Where the Wild Things Are: Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent B

When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak. There are only ten sentences in the entire story, which is why, when the book was made into a movie a few years back, a whole lot of detail had to be invented and added in. Mark’s gospel shares that characteristic when compared with the other gospels-- although Sendak’s glorious illustrations and incredible beasts made up for the scarcity of words. Sendak also had a main character whose imagination was running wild, which got him into trouble—unusual in a world at that time of vapid, whiter-than-white and blander-than-bland Dick, Jane, and Spot.

Where the Wild Things Are is the story of a boy named Max. One evening while wearing his wolf costume, he literally goes wild. His mother calls him a wild thing, and she doesn’t mean it as a complement. He responds by threatening to eat her, and so he gets sent to bed without anything to eat at all. As the minutes and maybe hours go by, the walls of Max's room disappear and become a forest, and he wanders through it until he finds a shore and a boat that takes him sailing a long distance to the land where the wild things live. 

Max quickly subdues the Wild Things and becomes their king. He enjoys bossing them around for awhile-- but eventually he starts to miss his home, and so announces his intention to leave. The Wild Things beg him to stay, and threaten to eat him up just as had his own mom. But he refuses them, climbs back into his boat, and sails back over that long distance. Even at sea he can smell the smell of something good to eat. And when he gets back to his room, he finds his supper there waiting for him on a table, still hot. (1) 

In Mark’s gospel, we get a lot of drama happening in just these first total fifteen verses, and our gospel today includes the last seven of those fifteen verses. And just like in the children's book, a whole lot takes place in these sentences in Mark.

All this happens in just ten sentences of the children's story: Max goes from miscreant, to prisoner, to escapee, to adventurer and king all by sentence number four. In our gospel passage, Jesus goes from leaving his hometown, his baptism and theophany in the Jordan by John, his being seized by the Holy Spirit to be driven into the wilderness, his 40 days of temptation by Satan, and his return to Galilee to begin his public ministry as God’s Son, God’s healer, God’s teacher, and God’s prophet. All in six sentences. Seven verses.

Often the wildernesses of our imaginations are the most frightening of all. Yet it is at times when we are thrown upon our own resources that we learn a lot about our own strengths and weaknesses, and about who we really are.

How does Jesus end up in the wilderness at all?

In the verses just before our gospel, it is stated that John had been baptizing people from throughout the countryside, predicting the coming of one more powerful than he. And here comes Jesus, the one who was predicted, and he steps up to take his turn to be baptized. Mark explained that John’s baptism was for repentance, and that people undergoing it confessed their sins. And thus, we see connected between all three of our readings, excluding the psalm, a discussion of water as enabling the remaking of creation, of a rebirth.

But why does Jesus need to be baptized, if we understand him as being without sin? Perhaps by undergoing this baptism, Jesus publicly aligns himself with the need for repentance; his baptism story does not include any confession, unlike the others mentioned in the narrative before our reading. This act demonstrates that God’s kingdom is breaking in, as demonstrated with the heavens being powerfully and maybe even bewilderingly torn apart in our gospel today. The term for this is used only one other time in Mark—and that is at the moment of Jesus’s death on the cross. The proclamation of God’s kingdom by Jesus will prove to be a dangerous political statement in a place ruled by a puppet king within the Roman Empire.

And when Jesus is baptized, he also receives the Holy Spirit, which hovers “like a dove” over him. With the arrival of the Spirit we see represented the complete Trinity—as St. Augustine of Hippo noted, God is the Voice, Jesus is the Son revealed in the Jordan, fully human yet fully obedient, and the dove is the Spirit. This Spirit empowers Jesus to embark upon his public ministry. The voice from heaven also speaks directly to Jesus, not to those observing, and declares that Jesus is God’s Son, “the Beloved,” who has pleased God by his willingness to undergo this baptism. This reference to pleasing God reflects one of the Servant Song in Isaiah 42.

Jesus is baptized in the Jordan—a place of significance in Israel’s history. It’s the place where, Jesus’s namesake Joshua (“Y’shua” is both Jesus and Joshua) led the people of Israel into the Promised Land after their own time wandering in the desert for 40 years. Thus we hear echoes of the Exodus story in this story from Mark.

But that Spirit is not content to hover there like a pretty little bird. It then immediately takes hold of Jesus and “drives” him into the wilderness. Jesus is then (immediately, again) driven out by that same Spirit to be tempted for 40 days—always a significant number, especially when referring to time. Jesus, just like us, in plunged into the wilderness, regardless of where he might have chosen that his feet would take him. Although in Mark we get no details of the temptations themselves, Jesus himself was vulnerable to those temptations, or they wouldn’t deserve the word. But he is not defenseless during this long time of trial. God is with Jesus—just as God is with us especially in times of disorientation, pain, and even suffering. Even tight-lipped Mark includes the reassurance that angels and wild beasts are “with” Jesus while he is in the wilderness, with the angels actually serving Jesus.

And that turn of the phrase is interesting, though if you slow down and look at it. Angels? You would expect them to wait upon Jesus, especially if you have read Psalm 91. But wild beasts? Less so. In most stories from ancient times, wild beasts were expected to live in the wilderness, which is a large part of what makes the wilderness dangerous. These wild beasts behave more like Max’s Wild Things, acknowledging Jesus as being at one with creation, in harmony with their wild, free hearts.

And of course, that is a great reminder to us. We are far too prone to try to “tame” or “domesticate” Jesus. Too many people try to make Jesus into a prop for their partisan philosophies by stripping out the absolutely radical political message of love, community, and resistance to oppression that Jesus brings to earth. Stripping out the wild, radical nature of Jesus’s gospel makes Jesus into a two-dimensional prop, when we all see over and over again that he lives in at least FOUR dimensions. It makes him palatable and toothless. It’s a point C. S. Lewis made in his epic allegory, the Chronicles of Narnia. When first asked to describe Aslan, the great character representing Christ, Mr. Beaver, one of the Narnian creatures is very clear about the wild, powerful heart of Jesus:

“Aslan is a lion- the Lion, the great Lion.”
“Ooh,” said Susan. "I'd thought he was a man. Is he-quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion…” and she trails off
"Safe?" said Mr Beaver... “Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.” (2)

And so where does this lead us? As we enter more deeply into the season of Lent, we too are being encouraged to enter into the wilderness of our own souls. Not to domesticate them. But to do something far more dangerous: to open them to the unpredictability and yet the glory of life in the Spirit of God. A life that will not necessarily always take you where you want to go. But then again, we often prove ourselves to be spectacularly bad at choosing our own paths—perhaps because we try to hard to pay it safe, to maintain our own independence, to deny our dependence upon anyone, much less God.

With so many of us living lives shut up in boxes all day—houses, skyscrapers, classrooms, offices, even our cars are really just sealed moving boxes in which even the air is filtered and stale-- we need desperately to let go and enter into wilderness places that remind us of our wild beating hearts. Hearts that are called to connect to each other, to God, and to all creation and recognize our essential unity and solidarity. Lent calls us into that wilderness alongside Jesus, to confront all that might try to pull us away from God: our arrogance; our greed; our hard-hearted denial of any claim of our neighbors upon us—as we see tragically playing out right now in the crisis in Texas; our worship of money and the power we think it gives us, making it a god rather than a tool for good; our destruction of the natural world in pursuit of immediate comfort at the expense of the health of the planet for our children; our scoffing at science which is actually a scoffing at the Creator herself.

It is when we open ourselves to the dangerous beauty of the wilderness within us that we see that we are all only as safe as the most vulnerable among us. To understand, as this pandemic continues to prove to us, that we are only as healthy as the most ill person among us. That we are all bound together—and to rejoice in that rather than respond with denial that only makes us more vulnerable. To enter into what the agrarian essayist and poet Wendell Berry describes in his beautiful poem, “The Peace of Wild Things,” which has even been set to music for choral voices by choral composer Jake Runestad (3):

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. (4)

As our gospel, and Wendell Berry’s last line reminds us, the foundation of the wilderness places is not fear, but grace. No matter what wilderness we may be plunged into, God is there with us, just as the Spirit and the angels and the wild beasts were there with Jesus as he endured the temptations we’re just left to guess at in Mark’s spare telling. To enter into the beautiful, creative darkness so that those day-blind stars are revealed to our hungry eyes once more, reminding us that the ages of humanity are but a flicker in the eternity of God’s creation—and yet God seeks us out again and again, calling us back to covenant and relationship. To lean into the beauty of Lent and the beauty of life without being blinded to the beauty of NOW by the “forethought of grief.”

Our gospel today reminds us that even when you are in the Promised Land, you are never far from the wilderness. Yet that is a gift, for the wilderness keeps us honest and fully alive. As Anglican theologian N.T Wright notes, the way of pilgrimage is the way of risk. 

“In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.” (5)

May we embrace the wilderness journey alongside God this Lent. May we remember our essential unity with all creation. May we lie down in peace with all wild things, and embrace the wildness of the spirit that God seeks to awaken in us.

Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 online service at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO on February 21, 2021.

Readings:

Genesis 9:8-17

Psalm 25:1-9

1 Peter 3:18-22

Mark 1:9-15

Citations:

1) Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are (1963).

2) C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950), p. 79.

3) Jake Runestad, "The Peace of Wind Things," from American Triptych, recorded by Conspirare and Craig Hella Johnson, on the album The Hope of Loving (2019). See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CseiIKJC7wo .

4) Wendell Berry, "The Peace of Wild Things" from Openings: Poems (1968).

4) N. T. Wright, The Way pf the Lord: Christian Pilgrimage Today, (1998), p. 32.

Images:

1) Alessandro Bonvincino, Christ in the Wilderness, 1515.

2) Maurice Sendak, from Where the Wild Things Are, 1963.

3) Sir Stanley Spencer, from his series Christ in the Wilderness, 1954.

4) James Tissot, Jesus Ministered to by the Angels, (1886-1994).

Living Out The Question: Sermon for Proper 16A

It is no accident that Matthew today has Jesus and his disciples entering Caesaria Philippi. This was a city that the family of Herod took and named after the emperor (Caesaria) and after themselves (Philippi, after Philip). Caesaria Philippi, not to be confused with Caesaria Maritima, the seat of Pontius Pilate. This Caesaria is no Jewish town, though--it was filled with Pagan temples and associated with the Greek god Pan. Physically, therefore, the disciples in Jesus are moving into gentile territory dedicated to empire, one that recalls the collusion between Rome and her client puppet rulers who carried out her bidding in the name of the Roman Empire. The setting is going to be very important over the next two weeks especially in our revised common lectionary as Jesus asked the disciples who he is and then tries to make them understand what that means.

Then we have this week’s gospel. Jesus turns to the disciples and asks them who they think he is. In answer to Jesus’s question, there are a couple of suggestions offered by his followers: John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or some other prophet from olden days. After these many possibilities, Peter, boldly gives the answer: Jesus is the Messiah! And standing there in a gentile town, that pronouncement is revolutionary, indeed.

One of the titles of the Caesars while they ruled was “son of god”-- and it is on this soil that Peter declares Jesus to be “the Messiah, the son of the living God.” In doing so the conflict becomes stark and subversive. Jesus is first declared as Messiah by his disciples in a region that is devoted through the obedience to a rival claimant to divinity and power. In naming Jesus Messiah, the disciples probably framed expectations about what Jesus would then do in political and possibly even military terms.

Yet Jesus's behavior as the son of God will not be one of armed conflict or rebellion , but will nonetheless challenge the rule of any political empire through his exhortations to build up a Kingdom not of this earth, but a Kingdom of heaven in which God's values are elevated over worldly, mundane ones. And as we wonder about who Jesus is and what that means in our own lives, we are reminded that the values of Christ to which we are called are NOT the values of the empire of self in which we still live.

Jesus was already aware that people were saying he was the Messiah. But it only after Peter’s declaration that he uses the term about himself in Matthew’s gospel. Peter can state WHO Jesus is, but then immediately gets wrong what exactly that means. And in order for that to become more clear, stay tuned for NEXT week’s gospel reading, when Peter will go from hero to zero within five seconds. Being able to rattle off the right answer to the question Jesus puts before us can actually lead us into thinking that our work is done once we HAVE the answer. It can also lead us to believe that we’ve got Jesus all figured out—that we have, in education-speak, achieved mastery over this question.

Oooh, is that a mistake! That can lead us to attempt to domesticate Jesus, to try to place him in a box limited by our own understanding. And when we do that to the Son of God, we do that to God the Father and God the Holy Spirit as well, and the next thing you know, you’ve got head – bobbing hipster televangelists urging us just to recite a magic formula inviting Jesus as a personal savior to keep us out of hell. But meanwhile, Jesus, don’t disturb our lives too much, okay?

Jesus can NOT be tamed. I am reminded of that scene in C. S. Lewis’s The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe in which the children, having travelled through the wardrobe to the land of Narnia, try to learn more about the great hero of the land and Christ-figure, Aslan the Lion,. Aslan is the rightful ruler of Narnia before the wicked White Witch has taken over and thrown the land into a perpetual winter. Mr. Beaver takes the children in and shelters them, and begins answering their questions about who Aslan is. The scene runs like this:

Mr. Beaver said, “Aslan is a lion-- the Lion, the great Lion. “

“Ooh,” said Susan. “I'd thought he was a man. Is he --quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver… “Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the king, I tell you… He’s wild, you know. Not like a tame lion.”

And yet we keep trying to tame Jesus and fit him into boxes so that too often he can align with our own prejudices and preferences. And in asking all of us that question again today, there are two things I think we can remember.

First, regardless of all the creeds we repeat, which sometimes roll over the surfaces of our conscious minds like a river over a rock, never being absorbed or taken in but molding us only slowly over time, it is up to us to engage deeply with the question of who Jesus is and how we understand what that means in our lives. For lots of folks, the knee-jerk response is inwardly focused—he’s the Savior who will save our souls from eternal torment.

The second thing to remember is that discipleship is not inwardly-focused. It is outwardly focused. But Jesus gathers a community around him not so that they can always stay together but so they can go out into the world proclaiming the good news—and that good news is about release for the captives, justice for the oppressed, and bread for the hungry. And remember Jesus puts us, as his disciples in charge of the making sure everyone is fed part as we have discussed previously, because Jesus trusts us that much with the power of our own ministry in his name. That’s one reason why we need to engage deeply and personally with who Jesus is as Messiah and what that means in our lives.

Jesus’s question is NOT just a question to which we flip off an answer, as you will see in NEXT week’s gospel reading. Just being able to say the right words is not enough. Rather, Jesus’s question calls into LIVING into the answer—in showing with oiur words and our deeds why Jesus as Messiah and Son of God matters right here and right now. How Jesus being Messiah and Son of God transforms our expectations about what our lives mean to each other, transforms those relationship from transactional --from looking at what we can “get” from the persons we encounter, to transformative—to engaging with Jesus’s identity as the BEGINNING of the journey of faith, not the end.

As our reading from Romans reminds us, I am convinced that Jesus’s question is a question for each and every one of us. Right now. Who do we say Jesus is? Not just with our words, or our repetition of creeds, but as self-avowed Christians, in our everyday lives? And does our answer align with Jesus’s own testimony as recorded in scripture and in tradition? Actions, as they say, speak louder than words.

Even while we acknowledge that we certainly are not perfect, and everybody has bad days, nonetheless, overall, do we ourselves strive to embody the healing, reconciling, forgiving, compassionate, resilient heart of Jesus? Even as we proclaim our allegiance with Christianity, do we forget that the greater allegiance is to Jesus? You know, the Jesus who showed us that there is always hope. The Jesus that called on us more than anything to love our neighbor rather than look down on them and condemn them?

So today, there are two things I want to ask you to do. First, I ask you to come up with a sentence or two about who Jesus is to you.  And since I would never ask you to do what I would not do myself, let me take that challenge upon myself for just a moment. (1) 

Earlier this week I took a list of all the names for Jesus found in scripture and created a word cloud for the cover of our bulletin. Yet as I looked over that list, I realized there were some words I would use that were not there, or not there enough: Friend. Comforter. Exhorter. Builder. Companion. Teacher. Savior. Healer. Guide. Exemplar. Model. Fully Human and Fully God. One Who Has Known All My Pains and Sorrows.

To confess Jesus as Messiah and Lord means to me that Jesus shows that living life according to love and healing is our highest calling even when it puts our comfort at risk, and forces us not to turn away but to share in the work of justice for the sake of others as well as of myself. It means looking with eyes of love and compassion on the brokenness in the world and the brokenness of people, remembering the grace that has seen us through our own difficulties and demons and extending that grace to those who bear invisible burdens we cannot see.

And maybe that doesn’t sound like such good news to some, at least at first. But, go deeper into your experience, and you can see that a life lives only for one’s self is really no life at all. Jesus promises us life, and life abundant at that, through the community and fellowship we are drawn to with God, and with each other.

The reminder that God has revealed to Peter what Peter himself could never have sussed out on his own is a bright promise for all of us, especially as the COVID-19 pandemic stretches on and as we all weary of being apart from each other. To put it succinctly, even while our worship remains separated by space, as my friends in the United Church of Christ say, “God is still speaking.” God’s revelation is ongoing in our time right now.

God is right alongside us, sustaining us in faith, urging us to use our God-given intelligence and wisdom to not let down our guard—and certainly not to take risks and chances with each others’ lives on the gamble that God will protect us, as we discussed last week. The knowledge of who Jesus is is the beginning of our journey of faith, NOT the end. Our knowledge of who Jesus is expands our notions of worship to go from what we do IN church on Sunday to what we show the world by our words and our deeds and our attitudes throughout the week.

As our reading from Paul reminds us, though, through our faith in Christ, we are called to transform our thinking and our way of life, so that what is pleasing to God is more important to us than the values of this world, to go from WORSHIP as a moment to WORSHIP as the sum meaning of our lives. To worship of God as not being just a rite, but to being a way of knowing and living.

When we worship, we unite the bodily and the spiritual. We spend precious time of our lives within the liturgy, and the liturgy can only exist with the work of the people. And the work of the people BEGINS here, but must go out into the world. The way we live is our most important act of worship—beyond all the things we do together here in normal times. And I don’t know about you, but I take great comfort from that, in this continuing time of COVID that keeps us physically separated. We still have Jesus. We still have each other. We still are called to EMBODY our faith as Jesus did, led by his example.

Our bodies and the way we use them and where we place them are a living witness to God and our understanding of God. We offer our entire self to God—all of us—as a “living sacrifice,” and that in itself is indeed counter to the norms and standards of the world. This is not a sacrifice of dead animals, as was common during biblical times. This is a “living” sacrifice, and of course sacrifice means both “to make holy” and “to give something up.” From the time we give ourselves to God, our lives change by this very real commitment. But what do we give up? Only that which would not be “good and acceptable and perfect.” As the body of Christ, our community is described by Paul as an alternative to the world, not conforming to it.

Beyond the shelter of the doors of the church, worship as daily living is a generous, mindful sacrifice in the very best sense of that word. It's a worthy response to the grace of a God who offers us all that we are in the first place. Our lives, from our impulses to our actions, become a fully-realized testimony to the ethic of compassion and healing which lies at the heart of Jesus’s message. And Jesus’s message starts with that insistent question: WHO do YOU say that I am?

I call upon you to actually spend some time this week thinking about that answer and what it means to your life. And then, I ask you to spend the coming week seeing how that confession shapes your life in the next few days.

Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 online service at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, on August 23, 2020.

Readings:

Exodus 1:8-2:10
Psalm 124
Romans 12:1-8
Matthew 16:13-20

Citations:

1) My thanks to David Lose for suggesting this train of thought here.

Prayer, day 2594: Jesus in the Margins

Merciful God, Lover of Souls, 
we turn into your embrace,
grateful for your abiding love.

Accept our confession of all our sins,
and grant us the strength 
to turn from darkness to light.
Renew our commitment to discipleship,
that we may live lives dedicated 
to compassion, mercy, and healing.
Awaken us from our heedlessness
to respond to the pain of others,
and stand with the oppressed and the powerless.
Remembering that we are all one,
help us to see Christ's face 
in places of pain, anxiety, and suffering.
In Jesus's name, let us work 
to repair the ruptures in creation and in society,
caused by our own deeds and those of others.

Holy One, pour out your comfort and blessing
on those whose needs we remember before you, as we pray.

Amen.

Fearlessly Human: Sermon for the 1st Sunday in Lent, Year A

From the birth of philosophy, one of the ultimate questions has always been, “What does it mean to be human?” It’s an attempt to define those unique human characteristics that separate us from other animals, and from the rest of creation. What makes humans unique? 

We start with eliminating things. It certainly isn’t strength, or speed, or agility—other creatures have us beat on all of those fronts. No, it must be something else. Over the centuries, the possible answers have been varied. Reason, some highlighted—and then we learned that dolphins, ants, and chimpanzees problem-solve and use tools. Language, others proclaimed—and then were learned about whale song and Koko the gorilla learning sign language. Memory, others suggested—and then we hear stories of elephants grieving their deceased kin, even years afterward, and loyal dogs returning to their family home after years of being lost thousands of miles away. Some claim that only humans have souls—but that takes us down another rabbit hole again, since you can’t prove the existence --or not-- of a soul in ANYTHING. 

There are things that unite us as creatures: a desire for growth, breath; a need to communicate and be understood; a drive for assuring the survival of our offspring; a longing to be fed, nourished, watered. Hungers and needs met. These are some of the basics of existence—and we are even learning that about organisms we once arrogantly assumed lack awareness. Trees sing to each other, and eavesdrop on each other through their roots. The dance of the honeybee communicates where to find water and pollen to their hivemates. Yet are they as free as human beings? 

What DOES it mean to be human? Perhaps it is bound up in the misuse of the freedom that is our inheritance. Sadly, often those who have asked that question have done so in order that they can exclude some OTHER group, and justify taking something from them or using them as objects rather than accord them dignity and rights. 

We seem to always get into danger when we overlook the responsibility part of being free humans, in favor of the argument from exceptionalism that confers more rights on whoever we define as “us” versus whoever we define as “them.” When we define being human as something that makes us exceptional, that elevates us above the balances built into creation, that’s a dangerous endeavor, because it inevitably leads us to trying to justify satisfying our wants throug selfishness, violence, and injustice. Like all creatures, we are driven by hunger, but God holds us accountable for how we assuage it. 

In the 15th-19th centuries, many Europeans denied the humanity of Africans so that they could be enslaved, abused, and killed. In the 20th century, Nazis famously denied the humanity of Jews, using a German term for them that translates to “beneath human.” And right now, we see some loudly deny the humanity of immigrants, or people of color, or LGBT people. We see people even now, through fear and prejudice, deny the humanity and right to life of people merely suspected of crimes, much less of actual convicted criminals. 

That denial of these “othered” groups as fully human is used to justify denying them their rights to life, liberty, and property in one guise or another—to justify the filling of one person’s hunger for status by denying someone else’s humanity. We run the terrible risk of privileging our own freedom and our own surrender to hunger until it morphs into the mistaken belief that it rests upon the necessity of others’ oppression. 

I was thinking about this question of humanity and exceptionalism as I pondered our readings this week. There IS one thing that scripture mentions that makes us different from other creatures—the fact that we have been specifically charged to be obedient to God. That's not because we are special-- it's because we HAVE to be told. Faithfulness comes naturally to the other creatures, but not to us—it’s part of the other side of our freedom. Our stories this week are about our temptations to place our freedom, our hunger and the materialism that together they spawn ahead of our faithfulness and trust in God. 

Our readings seem to be pointing us toward consideration of one thing that humans definitely are really good at—and that is rationalizing sin and disobedience. Ultimately, one of the hallmarks of humanity is our ability to sin, our ability to know right from wrong, and to do the wrong thing anyway. 

As our readings from Genesis and Matthew point out, the root of sin is unchecked hunger—of pridefully “independent” people surrendering to the fear that we will lack something or be denied something we want. It is that ability to choose the expedient or the pleasurable thing over the right and honorable thing that lies at the heart of the excuse “Well, I’m only human, right?” when we get caught doing something wrong.

The story of Adam and Eve is at the beginning of scripture for a reason, after all. This story begins with the reminder that God had provided Adam and Eve everything they needed for survival and even comfort—and yet they were driven to try to take something that God said was not meant for them. I am always struck by the fact that right after God supposedly makes humans the lords and masters of the rest of the creatures, humans are depicted as misusing their freedom and thus risking throwing away our privileged place where we imagine ourselves to be most beloved of all of God’s creatures. 

I love the fact that the ancient people who first told the stories in the Torah start right out with admitting that when it comes to temptation, we humans have almost never met one we didn’t like. It’s so incredibly honest. It’s like that great saying, “Opportunity may only knock once, but temptation leans on the doorbell.” 

The placement of that story as the first with human characters is an important and honest admission – that from our earliest knowledge of ourselves, our ability to sin is bound up with our freedom. Part of the creaturely condition is a desire and hunger for freedom. But God gave us as humans the freedom to choose, and we live in a time when people often lose sight of the fact that freedoms must be balanced in the name of justice and the good of those around us. 

God knows that’s absolutely not a popular message today. But especially with a backdrop of a fears of an epidemic and climate catastrophe looming before us, I think it bears repeating that especially for us humans, freedom comes not just as a privilege, but also as a responsibility. 

In the story from our gospel today, we get another story of temptation, but with a far different result. And just to make it clear that the result is bound up with freedom, Jesus faces not ONE but THREE temptations. And this time, Jesus in his full humanity—he is famished after all, just as all of us would be. So up pops the Devil, just as crafty and cunning as that snake in the Garden of Eden. And then we get to watch a little game of “dueling scriptures:” 

Devil: (in wilderness) You’re hungry; 
I dare you to turn stones into bread. 

Jesus: Deuteronomy 8:3 says no, 

God is sufficient.     

Devil: (on top of temple) Yeah? Well, 
Psalm 91:11-12 says you are bulletproof. 

Jesus: Deuteronomy 6:16 says no, 

God should not be tested (Irony!).

Devil: (on high mountain) Okay, just 
worship me for political power, then. 

Jesus: Deuteronomy 6:13 forbids it, 

and commands worship of God only. 

Once again, the parallels jump out: the temptation of Adam and Eve started out with a discussion of food, there through God’s providence; in the first two temptations, the devil tries to get Jesus to turn his back on God’s providence, and use his power for himself and deny his humanity. 

 The first two temptations try to play up to what in anyone else but Jesus would be human vanity— “Hey! You’re God’s son! The rules don’t apply to you, and what can it hurt?” The first two try to lead Jesus from obedience to God by setting himself up over God. The third temptation drops all pretense and nakedly reveals the agenda: “Abandon God, worship me, the God of the Belly.” 

What we see here in looking at the parallels between our Genesis reading and the temptation of Jesus here is that the “original” sin has nothing to do with sex. It has to do with not trusting God. It has to do with putting the trust and faith that we should have in God instead in our own arrogance and our own judgment—even as we know that our judgment is often tainted by fear, anxiety, and feelings of scarcity. Focusing on our hungers makes it impossible to have true peace and contentment. 

Our original sin is to let our hunger for more, which is inwardly focused, override our true calling to love and generosity which is outwardly focused.

We are often drawn into sin when we try to escape the hunger and longing that lies at heart of our existence as humans. That’s why giving up something for Lent CAN be instructive—IF it leads us to sit with our hungers and our longings as a way of getting to know ourselves better. Our longings can be blessings or curses, depending upon whether we master them or whether we let them master us. When we let our hungers master us, we fall into greed, selfishness, anxiety about perceptions of scarcity that our fears persuade us are fact rather than perception. 

Christian educator Debie Thomas notes that temptations can also been seen as invitations to lean into our relationship with God and our understanding that we don’t have to grab everything we can get our hands on, especially if that comes at the expense of others. She says this, and it pierced my soul so much I wanted to share it with you: 

Hunger in and of itself is not a virtue, it’s a classroom. To sit patiently with desire — to become its student — and still embrace my identity as God’s beloved, is hard…. But this is the invitation. We can be loved and hungry at the same time. We can hope and hurt at the same time. Most of all, we can trust that when God nourishes us, it won’t be by magic. It won’t be manipulative and disrespectful…. And through us — if we will learn to share — it will feed the world. (4) 

It’s absolutely vital that we understand Jesus as being BOTH fully human and God’s son—an understanding that Jesus demonstrates during his temptations. Jesus fearlessly faces his time in the wilderness because he has been led by the Spirit into the wilderness as God’s beloved Son, for the express purpose of being tempted to deny his humanity. Jesus, in facing down these particular temptations, redeems and reclaims the full goodness of humanity that some, like Paul, have claimed ended with Adam and Eve’s downfall. 

And what can we learn from this? Jesus is fearless and bold in the face of the devil’s temptation because he knows who he is, and he knows that God is with him. And we can do the same, if we trust that God is with us, too. Jesus’s ultimate trust in God means that he can’t be tested away from his faith or his obedience to the will of the Father. He is secure within the love of God, which satisfies far beyond any bread made from stone. We are tempted to sin when we are afraid— afraid that we are alone in the world, that we will never have enough, despite all the promises of God that God is always with us. 

Jesus shows us how to sit with being hungry, yet still and nevertheless faithfully, fearlessly human—and part of that lies in not being afraid to rely upon God. To put our trust in something beyond ourselves. That’s what it means to be fearlessly human—to be strong enough to be vulnerable. To be generous and openhearted, even when there are hungers for “more” beating out a cadence in each heartbeat. To be strong enough to depend on God, and depend on each other. To be fearless, because no matter how much we fall into temptation, through God’s grace, we are still beloved.

Amen.

Preached at the 505 on February 29, and at the 8:00 and 10:30 am services on March 1, 2020, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.


Readings:

• Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
• Romans 5:12-19
• Matthew 4:1-11
• Psalm 32

Sources:

1) James Tissot, Jesus Being Ministered to By Angels, Brooklyn Museum of Art.

2) "Adam and Eve Eating the Forbidden Fruit," Detail from Ste. Chappelle, Paris.

3) James Tissot, Christ Borne Up unto a Pinnacle of the Temple, Brooklyn Museum of Art.

4) Debie Thomas, "Tempted," in Journey with Jesus, February  23, 2020

5) James Tissot, Jesus Tempted in the Wilderness, Brooklyn Museum of Art.

Rich in Soul: Sermon for Proper 21 C, Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Periodically in American Christianity, a theory known as the “prosperity gospel” or “the gospel of wealth” is preached by some religious leaders, often quite popularly. The basic idea is that, if you pray this prayer or give money to that preacher, you will receive wealth and blessings from God. 

 The problem with this is that it is engaging in what is called “magical thinking.” One type of magical thinking is called superstition—where you see a baseball player always eating chicken before a game, or avoiding stepping on the baseline, or not shaving during the play-offs, because he believes it will bring him luck. Sometimes this kind of thing is light-hearted. 

I have a friend who, when she loses something, puts a dollar under a St. Anthony figurine on her mantle, since he is the patron saint of lost things—and frankly, I will admit to calling on St. Anthony to help me find things too—can’t hurt, right? 

 I once knew a strict Baptist woman whose house had been on the market for so long that she went and bought one of the specially made St. Joseph figurines and buried it head down next to her “For Sale” sign—and boom- the house sold. She was aghast—and her world was rocked. It’s a real thing, too, here in St. Louis. Don’t believe me? Just google “St. Joseph sell your house.” 

Sometimes it gets a little more desperate—when I was a kid, a famous televangelist in Tulsa famously told his followers that if they didn’t send him $8 million by March, 1987, God was going to “call him home.” Spoiler alert: he supposedly got the $8 million in 10 days’ time, and he lived for another 22 years. 

Magical thinking, though, can lead to the arrogant belief that if you do X, then God will have to do Y. That kind of magical thinking assumes that humans can control God and figure God out so that God follows our sense of justice and our sense of fairness. 

 Even worse, this kind of magical thinking about money and blessing also implies the inverse: it leads to the belief that anyone who experiences hard times or difficulties is being cursed by God. This kind of thinking is one of the ideas that Jesus constantly challenged. Further it flies in the face of our experience: think of all the times we see bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad people! Believing in a simplistic system like this will only lead to doubt, despair, and denial of the love of God by those who, through no fault of their own, suffer. 

And a word about the use of the term “Pharisees.” It is at this point that I realize how much I owe Amy-Jill Levine, whose work I have been reading in the 3 years since I last revisited these notes. She points out that many of the criticisms of “the Pharisees” were inserted into the documents of the early church after 70 AD, with the fall of the Temple. The problem that she points out is that the Pharisees ended up founding the post-Temple Judaism we now see, and they became many of its first rabbis. Thus, blanket criticism of the Pharisees feeds into the dangerous anti-Semitism that was spawned in the first century CE, and is always lurking in the Church. The idea of Jews as greedy and obsessed with wealth is a slander as old as time—and Hitler used that resentment to great effect. (1) 

If we look at this parable as the third in a series from Jesus (beginning with the Prodigal Son, to the Dishonest Steward, and now to this story) as pointing out the problems that worship of wealth can create for any person from any background. Thus, I propose that we understand that there are certainly many people for whom love of wealth is a not just a stumbling block to their spiritual development, but an idol they worship in place of God. It is wrong and historically inaccurate to claim that all members of a certain religious group behave badly, especially when the failing being talked about is a universal within MANY groups. 

Instead of using the word “Pharisee,” I will be using the term "opponent." I am convinced that that is what we should call those who worship money to the exclusion of all else what they are—opponents of the values God commands us to embrace, and opponents of the way of life Jesus calls us to embody. 

That’s why it is important to take a look at the verses that bridge between last week’s perplexing gospel and this week’s reading. Starting at the last verse of last week’s gospel, here are the intervening verses: 
No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.’
The opponents, who were lovers of money, heard all this, and they ridiculed him. So he said to them, ‘You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others; but God knows your hearts; for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God. 

Jesus then continues with this parable to illustrate his point. The rich man, who is a symbol for those who love money more than God, has squandered his life in focusing on his own comfort and honor (being dressed in purple and fine linen signified one’s status more loudly than shouting from the rooftops). The poor man is allowed to languish at the rich man’s very gate, with no mention of any care being given to him—he is there, but “invisible” and unacknowledged—just as many of us respond when we see the poor on the street. 

The poor man is indeed pitiful, not only due to his poverty, but because he is also covered in sores which make him unclean and further accentuated that he is cut off from all decent society. The licking of the sores by dogs is a fine touch within the Mediterranean culture, since dogs were also often seen as unclean—just goes to show how cultures are different, since many of us see this behavior by our pets as signs of love and attempts to comfort us, and we know dogs’ mouths are cleaner than ours, on average. 

Notice the use of names here. The rich man gets no name—he could be anyone. But Jesus tips his hand early in this story when he not only gives the poor man a name, but a name that has special meaning. Lazarus means “God has helped” in Hebrew. Further, when we hear the name “Lazarus,” we think of Jesus’s friend whom he raised from the dead—and this is a story about death. How can Jesus’s opponents be right about money being a sign of blessing and its lack a sign of curse, if the poor man is the one literally “helped by God?” Even more important in helping us judge the rich man is this: he KNOWS the name of the poor man he ignored as he strutted about in fine clothes with a full belly. He knew Lazarus’s name—and yet ignored his need for food, shelter, and medical care. 

This is an important realization to sit with. In an ironic reversal, the rich man “name drops” Lazarus to Abraham—possibly out of a delusion that he NOW recognizes the humanity that had sat, sick, suffering, shivering, at the rich man’s very gates. Or more likely, NOT.

In our parable, he STILL ignores Lazarus as a person, but demands that Father Abraham send Lazarus to wait first on him and then on his brothers, without ever deigning to talk to Lazarus directly. That alone makes it easier for us to understand that he STILL, even in the alleged torment of Hades, doesn’t get it—at all. 

In the best translation of this story, the image of Lazarus's comfort is even sharper: it states that Lazarus was in Abraham’s bosom, or embrace. This, interestingly, is an image from feasting as well. People reclined at table on couches, their head propped on the left hand, eating with their right. One gets an image of Lazarus lying up against Abraham at the great heavenly banquet. If Lazarus is next to Abraham, he is in the place of honor (remember a few weeks ago, when Jesus advised people to sit at the low place at the table so that they could be honored by being asked to move up? Where you sat at the table had deep significance. 

 The image of TWO feasts in this reading, then, re-enacts Luke’s combination of “blessings” and “woes” in Luke 6:21 and 6:25:
‘Blessed are you who are hungry now, 
   for you will be filled. 
‘Blessed are you who weep now, 
   for you will laugh. 

These are then turned on their heads as a caution: 
‘Woe to you who are full now, 
    for you will be hungry. 
‘Woe to you who are laughing now, 
    for you will mourn and weep.'

This is not to say that those who have money are evil—many people make great use of their personal savings to help others. For those for whom wealth is simply a tool to help others, money CAN be a blessing. However, there certainly is the tendency in our society today to believe that the poor are undeserving of help, and that they are not only to blame for their condition, but to RESENT them and to claim that their condition is something that they have chosen. It's a crazy claim. Yet, those doing the criticizing of the poor also have no desire to actually BE poor. If the poor are cleverly manipulating a system, why doesn’t everyone emulate them? 

The rich man, ultimately, in his life served himself, served his belly, served his status. He never served the poor, and so he never served God. This parable again reminds us that dehumanizing the poor is one of the most un-Godly acts we can take. When it comes down to basics, the point of the Torah and the point of the Gospel is to describe how to live a fully human life, and to understand what that means. It is always good, when considering that goal, to remember the concept of shalom, a word that includes the meaning of health, wholeness, well-being, peace, and contentment. Shalom is both a blessing, a prayer, and a hope for the future. 

What if, instead of engaging in magical thinking, we engaged in the magic of hope in action, especially when it comes to how we live and work with others? Many of us have had too much of hopelessness. Many of us have probably heard the excuse that alleviating poverty is impossible, a self-serving argument that actually makes poverty more widespread and more desperate, more hopeless. Pope Paul VI made this point in 1967 in his encyclical “On the progress of peoples:” 

It is not simply a question of eliminating hunger and reducing poverty. It is not enough to combat destitution, urgent and necessary as this is. The point at issue is the establishment of a human society in which everyone, regardless of race, religion, or nationality, can live a truly human life free from bondage imposed by men and the forces of nature not sufficiently mastered, a society in which freedom is not an empty word, and where Lazarus the poor man can sit at the same table as the rich man.(2) 

 That beloved old hymn, God of Grace and God of Glory that we sang as the processional at the 10:30 service, reminds us of a better way. Hear again what verse 3 has to say: 

Cure your children's warring madness; 
bend our pride to your control; 
shame our wanton, selfish gladness, 
rich in things and poor in soul. 
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, 
lest we miss your kingdom's goal, 
lest we miss your kingdom's goal. 

God IS our help, as Lazarus’s name implies, and God’s love offers us life, grace, and forgiveness— not just through some hope in the distant future, but RIGHT NOW. God is our help—through each other, right now. This parable reminds us that we are bound up together and called to care for each other as God cares for us and protects us. It is when we seize hold of our common humanity and celebrate it rather than resent each other and fail to really see each other that we become rich in heart, rich in soul. 



Amen.

Preached at the 505 on September 28 and at 8:00 and 10:30 on September 29 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.

Readings:
Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15
Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16
1 Timothy 6:6-19
Luke 16:19-31


Citations:
1) Amy Jill Levine and Ben Witherington III, The Gospel of Luke: New Cambridge Bible Commentary.
2) Pope Paul VI, On the Development of the Peoples .

Prayer 2381: Feast of the Transfiguration

Beloved Savior, we bow before you,
overcome by your glory.
We laud and magnify your Holy Name,
You who came
to remind us of the sacredness of humanity
by taking on human flesh
and revealing the unity of God with us
in joy as well as pain.
You dazzle our eyes
and fill our hearts with wonder,
awed and amazed by your steadfast love,
O Blessed Jesus.

May we reveal you and your gospel
as your hands and face in the world;
may we look with loving eyes on creation,
all of it a gift of God to us and for us,
and work for justice and reconciliation in your Name.
Abide within our hearts, Lord Christ,
and prosper our holy work of peace, we humbly pray,
that we may overcome hopelessness and apathy
by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Give your angels charge, Lord,
over those who weep or watch in anxiety this day,
and grant the balm of your blessing
to all for whom we pray.

Amen.

Prayer 2240: 2nd Sunday of Lent

Almighty Creator,
we draw before You and praise You
in a thousand places,
drawn to your altar in love and thankfulness.

Lord Jesus, draw us under your wing
as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.
Strengthen us, O Redeemer,
with the warmth of your embrace
even as we are comforted.
Then send us out, renewed,
as your disciples and friends,
to testify to your saving help,
to reflect the love of God in the world.

Let us stand with the persecuted,
repent together as sinners,
build the edifice of justice for the oppressed,
feed the hungry,
and comfort the suffering and anxious,
all for your love's sake
and as you commanded, Lord Christ.

United by your Spirit,
O God Beyond All Borders,
we lay our cares before You,
and we ask your blessing upon these beloveds.

Amen.