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.