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.

On dust and bodily living

Scripture: Matthew 18:1-9

We are people who live in bodies, who move in bodies and experience life through senses that are embodied, and Ash Wednesday is a day to talk about embodied-ness in all its inadequacy. It’s a day to say “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return” and to mean it—not only as a potentially depressing reminder of our mortality but also as the foretaste to a promise. You are dust, but dust chosen by God.

            When we talk about bodies in the church it tends to make people uncomfortable, because we all have bodily hang-ups. We can all pretend we have the perfect personality (which we don’t) or the perfect sense of humor (which we don’t), and we can try to fake having the perfect family (which is fooling nobody), but our bodies? We can’t even fool ourselves into thinking those are all that great. Even those among us who might feel they look pretty good, or who train their body to be an athlete, even they need only wait a year or two, a decade or two, and it will start to fall apart. Time makes all of our bodies out for what they really are. You are dust, and to dust you will return. It’s a promise; even if it’s not a very good one.

            So, on the one hand we’re uncomfortable with our bodies because they aren’t as great as we could imagine them being, whether you want to be more attractive or whether you’re just unhealthy and only want to be healthy again. And, on the other hand, we are also uncomfortable with our bodies because we have a tremendous capacity toward bodily guilt. When the typical person thinks about sin they don’t think about it as an orientation away from God. Most people think of sin as a bodily thing; that they have bodily urges that they should act on or not act on, that they have feelings that they can’t control. Even if most of the language of sin that we use in church is about sin in its universal sense, the way we feel sinful is usually in the core of our bodies—again, one might say, in our “embodied-ness.”

What is the church?

Matthew 17:1-8

What is the church? Is it a building or something more? A people or something more? And does it really matter?

            These are particularly appropriate questions when our sanctuary is under repair, because the nature of being “under construction” begs us to consider what it is that is sacred about this space. What is it that makes this space special, and how big a deal is a sacred space a church? Of course, this is temporary, and, when it’s done, will that mean the space is improved—not just structurally but spiritually? Or is it actually better to be “under construction?” Is the worst thing for our church when nothing is under construction?

            The Transfiguration doesn’t start out as a story about church, but very quickly Peter makes it that way. Here stands Jesus alongside Moses and Elijah—this incredible meeting of the stars of the faith—and Peter’s response is, simply, “Hey, let’s make a monument to this occasion! Let’s build a few houses for them to live in up on the mountain! And then when the occasion is over tourists will flock here and people can worship on the mountain. It’ll be great!”

            What Peter is talking about is building a church—or, rather, three churches. The moment of the Transfiguration is fleeting and he wants to remember it, dedicate it, preserve it. I think that’s not so different from what we do as church today. We’re remembering, dedicating, preserving. But, as it turns out, that isn’t always what we’re being called to do. God’s interruption of Peter begs us to consider: in our rush to remember, dedicate, and preserve, are we listening for Jesus?

It's not that you can't walk on water. It's that, eventually, you will sink

Scripture from Matthew 14:13-33

It’s not that you can’t walk on water. It’s that, eventually, you will sink.

When it comes to miracles Christians have wildly varying opinions. Some people put a ton of emphasis on the experience of miracles while others are forever trying to explain miracles away. Some can’t get enough of people talking about how God lifted so-and-so out of their particular impossible situation, and many of these folks have their own stories of something incredible happening to them. Others go out of their way to dismiss anything miraculous, spiritualizing miracle stories in the Bible and treating prayer as a psychological tool rather than a thing that might lead to God actually doing something. These folks are cautious about anything that crosses the bounds of what we know and are even more turned off by personal accounts.

Firstly, I should say that both groups have their points and their reasons for where they stand, and both are based very deeply on personal experience. Also, it’s perfectly OK to use personal experience to see God at work. It’s also OK to understand that the world tends to work in a certain way most of the time, and so it’s natural—and not unfaithful—to be skeptical when others claim a mountain top experience to which you cannot relate. Many of us stand somewhere in-between, living lives in a world that functions one way 99.9% of the time with the occasional eye toward the miraculous, but all of us need to be reminded, more often than not, that these waters are mysterious, deep, and the moment we think we have it all figured out, like Peter, we start to sink.

Living in the grey: Are you wrestling or just lazy?

When I find myself deeply pondering an issue, whether in prayer or in silent thought at my desk, I tend to poke holes in both poles of opinion until I find the place where I can faithfully stand. This comes out perhaps most evidently in sermon-form. I tend to find myself pointing out one opinion and then an opposing one before often coming to the conclusion that neither of these work particularly well. This works with most contentious subjects because, well, there's a reason they are contentious. But I'm writing today to make clear that I hope I am cautious with this approach, because lately I have found many people who celebrate simply living in the "grey." They seem to enjoy existing between the black and the white for the sake of not being black or white; not necessarily because they have spent any reasonable amount of time or energy in prayer, meditation, or thought to come to the hypothesis that there is the most faithful place for them to be.

Five-Thirty-Eight recently ran a piece claiming that "Americans Aren't Becoming More Politically Independent, They Just Like Saying They Are" and I think the same is true of many things, especially concerning questions of faith. There are many people in the mainline church who really like the "grey." They really like pointing out the arrogance of standing at the poles, but then they don't offer a serious alternative. Living in the questions sounds great, but most people who successfully live in the questions already have a strong base of history and tradition on which to stand (here I'm thinking about my Jewish friends who participate in the serious practice of midrash). This is a very challenging place to be and to do so absentmindedly is folly. To merely state that a person is free to believe whatever they want is fine, but I'm always going to pay closer attention to the person who has struggled deeply with the questions than the one who has decided on a whim. Those who try to stay in the no man's land between polar sides of an issue are forced out when it comes down to the nitty-gritty, because to truly live in tension is to constantly question--not just the black and the white but also yourself.

Are you in this just to not take a side? Do you really believe anything?

I tend to find that living in that tension only works, especially as a religious person, when those grey areas are resolved with a promise that I believe in strongly. Again, this is why midrash works--it's done by those who are already deeply woven into the faith. I wouldn't recommend people blindly question every side unless you already understand a little of what it is that makes you who you are. This may sound backward, but it is merely to say that you aren't going to find your faith through questioning but questioning may deepen a faith that you already have. (And it leads to a wonderful question of where faith originates, which is well beyond the scope of this post, though I'd point you to Ephesians 2:8 as a starting point)

This is no exhortation to move from the middle ground to a position on one of the poles, and it's no suggestion that we need more out-spoken conservatives or liberals, or true believers of any sort. Rather, it's simply to point out that to say you enjoy living "in the grey" does not mean you are off the hook for careful and thoughtful reflection; in fact, I would say that much more is expected of you. It's one thing to be agnostic; it's another to be an agnostic Christian. The first I find potentially interesting; the second I find lazy.

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.