Observational Theology

 

November 10, 2024 – The 25th Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 27B

Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17; Hebrews 9:24-28; Mark 12:38-44

© 2024 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video can be seen here.

What does it look like when the reign of God breaks through into this world? What are the signs that God’s will is unfolding around us? Where do we look for evidence that God is still God when it feels like the ways of the world are squeezing God’s reign out of our lives?

One of my favorite things about Education for Ministry, the four-year, small-group formation program we offer at St. Paul’s, is its emphasis on theological reflection. Perhaps more than anything else, EfM teaches participants to think theologically—to identify situations for potential reflection, examine them for theological meaning, connect them with the broader Christian tradition, and apply the insights that are gained back into their lives. The part of EfM that usually gets the most attention is the reading—the really long weekly readings from the Bible, church history, or other theological texts—but those readings are designed to equip participants for the real goal of the program, which is to engage the world around us through the lens of our faith.

That practice of observational theology has its roots in biblical examples like today’s reading from Mark. In this gospel lesson, Jesus identifies a situation that has potential, examines it for theological meaning, connects it with the broader faith tradition, and then invites his disciples to apply the lessons it offers to their lives. But, as we see in the story of the widow’s mite, the insights we gain must sometimes be mined from deep beneath the surface of our experience.

One day, Jesus was hanging out with his friends in Jerusalem. This was during the series of events that we call Holy Week. Jesus had already made his triumphal entry into the holy city, when the crowds had hailed him as God’s anointed. Then, Jesus had gone up to the temple and overturned the tables of the currency exchangers, openly challenging the legitimacy of the religious operations taking place there. In response, the religious leaders had challenged his authority to carry out such a prophetic action. One by one, the different groups of leaders—the chief priests, scribes, elders, Pharisees, Herodians, and Sadducees—came up to test him with different questions about faithfulness, and each time Jesus turned them aside with an impressive interpretation of the Jewish tradition.

When no one else was left to ask him a question, Jesus offered a scathing critique of some of the most prominent religious figures of his day. “Beware of the scribes,” Jesus said in today’s reading, “who like to walk around in long robes and like greetings in the marketplaces and have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts.” He was inviting the crowd to turn their expectations of who was truly faithful upside down. He invoked the sort of religious figures whom society praised for their generosity and sliced open the motivation behind their religiosity: “They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”

That’s a hefty criticism, but only later does the significance of that teaching become clear. Having finished his critique, Jesus sat down outside the temple proper, across from the place where people came and dropped their offerings into the treasury. Among those who placed money into the treasury was a widow, recognizable by her distinctive dress. Jesus noticed her and heard the subtle sound of the two small coins rattling in the treasury chute, and he recognized faithfulness at work. Before the woman could slip away, he called his disciples over and pointed her out. “Do you see that widow over there?” he asked them. “She has put more into the treasury than everyone else combined because she has given her last two pennies. Others gave out of their abundance, but she has given out of her poverty, everything she had left to live on.”

The prominent religious leaders, who were admired by everyone, had achieved their prominence by exploiting the weak and the vulnerable, even this widow. Yet this woman, whose livelihood had been stolen by the very religious authorities who get credit for being faithful and generous, gave all she has to God by contributing to a religious system that was governed by the same people who had robbed her. Jesus recognized that the Torah’s repeated command to protect vulnerable people, including widows, conflicted with the contemporary religious practice of putting money in the temple treasury. That’s not because contributing to the temple was a faithless act but because those contributions were being managed by self-interested religious authorities who had failed to alleviate this widow’s poverty. And only those who look carefully beneath the surface of success, piety, generosity, and status are able to see what real faithfulness looks like.

Interestingly, Jesus does not finish this theological reflection with an imperative. He never tells the disciples to go and do likewise or that it is to people like this widow that the kingdom of heaven belongs. In other words, he never tells his followers that they, too, should give their last penny to the temple treasury—the same religious institution whose legitimacy he challenged by overturning the moneychangers’ tables. Instead, he reinterprets the significance and size of the people’s offerings in a way that isn’t obvious to the casual onlooker but becomes clear to those who see in this episode what God sees. God knows that true faithfulness depends upon the heart, and only a heart that belongs to God can become a vessel of faithfulness.

Finding ways to contemporize this story is difficult. When we think of modern-day religious leaders whom Jesus would criticize, we naturally turn to the charlatans on television who swindle billions of dollars away from vulnerable people in order to fly around in private jets and live in luxurious mansions. And, while it’s true that Jesus would certainly have had some not-nice things to say about them, I think it’s hard for us to appreciate how universally respected the religious leaders whom he calls out were. Jesus wasn’t calling out the televangelists who make most Christians cringe. He was singling out faithful icons who were held in the highest esteem across the religious culture—the sort of people who get invited to banquets, palaces, and inaugurations—and not just the inaugurations you aren’t excited about. 

Only those who dare to peel back the curtain and look beneath the power and trace back the lines of success to their origins are able to see what God sees. No matter how faithful someone looks or sounds, if they got where they are by stepping on the backs of vulnerable people, they are not the paragons of faithfulness that they seem to be. No matter how good and generous and successful a congregation, organization, or denomination is, if it was built on the subjugation of human beings or achieved its status by excluding people from the community of faith, it cannot be an institution of faithfulness until it grapples with its sinful past. And, if you want to see what God sees, you have to learn to notice where real expressions of faithfulness are made—those little gestures that most of us don’t have time for—the kind of faithful actions that come from people whom the world has forgotten to value but whose hearts belong to God.

The work of theological reflection is as important now as it has ever been, not only for participants in EfM but for all of us. We need to learn where to look for God’s presence among us and to hone our skills at recognizing how God shows up in a sinful world. We need to engage in the work of observational theology, and, to do that, we must equip ourselves by reading the Bible, coming to church, saying our prayers, remaining in community, and serving those in need. Those practices shape us into a people who can recognize and respond to what God is doing all around us. Thus, we practice our faith not to look good in anyone else’s eyes but to learn how to look at the world through the eyes of Jesus Christ.

Comfort and Confidence

 

November 3, 2024 – The Feast of All Saints

Isaiah 25:6-9; Revelation 21:1-6a; John 11:32-44

© 2024 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon is available here. Video can be seen here.

Not long ago, I was introduced to the term “emotional lability.” I was meeting with someone who started to tear up unexpectedly. As she reached for a tissue, she acknowledged that those tears had been a little closer to the surface of late, and she attributed it to being “emotionally labile.” 

Since I didn’t know anything about the clinical nature of that term, I initially heard it as something positive. The word “labile” means flexible, elastic, and malleable, which to me sounded like a good thing—as if it were a healthy way of being in touch with your emotions. Of course, the word “labile” also means unsteady and unstable, and it turns out that, in the clinical sense, that term is applied to people whose wild emotional swings have taken control of their lives. I don’t think the person I was with meant it in the clinical sense, but I wonder whether we might find a different way of talking about the nearness of emotional experience as a positive thing—maybe “emotional flexibility” or “accessibility.”

Standing outside the tomb of his friend Lazarus, Jesus wept. As a child, I learned that John 11:35 is the shortest verse in the bible, but it wasn’t until much later that I started to realize how profound and deep is the truth contained in those two little words: Jesus wept. We believe in a God who loves us and comes among us not as an invincible warrior who vanquishes our enemies but as tender companion who cries with us, suffers with us, and dies with us so that we might be raised with him to new life. That is the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

Still, we wonder why Jesus wept. Lazarus, his friend, was dead. There’s no doubt about that. But, even from the beginning, there also seemed to be little doubt about how this story would end. From the opening verses of John 11, when Jesus first heard that his friend was sick, Jesus made it clear that Lazarus’ death would not have the final word. In his telling of the story, John stresses that, even though Jesus knew that Lazarus’ life was in danger, he stayed put for two more days in order to make sure that Lazarus had died before Jesus could get there to heal him. “For your sake I am glad I was not there,” Jesus told the disciples, “so that you may believe.” At every step, Jesus remained in control, as if he knew all along that his friend’s tragic death would be an opportunity to show his followers that he had the power to raise him from the dead. 

And, still, Jesus wept. He knew that he had the power to bring his friend back. He knew exactly what he would do. He knew that he would stand at that grave and cry out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” But, when Jesus saw Mary weeping, and when he saw the people who were with her also weeping, and when he came to the place where his friend had been buried, Jesus was overcome with emotion, and he joined them in their tears. 

God knows exactly how everything will work out. God knows that he will raise us from the dead and bring us to new and everlasting life. God knows that, because of Jesus Christ, death itself has been defeated and its sting has been robbed of all its power. And still God comes among us as one who weeps. Jesus loved Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus. Even though he had the power to overcome death and bring his friend back from the grave, he was not immune to the grief of his friends. He was not insulated from his own sense of loss. He felt it deeply, and he wept with his friends, real tears of pain and loss—the same tears we weep when our loved ones die.

I am comforted by Jesus’ tears—not only because his gesture of compassion provides me pastoral consolation but also because he shows us that, even though we know our loved ones will rise again, our grief is not a sign of faithlessness or defeat. Like Jesus, we are filled with sadness when someone we love dies, even though we know that God will bring them back, and that sadness does not displace our confidence in the power of God’s love. Like Jesus, we can experience both.

I am comforted by Jesus’ tears, but my confidence comes from something else. It has become fashionable in Christian preaching and teaching to talk about God as the one who suffers with us, who cries with us, who dies for us. And, while our faith is built upon the fact that God’s plan of salvation is accomplished through the death of God’s incarnate Son, who did suffer just as we do, it is God’s power that has triumphed over death once and for all. More than the mere companionship of a sympathetic friend, it is God’s victory over death that gives us hope, and we see that play out in Jesus’ exchange with Mary and Martha.

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died,” Mary said to Jesus, repeating words that her sister Martha had said only a few verses before our reading picks up. Kneeling at his feet, she offered these words as a confession of faith. We might instinctively hear them as an expression of angst and defeat, but her posture suggests that she was attributing to Jesus a profound confidence in his ability to heal the sick. Similarly, some in the crowd asked whether the one who had the power to give sight to the blind would not also have been able to keep Lazarus from dying. With this repeated theme, John, the gospel writer, wants us to see that the people around Jesus were ready to believe in him, but they didn’t realize how far that belief could go.

When Jesus told them to roll away the stone that sealed shut Lazarus’ tomb, Martha objected, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” But Jesus replied, drawing from her and the crowd a faith not only in a Jesus who had the power to cure the sick but in one who had the power to raise the dead: “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” John finishes this episode with a triumphant description worthy of a Halloween script: “The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’”

Do we believe in a savior who can heal the sick or one who can raise the dead? Do we believe in a God who comforts us in our sorrow or one who defeats the forces of evil, which are the source of that sorrow? In Jesus Christ, we see that the answer is both. We are comforted by the one who is with us in our struggles, who experiences our pain and suffering, and who loves us from a place of vulnerability and weakness. And we are emboldened by the one whose suffering and death are the means by which death itself is defeated—the one who, although immune to the power of death, endured death in order to defeat it once and for all. We are moved by Jesus’ tears, and we are saved by his death and resurrection—saved by a God whose love is vulnerable yet whose power is triumphant.

Today is the feast of all the saints—all the people of God who have been buried with Christ in his death and who have been raised with him to new life. That’s you and me and the children of God who are being baptized today. And what does it mean to be a saint of God except to be able to see the world through the eyes of Jesus Christ? Sometimes those eyes are filled with tears because we are moved deeply by the pain and hurt that are all around us. But through those tears we also see the new life that awaits us and the whole world. We may need to be emotionally and spiritually flexible to experience the joy and the pain of life all at once, but Jesus has shown us that that is possible, and it is by following him that we learn how.

The Ending We Didn't Write

 

October 27, 2024 – The 23rd Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 25B

Job 42:1-6, 10-17; Hebrews 7:23-28; Mark 10:46-52

© 2024 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon is available here. Video can be seen here.

Sometimes stories don’t have the endings we want, but that doesn’t mean we don’t get the ones we need.

On July 8, 2010, LeBron James used a 75-minute prime-time special to announce that he was “going to take [his] talents to South Beach and join the Miami Heat.” Although 13 million people tuned in to watch the announcement, relatively few left with any sense of satisfaction. Fans in Cleveland, where LeBron grew up and spent his first seven seasons in the NBA, felt betrayed. In New York, where Knicks’ fans believed they would win the LeBron sweepstakes, the thought of another decade of mediocracy led to outrage. Generally, except for those who lived in south Florida, “The Decision” was widely panned as a commercialized spectacle, which celebrated and promoted the entitlement of athletes.

Fourteen years later, after two championships in Miami, another back in Cleveland, and one in Los Angeles, a secret tape that was made to influence LeBron’s big decision has come to light. Rumors had long circulated that the New York Knicks produced a celebrity-filled video as part of their pitch to bring James to the Big Apple, but no one could verify it. The video had never been shown to the public until sportswriter Pablo Torre obtained a copy and released it. 

In the opening scene of the promotional video, James Gandolfini and Edie Falco reprise their roles from the HBO series The Sopranos as if they were living in New York under witness protection two years after the television series ended. Even if you never watched The Sopranos, you probably remember that the final scene of the final episode of the series cut to black, leaving the audience to guess what happened. It was highly controversial at the time. After six seasons, viewers wanted to know how it all ended, but the producers of the show wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. It came to be seen as one of the greatest television endings of all time, but, back then, not everyone was happy with how things worked out, but the Knicks didn’t make things any better

In much the same way, though for the opposite reason, it is hard to read the Book of Job and get any satisfaction from the way the story ends. After suffering the loss of his fortune, the agony of an illness, the death of his children, the desertion of his spouse, and the abandonment of society—and all for reasons Job cannot comprehend—God shows up and makes everything right by giving him twice as much money, ten new children, and totally renewed relationships with all the family and friends who had turned their backs on him. The only thing worse is seeing Tony and Carmela in their tiny New York City apartment two years after leaving the gangster life. To a post-modern reader, the so-called happy ending of Job cheapens the epic tale and effectively nullifies its theological message. Or does it? 

I’m not the only one who hates the way the story ends. In 1958, American playwright and poet, Archibald MacLeish, published J.B., a modern retelling of the Book of Job, with a very different ending. In the final scene of the play, Job’s wife, who earlier in the play encouraged her husband to commit suicide as an act of religious defiance, comes back to him. But, instead of accepting the simplistic restoration of their fortunes described in the biblical story, the Pulitzer-prize winning play depicts the couple clinging only to the near-extinct ember of love between them. “Blow on the coal of the heart,” Sarah says to J.B.. “The candles in the church are out. The lights have gone out in the sky. Blow on the coal of the heart, and we’ll see by and by…”

Instead of leaving the audience to wrestle with their questions about the nature of a God who would allow such unjustified suffering, the play brings those questions right onto the stage. In one sense, the result is a far more satisfying end to the story—one that acknowledges explicitly, with its unrefined conclusion, the irreconcilable theological problems presented by the Book of Job. But, in another way, the play misses the point entirely. Although it acknowledges how hard it is for us to experience inexplicable suffering, in the place of our only true hope, it offers an even cheaper substitute—the thought that the best we can do is endure life’s hardships with the companionship of a human partner, replacing the inscrutable God of the whirlwind with an idol made in our own image.

Surely the story of Job is more valuable than a cheap fairy tale. Surely our ancient spiritual ancestors wanted a better ending just as much as we do. Surely they recognized the inadequacy of a God who would throw money and new children at Job as if that were good enough. Maybe we should do them the favor of saving the book by cutting out the last eight verses. If the story ended with Job’s repentance—his return to God—and the rebuke of his friends for suggesting that bad things only happen to bad people, maybe we’d be left with a story we’d like—one that resists the urge to overexplain and instead just cuts to black. But isn’t that the point in the first place—that our preference for a conclusion that we would have written cannot replace the ending that God has given us without sacrificing our hope in God for a misplaced our hope in ourselves?

Maybe the ending of the Book of Job is a hook designed to catch us, the readers, in our own need for certainty, as sharp and subtle as the fishhook God uses to catch Leviathan. There’s a reason Job never attempts to answer the unanswerable questions about the nature of suffering—because the greatest danger we face is not the suffering itself but our desire to explain it in satisfactory ways. 

Job’s friends take turns explaining to him that a good and just God would never permit such bad things to happen to a righteous and upstanding person. Repent, they tell him, and everything will get better. But we know that’s not how God works. Job demands an audience with God, asserting that his lifetime of unequivocal righteousness has merited a hearing with the Almighty. But we know that even the holiest among us cannot plumb the fathomless depths of God’s mind. Elihu, the young prophet, rebukes Job’s friends for their shallow theology, and he also rebukes Job for failing to subscribe to the prophetic tradition, which teaches that God hears the cries of the oppressed as long as they humble themselves. But we know that all too often the desperate prayers of truly humble people do not receive the answers we think are right.

Whenever we fall into the temptation to seek our own perfect ending and suggest that we know why another person is suffering, we commit a grave sin. Whenever we decide that our plans for how and when something will work out are better than God’s, we commit a grave sin. The Book of Job is designed to teach us that it is dangerous, abusive, and disastrous when people, in the name of God, presume to speak with certainty on matters they cannot possibly understand. And the ending of the story is wholly unsatisfying in order to remind us that the temptation to speak for God is greatest among those who claim to know God the best.

As Sara preached last week, we believe in a God who abides with us in the midst of our suffering, even and especially when we cannot understand how. In the face of our lack of understanding, we may be tempted to exchange our God for one who makes sense to us or for no God at all. But, despite God’s unwillingness to conform to our expectations, God is not wholly hidden from us. The task of our faith is not the fruitless endeavor of pursuing an unknowable God but the unending journey of seeking the presence of the one who has revealed Godself to us in love. And that love does not condemn our suffering or discount it, but it redeems it as something holy and acceptable to God.

God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son to the end that all who believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life. The way that leads to life everlasting does not avoid suffering but goes right through it. In ways that surpass our understanding, God shows us that our true hope is found in Jesus, the one who redeems our suffering by becoming our suffering. That’s an ending to the story that we could not have written on our own. That’s the good news of our faith—that our ending is neither what we expect nor what we deserve, and thanks be to God for that.

Pursuing Our Own Impossibility

 

October 13, 2024 – The 21st Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 23B

Job 23:1-9, 16-17; Hebrews 4:12-16; Mark 10:17-31

© 2024 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video can be seen here.

Have you seen the meme on social media that captures the exchange between two people, Musa (@muvilakazi) and Orpheus (@umcornell), in which the first states, “Money will not fix all of your problems,” and to which the second replies, “…no offense but money would solve literally every single one of my problems. like all of them?” Or maybe you’ve seen the meme that says, “Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy a jet ski. Have you ever seen anyone sad on a jet ski?” Or, if you’re not into memes, maybe you’ve heard the saying from the business world that anything is possible, given enough time and money.  

Money makes the world go ‘round, but that doesn’t mean it rotates symmetrically. The chasm between the poor and the rich is growing faster and faster. According to the Pew Research Center, between 1970 and 2018, the median income for middle-class Americans grew by 49%. During that same period, the median income for lower-income households only grew by 43%, but—you guessed it—upper-income households saw an increase of 64%. Similarly, since 1991, the super-rich, defined as the top 5% of households, saw an average annual increase in their income of 4.1%, while the next 15% of the not-quite-so-super-rich saw income grow annually by 2.7%, and everyone else, the bottom 80%, saw an annual increase of only 1%. [1]

Is it any wonder, in a society in which things are getting harder for those who struggle to make ends meet while things are getting easier for those who don’t, that money has become our currency of hope? I wonder what Jesus would say to us—to our culture—if we were to fall down on our knees and ask him, “Good Teacher, what must we do to inherit eternal life?”

I don’t know if it’s comforting or discouraging to read in today’s gospel lesson that the problem of wealth is at least 2,000 years old. A man runs up to Jesus, kneels before him, and asks, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus then makes a big deal about the fact that the man had called him “good,” perhaps offering a prescribed rabbinical response designed to convey humility. But the man’s decision to call Jesus “good” is significant. It means that the man already recognizes Jesus as a religious authority—that he assumes that whatever teaching will come from the rabbi’s mouth will be of God and, thus, help him find what he seeks.

“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” The concept of inheritance was, in those days, a lot like it is today. In time, you will receive what has been set aside for you—your allotted share—not because you have earned it, as a worker earns their wages, but because you belong to a particular family. For the descendants of Abraham, the barrier between the material and the spiritual has always been permeable, and the idea of receiving an inheritance from God has been tied up in the hope for both the physical land promised to Abraham and the boundless security of dwelling forever in the presence of God. So, when this man asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life, he wasn’t just interested in what it takes to get to heaven but also what is required to have a share in the coming messianic age.  

Jesus’ answer is shockingly traditional. “You know the commandments,” he said, “‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.” Although it’s not a direct quotation of Exodus 20 or Deuteronomy 5, the answer Jesus gave is as familiar to the Jewish man as the names Moses and Elijah. If you want to inherit your share of God’s promises, Jesus seems to say, all you need to do is remain a part of God’s family, and you already know how to do that.

If the encounter ended there, the only problem this passage would present is the one posed to thoroughly Protestant preachers like myself, who would then be forced to reconcile Jesus’ emphasis on keeping the commandments with the sola fide (faith alone) foundation set forth in the letters of Paul. But that’s for another sermon because this encounter doesn’t end there. This man wants more—not more eternal life, not a bigger share of his inheritance. He wants to belong to God in a way that impacts his life now. He wants more than the familiar reminder of what it means to belong to God’s family. He’s kept all those commandments since his youth.  He wants to be a part of God’s kingdom, and he knows that Jesus is the one who can help him find it.

Jesus looked intently at the man and loved him—he agape-ed him—which is important. That lets us know that the man was serious and faithful and that Jesus was serious, too. This man wanted to be a disciple of Jesus, and Jesus saw within him the stuff from which disciples are made. There was just one thing missing—one thing that stood between this man and his full and vibrant participation in the messianic reign that God had promised: his wealth. “You lack one thing,” Jesus said. “Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then, come follow me.”

“You lack one thing,” Jesus said. Do you know what your “one thing” is? If you asked Jesus what you needed to do in order to become a full participant in the reign of God and he looked deep into your soul and loved you, what would he tell you to give up? What one thing, more than anything else, stands in between you and the kingdom of God?

For most of us, the answer is money. We live in a world in which money is perceived to be the answer to life’s greatest problems. Those who have money feel powerful, if not invincible, and those who don’t feel especially vulnerable to whatever challenges life might bring. It’s worth noting that Jesus didn’t require all of his followers to take a vow of poverty, but he consistently taught that wealth is the greatest obstacle to our participation in God’s reign. The members of the early church took that teaching to heart, selling their private possessions and pooling their resources to be sure that no one was in need. Maybe that’s a vision for using our wealth to participate in the kingdom of God that we should reconsider. As R. H. Gundry wrote, “That Jesus did not command all his followers to sell all their possessions gives comfort only to the kind of people to whom he would issue that command.”[2] 

So what will give us comfort? I think the answer we need comes later in the story, when Jesus explains to his disciples what this difficult teaching is all about. After doubling-down by saying that “it would be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God,” Jesus gives his disciples a word of encouragement that puts everything into perspective. “Then who can be saved?” they ask him. And he looks at them with the same intensity with which he had beheld the eager man and says, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”

Isn’t that precisely the place where the reign of God unfolds in our lives—in that space where what is impossible for us becomes possible in God? Doesn’t God’s kingdom always come in those gaps where our limitations are superseded by God’s infinite goodness, power, and love? That’s always the place where God enters in—not in the spaces filled up by our strength but in the emptiness opened up by our weakness—by our very dependence on God. The problem, therefore, isn’t simply our wealth but what our wealth inevitably fools us into thinking—into thinking that it’s our strength, our effort, and our ability that will save us. But that’s never the case. And that’s exactly the kind of thinking that stands between us and God’s reign.

When Jesus looks into our hearts and loves us, he sees what stands in the way of our full participation in the divine life. And he bids us to let go of whatever it is that makes us think that we are our own best hope. We’re not. God is. God has promised to bring us into full, abundant, and eternal life, and all we have to do is get out of the way. We must learn to accept, embrace, and even pursue that place where our impossibility becomes God’s triumph—where our misplaced faith in ourselves can be replanted into the fertile soil of faith in God. Whatever it takes to learn that truth—whatever it takes for us to know that we belong to the God whose power is made perfect in our weakness—we must pursue with all our hearts. You only lack one thing, Jesus says to us. May God give us the grace to accept it.

___________________________________

1. J. M. Horowitz, R. Igielnik, and R. Kochar, “Trends in Income and Wealth Inequality,” Pew Research Center, 9 January 2020: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/.

2. R. H. Gundry, Matthew, 388, quoted in R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark; Eerdmans: 2002, 400.

A Banquet of Reversal

 

September 29, 2024 – The 19th Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 21B

Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22; James 5:13-20; Mark 9:38-50

© 2024 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video is available here.

I love the Book of Esther, and I think I love it most because it’s unlike any other book in the Bible. There are important theological lessons to be gleaned from the text, for sure, but it’s presented more like a soap opera or a farce than a traditional biblical narrative. The book includes ten short chapters, designed to be read aloud in one raucous sitting, and it’s the sort of script we’d expect Eugene or Dan Levy to write, not Moses or one of the prophets. 

The Book of Esther is the story of God’s people living in a foreign land. Set in the fifth century BC, it recalls a time when some of the Jewish people had settled in Persia, where they sought to maintain their identity despite living within the vast and powerful Achaemenid Empire. Scholars often note that nowhere in the entire book is God ever mentioned, effectively forcing the community of faith to search the story for God’s presence when it does not present itself in traditional ways. If you say Morning Prayer each day, you’ve noticed that readings from Esther have been featured lately, but our Sunday lectionary cycle only includes a reading from Esther once—on this day—so I don’t get a lot of chances to preach on the text, and today, instead of focusing on the search for God in story, I want to talk about parties. 

Esther is a tale of parties. In the relatively brief text, there are ten different banquets that take place. They effectively serve as the glue that holds the story together and the channel through which most of the interesting action takes place. The book opens with a six-month-long debaucherous feast that King Ahasuerus threw for his officials and ministers to celebrate his own greatness, which pretty much tells you everything you need to know about King Ahasuerus. 

Then there’s the seven-day banquet the king threw for the residents of the capital city as soon as the six-month banquet was finished. After seven days of drunkenness, we are told that the king commanded that Queen Vashti come and display herself to the king and his guests so that they could admire her beauty. But the queen refused. She was not an object for their delight. She was a woman, powerful and independent. She had already thrown her own banquet for the noble women of the kingdom, and she was not about to parade around to amuse some drunken men. 

As you would expect from a man like Ahasuerus, the king was enraged, and so were his officials. One of his chief advisors said to the king, “Not only has Queen Vashti done wrong to the king, but also to all the officials and all the peoples who are in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus. For this deed of the queen will be made known to all women, causing them to look with contempt on their husbands” (1:16-17). A kingdom that is built upon misogynistic power, we are shown, cannot withstand the threat of a strong-willed woman, so the king did what kings like that are wont to do: he published an edict that banned Vashti from his presence and that declared “that every man should be master in his own house” (1:22). Like I said, it’s a script worthy of a series like Schitt’s Creek. 

After conducting a national beauty pageant, the king selected Esther to be his new bride. Although she was Jewish, the adopted daughter of her cousin Mordecai, a leader among his people, she kept her ethnicity a secret at her cousin’s suggestion. Thus, when the king threw a banquet to celebrate his new queen, the reader can already anticipate the significance of a member of the Jewish diaspora assuming a position of national leadership in a kingdom that was not her own.

The story takes the dark turn we expect at yet another banquet. This time, the king and his chief advisor, the wicked Haman, sat down to dine together and issue a royal edict commanding the annihilation of the Jewish people in Persia. Haman persuaded the hapless king to command the genocide because he was furious that Mordecai repeatedly refused to bow down to him. When Haman learned that Mordecai was Jewish, the Bible tells us, “he thought it beneath him to lay hands on Mordecai alone. So, having been told who Mordecai’s people were, Haman plotted to destroy all the Jews, the people of Mordecai, throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus” (3:6).

Only at the banquet we hear about in today’s reading—the second in a row that Queen Esther hosted for the king and Haman—is the wicked plot revealed. The story includes lots of twists and turns that both the lectionary and I must skip over, but suffice it to say that Haman is undone by his own hubris and by Esther’s bravery and by a heavy-handed dose of irony that makes it clear this story belongs in paperback. “Look,” another of the king’s advisors declared, “the very gallows that Haman has prepared for Mordecai, whose word saved the king, stands at Haman's house, fifty cubits high.” And the king said, “Hang him on that” (7:9).

But, even with the death of the antagonist, the series of banquets is not yet finished. That’s because the genocidal edict that threatened the Jewish people across the kingdom of Persia could not be repealed. In a strange layer of internal commentary on the nature of law itself, according to the Book of Esther, once the Persian king issued an official edict it could never be changed. So, after elevating Mordecai to the position formerly held by Haman, the king needed to be persuaded to issue a contravening declaration—one that would protect God’s people from the mobs that had begun to assemble to exterminate them.

Having learned nothing from his mistakes, the king handed over to Mordecai the authority to draft, seal, and publish a new edict, one that permitted the Jewish people in every city across the land [quote] “to assemble and defend their lives, to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate any armed force of any people or province that might attack them, with their children and women, and to plunder their goods” (8:11). Although God’s people were careful not to take any of the plunder—it seems they had learned their lesson from back when King Saul made a similar mistake in 1 Samuel 15—they killed 500 people in the capital city and 75,000 people across the land. Historians think that 75,000 is a fair estimate of the number of Jews living in Persia at the time, so one might say that their preemptive slaughter was a gesture of balance, though it also begs the question whether any law that condones violence could ever be justified. 

To celebrate their deliverance, God’s people held banquets throughout the empire. The feast of Purim, which is observed every spring, right before Passover, is a reminder not only of the time when Esther and Mordecai saved God’s people but also that the threat of their destruction does not go away when a single enemy is defeated. Even the name of the feast itself—Purim—comes from a word that means “lot,” as in the lot that Haman cast to determine the day when the Jews would be murdered. Each banquet in the story presents another reversal of fortune, and the final banquet, while a celebration of the Jewish people’s miraculous deliverance from near-certain genocide, also contains in its very name a reminder of how real the threat remains.

I wonder, though, whether Christians can hear this story—this amusing and farcical tale designed to entertain as much as educate—and draw from it a different message without undermining the importance of its original Jewish context. I wonder whether we might reinterpret the Book of Esther by reading it alongside the story of our own banquet, the Eucharist, where we, too, experience a reversal of fortune.

In his commentary, Sam Wells wrote about the Book of Esther,  

An invitation to a banquet is an invitation to a political reversal. Here the implications for Christian liturgy become evident. It begs the question, is the Christian Eucharist such a banquet— such a repeated, interactive, reading-and-performing rehearsal of reversal? The Eucharist should be the place and time where Christians recall that God has put down the mighty from their seats and exalted the humble and meek— and that God, the mighty, has come down from that seat and become humble and meek so that we, if we are humble and meek, might, through the power of his Spirit, become mighty. This should be the place and time where Christians celebrate that greatest of all reversals and where they reenact the death and resurrection of Christ, the definitive reversal gently anticipated in the mission of Esther. [1]

To conclude, I want to take Sam Wells’ observation a step further. In the eucharistic banquet, we encounter the ultimate and final reversal of the cosmos. There is no going back. Death has been defeated. Sin has been put away. Our unity with God has been restored. But that great reversal comes not because our protagonist has been spared the pain of death but because he has embraced it. And that means that the path that leads to our salvation must also take us through the grave and gate of death before we can enter the joyful resurrection that awaits. And, if God has used the death of God’s Son to achieve for us the ultimate victory over death, that means that death itself is no longer a threat. Because of Christ, it has been robbed of is sting.

Whenever we celebrate the Eucharist, which we do here today, we not only recall Christ’s death and resurrection, we reenact them by partaking in Christ’s body and blood. This is, as Sam Wells suggested, a “reading-and-performing rehearsal of reversal,” but it is also the place where we submit our own lives to Christ’s death on the cross so that we, being one with him, might find new life. If we come to Communion expecting anything less than our full participation in the complete and total reversal of the world through our own death and resurrection, then we aren’t doing this banquet justice. 

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1. Wells, Samuel; Sumner, George. Esther & Daniel; Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible; Baker Publishing Group, Kindle Edition: Kindle Locations 2127-2135.

Childish Ways

 

September 22, 2024 – The 18th Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 20B

Proverbs 31:10-31; James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a; Mark 9:30-37

© 2024 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video can be seen here.

On January 1, 1965, the undefeated Arkansas Razorbacks strode into the Cotton Bowl with something to prove. It had been five years since the Razorbacks’ last bowl victory, and they hadn’t finished a season undefeated since 1909. Further aggravating Frank Broyles’ team, the Associated Press and the UPI Coach’s Poll had released their end-of-the-season polls earlier in December, and both had declared the also-undefeated Alabama Crimson Tide as the national champion. In short, there was nothing Arkansas could do to take that title away from Alabama—except prove that they deserved it anyway.

As the Southwestern Conference champions, Arkansas faced off against the Big Eight champion Nebraska Cornhuskers in Dallas, Texas, while down in Miami, Florida, the SEC champion Crimson Tide played against Arkansas’ rival, the Texas Longhorns, in the Orange Bowl. Earlier in the season, Arkansas had defeated Texas 14-13 with a goal-line stand on a failed two-point conversion at Texas Memorial Stadium in Austin. In their game against Nebraska, Arkansas came from behind in the fourth quarter to win 10-7 and remain undefeated. Alabama didn’t fare as well. Texas got out to an early lead and then hung on to beat the Tide 21-17.

It wasn’t hard to argue that Arkansas should have been the unequivocal national champion. In fact, in all the polls released after the bowl games had been played, Arkansas was a clear #1. But even more than that, the transitive property of college football—a favorite among mid-sized-school fan bases—made the true outcome clear. Arkansas had beaten Texas. Texas then beat Alabama. Even though Alabama and Arkansas never played each other, the transitive property leaves virtually no doubt what would have happened if they did. But that didn’t stop Alabama from claiming 1964 as one of their so-called eighteen national championships. For what it’s worth, it was the last time the AP released its final poll before the bowl games had been played, so I guess you could say Jerry Jones’ Razorbacks won a moral victory as well.

In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus introduces a transitive property of his own: “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” In other words, by that property, those of us who want to welcome God into our hearts should start by welcoming and honoring the children among us. Of course, Jesus is using a nearby child to make a point. The act of welcoming a child is a metaphor for the importance of humility and a reminder of the value of seeking out and including the least among us. But let’s not leave the realm of the literal too quickly. There’s more to that transitive property than a preacher’s analogy. There is something about a child that expresses the divine nature more clearly than those of us who prefer the company of adults are likely to see. 

It’s clear from the start of this episode that Jesus is trying to get his point across to the disciples but failing miserably. Last week, we heard Jesus predict his passion and death for the first time. After asking the disciples who they thought that he was, Peter said, “You are the Messiah.” And in response, Jesus began to teach them that, as the Messiah, he must undergo great suffering, be rejected by the leaders of his people, be killed, and on the third day be raised from the dead.

Understandably, this was more than the disciples were ready to handle. They believed that Jesus was the one whom God had sent to redeem God’s people from the tyranny of Rome, but Jesus was telling them that the redemption God had promised would only come through his suffering and death. “Lord, this must never happen to you!” Peter exclaimed with well-intentioned disbelief, but Jesus then set the record straight, rebuking Peter and saying, “Get behind me Satan.” 

That was last week. This week, at the beginning of the gospel lesson, we see that Jesus and the disciples are making their way through Galilee, their home territory, but Jesus doesn’t want anyone to know it because he’s still teaching his disciples that the road ahead will lead to suffering and they still aren’t getting the point. To illustrate the extent of their lack of understanding, Mark recalls for us that, as soon as Jesus finishes explaining that he will be betrayed, killed, and, three days later, raised from the dead, the disciples begin arguing with each other about which one of them is the greatest. Later, when Jesus asks them what they were arguing about, no one says a word because, even if they don’t understand what Jesus was trying to teach them, the disciples know enough to know that that wouldn’t get them any compliments from their teacher.

Looking around the house where they were staying, Jesus sees something that will help him get his point across—a child. Picking up the little child and holding it in his arms, Jesus says to the disciples, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” Jesus recognizes that this child is the lens through which the nature of God and God’s Messiah come into focus. 

This is the child who would rather play with the box and the wrapping paper than the present that is wrapped inside. This is the child who doesn’t care what kind of car her mother drives to pick her up from daycare because all she wants is to be held in her mother’s arms. This is the child who does not need a priest or a rabbi to explain why God’s greatest victory must be accomplished by the one who gives up his life for the sake of the world. And this is the child who knows instinctively that, if God loves us like that, we, too, must love one another in the same way, even if it costs us our lives. 

You don’t have to explain those things to a little child. A child knows them because a child knows that true love beckons from us true love’s reply. And Jesus knows that, if those of us who are all grown up are ever going to remember what it’s like to believe that love is the only thing in this world that matters, we need to learn what that little child will teach us.

I have a feeling that Mark didn’t include the story of the disciples’ failure to understand Jesus’ teaching about suffering and death because he wanted us to laugh at the disciples’ foolishness or marvel at their stupidity. I think he wanted us to realize that this won’t be easy for us to understand either. We might not have as much trouble as they did recognizing that Jesus’ death is how God wins God’s victory over sin and death, but what that victory means for us in this life is a different story. Even on this side of the empty tomb, with confidence that the defeat of Good Friday will always lead to the joy of Easter, we still struggle to grasp what it means for us to believe in a savior who died for our sake. Unlike Peter and the disciples, we might begin to wrap our minds around Jesus’ selfless act, but it’s just as hard for us to accept that the path of suffering and death must be ours as well.

It's one thing to believe that the cross of Christ is a façade behind which the glory of God is hidden, but it’s another thing entirely to believe that the cross of Christ is the glory of God in its perfection. Jesus did not die for your sins so that you could be immune from suffering, pain, and death. He died so that the way of suffering, pain, and death, which you must walk in his name, will lead to life and love and peace. 

Jesus’ death is the means by which God brings life to the world. Jesus’ suffering is how God redeems the suffering of all people. If we really believe that, why do we struggle to accept that those who proclaim Jesus as their savior must suffer and die, too? Why is it so hard for us to understand that “whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all?” Somewhere along the way, we forgot that love is the only thing that matters in this life. It’s the littlest children in our midst who can help us remember it.

An Outsider's Perspective

 

September 8, 2024 – The 16th Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 18B

Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23; James 2:1-17; Mark 7:24-37

© 2024 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video can be seen here.

Twelve years ago next month, our family adopted a cat from the local animal shelter. After looking through the online database of available animals, we had decided that this particular black and white cat, whom the shelter had named Andrew, would be the perfect addition to our family. So I put the pet carrier in the car and drove to the animal shelter. 

I walked in, carrier in hand, and declared, “I’m here to adopt Andrew the cat.” Only at that moment, when I saw the puzzled look on the shelter employee’s face, did it occur to me that I might want to meet Andrew and hold him before taking him home. But, when I picked him up and heard his loud, near-constant purr, I knew that he was the right one.

I went back to the front desk to confirm my choice. “Okay,” the employee said, “we’ll just need to take down some information.” Again, it hadn’t occurred to me that shelter would have any interest in knowing who was adopting its animals, but, as the questions became more and more personal, I realized that they were evaluating my worthiness as a pet owner. 

Q: “How many pets do you currently own?”
A: “Just one—a dog.”

Q: “Are you confident that your dog will welcome a new kitten into your home?”
A: “Well, I hadn’t really thought about that, but he’s a pretty nice dog, so I think so?”

Q: “What is your household income?”
A: “Really? You need to know that?”

Q: “How much money can you afford to spend on vet bills, food, litter, toys, and other supplies?”
A: “Wow, this is pretty serious. Um, enough, I guess.”

Q: “What is the cat going to be used for?”
A: “Excuse me? What is the cat going to be used for? I don’t understand.”

Q: “You know, what will its purpose be? What role will it have? Why are you adopting it?”

I had always assumed that animals were adopted to be pets, to be companions, to be a part of your family. I didn’t know why else anyone would adopt a cat—except maybe to breed the cat, but all the animals at the shelter were fixed, so that was out. I was still confused, but I could tell that my answers were being scrutinized, and I didn’t want to fail now.

A: “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be difficult. I really don’t understand your question. We’re adopting a cat because we want a cat. Help me understand what the options are.”

Q: “Are you looking for a mouser?”
A: “A mouser? As in am I adopting this cat because I want it to catch mice?” 

Feeling the pressure of the interrogation, I panicked. Was that allowed? Or was a classic Tom and Jerry situation frowned upon? I didn’t know what to say.

A: “Well, I wouldn’t be opposed to this cat catching a mouse, but that’s not why we’re getting it. We just want a cat—a pet.”

Apparently, that answer was good enough because I was allowed to bring Andrew home to meet our family. I asked our children whether they wanted to keep the name Andrew. The shelter had given him that designation but hadn’t used it consistently, so he didn’t recognize it as his name, meaning that we could change it if we wanted to. “Do you want to change his name?” I asked. “Yes,” was the instant reply, “to Fetch.” “Fetch?” I asked. “Why Fetch?” “Because cats like to chase things,” which is true but not really in the sense that his name implies, but it stuck. We didn’t get a mouser, but Fetch regularly brings little presents into the house for us to chase around and catch. As is usually the case with cats, he’s in charge, and we seem to be there for his amusement.

In today’s gospel lesson, it’s the role of dogs in society that’s under investigation, and sorting through two radically different visions helps us understand what this passage is supposed to teach us. 

Mark tells us that “[Jesus] entered a house and didn’t want anyone to know that he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and fell down at his feet.” By this point in the gospel story, this sort of encounter is familiar. Someone in need comes to Jesus and asks him for help. But, this time, the person who asks for help is a Gentile.

It's hard for us in twenty-first-century America to appreciate how clear and distinct the divide between Jews and Gentiles was for Jesus and his contemporaries. More than a religious distinction, this was a social, economic, political, and cultural chasm that separated two radically different and fundamentally irreconcilable peoples. Everything about them was different, including the kind of pets they kept at home.

Gentile families, like this Syrophoenician woman, were fond of puppy dogs. In Pompeii, under the ashes from Mount Vesuvius, the mummified remains of a dog were found, still wearing its collar, having been kept tied up in its family’s garden when the volcano erupted in 79AD. But back then Jewish people almost never kept a dog in their home. Dogs were notoriously unclean—not just in the roll-around-in-the-dirt sort of way but in the ritual, religious sense as well. Dogs like to dig and scavenge, and there’s always a chance that a dog will uncover and come into contact with something that will make them a carrier of ritual impurity. Under rabbinic rules, dogs were not even allowed in the city of Jerusalem (4QMMT B 58-62). 

In Jewish culture, therefore, the term dog became a familiar slur for Gentiles, not only because they kept dogs as pets but also because they were thought to act like them. Unlike their Jewish counterparts, who kept kosher as an act of faithfulness, Gentiles ate more or less indiscriminately—at least without regard for their religious identity. Similarly, the Book of Deuteronomy uses the word “dog” as a label for male prostitutes, again probably because Gentile culture did not observe the same prohibitions on sexual behavior that the Jewish faith taught (Deut. 23:19). 

So when Jesus said to the Syrophoenician woman, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs,” he was embodying a cultural divide as old as the patriarchs. He was reflecting a long tradition of faithful Jewish people who thought of their Gentile neighbors as ritually speaking no different from the stray, four-legged scavengers who roamed the streets of a city like Tyre. But that doesn’t mean Jesus was right. And the woman’s bold, clever, and self-effacing response helps us see it.

When Jesus compared the woman to a dog, he must have had in mind the kind of stray animal that threatened the religious purity of God’s people. For a faithful Jew, dogs were not a beloved pet but an unwelcomed obstacle to faithfulness. But that’s not how the woman understood it. She came from a different place—a different perspective. To her and to her people, a dog was a delight, a playmate, a companion, a best friend. To a Gentile like her, a dog belonged among the people of the house, not the garbage in the street. Why would anyone refuse to allow a sweet puppy dog to come into their home? Why would anyone not welcome a canine companion as a beloved member of their family?

With an insight that only an outsider like her could have, the Syrophoenician woman looked up at Jesus and said, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” And, with those words, she challenged not only Jesus’ denial of her request but the centuries of tradition that had taught that only the descendants of Jacob could be called children of Abraham. She might be different from Jesus and his disciples. She might not speak the same language, eat the same food, or tell the same bedtime stories to her children. But she was a child of God who belonged among God’s family because the salvation of the world, which begins with God’s love for the covenant people of Israel, can never be confined to the few. God’s love must always be given to everyone. All means all.

Jesus didn’t come to Tyre, a predominantly Gentile community, looking to heal a Syrophoenician woman’s daughter. He travelled there to get away from the religious authorities with whom he had been quarreling over issues of ritual purity. As Lora mentioned in her sermon last Sunday, they were upset that Jesus allowed his disciples to eat without washing their hands in the way that strictly religious Jews did. In response, Jesus taught them that it isn’t what goes into a person that makes them unclean but what comes out. In effect, Jesus cast aside the dietary and purification practices that helped distinguish the Jews from their Gentile neighbors, but even he may not have thought through how far the implications of that teaching would go. 

Now, confronted by a Gentile mother who effectively asked Jesus to cast aside the ethnic distinctions that defined the boundaries of salvation, Jesus was forced to make a choice. How far would God’s love reach? This woman showed Jesus that to expand the circle does not threaten God’s salvation; it only increases it. I believe that the gospel tradition records and preserves Jesus’ shocking words because it recognizes that what takes place is more than the healing of one Gentile daughter. This is an opportunity to put on the lips of a religious authority—even Jesus—the fullness of our instincts to define the family of God along ethnic lines in order that that tradition might be obliterated. In effect, because of Jesus’ exchange with the Gentile woman, her request challenges not only his presumptions about the family of God but ours as well.

No matter where she is found in relation to those at the master’s table, this gospel story shows us that our place is always standing beside the Syrophoenician woman. We cannot call ourselves Christians if we allow our religious traditions to exclude someone from the family of God, no matter how familiar and important those traditions seem to be. This woman recognizes something in Jesus that no one else has seen before, maybe not even Jesus himself. She is the one who reveals to us that, because of Jesus, no one belongs outside of God’s love.

Hard Words, Good News

 

August 25, 2024 – The 14th Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 16B

1 Kings 8:22-30, 41-43; Ephesians 6:10-20; John 6:56-69

© 2024 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon is available here. Video can be seen here.

Years ago, a colleague in a nearby parish asked if I would officiate at a wedding in his church because he was going to be out of town. When the couple had asked if they could get married on Memorial Day weekend, he initially told them yes, but, months later, after much of the wedding had been planned, my colleague learned that his family was going out of town, so he asked if I get him out of a jam. I wasn’t going anywhere, so I was happy to help.

When I meet with a couple for premarital counseling, our first session focuses mostly on getting to know each other, but we also spend a little time reading through the marriage liturgy as a way of exploring what the Episcopal Church teaches about marriage. In our denomination, one of the very few canonical requirements for marriage preparation is that the clergy must instruct the couple as to the nature and purpose of marriage. After that, the couple is required to sign what is called the Declaration of Intention, which essentially states that the purpose of marriage is mutual joy, help and comfort, and the gift and heritage of children and that marriage is unconditional, mutual, exclusive, faithful, and lifelong. 

As we started to wrap up our first session, I asked the couple to sign the Declaration of Intention, but the groom-to-be simply said, “I can’t sign that.” I was confused. It is literally a form that all couples are required to sign. There isn’t an opportunity for nuance or discussion. “Why not?” I asked. “Because I’m an atheist,” he replied. Because the form used religious language to describe the nature and purpose of marriage, he wouldn’t sign it. 

A three-fold wave of anxiety, frustration, and resentment washed over me. I had agreed to do the wedding as a favor for my friend, and I didn’t want to let him down, but I was angry at myself for not thinking to ask him whether the couple would be difficult. I told them I’d think about what to do and that we could talk about it next time. The next day, I asked my boss what he thought I should do, explaining the groom-to-be’s atheistic crisis of conscience. My boss said, “Tell him he sounds like an Episcopalian who doesn’t know it yet.” His words were a simultaneously insightful and damning assessment of both the situation at hand and the Episcopal Church as a whole. As a denomination that prioritizes inclusion over instruction, we are a church that likes identifying with Jesus as long as we don’t have to sign something. And today’s exchange between Jesus and his disciples suggests that we’re in good company.

For five weeks in a row, the lectionary has given us gospel lessons from John 6, the part of the gospel in which Jesus describes himself as the Bread of Life. Actually, because we celebrated the Transfiguration as a baptismal feast, we skipped one of those weeks, but we’ve been stuck in John 6 so long that I wouldn’t blame you for not remembering that. “I am the Bread of Life,” Jesus says, “…the bread that came down from heaven…The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh…Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them…The one who eats this bread will live forever.” 

It’s a lot. I won’t lie to you and tell you that I’m disappointed that this is the last week in the series. I find most of John 6 a bit tedious and repetitive. I suppose get a little impatient with longwinded preachers, even Jesus. But today we’ve finally come to the part of the discourse that involves Episcopalians—those followers of Jesus who don’t have a problem as long as Jesus is squaring off against his opponents but aren’t so sure they want to follow him if it means signing off on all of the strange things he says.

Jesus was a provocateur. One of his favorite pedagogical techniques is hyperbole—overstating a truth about God or God’s people that forces us to reexamine our assumptions about the faith. So far in the Bread of Life discourse, Jesus has managed to alienate curious newcomers and religious hardliners. He has dismissed would-be disciples as only interested in a free lunch, and he has challenged those leaders who refused to accept that the son of Mary and Joseph could also be the one who has come down from heaven. 

Those committed followers who had been with him for a while would have been familiar with these tactics. When the outsiders and opponents asked Jesus to clarify what he meant when he identified himself as the Bread of Life, instead of explaining the metaphor, he doubled down on the literal take that his flesh and his blood were real food and real drink. Surely that would be enough to chase away the half-hearted and the naysayers.   

But this time Jesus seems to have gone too far. As John writes, “When many of his disciples heard it, they said, ‘This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?’” My favorite part is the root of the word that is translated for us as “difficult.” It literally means “inflexible” or “unyielding.” Is there anything we Episcopalians like less than a doctrinally rigid perspective? Yet that’s exactly what is at issue here. John notes that the disciples were complaining about this among themselves, using the same word to describe their consternation as that of Jesus’ religious opponents. Apparently, when pressed far enough, we disciples aren’t all that different from them.

We are foolish to think that Jesus’ challenging teachings aren’t meant to challenge us. I don’t like the Bread of Life discourse, which is exactly why I need to read it and study it and ask God to help me receive it until I become the very thing this difficult text is trying to convey. We do not belong to God because we understand and agree with Jesus. We belong to God because we abide in Christ and Christ abides in us. His response to those disciples who cannot be conformed to this inflexible teaching is to ask them to imagine something beyond their imaginations: “What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?” Might that be enough to win us over, too?

The key to receiving what Jesus is offering us is not to try to bring the wisdom of God down to the earth where we can comprehend it but to ask God to transport us into heaven where our hearts and minds can be opened to the limitless possibilities of God. That’s the hardest part of all—acknowledging that that we don’t come to those insights on our own but only when God draws us to Godself. And we admit that truth every time we celebrate the Holy Eucharist.

When we share in Holy Communion, we ask God to nourish us with the spiritual food of Christ’s Body and Blood. This is far more than an act of remembrance. It is an act of renewing our participation in the divine life. We treat the consecrated bread and wine with reverence, not because they have magically become Christ’s flesh and blood, but because they are the physical and earthly means by which we partake in the spiritual and heavenly feeding of our souls. Because we have been united with Christ in the waters of Baptism, a part of us is present with him in heaven, and we nourish that part of ourselves with the real Body of Christ whenever we come to this table as the Body of Christ. In this holy food of bread and wine, therefore, Christ is present among us just as we are present with him in heaven, and, whenever we share this bread and this cup, we ask God to draw us more fully into that place—more completely into the divine life where the wisdom of God can fill us.

If that sounds like more than you signed on for, you’re not alone. No one said that being a Christian would be easy, least of all Jesus. At the end of the passage, Jesus asks Peter and the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” There is no antagonism in his question, only the longing and pastoral concern of a rabbi who wants to be sure that he hasn’t alienated his closest friends. 

Jesus isn’t trying to push us away. He wants us to know God’s love, and he knows that we need God’s help to find it. As the prayer book reminds us, Jesus stretched out his arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that all might come within his saving embrace. Back when I was meeting with that couple, I wish I had been wise enough to use words like that, but I am thankful for the ethos of gracious welcome that fills our tradition and that somehow enabled that groom to sign the Declaration even if he wasn’t sure he meant it.

It’s always easier to apply Jesus’ challenging teachings to someone else, but, if his love is meant for us as well, then his tough teachings are, too. If you’re having a hard time receiving the difficult truths that Jesus is offering you, then you’ve come to the right place. Holy Communion is not a reward for the sanctified but a prescription for sick souls. This is the place where God helps us become that which we seek to become. This is where the Body of Christ becomes the Body of Christ as we receive the Body of Christ. 

Imperfect Yet Loved

 

August 11, 2024 – The 12th Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 14B

2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33; Ephesians 4:25-5:2; John 6:35, 41-51

© 2024 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video can be seen here.

When David heard that Absalom was slain, he went up into his chamber over the gate and wept, and thus he said: O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!

Contemporary composer Eric Whitacre brought those words from 2 Samuel 18 to life in a haunting choral piece that conveys the grief, anger, guilt, and desperation of a father who had lost his son. To express the depths of David’s emotion, Whitacre builds up an 18-part chord, one voice at a time, gradually growing to an anguishing climax of pain and woe before trailing off in a whimper of resignation. (You can listen to all eighteen minutes of the piece here.) 

But neither Eric Whitacre nor the chopped-up lectionary text we heard this morning conveys the complexity of King David’s loss. David didn’t just lose a son. He defeated an enemy. The lectionary skips over a lot of the story, and we need at least a quick recap to begin to appreciate what David’s grief might teach us. 

A few weeks ago, Lora Walsh mentioned in her sermon that David only learned how to respect the Ark of the Covenant when he was forced to flee the city of Jerusalem and told the priests to carry the Ark back into the city where it belonged. “If I find favor in the eyes of the LORD,” David said to Zadok, “he will bring me back and let me see both it and the place where it remains. But if [God] says, ‘I take no pleasure in you,’ here I am, let him do to me what seems good to him” (2 Sam. 16:25-26). At the time, David and his loyal supporters were running away from Jerusalem because Absalom, one of David’s sons, had declared himself king, and his troops were marching toward the city.

But the seeds of Absalom’s treachery go back further than that. For years, he had sat at the gate of the city and listened to the people’s troubles. Whenever they would come to Jerusalem to seek a judgment or an intervention from the king, the king was always too busy to hear them, but Absalom listened with compassion. Every time a petitioner came and bowed before the prince, Absalom would lift them up and embrace them with a kiss. “If only I were the king,” he said to himself, “then I would give these people justice.” A handsome man with striking locks of hair and a servant’s heart, Absalom stole the hearts of the nation. 

But the rift between Absalom and his father didn’t start at the city gate either. Years earlier, Amnon, the heir to the throne and Absalom’s half-brother by another of David’s wives, had developed an obsessive crush on Tamar, Absalom’s sister. Everyone knew about Amnon’s obsession, and everyone knew that nothing could ever come of it, but that didn’t stop David’s oldest son from trying. 

One day, Amnon pretended to be ill and asked his father to send Tamar to come and minister to him. The Bible isn’t clear whether David knew why his son made this strange request, but it implies that the king should have known that he was sending Tamar into a dangerous situation. After asking his servants to leave the room, Amnon raped his half-sister. As soon as he had done this wicked thing, Amnon was filled with disgust for her, even more than the lust he had previously felt, and he sent her away, exposing her to a double-shame for his crime. When Absalom saw that his sister had exchanged her royal robes for the mournful garments of a desolate woman, he asked Tamar to confess what had happened. When King David learned of it, we are told, he was very angry, yet “he would not punish his son Amnon, because he loved him, for he was his firstborn.”

Absalom, on the other hand, had no intention of suppressing his anger. For two full years, he waited, speaking neither good nor bad to his half-brother. Then, when the time was right, he hosted a feast for all the king’s sons. Absalom told his servants to wait until Amnon’s heart was merry with wine and then, when the host gave the order, to strike him down. After avenging his sister’s rape with the blood of her rapist, Absalom fled. For three years, he lived in exile while King David mourned the death of his oldest son.

Eventually, David’s feelings shifted, and a spot for Absalom opened up in his heart. Joab, the king’s general, recognized the need to establish a clear line of succession, and he seized upon this emotional shift and orchestrated Absalom’s return to Jerusalem. But grief and guilt are funny things, and David did not know how to be reconciled with his son. Although he allowed Absalom to come back into the city and eventually even offered him a kiss of forgiveness, David was unable to face the embodiment of his own parental failures, and he kept this son at a distance. The king’s inability to confront his own shortcomings as a father quickly grew into a neglect of his royal duties, and, before long, Absalom was sitting at the city gate, wishing that he were the king.

“Deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom,” David said to his generals in the hearing of the troops, as he sent them out to risk their lives for his sake in battle. And, when the fighting was over and David heard that Absalom was slain, he went up into his chamber over the gate and wept. But that isn’t the end of this story. In its conclusion, which the lectionary leaves out, Joab confronts the king about his problematic grief:

You have today covered with shame the faces of all your servants, who have this day saved your life and the lives of your sons and your daughters and the lives of your wives and your concubines, because you love those who hate you and hate those who love you. For you have made it clear today that commanders and servants are nothing to you, for today I know that if Absalom were alive and all of us were dead today, then you would be pleased. Now therefore arise, go out and speak kindly to your servants, for I swear by the LORD, if you do not go, not a man will stay with you this night, and this will be worse for you than all the evil that has come upon you from your youth until now. (2 Samuel 19:5-7)

David’s side may have won the battle, and his grief may be easy for us to understand, but his inability to sort through the conflicting demands upon his heart almost cost him his kingship even after his generals had given him the victory. That imperfect leader and imperfect father is the man whom the Bible asks us to remember.

The words of sacred scripture do not preserve for us an unblemished hagiography of Israel’s greatest king because a portrayal of David as perfect would have no power to help us. Instead, the story of David’s life that we are given includes horrible moments of lust, deceit, selfishness, and injustice. And it also includes heart-rending moments of struggle, fear, failure, and grief. As such, it is the story of the life of a human being—sinful yet faithful, powerful yet impotent, full of arrogance yet desperate for affection.

David was only a boy when the prophet Samuel anointed him to be king. The youngest of eight sons, David was called in from the field, an afterthought of his own father, the least likely in his family to be chosen to lead God’s people. Later on, when his father sent him with supplies for his brothers to the battleline where Goliath and the Philistines threatened the army of Saul, his siblings scoffed at him and accused him of showing up just to gawk at the violence. Although it's not an excuse for David’s moral or political failures, his childhood, which Joab invoked in his reprimand of the king, helps us understand why David had such a hard time within his own family. He did not grow up learning how to be a leader, but God chose him and thrusted him into that role.

Too often preachers have lauded David as the man after God’s own heart without giving voice to the victims of his negligence and wickedness even though the pages of holy scripture refuse to cover them up. But we would compound their mistake if we excised the stories of David’s life from our lectionary or declined to preach on them when they come up. The Bible does not present David as a man to be imitated but as an example of a flawed human being whose flaws did not prevent God from using him for the good of God’s people.

None of us is perfect. We are all plagued by the same shortcomings as King David, which is to say we are all human. Like David, we are desperate to be loved, and, like him, when we are conscious of our belovedness, our lives become mirrors of God’s love. When we realize that God has not chosen us because we are perfect but simply because, in God’s goodness, God chooses to love us, we are set free from those forces that compel us to seek affection in sinful ways. In other words, when we recognize that God loves us unconditionally, that love begins to shape our lives into patterns of holiness.

You don’t have to be perfect in order to be God’s beloved child. And you don’t need to love perfectly in order to be loved by God. But God’s love will not allow you to stay put in your imperfections. That unconditional love will find you cand call you, along with all your shortcomings, into a new life of holiness. It’s okay if that transformation takes a lifetime. God didn’t give up on David, and God won’t give up on you.

Wrapped Up Within The Veil

 

August 4, 2024 – The Transfiguration (tr.)

Exodus 34:29-35; 2 Peter 1:13-21; Luke 9:28-36

© 2024 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video can be seen here.

Imagine going on a journey—perhaps a family vacation—and waking up every morning to check the weather in order to determine if today was the day you would leave the hotel and move on to the next stop. Imagine going to bed each night not sure how long you would be staying put, knowing that if you looked outside the next day and saw that the fog had lifted you would have only a few minutes to collect all of your belongings (and your children) and pack the car and hit the road. Imagine never knowing whether you would stay in a particular place for a night or a week or a month, always ready to head out but also aware that you had no control over when that would be.

As the people of God made their way through the wilderness from Egypt toward the land of Promise, they were led by a pillar of cloud—a sign of God’s presence. Wherever the cloud went, the people followed. About a year after their journey started, God told Moses to honor the divine presence among them by erecting a tabernacle, the tent of the covenant, the place where God could dwell among God’s people. According to God’s command, the ark of the covenant was placed inside the tabernacle. Inside the ark were the stone tablets on which the Ten Commandments had been inscribed, and on top of the ark was the mercy seat on which God’s presence rested. 

After the tabernacle had been built, the cloud came and descended upon it, and, from within the cloud, the glory of God—the weight of God’s holiness—came to fill the tent. As long as God’s glory remained in the tabernacle, the people of Israel remained camped in that place. But, in the morning, if the cloud should ascend from the tabernacle and God’s glory should depart from the place, God’s people would pack up and journey onward until the cloud of God’s presence came down to linger in another spot. Sometimes the cloud remained in place for only a day. Sometimes it stayed put for a week or a month or even a year.

Imagine being so dependent on God’s guidance—God’s presence—that an entire nation would sleep and rise, night and day, waiting for God to show them when it was time to leave. Imagine experiencing the presence of God in such a real way a way that it would govern your every move. It must feel strange to know something that powerful in such an immediate way. It must be indescribably liberating and unfathomably terrifying all at the same time.

That’s why the people of Israel asked Moses to put a veil on his face whenever he came out of the tent of divine presence. Even the reflection of God’s glory, shining on Moses’ face, was more than the people could bear. To be that close to God—to know that God’s infinite power was only a few steps away—was the source of both their greatest hope and their greatest fear. Surely, our reaction would be the same if we came that close to God. Don’t we prefer a God whose power is close at hand yet safely veiled behind a screen or a wall?

Maybe that’s why the disciples were so afraid when the cloud came and overshadowed them. In an instant, they knew that they were within the veil—behind the curtain that had always insulated them from God’s presence.

Notice in today’s gospel lesson that it wasn’t Jesus’ shining face or clothes that scared the disciples, nor did they show any fear when Moses and Elijah appeared with their rabbi. In fact, they were so weighed down with sleep that they almost missed it. I think that the disciples who accompanied Jesus up that mountain initially thought they were bystanders to a mystic vision. In those days, faithful people were known to pray so fervently that God revealed to them otherworldly sights. I think that Peter, James, and John, when they saw Jesus’ face and clothes begin to shine and then saw Moses and Elijah standing with him, thought that their master was praying so hard that even they were able to see his vision.

When the figures beside Jesus began to disappear, Peter did the only think he could think of to prolong the vision. He offered, somewhat clumsily, to build three tabernacles—three tents—in which these icons of the Jewish people could dwell, but Peter didn’t understand what he was saying. Yet, while he was still speaking, the cloud of divine presence descended upon the mountain top, and the disciples were filled with fear. This was not a mystic vision but an unfiltered encounter with the Almighty. The terrifying presence of God, into which only someone as great as Moses could dare to enter, surrounded the disciples. Surely, it would cost them their lives.

But it didn’t. From within the cloud, God’s voice declared, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” And, as quickly as it had appeared, all the evidence of God’s presence evaporated. The disciples were left alone with Jesus. The moment had passed. But something had happened that forever changed them—something so strange and awesome that they dared not speak of it in those days. Only later, when the glory of God that dwelt within Jesus, the Incarnate Son, had been revealed to the whole world in the empty tomb were they able to tell this story.

Imagine how wonderful and terrifying and beautiful and life-changing it would be to find yourself wrapped up within the very presence of Almighty God. Imagine the impression that moment would leave upon you. Imagine how clearly and attentively you would listen to that voice. Imagine how determinative and powerful such an encounter would be—clear enough to guide your every step for the rest of your life.

Yet we believe that’s precisely what happens to each one of us when we are baptized. When we are immersed in the waters of Baptism, we are wrapped up within the veil that ordinarily separates us from the glory of God. In Holy Baptism, we are forever united with Christ. We become one with him in his baptism, in his death, and in his resurrection. Through these baptismal waters, the glory of God that shone from within Jesus on that mountain top is restored within each one of us. And the Holy Spirit, which animates us, guides us, and perfects us, is implanted within us.

For the rest of our lives, therefore, we live within that veil. Because Christ has restored our human nature, we belong with God. We dwell with God. We live in God. And, when we remember our baptismal identity, when we renew our union with Christ in the Holy Eucharist, when we nourish the life of the Spirit that lives within us, that veil again is lifted, and we find ourselves where we belong—in the presence of God. 

Imagine the shape your life will take because you have been made one with God. Imagine the way that you will love others because God’s love has made you perfect. Imagine how clear your life’s direction has become now that you have encountered God’s presence within your very soul.

The Holiness of God

July 14, 2024 – The 8th Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 10B

2 Samuel 6:1-23; Ephesians 1:3-14; Mark 6:14-29

© 2024 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video can be seen here.

“Marion, don’t look at it. Shut your eyes, Marion. Don’t look at it, no matter what happens.” Indiana Jones speaks these words to Marion Ravenwood in the scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark when the Nazis open the Ark of the Covenant in an attempt to harness its awesome power. Stephen Spielberg’s take on what happens next was probably inspired, in part, by the passage we read from 2 Samuel this morning. 

Rival archeologist and Nazi stooge, René Belloq, dressed in Hollywood’s take on the garments of a high priest and holding a replica of Moses’ staff, utters incantations in Aramaic, and the top of the Ark is removed. When they look inside, initially they find only sand—the natural accumulation of millennia in the desert. But, before long, a swirling portal of light and cloud begins to fill the Ark. Ghostly spirits leap from the vessel and begin to fly around. 

Then, in an instant, the Nazi’s curiosity turns to horror. Divine power, represented by fiery beams, begins to emanate from the Ark, killing and consuming anyone it touches. In what was a cutting-edge special effect back in 1981, the heads of Belloq and the Nazi leaders standing with him are liquified by the fire and then explode. Finally, when God had finished consuming all who thought the Ark could be used for evil, its cover falls back into place, slamming shut the container of divine power, effectively resealing the presence of God within the sacred chest. 

In today’s Old Testament reading, we see the power of God spill out from the Ark and consume Uzzah, the priest, because he dared to underestimate its holiness, but this story is a little harder for us to understand, because Uzzah wasn’t a bad guy, and he didn’t wear a Nazi uniform.

In last week’s reading from 2 Samuel 5, we heard the leaders of the twelve tribes proclaim David as the king of all Israel. He established Jerusalem as his capital city and fortified it as the place from which he would reign. But something was missing. The Ark of the Covenant was the literal seat of God, the place where the Lord of Hosts came to dwell among God’s people. For two decades, the Ark had been kept in the home of Abinadab, only brought out a time or two during military campaigns. But David was the king after God’s own heart, and he wanted to bring God’s presence and power into his capital city. So he led a procession of priests, choristers, dancers, and officials down to house of Abinadab to retrieve the Ark and bring it into the City of David.

But something went wrong. Along the way, the cart being led by the oxen was shaken, and the Ark of the Covenant began to fall. Without thinking, Uzzah reached up his hand to steady the holy seat of God to prevent it from falling to the ground. In an instant, the Lord struck him dead. Although it is missing from our translation, the biblical text lets us know that what Uzzah did was an “irreverent act,” but I’m not sure that really helps us understand it. As a child, I remember hearing this story and being confused. How could the God who loves me punish with instant death a man whose instincts had led him to save the Ark from falling in disgrace?

Of course, it’s more complicated than that. The problem started earlier, when the sons of Abinadab loaded the Ark onto a shiny new cart, built solely for this purpose. But the Ark isn’t supposed to be transported on a cart. The Bible makes it clear that the Ark must be carried on poles because it is too holy to be touched by human hands. That might sound like a silly detail, but, when we’re talking about the actual throne on which the Lord, the God of Hosts, chooses to sit, it matters. 

When God struck Uzzah down, David became angry, and I wonder whether it was because, in that instant, David recognized that he should have known better. Quickly, his anger changed to fear as he realized that the carelessness with which he had approached this entire operation could be his downfall. “How can the Ark of the Lord come into my care?” David asked in a panic. So he left the Ark at a nearby house and cancelled the celebration and sent all the revelers home.

This same episode is recorded in 1 Chronicles, a book of the Bible that tells the history of God’s people from a priestly perspective. That account makes the issue clear. According to the Chronicler, after David had decided to try again, the king said to the priests, “Because you did not carry it the first time, the Lord our God burst out against us, because we did not give it proper care” (1 Chr. 15:13, emphasis added). The second time, in both accounts, the priests get it right, and they carry the Ark into the holy city, and David goes dancing before it.

The death of Uzzah is not the only part of this story that challenges our assumptions about God. As the king led the procession into Jerusalem, wearing a linen ephod and dancing with all his might, Michal, his first wife and the daughter of Saul, David’s predecessor, looked on with contempt. She despised him in her heart, the Bible tells us, and that comes as no surprise. Although, on the surface, it seems clear that the reason Michal holds David in scorn is his unseemly, anything-but-regal behavior, there’s more going on than the king’s embarrassing display. 

Michal had been scorned. Her father had given her away as a wife for David, and the scriptures tell us that she loved her husband. In the Bible, Michal is the only woman who is ever said to have loved a man, but her love was not reciprocated. [1] When David was being hunted by her father, Michal helped him escape, choosing love over loyalty to Saul. But, by the time David and Michal were reunited, the would-be king had already begun to collect a harem of wives and concubines. In a political negotiation with one of Saul’s sons, David asked that Michal be returned to him in order to legitimize his claim to the throne. So she took her place, the first of David’s wives now reduced to a status she shared with more women than she could count. 

Of course Michal was angry—angry at how David and her father had treated her, angry at the way that nothing had changed, angry that her husband, the king, now danced into town, exposing himself to all the women and girls who looked on. But the Bible doesn’t make David out to be the villain we think he is, at least not in this passage. Eventually, there will be consequences for his adulterous behavior, but this story isn’t about our sense of justice. It’s about the importance of losing ourselves in the awesome presence of God.

David wasn’t dancing for the women and girls who looked on, nor was he dancing for Michal. He was dancing for God—shamelessly, recklessly, passionately consumed with zeal for the Lord. Regardless of the unspoken reasons for Michal’s contempt, the criticism she expressed was that of a king who embarrassed himself by dancing the way a common, ordinary, vulgar fellow might dance. But, as David’s reply makes clear, God didn’t choose him to be king because he was a dignified politician but because ordinary people were able to see in him a man who belonged to God.

I don’t like the fact that God killed Uzzah because he dared to touch the untouchable Ark of God. And I don’t like the fact that Michal is portrayed in the wrong even though her contempt for David is not only understandable but justified. But, standing in the awesome presence of God, it doesn’t matter what I want or what I think or what I wish were true. The holiness of God must consume every aspect of our lives. It shapes us, not the other way around. Yes, our God is loving and merciful, but it’s not up to us to decide how and when that love and mercy are manifest. And thanks be to God for that! Can you imagine how quickly we’d find a way to substitute our self-seeking rationalizations for the eternal goodness of God?

Although much has changed since the Old Testament was written, human nature hasn’t changed at all. I am confident that the ancient Israelites who told and retold this story were as sensitive as we are to the unfairness of Uzzah’s death and the heartache that Michal felt. They didn’t like them any more than we do. But they told this story for the same reason we read it today—because we need to be reminded how easy it is to forget that God’s holiness is the source of our moral life. It always takes precedence. It must be the fount of our aspirations, the all-consuming compass that guides our every move. 

When we forget that and begin to think that God’s power is something we can use to suit our needs and conform to our desires, we set ourselves up for the kind of moral catastrophe that exceeds even a Hollywood script. As history has shown, the consequences of wrapping our sinful ambitions within a religious veneer are disastrous in any generation. The biblical story of the Ark of the Covenant teaches us to recognize that regardless of the uniform its bearers are wearing.

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1. Gafney, Wilda C. Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to the Women of the Torah and the Throne. Westminster John Knox Press; Louisville: 2017, 129.