going to be way too pious about this and direct the actors who play the disciples to look completely dopey in an attempt to convey awe. But I know how they really looked; it’s the way somebody looks when you tell them something and they think they know where you’re going with it. “Yes, yes, tomb, Jesus, gardener, yeah, yeah… resurrection… Wait, what?” That’s what the History channel isn’t going to get—that “wait, what?” moment. How could they? The actors know the script and, let’s face it, the History channel isn’t budgeting for A-list actors to play Jesus’ disciples. Anyway, none of us can put ourselves in the place of those disciples that first Easter morning.

Dust

Text: Luke 9:51-62

            We mostly don’t know what to do with Ash Wednesday. I mean, we do the whole shpeel year after year. Come forward. Get ashes put on our foreheads. You are dust and yada yada, something depressing sounding. Return to our seats. Eventually, return home and wipe dust off our foreheads. But why dust? Why ashes? What does today have to do with anything other than the high holy days of soup suppers and this season called Lent?

            Well, a couple of things, actually.

            In the Gospel reading for today, Jesus’ ministry begins its course toward Jerusalem. If you can image the Gospels as a giant valley, in today’s reading we have reached the bottom of the valley and from here we are now ascending faster and faster toward the mountain top which is Jerusalem. The entire season of Lent is oriented toward the holy city where Jesus is heading—first to be celebrated with palms waving and finally to be crucified. But at this valley bottom of the Gospel narrative we have a series of strange stories about people who are willing to follow Jesus but are rebuked nonetheless. There’s the person who says he will follow wherever Jesus goes, whom Jesus shoots down with the line that foxes have holes and birds nests but the Son of Mon nowhere to call home. Then another wants to follow but has an obligation to bury his father, whom Jesus again reprimands, saying “Let the dead bury their own dead.” Another will follow but wants to wish family good-bye first, and again, Jesus rebukes him, saying, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back if fit for the kingdom of God.”

Art and the Probable-Impossible: Thoughts on miracles and Madeleine l'Engle

"That which is probable and impossible is better than that which is possible and improbable."-Aristotle in Poetics

Madeleine l'Engle is a hero of mine. In fact, I count her on a very short list of authors, alongside Wendell Berry, who have influenced my perspective on God and the world more than any others. So, when l'Engle wrote that she had been pondering this Aristotle quote from the time she was in college until near the end of her life I set it aside as something worthy of my own time and interest. Today, as I prepare to lead a discussion on miracles with our 9th-grade confirmation students, I find myself returning again to what this means for me and for all of us trying to understand this world.

I recognize firstly that both Aristotle and l'Engle were writing on art, but if you've read much of l'Engle you also should know that she believes art is not a discipline of escapism but a primary means of truth-telling. She is a scientist, an artist, and a poet, but you don't get a sense in her work that the three are separate; they are, in fact, equal, integrated and integral to the whole picture she is painting. So, when l'Engle talks about her favorability towards the probable-impossible it is in the sense of making good art but also telling something that is fantastic and true in the world, something that can't be told with such ruthless efficiency as we might like. The probable-impossible is for her (and for me) a world where miracle and God are the ultimate reality, while the possible-improbable is this world that we see which so often cheapens everything down its most banal and self-gratifying nature.

All Saints Day- Life, Death and Resurrection

Text: 1 Kings 17:1-24

            This is a macabre time of year. The turning of the calendar from October into November brings with it Halloween, scary movies, the passing of the seasons, and in the midst of all those reminders of death we have a Sunday dedicated to the saints, especially those who have died in the last year.

            Well, isn’t that just a depressing way to start a sermon?

            But if we’re honest about our cultural traditions around death we don’t actually talk much about it. As much as parents are sometimes concerned about the message of Halloween, most of it has much more to do with candy and dressing up than it has anything to do with demons or anything like that. The same can be said about our scary movies. They have plenty of blood and gore, but most of it is so sensationalized that it is actually a detriment to approaching real-life death. In fact, we are so saturated images of death that we’re desensitized to the entire concept.

            Society spends an inordinate amount of time evading questions of mortality. The more Zombieland or Saw that you watch, the more you will be convinced that you have seen death. The same can be said for the more realistic killing in video games. All of this makes real death in real life actually kind of awkward, because society has prepared us for the graphic nature of bodies being beaten, shot and otherwise abused but they have done nothing to prepare us for the ramifications of loss. Now, I don’t want to make this a message about the evil of graphic movies and video games; it’s enough to say that our younger generation is handicapped in talking about death, strangely, because they are saturated by it.

            Death should cause a rift; it should not be normal; it should smack us in the face.

            In today’s lesson we have a prophet named Elijah who stopped the rain from falling in all the land of Israel because the king had turned from worshiping the true God and had started to worship the god of fertility, Ba’al. And what happens when there is no longer any rain? Death. The land starts to die. First the wadis—or stream beds—then the rivers, then the wells, and then the animals and the people with them. No water—then, as now—means death. Elijah’s control over the rain is meant to demonstrate who it is that truly has power over the rain; not Ba’al but the one true God of Israel.

            But Elijah too needs water and so we have this odd scene where he is sent to a widow in the town Zarephath who God commands to feed him. When Elijah visits the widow the abstract concept of death that he helped cause becomes specific and real. She and her son are dying; they are without water and without hope. They are the most vulnerable in society: a widow with a child. Weirder still, God sends Elijah not just to see her suffering or, better still, to fix it; instead, God sends Elijah to the widow so that she might feed him. It’s a strange turn. The widow wants nothing more than to be left alone. She has given up and truly expects that both she and her son will die. And in precisely that moment Elijah arrives not to offer a hand but to do exactly the opposite: he asks her to give up just about everything she has left. He casually acts like he’s ordering a sandwich from Subway when in fact he’s asking for the last little nuggets of food this woman has—bread that would have been her final meal.

            Remarkably, the woman gives it away, but the moral of the story isn't simply about her blind faith; the scene continues on without missing a beat. Suddenly, the son of the widow falls ill, probably from malnutrition, and dying. The widow loses the last thing that is hers—the life of her only child. She is left with nothing. Only then is she in a place to discover the true God; so when Elijah stretches out over her son and he is raised from the dead she finally exclaims, “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth.” The false god is crushed by resurrection. Death does not have the last word.

            Death and resurrection are probably the most critical themes in the Christian faith. They represent our human limitations crashing into God’s unlimitedness. Death and resurrection are why we worship god incarnate in Jesus Christ, but in today’s world—especially in today’s church—we have just two little problems with death and resurrection. One little problem we have is with the resurrection part… and the other problem is with the whole death thing. It is a fascinating trait in human beings that we hide from the very things that give us life. We are truly all Adam and Eve, hoping that God will not see us in our nakedness.

            Resurrection doesn’t make sense. It’s kind of an absurd and extravagant promise. So, in some sense, I get why we have issues honestly believing it to be true. We are suspect of stories like Elijah and the widow’s son—maybe Elijah was just doing some kind of CPR on the boy; maybe it wasn’t really a resurrection. We do the same things with Jesus. Even if we believe he was resurrected, we make our life's journey about getting to heaven to be with Jesus rather than the more incredible promise we have of resurrection.

            But the death part is even stranger. We hide from death by trying to make it something laughable and commonplace. How many horror/comedy genre mash-ups are there these days? They tap into something people want: to minimize the impact of death; and in-so-doing they attract a wide audience. All of this tries to make death less powerful, but in fact it makes real death, actual death, something strange and more powerful. It makes us unable to process real death because we are stuck behind images of comic and horrific death that do not allow us to confront the reality of loss.

            On this All Saints Day we celebrate the lives of all those who have completed their journey on earth. We celebrate the promise we have of their resurrection, but we can’t do that unless we also remember and comprehend their deaths and deal with the fact that they are no longer with us. Today, we proclaim that death is real but also that death is central to new life. Never is that more evident than in baptism. Our church’s understanding of baptism is that in these waters you are drowned—not washed; we’re not cleaning you of sin—no, in the waters of baptism you are drowned and put to death. This is the big death. This is why it should really say on my gravestone: Francis Bradley Johnson. Born March 26, 1986; Died (in baptism) December 2, 1987; Finished him off: such and such a date 20-something.

            Baptism is the big death because it is in these waters that God raises you as a new creation. It’s not just a sign; it is quite literally a death. This is why the South American priest, Juan Carlos Ortiz, baptizes with the words: “I kill you in the name of the Father and the Son and Holy Spirit.” That doesn’t go so well on a Hallmark card, but it’s true. If death is the last word then what we are doing today is horrific. Without resurrection, baptism is nothing more than a horror movie kind of escapism.

            That’s why resurrection is so important. We see the widow’s son, risen from the dead; Lazarus, so dead he’s smelly, and all other little resurrections in our life as pointing to the one who was, and is, and is to come; Jesus Christ—crucified, died and RISEN.

This All Saints Day we celebrate death because it is the only precursor we know to resurrection. We celebrate those who have gone before and those who will follow—all God’s saints, those who have been drowned in the waters of baptism, finished off at the end of their earthly lives, and finally raised with Christ as a new creation. We shall not run from death; we shall not become desensitized to it. Death brings new life, new life requires death; there is no way to wrap our heads around the reality of resurrection without honoring and respecting the reality of death. Today, we celebrate it; we live it; because this world will end, our lives will end—whether we want to acknowledge it or not—and the only reality that matters then is the empty tomb, Christ risen from the dead, and our resurrection in the world to come.