Everyone Gets A Medal

 

January 22, 2023 – The Conversion of St. Paul, Apostle (tr.)

Acts 26:9-21; Galatians 1:11-24; Matthew 10:16-22

© 2023 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video of the entire service can be seen here with the sermon beginning around 22:00.

At 8:00 in the morning, on the first Sunday in November, the first competitors in the New York City Marathon set off up the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge in Staten Island to begin their 26.2 mile trek through the city’s five boroughs. By 11:15, all the winners will have crossed the finish line. Nine hours later, long after the sweep busses have come through to pick up anyone who wants to quit and needs a ride to the finish, hours after the streets have been reopened to traffic,  the last finishers, who have been sharing the sidewalks with ordinary pedestrians, will cross the line, and every one of them will receive a medal.

Every one who finishes the marathon receives a medal. Hardly anyone can tell you the names of the winners, but everyone who walks around the city that night wearing their medal is greeted with congratulations and words of acclaim by total strangers. For those finishers, in a way, the city, whose people normally keep to themselves, suddenly becomes a small southern town, in which every resident is eager to greet you and wish you well—and not because you were fast, not because you set a personal best, not because you won your age group, but simply because you finished the race.

Every time our family drives through the Bobby Hopper Tunnel on I-49, our children hold their breath. To be honest, I usually do, too. I grew up across the bay from Mobile, Alabama, and, whenever our family drove through one of the two tunnels that go under the water, we always held our breath. When I was little, I struggled to make it to the end until my father told me that you can hold your breath longer if you breathe out along the way. It turns out that the alarm signal your brain sends to your lungs has less to do with a lack of oxygen and more to do with the build up of carbon dioxide in your body. If you can teach your brain not to panic, you can train your body to go without taking in a breath for five, eight, maybe even ten minutes. 

But what happens when we can’t tell how long the tunnel will be? What happens if traffic comes to a standstill? What happens if we get to the finish line, ready to collapse, only to discover that we have to keep on running? How can we make it to the end when we don’t know where the end is?

Jesus says to his disciples, “They will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues; you will be dragged before governors and kings…Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; you will be hated by all because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.” 

Those are terrifying words of warning, but, if we listen closely, we can also hear within them words of great comfort and encouragement. Jesus addresses these words to the twelve—to the company of disciples whom he sends out to carry the good news of God’s grace to the world. But he’s also speaking to us—to the church in every generation. He wants us to know that, as people who belong to God through Christ, our lives are not measured by what we do in the face of struggle but by our willingness to remain rooted in him no matter how long those struggles last. 

Notice what Jesus doesn’t say to the disciples. He doesn’t tell them to take the high road—to make a great, public display of their unwavering faithfulness even if it costs them their lives. Instead, he tells them to be as “wise as serpents and as innocent as doves.” There are no other examples in the Bible of anyone being encouraged to act like a snake. There are no parables or prophetic utterances that say anything positive about serpents. They are, from the very beginning, the embodiment of guile and deception. Yet Jesus tells his disciples that, when a situation calls for it, they are supposed to be as slippery as snakes. 

Although there are no examples found in the Bible, Jesus wasn’t the first rabbi to use this analogy to instruct the faithful. Ancient manuscripts show us that other religious leaders told their congregations to act like cunning serpents in the face of Gentile persecution but to behave with the singlemindedness of doves when surrounded by their own people. Jesus was passing along this piece of practical advice but expanding it to encourage his followers to recognize that sometimes artful dodging is necessary even when you’re in the midst of your own people. Jesus wasn’t telling his disciples to seek out martyrdom. He was teaching them to avoid it even if it meant putting on a spiritual disguise from time to time.

Notice also that Jesus doesn’t tell his followers to practice their lines so that they will be ready to give an impressive speech when they inevitably get hauled before magistrates and rulers. Instead, he tells them to trust that God will give them the words to say when the time comes. That’s good news because sometimes I don’t know what to say in an important encounter. Frequently, I am at a loss when hardship and heartache come. I need to hear Jesus tell me that it will be ok no matter what I do or do not say. Isn’t it encouraging to know that God isn’t judging you on the words that come out of your mouth when the time comes because it isn’t your job to say anything at all? That’s God’s job. God is the one who speaks through us in that moment.

The faithfulness that Jesus invites us into isn’t a radical, self-destructive showiness or a martyrdom debate contest but a strange sort of simply and persistently belonging and trusting in God. Jesus doesn’t tell us that our persecution, suffering, and struggles are a part of God’s plan, yet he makes it clear that God will use them for God’s own purposes. Even if you try to escape, there is no way to avoid hardship in this life, yet God refuses to allow our suffering to be empty. 

You will not have the right words to say when the critical moment arrives, but you need not worry because it is our belonging to God that God uses as a witness to others. God will speak through our circumstances in ways more powerful than any elocution. We are even powerless to win over our own families—those closest to us, whom Jesus acknowledges sometimes turn against us—but God does not abandon us because of our limitations—because of what we cannot do. Isn’t that the kind of encouragement—God’s abiding love through even our most difficult struggles and failures—that we need to keep going no matter how long the race is? Then we can hear and believe the good news that it is the one who endures to the end who will be saved. 

We do not belong to God because we say the right words or do the right things when the moment of truth comes. We are not loved by God because we have lived a good life or because we have brought others into the faith. We do not share in the inheritance of the saints because we have stood up in the face of persecution or because we have weathered the trials of this life without breaking down. We are God’s beloved children because we belong to Jesus Christ. He is the one who has reconciled us to God. Because of him we are received by God and given a heavenly crown whether we finish first or dead last. All we need to do is finish the race. The one who endures to the end will be saved.

The Lamb We Follow

 

January 15, 2023 – Epiphany 2A

Isaiah 49:1-7; 1 Corinthians 1:1-9; John 1:29-42

© 2023 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon is available here. Video of the service can be seen here with the sermon beginning around 23:30

According to its website, Fort Collins High School in Colorado is the only school in the nation to have a Lambkin—a young lamb—as its mascot. Back in the early twentieth century, when that mascot was chosen, Fort Collins was a hub for raising sheep and producing wool, so it made sense. But in 1981, presumably because the image of a prancing lamb had failed to strike fear in the hearts of their opponents, the school adopted Clyde, a rather fierce-looking lamb, as an alternative. Somehow, though, Clyde never fully replaced the prancing lamb, and the school continues to use the comically gentle image as symbol of its athletic and academic prowess.[1]

Although it’s a common symbol for Jesus, there aren’t many religious schools or clubs or churches that use a lamb as their mascot. Lions, eagles, and warriors are the most common. Saints can be fierce. Some have chosen the crusaders, though that can be problematic these days. Ironically, Wake Forest, originally a Baptist university, became known as the Demon Deacons, and Duke University, a Methodist school, is home to the Blue Devils. I went to a seminary where the Fighting Friars took the field, and Earlham College has its Hustlin’ Quakers. But I don’t know many athletes or fans who cheer on the lambs. After all, why would anyone want to be a part of a team that is led by its mascot to slaughter?

“Here is the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world!” John the Baptist declares as he sees Jesus approaching. Anyone want to follow him? With the benefit of two thousand years of hindsight, we understand enough about that label to know that it means more than certain defeat, but what did John the Baptizer have in mind when he used that label to describe Jesus?

For us, the Lamb of God is the one who is sacrificed on the cross yet raised in victory at Easter. One of our needlepoint cushions at the altar rail contains the most familiar representation of the Lamb of God in Christian iconography. It is the image of the lamb holding with one hoof the flag that bears the cross of St. George. This flag—or vexilium—is a Christianized version of a Roman imperial military banner. Instead of a legion of soldiers parading around a symbol of their military might, the Lamb of God, who was killed by the empire yet raised by the one true God, stands with the sign of victory. 

But what did the John the Baptist know about the cross and empty tomb at the very beginning of Jesus’ earthly ministry? When he called Jesus the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, what sort of expiatory victory did he have in mind?

The gospel according to John doesn’t tell us a lot about John the Baptist’s preaching, but the other gospel accounts give us a pretty clear idea that a sacrifice for sin wasn’t the sort of savior the Baptizer was getting the world ready for. Instead, he called upon the people to repent of their sins so that they would be prepared to receive the one who was coming to baptize them with the Holy Spirit and fire. His job as the forerunner was to make the path straight and clear for God’s anointed one to come and bring the full power of God to the earth. The great reordering of the world, which God’s people had long been waiting for, was coming, and John was in charge of getting them ready to receive it. So, when John the Baptist called Jesus the Lamb of God, he probably didn’t envision a sacrificial offering that would reconcile us to God but a strange sort of apocalyptic figure who would trample down the evil in this world.

There are some ancient Jewish texts, including the Testament of Joseph and the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, which were composed about the same time as the New Testament, that describe how a lamb who is sent by God will come and defeat the enemies of God’s people. It is likely that Christian redactors got their hands on those texts and shaped them to conform more closely with the story of Jesus, but they still give us a sense that, at the time of John the Baptist, the lamb of God was understood to be more than a passive sacrifice for sin. God’s lamb was also the one who could carry out God’s triumph over the forces of evil.

There are some other lamb of God traditions that may have informed John the Baptist’s use of that label for Jesus. In the writings of the prophet Isaiah, God’s faithful servant is likened to a lamb that remains silent as it is taken to be slaughtered. In the Book of Exodus, before God’s people are delivered from slavery in Egypt, they slaughter the Passover lambs and paint the lintels and doorposts of their homes with the blood in order to protect their firstborn when the Lord comes to deliver them. In later Jewish practice, lambs were included in the daily sacrifices offered in the temple, but they weren’t usually a part of the sin offerings. None of those examples sounds a lot like the one whom John was preparing the world to receive, but, when you put them all together, we get an image that gets pretty close to the Jesus we know and worship.

What makes John the Baptist’s label for Jesus so interesting, therefore, is that he got it exactly right without fully understanding what he meant. The Lamb of God is the one whose death takes away the sin of the world, yet it is through that death that he defeats death itself, trampling down the evil one. We worship all of them at once, in the same Jesus—the one who gave himself up in obedience to God and the one who was slain for our sins and the one who stands victorious over the forces of evil. 

Before Jesus brough them together, no one could have imagined how those threads would be woven together into one—how the passive victim would also be the glorious victor. In the Book of Revelation, the vision of God’s triumphant lamb, whom we worship, is the one who stands as if slain—an oxymoronic image that only makes sense in Jesus (5:6). We try to make sense of it again every time we celebrate the Eucharist and sing the Angus Dei. When we proclaim Jesus as the Lamb of God, we bring together synthetically what was, before Jesus, a collection of impossibly disparate traditions—the atoning sacrifice and the paschal lamb and the apocalyptic victor, which are one in Christ Jesus.

But the good news is that you don’t have to see all of that at once in order to follow Jesus. If John the Baptist wasn’t fully aware of how Jesus would become the Lamb of God, then neither were Andrew or his brother, Simon Peter, when they decided to follow him. For those who would be his disciple, it is enough to answer the invitation to “come and see.” “Rabbi, where are you staying?” they asked him. “Come and see,” was Jesus’ reply. Whether it is the promise of a long-awaited victory or the hope of reconciliation or the example of unwavering faithfulness—whatever it is that has brought you here, you will find in Jesus Christ the one for whom your heart yearns. He is the Lamb in whom we are permitted to dwell, to remain, close to God. You do not need to understand it with your mind in order to be faithful to that invitation with your heart. 

1. https://fch.psdschools.org/mascot-story.

The Only Way That Doesn't Make Sense

 

Wednesday in Epiphany 1A - January 11, 2023

Matthew 3:13-17

I like it when things make sense, when they flow logically. In college, I made a perfect score on my logic final. It hasn't gotten me anything except a sermon illustration, but it remains a good way to get to know me. Making sense of things--even complex, multi-faceted things--comes naturally to me. Messy, mystical, imprecise wonder, on the other hand, isn't really my thing. Sometimes new, counter-intuitive concepts ask my mind to bend a little too far, and, when I can't make sense of them, organizing the premises into neat categories of understanding, I get frustrated enough to leave it behind entirely. I don't like that about myself, but I'm learning to accept it.

In his encounter with John the Baptist at the River Jordan, Jesus asks the baptizer to believe something that doesn't make sense--that can't make sense--and I think it takes a leap of faith for John to go along with it. "Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, 'I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?' But Jesus answered him, 'Let it be so now; for it is proper in this way to fulfill all righteousness.' Then he consented."

John's ministry was focused on helping God's people prepare to receive the kingdom of God. He promised them that God was coming near to them. He explained that the power of God to renew the world was coming not through the religious institutions that they had known and trusted for generations but through a personal experience of God's Spirit. The baptism of repentance was how John invited people to turn away from a life that was dependent upon the power structures of the earth and embrace their place in the coming reign of God. When the one who was to come arrived, he would baptize them with the Holy Ghost and with fire--the full power of God.

Jesus was the one they were waiting for. Jesus was the one John had been preaching about. Jesus was the one who had come to bring the fullness of God's reign to the earth and to set the world ablaze with the power of God one person, one heart, one life at a time. The wait was over. The time had come. But the one that they had been waiting for came to John and asked to be baptized with the same baptism of preparation and repentance that John had been administering for years. It didn't make sense. It couldn't make sense.

"Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness," Jesus said, asking John to trust him even if he didn't understand it. The phrase that is translated for us as "fulfill all righteousness" carries a little more nuance than a simple English rendering can offer. In a different context, the word fulfill could also mean "to cram full," as in to stuff a bag or a net until it was at maximum capacity. Or it could mean to "to level out" as in grading over a hollow in field or leveling off the top of a measuring cup. It can also mean "to satisfy" as in faithfully execute an office or responsibility. It can mean "to finish" as in completing period or a task. It can mean "to verify" as in to prove a prediction or prophecy as true.

Jesus wasn't asking John the Baptist simply to do the thing we're accustomed to doing but somehow, in a way that transcends our logic and understanding, to allow Jesus' baptism to become the means by which our hollow is levelled out, our inadequacies are crammed full, our insufficient duties are satisfied, our period of longing is finally completed. How can that possibly happen as Jesus is submerged below the surface of the muddy waters of the Jordan River? In a way is possible because it doesn't make sense.

Jesus meets our deepest need for fulfillment not by prescribing a spiritual discipline or laying out a regimen designed to make us more holy. That. Never. Works. No one ever set the world on fire with the power of God by requiring human beings to do anything. We fizzle out. We let ourselves down. We end up substituting a new religious institution for the ones we left in the first place. It's a non-starter. Jesus does not show us the way to God. Jesus becomes the way to God by becoming us. Jesus meets our deepest need by becoming the hollow that needs to be filled in, by becoming the emptiness that only God can cram full, by inhabiting our failures so that our responsibilities can finally be fulfilled. 

We prepare to receive the fullness of God's reign and to greet the coming of Christ in the same way John taught. We forsake our attachment to institutions of earthly power in order to take our place in the kingdom of God. We enact that preparatory work in the waters of our own baptism. But our place in God's reign is not something we then go off and find on our own. Jesus has come to bring it to us. The fiery power of God's Spirit comes and dwells within us not because we have made ourselves holy but because Jesus has become one of us--because he is us. He has made these imperfect vessels the perfect receptacles for God's Spirit.

Before he met Jesus, I don't know what John the Baptist expected the coming reign of God to look like. I suspect he always knew that it would come and meet God's people where they were, in a wilderness place, apart from the fleeting comforts and protections the world can provide. His work of preparing God's people to receive the one who was to come was perfectly designed to help us become vessels for God's power. But no logic could have expected the way that God chose to show up--in a transformation made possible not by our pursuit of holiness but by God's own pursuit of our brokenness. It doesn't make sense. But it's the only way it could ever work.