Winthrop Congregational Church, United Church of Christ
No matter who you are. No matter where you are on life's journey. You are welcome here.
Luke 24:36b-48 Jesus Appears to His Disciples While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’ They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, ‘Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’ And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence. Then he said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. Last week, I had an extraordinary meal... well, several very good meals. That’s part of the joy of weddings. The people getting married, or their friends and family, will feed you. I want to talk about one of the good meals. When I am anywhere between Texas and California, I want to get Mexican food. Our friend Cherie, who grew up in Phoenix and went to college in Tucson, made sure we got some. After conversation with our other friends Simone and Shauna, we went to a local chain with loads of options. I spied something called a birria taco and knew I had to have it. Birria is usually a stew, often with beef that has been cooked for a long time so that it is tender enough to be easily shredded with a fork. When you get the shredded meat in tacos, they give you a little bowl of soup broth in which you can dip your tacos.
The food was so good that I got it on both my shirt and pants and used not less than three napkins to clean up my face and hands. The meat was cooked perfectly. The broth was delicious. The corn tortillas were just the right amount of crunchy. There was also guacamole and salsa that was made right at our table. We sat outside on the patio on a beautiful, if windy, 70-degree day with a good friend who we hadn’t seen in-person since before the pandemic and ate really good food. It wasn’t exactly Easter dinner, but it was only four days after, which is close enough for me. I can’t imagine Jesus’ ministry without food. How many times in each of the four Gospels do we see him sharing a meal with his friends, sharing a meal with his enemies, being hosted by other friends while he teaches, feeding people who show up to hear him teach, talking about the ethics of harvesting, and declaring keeping hungry people fed to be a central act of faith. The post-resurrection accounts of Luke share a couple of poignant resurrections accounts where food plays a central role in the disciples’ recognizing a Resurrected Christ. The first is one I often share with communion. On the day we call Easter, the women disciples saw two heavenly representatives at the tomb who told them Jesus is resurrected. The men disciples didn’t believe them until Peter went and verified their account that Jesus was no longer in the tomb. On the same day, two other disciples were walking to a village called Emmaus, and they met a man who they thought was a stranger on the road. It was Jesus. He asked them what they were talking about, and they shared their story about the death of Jesus at the hands of Rome and about how the women disciples told them he’d been resurrected. Upon hearing uncertainty in their voices, Jesus began to teach them. It is fascinating to me that they don’t recognize Jesus when he teaches them. You would think, with all the hours of teaching they had heard, through the months and months of his public ministry, that those words would have been familiar enough to shake loose their understanding so they could realize that Jesus was walking with them. But, it wasn’t Jesus’ words that helped them understand, it was his actions. Specifically, it was his blessing and sharing a meal with them that made his identity clear. Of course, Jesus, the one who told his disciples to feed the hungry and, also, invited them to share the bread and cup to remember him, would finally be recognized in his resurrected form when he shared food. That story is the story right before today’s reading. Once the two disciples recognize Jesus, he disappears before their eyes. They ran all the way back to Jerusalem to tell the rest of the disciples what had happened. While they were telling the eleven their story, Jesus stood among them. You might guess that he’d say, “be not afraid.” He says something close: “Peace be with you.” Understandably, the disciples don’t have a lot of peace in that moment. They are terrified and pretty sure they are seeing a ghost. Again, it is actions that bring a measure of clarity, not simply his words. María Teresa Dávila notes in her commentary on this chapter, even the loving power of the resurrection has not removed the marks left by torture on Jesus’ body. Jesus knows that his friends will know how he was harmed and invites them to look at and touch the places he was hurt, his hands and feet. “Ghosts don’t have flesh and bones,” he says. The next part is my favorite part. They are overjoyed but still unsure about what to make of his appearance, so he asks for some food. The subtext here is that ghosts can’t eat food, so he’s going to eat food with them to demonstrate that he is alive. Dávila points out in her commentary that lofty ideas such as “reconciliation and victory over injustice” always take place within the concrete realities of human bodies harmed by injustice. Salvation doesn’t take away scars from previous harm. In a similar manner, resurrection and renewed life require concrete sustenance and reconnected relationships to flourish. Ghosts don’t eat, but Jesus did. And his disciples did. And, upon his direction, they fed other people. Remember that story about the bread and the fishes? That miracle over a simple meal showed them something about who Jesus was. So, did this simple meal of broiled fish. To be clear, I did not see Jesus when I was eating my birria tacos. It was close, but, it wasn’t what happened to the disciples. I was reminded, though, of the unique joy that comes along with sharing a meal with people I care about. It is the memory of that kind joy and everyday connection that happens over food that appears that seems to have made the greatest impression on Jesus’ disciples. Dr. Jin Young Choi describes Jesus as being present in hospitality. I would argue that Christ in still present in our hospitality to this day. In the times when we share food with those who need it, fight for the workers who grow it and serve it, and welcome strangers into our churches, communities, and nation, we are enacting the hospitality that shows people who Jesus is. This might be the power God clothed the disciples with from on high.... the power to follow the work of Christ in our time, guided by his spirit. This week, I hope you get to have a meal that makes you see Jesus. Sustained by that meal, may you go forth, belly and heart full, as a witness to the power of resurrection and as a worker for the kin-dom of God. Resources consulted while writing this sermon: Jin Young Choi: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-of-easter-2/commentary-on-luke-2436b-48 María Teresa Dávila, "Third Sunday of Easter," Preaching God's Transforming Justice: A Lectionary Commentary, Year B, eds Ronald J. Allen, Dale P. Andrews, and Dawn Ottoni-Wilhelm (Westminster John Knox Press, 2011)
0 Comments
Mark 16:9-15, 19-20 The Shorter Ending of Mark [[And all that had been commanded them they told briefly to those around Peter. And afterwards Jesus himself sent out through them, from east to west, the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation. ]] The Longer Ending of Mark Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene [[Now after he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons. She went out and told those who had been with him, while they were mourning and weeping. But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it. Jesus Appears to Two Disciples After this he appeared in another form to two of them, as they were walking into the country. And they went back and told the rest, but they did not believe them. Jesus Commissions the Disciples Later he appeared to the eleven themselves as they were sitting at the table; and he upbraided them for their lack of faith and stubbornness, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen. And he said to them, ‘Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation. The Ascension of Jesus So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went out and proclaimed the good news everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that accompanied it. ]] The Long Ending of Mark
“Now after he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons. She went out and told those who had been with him, while they were mourning and weeping. But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it. After this he appeared in another form to two of them, as they were walking into the country. And they went back and told the rest, but they did not believe them. Later he appeared to the eleven themselves as they were sitting at the table, and he upbraided them for their lack of faith and stubbornness, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen. And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation… So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went out and proclaimed the good news everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that accompanied it.” My friends, it is wonderful to be amongst you all again. Pastor Chrissy and I have joked that the Sunday after Easter will soon be known as “Sarah Sunday” at Winthrop Congregational Church. In the year since I last visited with you, I have taken more courses through the Maine School of Ministry, continued my work on the MESOM Advisory Team, and begun a chaplaincy internship at Mid Coast Hospital in Brunswick. My journey of pursuing my call has continued in new ways. That is also where we find ourselves in this, the first post-Easter service, looking to how we can pursue our call as disciples of Christ in a post-Resurrection world. Now, your reading last week, Mark 16:1-8 closes with the women being told by the white-robed man they do not recognize to leave the empty tomb, for Jesus is not there. He had told them to let the disciples and especially Peter know that Jesus would go ahead of them to Galilee, but what did they do? They leave the tomb and don't tell anyone because they're afraid. Fear and doubt are a common theme in the gospel of Mark and so it makes sense that this would be where Mark asked us to leave the story of Christ. We are left with people who are afraid, people who probably doubt what they've just seen and what they've heard from this mysterious figure. Now the reading that we heard today seems to fly in the face of this mysterious and doubt-filled ending. What we instead get is the rest of the story or so it would seem. What we might not know from hearing these verses is that this is very likely an addition to Mark’s Gospel from perhaps 200 years after the original text was completed, a text which ends with the verse you heard last week, the women who leave an empty tomb and tell no one, so we have to ask ourselves, why make this addition to the text? What is it about people that means that we can't sit with a story of Christ that features an ending centered on doubt and fear? In the original ending, the robed individual says that Jesus will go ahead of them to Galilee and that the disciples will meet him there. Now, Mark usually portrays a Christ who is true to his word and so when we read that Jesus will appear to them all in Galilee, and then we don’t get to hear about it happening, well, I don't know about you, but I would be upset. That can’t be how it ends! To make a comparison to a different epic story, it would be like having the Lord of the Rings end with Sam and Frodo having completed their goal of getting the one ring into the fires of Mount Doom, escaping the rising tide of lava as the mountain begins erupting, but then Tolkien deciding that he will just leave the story with them clinging to the rocks, happy to be free of the ring and completed their quest. We want, no, we need to see Gandalf fly down on the back of an eagle and rescue them both before the fires can claim them. We wouldn’t be happy to just know that the ring had been destroyed and Sauron had been defeated. We long for happy endings that tie up ALL the loose ends. There is a reason many people say “The Return of the King” has too many endings. The truth is, we want to know that it’s all been worth it and everyone’s stories have tidy endings. In that same way, we long for more stories about Jesus after Mark 16:8. If I were an early Christian, I would be shouting “That can’t be how it ends! Come on! Tell me everything you know!” Give me those 25 more minutes of climatic ending sequences! What we have in the added verses we read today is what Ched Meyers in his book “Binding the Strongman: A Political Reading of Mark's Story of Jesus” calls an “imperial rewriting of Mark”. This imperial rewriting symbolizes our unending efforts to domesticate the gospel. Meyer states that this longer ending represents the work of those who cannot see the meaning of chapter 16 verse eight as an invitation to which to respond, but only as a scandal that must properly be resolved. These rewriters are looking for a happy ending, not content with the ending Mark originally offers; one where we are left to wrestle with whether or not the women at the tomb (that is to say ourselves) overcame their fear in order to proclaim the new beginning in Galilee. Instead, they preferred to insert an ending that has neat closure and allows the reader to remain passive. In these added verses, we hear that the women did indeed speak to the disciples, but they were not believed, and after that, Jesus appeared to two more disciples who were walking into the country and they went back and told the rest, and they did not believe them either. Now, it would seem our imperial rewriters are not doing the best job here. I thought this was supposed to be the happy ending that set up the foundation of Christ’s kingdom on earth, but all these people don't seem to be believing what they're hearing. Well, then we get to Jesus himself showing up to the 11 as they are sitting at a table and berating them for their lack of faith and they're stubbornness because they had not believed those who had seen him after he had risen. To me, this is those imperial rewriters coming in and saying “Listen! We know you don't all understand and believe as much as we do so we're here to tell you that Jesus is really mad. If you don't believe in him and those who try to tell you about him, he might just shout at you for your stubbornness.” In fact, I left out a pretty sizable chunk of verses that, to me and most theologians, seem to subvert so much of what Mark’s original gospel is trying to say in place of providing the early Christian church with more imperialistic, measurable proofs of Christ’s power. Maybe this will sound familiar to you, but in verse 16 it says, “the one who believes and is baptized will be saved, but the one who does not believe will be condemned.” And one verse that we may be all know, verse 18, says that true-believing Christians “will pick up snakes with their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them. They will lay their hands on the sick and they will recover.” For a gospel that is otherwise almost entirely concerned with sacrifice and a suffering Christ and mystery and silence and misunderstandings, these verses seem to give very clear directions on what people need to do in order to both be a good Christian and then to go out and properly represent Christ and his power. I don't know about you all, but I'm about to go into the desert and pick up the first rattlesnake I see and see how my luck is!… Obviously, I'm not going to do that! So much of Mark’s Gospel refutes the idea of miracle working as being theological proof that Jesus is who we believe Jesus to be. It is easy to criticize the many efforts at Christian magic that are inspired by this text. Think of those folks in churches, particularly in Appalachia, who handle dangerous snakes during their service as a sign of their faith. This emphasis on miraculous Christian magic betrays Mark’s message by instead endorsing the idea that to be a Christian means to demonstrate visible power. You are taking one of the most dangerous creatures and lifting it up in your bare hands, you're drinking poison without fear of dying. You're showing off how powerful you are because you have been baptized and are now a Christian. There is suddenly an emphasis on the idea that, because you are a chosen, baptized person, you can do all of these amazing things. What this notion ignores is Mark’s rejection of those visible signs of power in favor of servanthood and sacrifice. So, given all of this, why did I decide to pick this as the reading for today, you might wonder. Well, as I said earlier, I like the fact that, even though this is an addition to Mark’s Gospel, it still embraces the idea of people reporting things and not being believed, not being fully understood. I like that the resurrected Christ is almost as much of a mystery as the Christ in the earlier portions of Mark's gospel, appearing to a select few people until he just can’t take the fact that his closest friends aren’t believing their fellow disciples when they hear of his encounters with their comrades. The disciples are just as useless in this additional writing as they are in the rest of the book, not understanding what Jesus is doing. I like the idea that we end with the disciples being told to proclaim the good news everywhere (even though they may struggle with doubt and not understand everything) and that, during their witnessing to the world, the Lord worked with them. Christ remains collaborative, even after his ascension to heaven. But I also picked this reading for all of the things that I don't like about it. I picked it in part for the verses that I did not have our liturgist share: the idea that someone looked at an ending of a gospel text and felt so lost, still felt like they did not have a good grip on Christ yet, and just wanted that happier ending. I understand wanting to have a list of things that you need to do and that you should do in order to best serve Christ after his resurrection and prove to those you meet that the power of Christian belief can be visibly demonstrated. I understand the desire for a risen Jesus who shows up and tells people who still don't believe the stories of others to stop being so stubborn! He really is not in that tomb anymore! I understand, wanting to have this earliest story of Christ’s ministry end with people actually seeing him being taken up into heaven and sitting at the right hand of God. Warren Carter and Amy-Jill Levine share that Mark’s original ending “maximizes reader engagement with the story. Readers are called to continue the story. [But it also] is not surprising that some early interpreters found this unresolved conflict to be unsatisfactory.” After nearly 200 years of questioning Mark’s ending, a choice was made by people like you and I to unify its closing narrative with the other gospels. Maybe this was a sign of a young faith seeking firm foundations and prescriptive sacraments around which to root their discipleship. A faith longing to model the empire all around it with signs of strength and visible power. But I also love the idea that Mark originally ends with a question mark. It invites us to consider what we would do in place of these frightened women running from a now empty tomb. We can put ourselves in their place and imagine telling others, "Now I know how this sounds, but…". In this post-Resurrection world, we are called to return to the beginning of the gospel, to Galilee, and share it with everyone; called to begin our own journey of discipleship in the model of Christ. We may not see a physical risen Christ in our midst, as the rewriters decided to include, but we must strive to follow his example as detailed right the way up to Mark 16:8, and pursue our call to be like him nonetheless. Indeed, as C. M. Tucket says in his commentary on the end of Mark: The rest of the gospel is to be completed by the reader, but the reader can only complete the story by following as a disciple of Mark's Jesus, and that means going to Galilee being prepared to follow in the way of discipleship as spelt out by him, i.e. the way of the cross. There, and only there will Jesus be seen and experienced. There is then no happy ending to the gospel… It is up to the reader to supply the ending – and that is the perennial challenge of this gospel to all its readers today. We do not always have experiences with neat and tidy happy endings. As humanity, we are sometimes forced to learn from the saddest of stories and find the hope and the love in them wherever we can. We must continue to wrestle with tales that leave us wanting clearer answers. And while we may never catch a glimpse of Jesus literally sitting at God’s right hand, we can certainly hold fast to the belief that he is working right along with us as we strive to live a life of discipleship like his own, one rooted not just in signs of visible power, but in the strength of sacrificial love and servanthood to all of creation. Amen. Sources consulted for this sermon: Carter, Warren, and Amy-Jill Levine. The New Testament: Methods and Meanings. Abingdon Press, 2013. Coogan, Michael David, et al. The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version; with the Apocrypha; an Ecumenical Study Bible. Oxford University Press, 2018. Myers, Ched. Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus. 2nd ed., Orbis Books, 2008. Tuckett, C.M. “Commentary on Mark.” The New Oxford Bible Commentary, Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 2001, pp. 886–922. Mark 16:1-8 The Resurrection of Jesus When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?’ When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, ‘Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.’ 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. They had to have told someone, right? We know that the book we call Mark wasn’t written down live as it happened. The author wasn’t a court stenographer or me sharing my reactions to a show I like on social media. The book we call Mark is a product of memory, curation, inspiration, and faithful labor produced well after the events it describes. One of my favorite things about comparing the four Gospels is considering the message the author hopes us to find within its sermons, parables, and miracles. As a person whose job it is, in part anyway, to tell stories and read stories and listen to stories, it is interesting for me to consider how the discovery of the resurrection is so different in Mark than in the other three Gospels. If you were telling a story with as wild an ending as resurrection from the dead, would you then turn around and have the heroes of the story be too scared to tell anyone what happened?
Maybe I’m exaggerating a little in calling Mary Magdalene, Jesus’ mom Mary, and Salome heroes. I don’t think I’m exaggerating much though! In his introduction to Mark, Richard Horsley, when comparing the women disciples to the 12 men disciples, says that the women “serve as models of faithfulness.” Unlike we who show up on Easter morning expecting a Resurrection, these women came to the tomb assuming they would only find the dead. In her commentary on this text, Cheryl Lindsay describes what they are doing as the “unfinished work of caring for the dead body of Jesus.” It is necessary and valuable work that is also difficult and heartbreaking, and yet, they show up to tend to the One They Love. They are assuming that they are arriving to do what Lindsay calls “a final act of honor, care, and presence” in spite of the danger that could have lingered after Rome sentenced him to death. Instead, what they become is witnesses. Léoncienne Labonté says of these women, “The dead don’t scare them.” But, that young man in white sure does! Which is fair! I would have been alarmed, too! It doesn’t matter that, as Cheryl Lindsay notes, the Gospel of Mark shares predictions that Jesus will rise from the dead three times (8:31, 9:31, 10:33-34), the women who had been so faithful still didn’t expect the tomb to no longer contain Jesus. This angelic figure says what so many angels end up saying in Bible stories, “Do not be afraid.” The word that is translated as “alarmed” in the translation that we heard today carries with it a sense of being amazed, but not in a totally joyful way. Instead, according to Aubrey West, “alarmed” means something more like “overwhelmed by surprise or perplexity.” She goes on to say, “Nothing they see (or do not see) makes sense.” Even though Jesus had tried to tell them, I’m not sure they could have truly prepared for the empty tomb and angelic presence they found. I’m not sure that they could have truly prepared for the words “he is going ahead of you to Galilee.” Mark is the only one of the four Gospels where we don’t see Jesus after the resurrection. Now, if you open the Bibles in your pews, you might see that there are some post-resurrection encounters that might be under a heading that says something like “the shorter ending of Mark” and “the longer ending of Mark.” But scholars generally agree these were added on later. The oldest versions of Mark that we have don’t include them. While John has Jesus comforting the ones who came to the tomb, and Luke has Jesus appearing as a traveler his friends don’t immediately recognize, and Matthew has Jesus being the one telling the women not to be afraid and telling the men “I am with you always,” Aubrey West points out, Mark has the simple promise that Jesus is going ahead of them. Even though we’re pretty sure that the last thing the author wrote is that the faithful women run from the tomb in terror and amazement, what could be the end actually opens up for us a new beginning. A story’s meaning doesn’t only come from the writer. It also comes from those who hear it. When you hear that the faithful ran away and said nothing to anyone, I hope you will remember that we are here as a reminder that they must have finally moved through their fear and told the truth of what they saw. Even though, as Cheryl Lindsay points out, Mark leaves the story of what they say to be told by others, we have heard the promise that Jesus goes before us. Audrey West offers up what I think is helpful insight: there is no place, including death, that Jesus’ followers can go where “Jesus isn’t already there.” Mark isn’t showing a story of Jesus’ abandoning his followers, but instead repeating his first instruction to them, the instruction to follow. As you think about the meaning of Mark’s resurrection story for your life at this moment, I hope you’ll take this promise to heart. Even as we carry grief and pain in our hearts, even as our actions are shaped by fear, even as we are overwhelmed and confused, Jesus is known by his promises. He has promised to go ahead of us into the worst we can imagine and show us a way through. May we hear this promise and know that we can follow, even when we have to take a break because we are afraid. The story hasn’t yet ended. It is up to us to tell the next part. John 12:12-16 Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into JerusalemThe next day the great crowd that had come to the festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, shouting, ‘Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord-- the King of Israel!’ Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it; as it is written: ‘Do not be afraid, daughter of Zion. Look, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt!’ His disciples did not understand these things at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written of him and had been done to him. Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem is one of those stories that happens in all four of the Gospels. But, there are some interesting differences in how they tell the story. Sometimes there are two donkeys and sometimes there is one. Does anyone remember which story has two donkeys? Matthew! In Matthew, Jesus sends two disciples into a village where they will find the donkey and her colt. If the owner objects, the two disciples are supposed to say, “the Lord needs them” (which is also what they are supposed to tell people in Luke). Matthew also tells us that Jesus did this to fulfill two prophecies, one from Isaiah and one from Zechariah. The Zechariah one has the colt and the mother donkey.
In Mark, it says Jesus sent two disciples, too. But, there’s only one donkey, a young one this time. And, Jesus tells them to tell anyone who asks why they are taking it that “The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.” It’s really nice for Jesus to make sure they knew that they’d get the donkey back. Mark, like Matthew and Luke, says that the disciples let Jesus use their cloaks like a saddle for the donkey. All four Gospels say that the people who see Jesus coming get excited and clear the way for him, by doing something to the road. Does anyone remember what they do? Mark and Matthew says they lay down their cloaks and leafy branches. Luke says they just laid down cloaks. John is the only Gospel that says they laid down palm leaves. That’s where we get the name of the holiday from... today’s reading from John. Why was it so important for Jesus to be shown going to Jerusalem that each of the four Gospel writers included it in their accounting of Jesus’ life? Hope. It’s for hope. Because the people have been waiting for a leader for a long time. And, they thought there would be some signs that the leader had come. Jesus was going to be different that they expected. He always had been. This entry into Jerusalem needs to show people that Jesus is the leader the people had been hoping for, but it also had to show clearly that he would be different. This is no Roman governor on a military steed. This is Jesus, on a borrowed donkey, showing that God’s kindom will come through humility, not military might. The national and religious history that Jesus was born into assumed that God appointed monarchs for the people. David was an important one. In the wake of generations of traumatic wars, his people had come to understand that God could and would save them through a ruler descended from David. Each of the Gospels describe Jesus as the sovereign the people had been waiting for. In John, it says that the people shouted “Hosanna!” Cheryl Lindsay, in her commentary on this text, reminds us that Hosanna means “save us,” something you might say to a monarch or you might say to God. The people also shouted, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord- the king of Israel!” Even on a borrowed donkey, Jesus is called “king.” What kind of king rides into town on a donkey, a sign of humility and peace according to Lindsay Jodrey. The Jesus kind, I guess. Or, maybe the Zechariah kind. And, even though he looked different than any royal they had seen, the crowd knew enough about Jesus to believe that he could save them. Cheryl Lindsay, in her commentary on the text, points out that the crowd who is called “great” in the reading somehow managed to not arouse too much suspicion from the Roman authorities. Remember, Rome was always on the lookout for possible rebellions during Passover, sending extra soldiers there in case the people got too inspired by the liberatory stories of Exodus and tried to throw off the yoke of the empire. You’d expect the soldiers to squash a parade by someone claiming to be a rival monarch to Caesar. Jesus is clearly evoking images of a monarch in his entry into Jerusalem. I wonder if the reason this parade doesn’t irritate the Romans is because it is not for them. None of Jesus’ actions are intended to inspire either irritation or hope to the Roman soldiers and politicians. This is a sign for Jesus’ people, not the Empire. The people who had the eyes to see... who knew the stories of the prophets... they were the ones Jesus was doing this for. And the humility of this parade: a donkey, a traveling teacher and his friends, branches quickly gathered... of that is to help his people, and the people who would later follow him, know him better. And, understand how he would wield power differently than Rome, and, frankly, differently than David. The author of John tells us that Jesus’ friends don’t really understand everything that’s going on at the time of the triumphal entry. Their understanding only comes later, after they’ve witnessed Jesus glorified. They will have to go through the fear of Jesus’ arrest, trial, and crucifixion, before they understand. They will have to experience the awe of the Resurrection in order to look back and see this parade clearly. What I hope what they realized after the Resurrection was that Jesus was not afraid to say who he was to the people who needed him the most. He was not afraid to speak and act in ways that were meaningful mostly to them. While he never hid from Rome, he also knew that Rome ultimately had no real power over him. Even their cruel crucifixion wouldn’t stop him in any way that mattered. On Palm Sunday, we remember the way that Jesus would not be stopped by fear of the ones who had greater military power over him. And he wouldn’t be stopped by the fear of his followers who didn’t understand why he had to be so clear in his mission, even in the face of great danger. There is much to fear these days. But, Jesus shows us that we can’t let it stop us from showing up for the people who need his love and justice. Frank Herbert once said, “I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” May we pass through the fear with Christ, and into the Reign of God he is building in this time and this place. Resources consulted while writing this sermon: Cheryl Lindsay: https://www.ucc.org/sermon-seeds/sermon-seeds-fear/ Lindsay Jodrey: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/narrative-lectionary/the-crucified-messiah-opt-triumphal-entry/commentary-on-john-1212-27-1916b-22-3 John 12. 20-33 Some Greeks Wish to See Jesus Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’ Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. Jesus answered them, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honour. Jesus Speaks about His Death ‘Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—“Father, save me from this hour”? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.’ Then a voice came from heaven, ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.’ The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, ‘An angel has spoken to him.’ Jesus answered, ‘This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgement of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die. Single grains? What’s all this talk of single grains? Is this some kind of recipe? Are we talking about cereal? Cereal is good, but that’s not what we’re talking about this time. We’re talking about seeds and what it takes to grow.
We’ve already heard one story that took place around Passover back at the beginning of John. Now it’s a different Passover and it is closer to the end. As we get closer, you will see Jesus prepare his friends for what’s coming. And, you will see Jesus meet new people who need to see him to understand him. In today’s reading, he does both. You might expect this reading to come after next week’s. This is an encounter that follows the events we call Palm Sunday. But, Holy Week is full. We should talk about this now. Rev. Dr. Cheryl Lindsay reminds us in her commentary on this text that when we talk about a grain, we are talking about a seed, and often a particular kind of seed with hard covering we might call a hull. The hull protects parts of the seed that will become a plant. That part’s called the germ. In order for the germ to grow into a plant, the hull has to break. If the hull isn’t broken open under the right conditions (in good soil, with water and light to coax it out), the plant can’t grow. The grain can never become more grains. It will simply exist as a dried-up bit of potential. It will have no new life. This story is to tell us that the hull is about to be broken open. At this Passover, some Greek people wanted to meet Jesus. Alicia Myers says in her commentary that they were probably Gentile God-fearers who followed some Jewish teachings, including going to the temple for Passover. Cheryl Lindsay is inclined to read them as Greek Jews, given that the author of John was writing to an audience of Jewish people who followed Jesus, it’s more likely that they are intended to be Jewish. Either way, they had heard about Jesus, and came to Philip to ask “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” The teaching that Jesus would offer them and the rest of the crowd gathered that day would be the last bit of public teaching he would offer. I’m not sure what the Greeks were expecting when they went looking for Jesus. I have a feeling that they hoped to hear his wise and strange parables or receive healing. That’s what many people looked for when they came to see Jesus. I’m not sure that they or the disciples were prepared for Jesus to speak of his death or of his troubled soul. “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies it bears much fruit.” It is not always easy to grow. There’s more than one parable about seeds not having the right conditions to grow into healthy plants. Sometimes seeds fall on hard places, like rocks, and get eaten before they have the chance to grow. Sometimes they fall in places where they only have a little of what they need, and start to grow, but can’t flourish. I once saw a tomato plant growing out of a gap in a sidewalk in the middle of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Sure, it had some dirt and water and light. But I don’t think it was going to produce much. Some seeds, like giant sequoia seeds, even need fire to help them flourish. The fire opens up space for saplings on the ground, helps to break open the cones the seeds form in for protection, and clears away leaf litter so the seeds land on the bare dirt they need. If you’re like me, it’s hard to look at a burned- up forest and remember that the fire is a necessary thing. The seed can’t become trees without it. A good leader gives their team the opportunity to opt out of a hard action. Not every seed is made for the fire. Not everyone is willing to be in the dirt. Jesus says that a seed must fall in the dirt. A hull must be broken. No fruit can come without a change... a loss of the seed’s original form. “Those who love their life must lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” To truly grow, the grain must return to the dark earth, and trust that it will find the resources within the dark earth to nurture it into new life. Barbara Brown Taylor once said, “The great hope in the Christian message is not that you will be rescued from the dark but if you are able to trust God all the way into the dark, you may be surprised.” To follow Jesus is to become a seed, broken open in the rich darkness, fed by what we find there, reaching for the light that we hope is beyond. Rev. Dr. Lindsay says, “Jesus did not come to be a single grain.” Even in the moment when Jesus tells the gathered crowd that his heart is troubled, what is weighing on him will not stop him. John, more so than any other Gospel, shows Jesus fully aware of what loyalty to his mission will mean for him. Just because he is troubled, he isn’t looking for reassurance that he is on the right path. He knows he is. And, the voice from above helps make sure his disciples also know. What will come may seem like the end. It won’t be. This question of Christians seems quite pressing: what is preventing us from following Christ into the rich darkness of this current time? What hull is surrounding us, offering a measure of protection while we mature, is no longer of use. Rev. Dr. Lindsay says, “A single grain may be comforted within its protective shell.” But, a seed in a hull of comfort and stability cannot grow. In this scripture, Jesus isn’t telling his followers to be as comfortable as possible. He tells them that they must be ready to be broken open in the darkness of the Holy What’s Next. What this world needs now is seeds ready to grow through conflict into peace. As Rev. Dr. Lindsay says, “our privilege, power, and prestige may be used for this hour.” May we cease to protect a single grain. May we let that grain fall, trusting that the Living Water will grow in us many grains for the nourishment of this world. Resources consulted while writing this sermon: Cheryl Lindsay: https://www.ucc.org/sermon-seeds/sermon-seeds-single-grains/ Karoline Lewis:
An interview with Barbara Brown Taylor: https://religionnews.com/2014/04/14/barbara-brown-taylor-encourages-christians-embrace-darkness/ Alicia D. Myers: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fifth-sunday-in-lent-2/commentary-on-john-1220-33-5 Image credits: Cross with serpent: Fantoni, Giovanni. Brazen Serpent, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55664 [retrieved March 7, 2024]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brazen_Serpent_Sculpture.jpg. Moses and serpent: West, Benjamin, 1738-1820; Hall, John, 1739-1797. The Macklin Bible -- Moses, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54084 [retrieved March 7, 2024]. John 3.14-21 And 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. ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. ‘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. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.’ Every three years, today’s reading from John shows up in the lectionary cycle. And, every three years I notice that this scripture contains one of the strangest metaphorical explanations of who Jesus is in any Gospel as well as one of the most well-known verses in American Christianity. When we see a verse that is as immediately recognizable as John 3:16, it is tempting to gloss over it because we think we know what it means. I’m going to invite us to not read over the familiar too quickly today. So, let’s start with the less familiar part of this reading and work our way to what we know and see if we can learn something new. Let’s start with the thing about the snake.
The story of Moses and the bronze serpent is in Numbers 21. I don’t blame you if the Exodus stories of Numbers is not as familiar to you as the Exodus stories of, well, Exodus. Numbers is mostly set in the wilderness travels of the Exodus. Within the wilderness stories, a reader will also find lots of descriptions of Jewish religious laws beyond the 10 Commandments and lots of descriptions of Moses acting as a mediator between God and the people. The story about the serpent starts out similar to the more familiar story about manna in the desert, which means it starts with people worrying that they won’t have enough to eat and even wondering if maybe they weren't better off in Egypt. The thing is, the snake story is not at the beginning of the Exodus. It comes after 40 years of God tending to them in the wilderness. You would think that would have been enough to show them that God would provide for them. And, yet, Numbers tells us that the people became impatient and afraid. So, they did what impatient people often do... they complained. While Cameron B.R. Howard points out in her commentary that the scriptures don’t specifically say God sent the snakes to punish the complainers, it sure looks like God did. Especially since the book of Exodus talks about plagues of critters God sent after Pharaoh. I am inclined to think that this whole “God sent the snakes” thing says more about how people try to explain away difficult events than it says about the actual character of God. Nevertheless, we should pay attention to how the people in the story explained a weird and scary thing that happened in their community. The people in the desert thought God sent down a bunch of poisonous snakes. Having tons of venomous snakes around seems like an accident waiting to happen, which is an unusual kind of plague, largely because snakes don’t typically hurt people unless we are messing with them. Typically, when you live with something so dangerous as this plague of snakes, I’d think you’d develop a habit of vigilance. Even with vigilance, though, people are still bitten. Enough people were being bitten that the whole community grew afraid. This time, though, they blamed themselves for the problem, not God. They said that they had messed up by speaking against God and against Moses. They begged Moses to intervene with God and get rid of the snakes. Moses, true to his role in Numbers, intervened on their behalf. God does help, but not in the way the people expected. God doesn't take away the snakes, but God does give the people a way to be healed when they do run afoul of a snake. God had them build a bronze serpent and mount it up on a pole. When they looked at the serpent, they were healed. This is a wild desert story, right? And, as best as I can tell, one that isn’t cited often in other parts of the Bible. Stories from the Exodus that carry a lot of weight in a community, like the manna and quail or the golden calf and the Ten Commandments, are regularly referenced beyond their original telling. Aside from the Psalms and other prophetic books referencing the fact that the people got angry or scared and complained to God, which, frankly happened a lot of times in Exodus and Numbers, there are only two references to Moses and the bronze serpent outside of Numbers: one in 2 Kings 8:14 and the other in John 3:14. If the snake on a stick story is one that is not referenced broadly across Jewish scripture, isn’t it interesting that the author of John has Jesus describing the Son of Man, a phrase he uses to reference himself, this way. What a strange choice. Cheryl Lindsay reminds us of something useful in her commentary on this scripture. Today’s reading isn’t from a big speech Jesus is giving a whole crowd of people. It’s from a conversation he is having with one person, a pharisee named Nicodemus. In his notes on this chapter, Obery Hendricks says that the Pharisees observed Jewish purity laws more carefully that all other groups of Jewish believers. I think Jesus and the Pharisees founds themselves arguing so frequently because both he and they took living out their religious obligations seriously. If either of them cared less, they might not have so frequently found themselves in opposition. Perhaps Jesus references an obscure story about Moses precisely because it was from the book of Numbers. Numbers is a book about, at least in part, the instructions for shaping your life according to love of God and love of neighbor. When speaking to someone who cares deeply about the Law, you demonstrate that you, too, know the Law, even the weird parts of it, as a way to build trust and affinity. Maybe that’s why Jesus’ uses this story while talking to Nicodemus. Nicodemus visits Jesus in the dead of night because he is afraid someone will see him. The story of the serpent plague is certainly a story about fear, particularly about the ways that fear can push you back into modes of behavior based on scarcity. It can keep you from embracing the walk to freedom through the desert and settling the certainty of slavery with the Pharoah. It can even make you hide away at night, rather than approach new understanding in the light of day. Nicodemus is afraid of being condemned for even entertaining the idea that Jesus will bring insight as to how to live according to God’s covenant. And, yet, even in his fear, he seeks Jesus out. In the verses just before today’s reading, Nicodemus asks Jesus questions about where his power comes from and for clarification on some of his more metaphorical teachings about the nature of faith. Today’s reading is part of Jesus’ response. And, part of his response is that he believes that his mission is to be an instrument of healing, not condemnation. One of the most well-known parts of this passage is verse 16. I’ll share Wil Gafney’s translation of it: “For God so loved the world that God gave God’s only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” I am quite familiar with readings of this verse that hold Jesus up as a grand arbiter who is quick to send people to eternal damnation. If those who believe will have eternal life, some argue, the subtext is that those who don’t believe will be condemned to eternal suffering. In a commentary on this passage, Karoline Lewis encourages us not to stop at 16, but to keep reading. The rest of the passage has a more complex view of condemnation. And, it is clear that Jesus is to be held up as a passageway for divine healing, not condemnation. It may not be the kind of healing people expected. Certainly, the bronze serpent was not what the Israelites expected in the desert. Dr. Lindsay argues that verse 17, which says, “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,” makes it clear that condemnation is antithetical to ministry of Christ. If we are using Jesus’ words primarily to condemn other people to poverty, isolation, and suffering, we are operating outside of his mission. If we allow our fear to limit us to hidden, creeping encounters with Jesus, we will find ourselves like Nicodemus, with a glancing awareness of God’s radiant love, but an inability to fully step into it. What the world sees in Jesus is healing, not condemnation. What the world should see reflected in Jesus’ followers is healing not condemnation. We never see Nicodemus again in John, or in any other Gospel, with the subtext being that he was too afraid to live in faith in full view of those who judge him. How sad that is for him. May we make a different choice and hold up Jesus’ love for the world to see. And, may the world be changed by it. Resources consulted while writing this sermon: Cameron B. R. Howard’s commentary on Numbers 21:4-9: http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3606 Karoline Lewis: http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=5075 Cheryl Lindsay: https://www.ucc.org/sermon-seeds/sermon-seeds-condemnation/ Obery Hendricks’s notes on John in The New Oxford Annotated Bible: The New Revised Standard Version with Apocryphya, ed. Michael Coogan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001) John 2:13-22 Jesus Cleanses the Temple The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money-changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!’ His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’ The Jews then said to him, ‘What sign can you show us for doing this?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken. Sometimes, a story we read at church is only found in one Gospel. Sometimes it's in two or three of them. And, sometimes, it’s in all four. Dr. Nyasha Junior, in her commentary on this text, reminds us that the story in today’s reading is a story that is in all four Gospels. That means that all four of the people who compiled the stories of Jesus’ life and ministry thought this was an important story to share. In three of the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), the story takes place the week before the crucifixion. In John, it takes place at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry. First, he gets baptized. Then he invites a group of people to work with him. Then he performs the miracle of turning water into wine at the wedding. Then, after a brief respite in Capernaum, Jesus goes to Jerusalem and gets in a fight with some people in the Temple.
This story is pretty wild. Jesus chases people and animals with a whip. He knocks over people’s stuff, and he screams at people who are doing an important job for pilgrims to come to Jerusalem during religious festivals. Sometimes, regardless of which Gospel is being read, this story gets called “Jesus Cleansing the Temple.” But, as Dr. Junior writes in her commentary, none of the versions of this story in any Gospel use the word “cleanse” to describe what’s going on. That is a name that got added by later Christian readers. In fact, Dr. Junior reminds us that the version we heard today doesn’t even tell us exactly what made Jesus so mad or what the purpose of his outburst is. She jokes that it might be better to call this story “Jesus flips out!,” or “Jesus loses it!” I’m inclined to agree. It makes me wonder why the person who wrote John thought this story was so important that they made it the fifth big thing that Jesus did in his public ministry. Like I said, all the people selling and buying stuff in the temple were supposed to be there. It’s not like our church fair, a fundraiser (though could you imagine Jesus knocking over our Second Time Around table). That’s when we have people buying and selling things in our church. In his notes on this story, Obery Hendricks outlines some of reasons why people were selling and trading things in the temple in Jerusalem. One reason was that ancient Jewish religious practice required bringing an animal to sacrifice. What animal you brought was usually based on how much money you had. Remember from back when we talked about Jesus’ parents bringing him to the temple for the first time. They brought two doves as a sacrifice. They probably bought the doves from people working around the temple just like the people Jesus got mad at in this story. The people called money changers had a job, too. There was a certain amount of money worshipers gave when they came to Temple. But, they couldn’t give that offering, usually called the Temple tax, in any old kind of money. Remember, people in this era of the Roman Empire might have money created by many different governments, not just Roman money. They couldn’t use the regular Roman money either. They had to get their donation converted to something called the “half-shekel of Tyre” in order to give it during worship. Hendricks says it this way: “Roman money was changed into Jewish money to pay the Temple tax.” If all these people are supposed to be there to help devout people worship in the way God told them to, why would Jesus get so mad at them? Karoline Lewis, in her commentary on this story, makes an interesting point. Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the ones that put this story much later in Jesus’ life, show Jesus calling the venders in the temple a “den of robbers,” indicating that he thinks they are cheating people who have to use their services. That’s not what he says in John. In John, he says, “stop making my Abba’s house a marketplace!” Lewis thinks that means that Jesus isn’t calling people out for cheating other people, especially since buying and selling things was necessary for the whole system of sacrifice in worship. You had to get the right stuff somewhere. Best to get it at the temple. Lewis thinks that Jesus is being critical of that whole system, and maybe even saying that the whole system of sacrifice is unnecessary. And, that is a radical statement. I haven’t decided if I think Dr. Lewis is right yet. Part of the reason why is because interpretations of this story where people argue that Jesus wanted to replace worship practices centering God’s presence in the temple with worship practices centering God’s presence in him have often been used to justify harming Jewish people. Dr. Dong Hyeon Jeong describes this kind of interpretation as “replac[ing] the Second Temple of Jerusalem (Judaism) with the body of Jesus (Christianity).” Historically, when Christians have talked about replacing Judaism, it has led us to persecute people who opt to be Jewish instead of being Christian. Because I know what kind of harm those interpretations continue to do in this world, I am leery of leaning too hard into the idea of trading one Temple, the one in Jerusalem, for another, the one that was Jesus. Dr. Jeong offers a bit of context on John in his commentary on this text that might help us avoid interpretations that justify harming our Jewish neighbors. Jeong notes that at the time when this scripture was written, there wasn’t actually a distinct religion called Christianity. There were only followers of the teacher Jesus, some of whom were Gentiles but many of whom were Jewish. Those who were Jewish had to contend with Rome’s destruction of the temple in 70 CE... that is the same temple that is central to this story. According to Jeong, the community that the author of John was trying to address with this Gospel was a community that was looking for an explanation for how God could allow a second Temple to be destroyed by a brutal empire. For a people who have seen their temple, the very resting place of God, destroyed, it might bring comfort to them to understand that God was still at home among them, but this time in the body of Jesus whom they called Christ. Dr. Cheryl Lindsay interprets Jesus-as-Temple this way: The God who had once given them their religious law, including directions for temple sacrifices, as a means of maintaining right relationship with God and with one another, in the wake of the destruction of the temple, would offer another means for connecting with the Divine. This time, it would be the Incarnation. Dr. Lindsay is the primary crafter of the seasonal theme I have been attempting to follow this Lent. She is the one who suggested “saying no to transactionalism” as an interpretation of this story. While she acknowledges that humans are relational beings, and a certain amount of exchange of goods, ideas, and services is simply part of being a person, what she is concerned about is when the give and take that is a part of human life gets shifted into a competition to see who can construct their relationships around the idea that people owe them something. You can become very powerful when people owe you things... owe you money, owe you allegiance, owe you control. When we only exchange goods, ideas, and services so that other people, or even God, will do something for us, we run counter to the kind of relationships Jesus invites us to create. Jesus doesn’t want your faith to be a transaction that gains you more power in this world. Jesus does want you to build relationships like he did, through sharing, healing, and fighting for those who have been abandoned. Too often, Christians have traded Christ-like relationships for power that destroys. Time and time again, through our history, when Christians have felt like the world owes them power, money, and loyalty, we have strayed the farthest from Christ’s teaching. God has not given us the world to make us powerful. God has given us Christ to teach us to love. We do not need to sacrifice our neighbors’ lives and well-being in order to maintain our cultural power. If Jesus did think he, himself, was the new temple for God, Dr. Lindsay points out that he did not rebuild the temple through “force, power, or might.” He rebuilt the temple, his body, in the mystery of the tomb. May we never feel like we must build the Body of Christ using the tools that killed Jesus. May we be assured that in saying no to transactions of injustice, we can more forward, sharing Christ’s gift of love. Resources consulted while writing this sermon: Cheryl Lindsay: https://www.ucc.org/sermon-seeds/sermon-seeds-transactionalism/ Nyasha Junior, "Third Sunday in Lent," Preaching God's Transforming Justice, A Lectionary Commentary, Year B Featuring 22 New Holy Days for Justice, eds. Ronald J. Allen, Dale P. Andrews, and Dawn Ottoni-Wilhelm Obery Hendricks's notes on John in The New Oxford Annotated Bible: The New Revised Standard Version with Apocryphya, ed. Michael Coogan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001) Karoline Lewis: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-in-lent-2/commentary-on-john-213-22-3 Dong Hyeon Jeong: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-in-lent-2/commentary-on-john-213-22-6 Mark 8:31–38 Jesus Foretells His Death and Resurrection Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’ He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.’ Shame is powerful. In 1990, when the Americans with Disabilities Act was not yet law, hundreds of disability rights activists went to Washington DC to work for the bill’s passing. They used all the levers of democracy at their disposal, including direct action protest. On March 12th of that year, dozens of protesters gathered at the bottom of the steps that lead up to the West Entrance of the Capitol building. They then began a slow ascent up the steps, leaving behind all their mobility aids. Some ascended on their own, some with the help of family and friends. The protest would come to be known as the Capitol Crawl. I found this quote from Michael Winter, former Executive Director of the Berkeley Center for Independent Living in an article about the Capitol Crawl. He said, “Some people may have thought it was undignified for people in wheelchairs to crawl in that manner, but I felt that it was necessary to show the country what kinds of things people with disabilities have to face on a day-to-day basis. We had to be willing to fight for what we believed in.” What these wise organizers were counting on was the power of shame. They were counting on the lawmakers feeling ashamed of having driven their constituents, some of whom were children, to such a vulnerable and painful act just to get their attention. The organizers also knew that plenty of other citizens would see the protest and be appalled that the protestors had been driven to such direct action by the inaction of legislators. Those citizens would call on the lawmakers to draft legislation to make actions like the Capitol Crawl unnecessary. Ultimately, the legislators did act. The Americans With Disabilities act was signed into law on June 26th, 1990. Shame is powerful in Christian circles. It is both a tactic we use to compel people to behave in a certain way and an emotion that arises within us as a result of theologies and ethics we are taught in Christian circles. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard of teenage girls being pulled aside and scolded for wearing shorts or tank tops. They are shamed for wearing certain types of clothes and tempting the boys and grown men around them to sin. In these cases, men and boys are rarely held accountable for managing their desires. Many women continue to carry that shame in their hearts, even if they leave the Christian communities that harm them this way, making it difficult to feel comfortable in their own bodies and making it challenging to form healthy relationships with other people, especially men. It can take a lot of years to disentangle religious shame from our hearts. Shame is powerful and that’s why Jesus addresses it in today’s reading. He has been teaching for a while at this point. This chapter also includes one of the most wide-reaching miracles, a feeding of four-thousand people, as well as an individual healing story where Jesus has to take two tries to heal a blind man’s vision. After all of this he asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” They offer a couple responses that they’ve heard people say: John the Baptist, Elijah, or maybe one of the other prophets. Richard Horsley, in his notes on this text, says that all of those responses make sense given what and how Jesus had been teaching. Then, in the verses just before today’s reading, Jesus asks, “who do you say that I am?” and Peter replies, “You are the Messiah.” Then, Jesus does that thing he does in Mark where he tells his disciples not to tell anyone about him. Jesus also tells them than in the coming days, it will be necessary that he suffer. He says he is going to be rejected. And, that he will be killed, though, after three days, he will rise. Peter is appalled when he hears this. Remember: Shame is powerful. In her commentary on the text, Marilyn Salmon reminds us that the rejection and suffering that Jesus will experience would have been viewed as deeply shameful in the era in which he lived. There is a certain amount of shame that comes with following a leader that respected members of the community rejected. That is an embarrassment akin to routing for the losing team. The suffering that Jesus was speaking about was more than that. For those of us raised with an understanding of the empty cross as a symbol of Jesus’ loving power, it is easy to forget that crucifixion was intended to be a humiliating death. Salmon reminds us that the public, messy, and agonizingly slow nature of death by crucifixion was intended to shame the victim and shame all the people who cared about them. Jesus doesn’t mention crucifixion in this scripture, but it was written after his death and would have been on the author’s mind. Also, I think there is a subtext in this scripture that the “would be killed” means “would be killed by powerful people, like John was.” The Messiah was supposed to save the nation, not be murdered. But Jesus knew that following his mission put him in conflict with powerful people. And, powerful people will use their power to harm their enemies. He knew what the risks were and wanted to make sure his disciples did, too. I kind of wonder if Paul was trying to avoid feeling the shame associated with following a leader who has been rejected, and that’s why he rebuked Jesus. “Jesus, come on. You’re bumming the disciples out. Don’t talk like that. You are the Messiah! People will believe you! Surely, everyone will see that, right?” Jesus rebuked Peter right back. He didn’t need disciples who are surprised into inaction by the poor reception his message invoked in powerful people. He needed disciples who would be willing to be seen as undignified, embarrassing, and disreputable in service to the Gospel. He needed disciples who understood that being shamed by powerful people will be hard. They must be able to build up enough spiritual fortitude to resist the shame that unjust leaders and community members heap on them. He wanted to warn them that the shame was coming so they could develop a commitment to love that is stronger than shame. Have you ever heard the saying, “Tell the truth and shame the devil?” This week, I saw a video of someone telling the truth and shaming the devil. Sean Cummings, a city council member of The Village, which is a suburb of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, took the state’s Board of Education to task. The board, dominated by hateful transphobes and homophobes who are also Christian Nationalists, has been tormenting LGBTQ kids and families for years now. This week, a 16-year-old student named Nex Benedict, whose family is Choctaw and who was non-binary and used they/them pronouns, was severely beaten by three other students at school. Nex died the next day. While many details around Nex’s death are not yet clear, it is quite clear that the culture of hatred fomented by adults in political leadership contributed to their death. Sean Cummings showed up at the school board meeting and made sure the board knew that truth. Cummings said, “Three older girls don’t just jump a 16-year-old in a bathroom for no apparent reason, especially when they’re from the alphabet community, who you personally have attacked ever since you ran for office.” He even went so far as to say that the public school superintendent and a nationally known transphobic social media influencer whom he has allowed to be an advisor to the school board, despite her not living in Oklahoma, “have blood on their hands.” Councilor Cummings, who has worked hard to protect his LGBTQ constituents, has been targeted by that influencer in the past, garnering scores of death threats when she has directed her followers to attack him. He even told the board that he anticipated more death threats to follow the meeting where he told them off. Even knowing that these powerful transphobes will incite their followers to threaten him again, he still went to the meeting in hopes of holding the powerful accountable. He told a local reporter that “he often felt like a lone voice standing up for LGBTQ rights in such a ‘red state.’” And, yet, he has the spiritual fortitude to speak up. He said, “I’m a dad, I have a dog at home. I don’t have anyone at home. If anybody wants to come after me, they can come after me.” I don’t know anything about Council Cummings’ religious beliefs. I will say that he seems to be a clear example of someone who has a commitment to love that is strong enough to risk the ire of the powerful. He has a commitment to love that has overcome the shame that some Christians will heap on him for standing alongside his trans neighbors. It is clear to me who is acting like Jesus wants his disciples to act. May we be this unashamed to follow Christ into love, especially when following him is a risk. Resources consulted while writing this sermon: Marilyn Salmon: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-in-lent-2/commentary-on-mark-831-38 Capitol Crawl: https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/capitol-crawl-for-ADA/ Richard A. Horsley’s notes on Mark in The New Oxford Annotated Bible: The New Revised Standard Version with Apocryphya, ed. Michael Coogan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001) An article about Sean Cummings: https://news.yahoo.com/lawmaker-accuses-education-board-libs-214726178.html Mark 1:9–15 The Baptism of Jesus In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’ The Temptation of Jesus And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him. The Beginning of the Galilean Ministry Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’ I grew up in a place where most people didn’t celebrate Lent. My school, which is quite a bit bigger than most of the local high schools here, had no other Lutheran students and probably less than five Catholic and Episcopal students combined. The Methodists, of which there were many, seemed to know about it, but also didn’t seem to talk about it as much as my church did. And, I remember driving by a Methodist church not far from my school with my grandfather and they had the wrong liturgical color sash on the cross out front. He said derisively, “They should know better.” Though he had not grown up with Lent, when he married a Lutheran, he adopted some very clear ideas about what was appropriate in the season.
In the church of my youth, it also seemed clear that Lent was about one thing: suffering. If you wanted to do Lent right, you had to give up something that would make you suffer. Ideally, you had to give up something that was super hard to give up, like smoking or eating chocolate, so that you suffered extra hard. I was told that it was only by making ourselves suffer that we could begin to understand Jesus’ suffering. As a serious, well-behaved teenager, it seemed very righteous and also a little dramatic to think about what I could give up to make myself suffer the right amount. As an adult, I’ve come to see Lent as something more useful than a “who can suffer more” contest, thank goodness. It’s not that I don’t find fasting to be useful, because I do think it can be. Over the years, though, I’ve come to value Lent not as a time to force suffering but as a time to be intentional and reflective. Rev. Dr. Cheryl Lindsay, in her introduction to the “Saying No” theme we’ll be exploring this Lent, speaks of Christians making use of Lenten practices, “such as fasting and other spiritual disciplines to draw disciples not only closer to Christ but also to the way of sacrificial living modeled by Jesus.” I think there’s a helpful distinction between suffering and sacrifice in her description. A life that is oriented to Christ will require sacrifice. But that sacrifice is an offering given as an investment in the well-being of our neighbors and creation. The goal is not to suffer for suffering’s sake, but to be willing to be less comfortable, to have less wealth, maybe even to have less of a good reputation in order to feed the hungry, visit the imprisoned, and tend to those who mourn. Catherine Doherty describes the sacrifices of Lent this way: “Lent is a time of going very deeply into ourselves…What is it that stands between us and God? Between us and our brothers and sisters? Between us and life, the life of the Spirit? Whatever it is, let us relentlessly tear it out, without a moment’s hesitation.” I agree. That sounds kind of intense. You may not know what that is if you had to name it right now. This is a place where Lent can be useful. You can experiment with fasting from something and/or adding a practice to your life. You can take these forty days to pay attention in a way that is different from your norm. Perhaps you say, I will make coffee at home and donate the money I usually spend on the coffee I buy every day. If you were to treat this like a worthy sacrifice, you might need to slow down and pay attention to the changes you will have to make in even such a simple act. How does the process of getting up earlier to make coffee, of learning to make a latte like the barista does, and then figuring out where to donate the money you saved teach you something about yourself and about God. You might be tempted to just make the coffee and walk out the door. And, maybe some days, you’ll need to do that. But, I will invite you to resist the temptation to rush through the season. Carve out some time to prayerfully consider what you have given up or added in this time. What is this fast or practice showing you about God and yourself? In this season, you will undoubtedly have to deal with temptation. You may be tempted to wonder if, in a world in the kind of upheaval that our world is in right now, how can I even make space for the season of Lent. To be fair, if you feel like adding a lot to your plate this Lent is more suffering than sacrifice, I think it’s ok to just get through. If you do decide to have a Lenten practice, you may be tempted to forego whatever fast or practice you’ve adopted. Or, you may find that giving up something means you want it all the more. Rev. Dr. Lindsay shares in her commentary on today’s scripture, “I know of people who have given up something they only marginally cared about because they think it will be easy only to discover that the process of self-denial can make something nominally interesting become almost irresistibly appealing. That’s the power of temptation.” Sometimes I wish Mark told us a little more about the temptation that Jesus dealt with out in the wilderness. Verse 13 of today’s reading tells us that “he was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.” But, as Dr. Lindsay points out, Mark does not take the time to spell out those temptations. Other Gospel writers do. They are temptations to use power to help curb his own suffering and also to take short-cuts in doing what he is called to do. In those versions of this stories, we can come to understand Jesus’ divinity in seeing him say no to temptation. Dr. Lindsay invites to consider that in being tempted, Jesus is also showing his radical commitment to humanity. She says that while other Gospels show Jesus “enter[ing] into the human condition through birth,” Mark, which has no birth narrative, shows him doing so through the communal act of baptism and through the fact that he is tempted, as we are tempted. She refers to Jesus’ temptation as “proof of his human nature.” Jesus is God right here with us, especially in the messy parts, fully participating in humanity. In her invitation to consider “saying no” as a Lenten spiritual practice, Dr. Lindsay shared this quote by Robin S. Baker: “To end certain cycles in your life, you will need to say no to things you’ve once said yes to in the past. You have grown much wiser and you know better now. So dissimilar decisions will have to be made this time around. It’s time to extract expired people, energies, and situations.” Perhaps your work this season can be learning to say no to the temptation to continue actions that are a part of the cycle that draws you away from God and neighbor. Fortunately, in saying no to some things, you will say yes to others. I pray that you can say new yeses this season, as well. Yes to worthwhile sacrifice. Yes to compassionate advocacy. Yes to loving your wonderfully imperfect neighbors. There will always be something there to tempt us into separation and destruction. May the Holy Spirit help you say no to the temptations that will destroy you. And, lead you to the yes that follows Jesus into that Kindom of God that has drawn near. Resources consulted while writing this sermon: Cheryl Lindsay:
Mark 9-2-9 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, ‘Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’ He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!’ Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus. As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. Dazzling: Mark 9:2-9
“Confusion is but the first stop on the journey to knowledge.” That sure sounds like a thing a famous philosopher would say. I heard it from a fuzzy, blue mutant called Beast in a superhero movie called The Marvels. If you don’t want to hear a few spoilers from the movie, I suggest you plug your ears for a moment (or skip the next two paragraphs). He said that line about confusion and knowledge to a superhero named Monica Rambeau who has end up trapped in a parallel timeline to her own, one where her beloved mother Maria, who had died of cancer in her own time, was still alive. And, it appears, one in which Monica had not been born. Also, her mom is now a superhero herself, hanging out with the professor/mutant hero Beast. When Monica wakes up in the wrong dimension and sees her mother alive, she is clearly confused. And, Maria is confused about why this woman who is about her same age is calling her mom. In walks Beast, brilliant and hairy, who notes that confusion can be useful if you are willing to pay attention to what is confusing you and put in the work to figure it out. This scene, which follows the official end of the movie, serves as a teaser for movies that have not yet been filmed. It’s leading us to believe that we will eventually understand where Monica is and learn how she will get home. This post credit scene is made to assure us: things might be confusing now, but an answer will come. (If you wanted to skip the spoiler, you can start reading here.) It was interesting to watch a superhero movie about making big sacrifices and making amends, living into your calling and finding your co-workers while I was working on a sermon about the Transfiguration. Both feature three glowing figures (did I say that there’s lots of glowing in the movie... the three main superheroes all glow when they use their powers). Both feature meditations on vocation and what it means to work alongside someone. And, both feature lots of confusion, confusion that we hope might be cultivated into knowledge. Our scripture for the day begins not in a futuristic hospital room but on a mountain. The scholar Rolf Jacobsen, on an episode of the Sermon Brainwave podcast that is about this scripture, reminds us that we’ll have mountains at the beginning and end of Lent. And, today, on the cusp the season of Lent, at the end of Epiphany, we find ourselves on the first mountain. Peter, James, and John have found themselves in great confusion. You see, they see Jesus, fully glowing like an ancient Messiah-shaped light bulb, standing alongside two heroes of the faith, Moses and Elijah. To be clear, neither of these things are everyday occurrences in Peter, James, and John’s lives. So, confusion and astonishment are appropriate responses, as far as I’m concerned. Important things happen on Mountains. Dr. Bonnie Bowman Thurston talks about that in her commentary on Mark. God tells Moses about the covenant on a mountain in Exodus. God gives Elijah a divine mission on a mountain in 1st Kings. These aren’t the only examples. I’ll leave you to look the rest up on your own. And yet, even if we just read these two, we can see that people often receive clarity on a mountain... clarity of mission, clarity regarding relationships... clarity around God’s power. Isn’t it interest that, though Peter, James, and John have likely heard that divine knowledge is often found on a mountain top, they are still surprised and astonished by what they are seeing on their own mountaintop with Jesus. There's a point earlier in the movie The Marvels where a superhero named Carol asks Monica how she got her superpowers. Monica responds with what sounds more like an odd collection of words than a coherent answer. She says she “walked through a witch’s hex” and now can see waves of energy and particles of light and somehow this allows her to also walk through walls. I think it’s interesting that the movie just gives you this short explanation and goes right on with the story, inviting the audience not to worry too much about a wild backstory they might not know. I think the writers of this film understand that there are hours of tv shows and years’ worth of comic stories that give the details of Monica Rambeau’s power, and that they know not every audience member will have all that knowledge. Rather than leave out those who don’t know the backstory or dedicate hours in this film to retelling other stories, the writers explain her powers in a weird, short burst. They have Monica say just enough so you know some weird stuff happened to her and now she can save people more effectively. They want you to remember great power exists right alongside some weird stuff. I’m going to follow the recommendation of the scholar Melinda Quivik and invite you to read this story from Mark in a similar spirit. Please do not to think the only way you can appreciate the Transfiguration is if you have a detailed schematic of how Jesus could glow and an affidavit offering a rational explanation for the presence of dead prophets. We shouldn’t approach the Bible the way we approach math. This is a story. In storytelling, the fantastical is utterly unquantifiable and still yet shows us something true. Bonnie Bowman Thurston offers up similar advice. Read the Transfiguration as a wild, unquantifiable, story with one purpose- to help the audience to know this as true: like Moses and Elijah, God gave Jesus a calling. And the disciples should listen to him like the Hebrews were supposed to listen to the prophets. It's no wonder that Peter wanted to build a structure to commemorate the wild event he observed up on that mountain. It’s like Peter thinks there should be a signpost that says, “On this day, Jesus blew all our minds.” But, this isn’t supposed to be a story about a monument. This is a story about a mission. Thank God that God gave the disciples some clarity while they were lost in that cloud: “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” They will still get confused in the listening, but at least they know their next step. Listen. And after that, follow. Here’s a thing that continues to confuse me: Jesus tells his disciples not to tell anyone what they saw. I mentioned last week that we’re going to see a pattern in Mark of Jesus asking for a certain level of secrecy from those who see him in miraculous moments. One explanation I have found that I think is more convincing comes from one of Rev. Dr. Fred Craddock’s sermons called “Tell No One Before Easter.” In that sermon, Dr. Craddock asks the question: what if Jesus asked them to wait because there was no way they understood the miraculous thing they just saw mere moments after they saw it. Dr. Craddock thinks Jesus was saying “Take some time to tell this story right. It's ok to not understand everything immediately. Stick around and keep learning.” You know, confusion is the but the first step on the journey to knowledge, and all that. The pastor and poet Maren Tirabassi talks about it this way: The Transfiguration is but one of the small epiphanies, hills on the way to the mountain, from which the disciples will gather yet one more insight into of the mystery of Jesus. We should also remember: the valleys will bring their own clarity. In the same way that the confusion of Beast, Maria, and Monica foreshadows the next movie in their series, today’s confusion on the mountain foreshadows a different mountain, one will come later, this time with the women disciples watching from a distance. The second set of disciples will also learn something about Jesus on a mountain, the mountain of Calvary. Rolf Jacobsen reminds us that bystanders will think they hear Jesus call for Elijah when he is crying out in anguish to God. At the second mountain, no voice from God will cut through the cloud of the disciples’ grief. They won’t get clarity on the mountain this time. Clarity will come in the valley, at the tomb. And, at least in Mark’s version of the story, they appear unclear what to do with it. I’ll offer another spoiler for the movie: The moment before Monica Rambeau saves Earth by pulling together a hole that has been ripped between her dimension and the dimension next door, thereby trapping herself in the wrong dimension, she speaks to a weeping Carol, who we have come to know is her aunt. She says, “I always knew I would have to stay.” This fantastical superhero knew what was true: sacrifice and salvation are often tightly bound. In today’s story, Peter, James, and John do not yet know of the sacrifice to come. They simply know that they are called to listen. Perhaps that is how we also begin. We listen. May what we hear be dazzling. Resources consulted while writing this sermon: Melinda Quivick: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/transfiguration-of-our-lord-2/commentary-on-mark-92-9-5 Sermon Brainwave Podcast: https://www.workingpreacher.org/podcasts/768-transfiguration-of-our-lord-b-feb-14-2021 Bonnie Bowman Thurston, Preaching Mark, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002). Maren Tirabassi: https://giftsinopenhands.wordpress.com/2021/01/29/strongholy-communion-liturgy-for-february-7-2021/ Fred Craddock, "Tell No One Before Easter: Mark 9:2-9," The Collected Sermons of Fred B. Craddock (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011) |
AuthorPastor Chrissy is a native of East Tennessee. She and her wife moved to Maine from Illinois. She is a graduate of the Divinity School at Wake Forest University and Chicago Theological Seminary. Archives
March 2024
Categories |