“By Whose Authority?” Matthew 21:23-32

Rembrandt, Head of Christ (c1648-56) detail, Phila. Museum of Art

Jesus had entered the holy city of Jerusalem, amidst the crowd’s cries of “Hosanna!” and proceeded to the courtyard of the temple, where he had cleared it of “business as usual”.

            “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” Jesus, just who do you think you are?  Come traipsing into our precincts, our territory, our areas of expertise, our lives?  What right do you have to interfere with the way we’re running things around here?

In good rabbinic fashion, Jesus responds to His interlocutors, the “chief priests and scribes,” by telling a story.  In the parable, a man orders one of his sons to work in the vineyard. The first son he says “I will not,” but has a change of heart and goes to work. The other son immediately says “yes” but never enters the vineyard to work. Jesus asks a question, to which the answer is obvious: “Which of the two did the father’s will?”  Then Jesus hammers home the application, that while notorious sinners (originally naysayers to God’s commands) repented & did God’s will, the religious establishment, although they may have paid lip service to God’s commands, did nothing.

Apparently, the preferred son is the one who does the right thing, not the one who says the right thing, or perhaps even believes the right thing. But for Jesus, the faith that doesn’t result in faithful action is mere talk. As Kierkegaard, was fond of saying: “Truth produces itself in action”.

            Jesus has a lot of listeners to His word, but relatively few doers.  The word listen means “to audit.”  Latin: audire “hear” (as in audience, auditorium).  When a student “audits” a course, they attend classes to listen.  You don’t do the homework.  You don’t take the tests.  You don’t get graded.  But you don’t get credit either!  The same is true in our spiritual lives.  You don’t get credit for auditing Scripture!

Another lesser known theologian than he was an actor, John Wayne, told his deputy sheriff, played by Dean Martin in the movie “Rio Bravo”: “just showing up doesn’t get the job done.”  The goal is to do.

Doing God’s will doesn’t require being part of the local Church Council; being rostered or ordained; or having a lot of initials after your name from years of study. It doesn’t require that you’ve never made mistakes in the past.

All that is required is that we change our minds and believe the One who is the Truth, and go work in the vineyard.  And so when this Gospel story ends, we hear the words of the Risen Lord: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all people…” (Matt. 28:18).

Easter 2, April 19, 2009

John 20:19-31

So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” v.25

If Thomas could just touch the wounds of Christ, he would believe.  It’s not so much that Thomas wanted some physical, tangible proof of a bodily resurrection, he wanted to touch the wounds, because if we know anything with certainty, it’s the wounds that we all collect, it’s the scars we come to wear.
Thomas didn’t say, “Unless I see His halo”.  He wanted to see the wounds.  The doubting Thomases of the world who hear our proclamation that Jesus is risen want proof that we wear the marks of suffering on behalf of others.  They don’t want to see our halo, that’s not a mark of the Church; they don’t necessarily want to see pews filled to capacity, nor endowment fund portfolios.

They say, “If you are the Body of Christ, show me the marks of your wounds”.
● Show me how you have suffered for the sake of others, like those afraid to walk their neighborhood streets at night, and those parents who are afraid to allow their children to play outside because of stray bullets from drug dealers.
● Show me how you’ve gotten your hands dirty and covered with callouses working with unemployed coal miners in Appalachia.
● Show me the marks of compassion because you’ve been there for someone suffering with AIDS or Alzheimer’s.

The apostle Thomas identified Jesus after He had risen not by His glorified presence, but rather by the marks of His suffering.  That’s the authentication Thomas sought.  And he comes to us and says, “Unless I thrust my hand into the Church & find real wounds, no way will I ever believe”.  Unless we carry the wounds of Christ, unless we have become, in Henri Nouwen’s phrase, “wounded healers,”  because we have extended our love and compassion, we cannot say that we are the Body of Christ in the world with any ring of truth to the claim.
“If you are the Body of Christ, show me the marks of your wounds”.

Easter Sunday, April 12, 2009

Mark 16:1-8

della Francesca, "Resurrection," Sansepolcro Museo Civico

The story is told of Carlyle Marney when once addressing a group of college students was asked to say something about the resurrection.
“I can’t discuss that with people like you,” he responded.  “Why not?” came the reply.  “I don’t discuss such matters with anyone under the age of thirty”.  Taken aback and somewhat offended, came the obvious question, “Why not?”
“Look at you,” Marney said, “prime of life, full of potential, never have you known honest to God failure, heartbreak, solid defeat, brick walls or mortality.  So what in God’s name can you know of a dark world which only makes sense if Christ is raised?”

Those who are well-fed, well-healed, well-housed, well-futured; those who have never known Good Friday worlds, no matter what their age, will ever really be able to fully begin to understand the victory and the joy of Resurrection Day.

The joy of the Resurrection is no superficial joy.  It has little to do with broad, innocent grins; or of the blythfulness of unwrinkled faces.  The depth of Resurrection joy is seen on faces whose lines of anguish have been turned into laughter lines.

Only those who have experienced Good Fridays, dark nights, and immoveable obstacles, will be able to understand.  Only those who have sung dirges will be able to sing Alleluia.

However, make no mistake.  Entering our tombs, exploring the emptiness that we there find, touching the pain that we attempt to keep sealed up, hiding the bruises and scars of our Good Friday worlds, is not the Easter message.  At best, it is only the beginning of a catharsis.  It is an invitation.

Nevertheless, it is only after we have entered the tombs & sealed places of life, that we will be able to hear the Easter proclamation in all of its fullness, “He has risen, he is not here”. He has conquered death; the dominion of evil has been broken; the just and righteous will be vindicated; and the empty places will be filled to overflowing!

Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 22, 2009

Numbers 21:5-8

The people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food & no water, and we detest this miserable food.” Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, & set it on a pole; &everyone who is bitten shall look at it & live.”

The people of Israel have become impatient with God & Moses, saying that they would rather had never been freed from Egypt & forced to undergo such a terrible journey.  Their most recent occasion for “murmuring” is the rather benign complaint about what provisions have been given them.  They were merely grumbling about the food: manna yesterday, manna today & more manna tomorrow.  God is angered by their attitude & sends a plague of poisonous serpents to visit them.
Commenting on this story, even the ancient rabbis noted the irony. From the very beginning of creation, the rabbis commented, the snake has eaten only dust, & did so without a word of complaint.  Therefore: “Let the serpent which does not murmur concerning its food come & rule over the people which has murmured concerning their food.” Targum Neofiti
Repentant, the people come to Moses asking him to intercede with Yahweh.  Yahweh relents, but God doesn’t cancel the plague of snakes.  God tells Moses to make a serpent out of bronze and raise it on a rod; anyone who is bitten & looks at the bronze serpent will be healed.
The real problem is the solution itself: one glance at a snake on a stick & all is restored.  That sounds like  the primitive magic of a talisman.
But at least for the followers of Asclepius, the ancient Greek god of healing, who used snakes as part of healing ceremonies, the snake may have  had more than symbolic value.  It has been suggested that snakes tied to a stick (the caduceus of medical art) may have been a way of inoculating patients with nonlethal does of snake venom – a primitive hypodermic injection.
But for the ancient rabbis it’s not the snake, but rather what looking at the ‘raised’ snake causes us to do: “Rather whenever Israel looked upward and submitted their heart to their Father in heaven, they were healed”. Mishnah Rosh Hashanah
Looking upward, we discover the source of our healing.  As the Evangelist John has it, the Son of Man is lifted up on a cross so that we might behold the healing love of God.

Third Sunday in Lent, March 15, 2009

John 2:13-22

Giotto, Explusion of Money Changers 1306

Normally, the animal markets & the exchange agents set up their tables outside the Temple precincts. Whatever the reason for the change, it resulted in allowing rival competing merchants to set up their animal stalls & money changers to set up their exchange tables in the Temple confines.
Now, guess where in the Temple all of this took place?  Right there in the Court of the Gentiles-in the only place where those who were defined as needing God the most had that chance taken away.  The Gentiles were displaced by pigeons.  And Jesus becomes infuriated.
Nowhere else in all of the New Testament do we meet Jesus quite on these terms.  His outburst in the Temple seems to be out of character.  Through our image of a Jesus meek and mild, a tender, soft-spoken Galilean, comes this specter of wrath and rebuke, anger and indignation.
For the evangelist John, Jesus not only momentarily shakes up the Temple practices, Jesus does away with the whole sacrificial system.  It’s not merely misguided, it’s bankrupt.
No longer do we need to sacrifice those on the outside, replacing people with pigeons, because they just might not be pure enough – or look, think and dress like us.  With Jesus, there’s another way.
No longer do we need to sacrifice one another in order to find a scapegoat to blame.  So that we come off unblemished with clean hands and purged consciences.  With Jesus, there’s another way.
The Temple with its sacrificial system has been destroyed.  A permanent sacrifice has been made for us and for our salvation upon Calvary’s cross, and on the third day a new temple was raised.  He is, as John the Baptist testified, “The Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world”.

Second Sunday in Lent, March 8, 2009

Mark 8:31-38

Caesarea Philippi

“Who do people say that I am?” The disciples respond by reporting the gossip picked up on the waterfront, in the synagogue courtyards, & among the crowds at the market place.  The suggestions roll off their lips for it is always easier to talk about what others think about Jesus.

“Who do you say that I am?” Peter’s hand is the first to go up.  “You are the Christ!” He looks at Jesus & sees the Messiah – the Anointed One – presumably on His way to take control of Jerusalem, & to claim His crown in glory, honor, & power.

But then, the words of Jesus.  He “begins to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer… and be rejected… and be killed”.

“God forbid it Lord!” Peter was horrified, not only because Jesus announced that He was going to suffer on a cross, but because that made a demand upon him to take up the cross as a servant like Christ.
What kind of Christ you have determines what kind of disciple you’ll be.  That is, what you think of Jesus, will show in how you put you faith into practice. If you’re going to have a Christ who is a suffering servant, then that means that your discipleship will need to take the same form.

Jesus turns & rebukes, not Peter, but Peter’s understanding of discipleship: “Get behind me, Satan!  For you are not on the side of God, but of man” (8:33).

We prefer the Jesus that is meek & mild, the projection of our human sentimentality;  the Jesus who very easily meets our every desire, but lays little demands on us. Our portrait of Him is beautiful, but unscarred by thorns.  His hands are gentle, but bear no marks of nails.  He can sympathize, but not save.  For this Jesus – the Jesus as we would have Him be – would never cause us to abandon Him, and nobody would be likely to crucify Him.
Right in the middle of the Gospel of Mark, indeed, right in the middle of our lives, Jesus turns to you & wants to know, “Who do you say that I am?  What place do I have in your life?”  “What kind of disciple are you anyway?”

Epiphany 6B February 15, 2009

Mark 1:40-45
In reality, there are two separate acts, two miracles that take place.  Jesus heals the disease & He cleanses the leper.  The one miracle is that of a physical healing, but the most important miracle was that of restoring this outcast – who was told by others & by the religious practices of the day, that he was too “dirty,” too immoral, too impure, too damaged, too broken, to be touched – restoring him so that he knew that he was embraced by God.
Jesus was filled with pity & he stretched forth his hand, touched the leper & healed the man.  This is the way the story appears in most of our translations, but there are several very ancient manuscripts that have a different reading at this point in the story. Instead of saying that Jesus was filled with pity, or compassion, they say that Jesus was moved with anger!
Jesus  was obviously not angry with the leper, but  angry at the state of affairs in a world that produces lepers, that produces outcasts & misfits, and that generates misery & suffering & evil. Upon the outcasts in the world, Jesus is not only filled with compassion, but is filled with anger, hostility, toward every force in human life that mitigates against God’s plan for wholeness and salvation.

Epiphany 5B / February 8, 2009

Mark 1:29-39
As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John.  Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once.  He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them. vv.29-31
This text is not merely a rather pedestrian healing story, but the transformation of this semi-anonymous, marginalized woman who is “raised up” to a new status from “mother-in-law,” “soccer mom,” expectations – to diakonos [diakonos came to designate the first ministers of the Jesus community - but the only person in the entire gospel to be described as "diakonos" is a woman.  She is the first to act like Jesus himself].
Upon entering the house, Jesus finds her lying in bed with a high fever – he hastens to her side.  He doesn’t ask her, “Do you have faith?  Have you been attending synagogue?  Have you been praying hard enough?”  He  touches her hand & lifts her up out of:

• the patriarchal bondage of misplaced expectations,

• the debilitating awareness that her security was totally dependent on others,

• the knowledge that her identity was subsumed in a servile role – that would make anyone ill.

How can you know when you have been healed?  Seems like an odd question.  For many, the answer is obvious: when the pain is gone, the fever has come down, and the disease is no more. “The fever left her,” we are told of Peter’s mother-in-law, “and she began to serve them.” As she was healed, she immediately began to serve others.  When we are ready to help others in their need & focus once again outside ourselves we will know that we too have been cured.
He comes where we need healing most in our lives; where we need restoration in our personal relationships.  He comes where our lives are frayed at the edges & bruised to its depths.  He comes when its just too much just to cope anymore with the incessant demands.  He comes, touches us – & “lifts us up” & sends us out.

Epiphany 4B / February 1, 2009

Mark 1:21-28
“Jesus taught as one who had authority”. The word that Mark uses for authority in the Greek is exousia, literally, “out of himself”.   His authority does not come from “how” He teaches.  Gesticulation may be entertaining, eloquence may be popular, sentimental stories may be evocative, but they won’t get anybody crucified.
Jesus’ words make things happen.  Mark relates the exorcism in order to illustrate the power of Jesus’ word.  Jesus’ power over the evil spirits, demonstrated in this exorcism, is not only an example of the authority of His teaching, but an illustration that even the demonic powers of this world know with whom they have to contend.  After the teaching & miracle, the congregation is overwhelmed in wonder for this is something new, that is, it is something beyond & greater than they had ever encountered in any other rabbi.  “And they were all amazed, so that they questioned among themselves, saying, ‘What is this?  A new teaching!…”. It’s that kind of authority which also threatens that of the scribes, the so-called expert theologians, & intimidates the status quo of the Pharisees. Jesus is the Word of God who has entered a world in which the forces of evil are crippling, alienating, distorting, & destroying life.

Epiphany 3B / January 25, 2009

Jonah 3:1-5, 10
The story of Jonah is not an autobiography – an historical account of some newsworthy event, nor a fictional short story, but functions rather something like a parable (didactic fiction).  It’s a parable that talks about God’s universal love, and in hearing that message — that God actively seeks the lost, that God earnestly desires the salvation of those who have turned away from Him — I think we can begin to understand why Jonah ran away from God in the first place.
Jonah had a pretty good idea that God had a streak of mercy in Him, and that His real purpose for sending him to Nineveh was to get the people to repent so that God’s judgment wouldn’t have to be carried out.
Jonah wasn’t sure he wanted those Ninevites to have the opportunity to repent.  You see, Jonah was that kind of person who really believed that there are those people who, because of what they have done in the past, or who they are, don’t deserve any kind of consideration, the benefit of the doubt, let alone forgiveness.
Jonah didn’t want the Ninevites to have the opportunity to be forgiven.  “I don’t want to be your agent of forgiveness and reconciliation,” Jonah tells the Lord, “I want to be your prophet of doom!”
So Jonah went down to the docks at Joppa and bought a ticket on a cargo ship headed for Tarshish – in the opposite direction, as far as one could get, from Nineveh.
To run away or avoid one’s vocation, what God has called you to do, will usually result in being swallowed up – of not knowing where you’re going.
Another purpose of the great fish, which we ought not overlook, is to make it plain that sometimes God has to deliver us from what we do in the name of religion.

• Like throwing somebody overboard because it might appease the gods, or sacrificing somebody else instead of rightfully assuming part of the blame so that we don’t have to feel so guilty.

• Like assuming that our enemies are God’s enemies.

The fundamental problem Jonah & a few others of us have with God is not that God is cruel or vengeful, but that God is gracious.