What Kind Of Messiah Is Jesus?

 

September 12, 2021 – The 16th Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 19B

Isaiah 50:4-9a; James 3:1-12; Mark 8:27-38

© 2021 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon is available here. Video of the service can be seen here with the sermon beginning around 18:45.

“Who do you say that I am?” Jesus asks. Has that question ever been more important for the church to answer? Who do you say that I am? Not who am I? Not what do the scriptures say about me? But you—my followers, my disciples—who do you say that I am?

Some of us say that Jesus is the one who cares about the poor and the vulnerable. Some of us say that he is the one who welcomes outcasts and sinners back into God’s fold. Some of us say that he is the one who protects the unborn. And some of us say that he is the one who protects the women whose bodies have become a political battleground. Some of us say that Jesus is the one who promotes freedom and liberty and self-determination. And some of us say that he is the one who demands sacrifice and surrender and selflessness. Some of us say that Jesus is the one who came to make his followers rich beyond measure. And some of us say that he came to teach them to embrace a life of destitute poverty. 

Who among us gets to decide who Jesus really is? We all claim to be Christians. We claim to be his followers, his disciples. In all our various churches, we read the same Bible and pray to the same God. But we talk about Jesus in radically different ways. We make him the centerpiece of competing platforms and conflicting lifestyles. As Christians, all of us call Jesus, “Savior, Lord, Christ, Messiah,” but do any of us remember what any of that means?

By the time we get to Mark 8, we have been asking the question, “Who is Jesus really?” for a long time. The gospel writer lets us know in the very first verse of his account that this is the “good news of Jesus the Christ,” but, except for that editorial introduction, we haven’t gotten a clear answer yet. The demons in chapter 1 recognized Jesus, but he silenced them before they had a chance to tell anyone about “the holy one of God.” After Jesus stilled the storm in chapter 4, the disciples wondered aloud, “Who is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” but still no answer was given. In chapter 6, people from his hometown expressed their confusion and derision that this carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon, a man whom they knew well, could teach with such unfamiliar authority and power. 

Every miracle, every teaching, every encounter up to this point had been a way to make the case for Jesus’ real identity, and, just when things were starting to become clear, Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And they replied, Moses or Elijah or one of the prophets. But then he turned the question back onto them and asked, “Who do you say that I am?” And Peter replied, “You are the Messiah, the Christ.” It’s the answer we’ve been waiting for. It’s the first time since the first verse of Mark that we’ve heard that word, Christ. It’s the first time anyone has acknowledged fully who Jesus really is, but it turns out, as our own continued disagreement over Jesus’ identity reveals, calling Jesus the Messiah is only half of the job.

The other half is deciding what Messiah means and what it means for us to give Jesus that title. We more often use the Greek version, Christ, of that Semitic word, Messiah, but they mean the same thing—anointed. To call Jesus the Messiah or Christ is to call him the anointed one of God—the one chosen and equipped by God to do whatever it is that God has entrusted him to do. To someone like Peter, it seems, the label “Messiah” evoked a connection with David, the great king, who was also described as God’s anointed. There are several first-century Jewish texts that let us know that many of Jesus’ contemporaries expected God to send a messiah to come and defeat the Romans and claim the throne of the Davidic king. When Peter called Jesus the Messiah, he was articulating his belief that Jesus was the one to come and restore the kingdom to God’s people, but, in the exchange that followed, we discover that Peter didn’t really understand what that meant.

As soon as Peter identified Jesus as the Messiah, Jesus sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone about him. Why? Perhaps we find the answer in how quickly Jesus substituted for the label Peter had given him a less familiar, less provocative, though no less consequential label, “Son of Man.” In first-century Judaism, the Son of Man was not understood as the one would come and claim the earthly throne but the one who would come at the end of time and vindicate God’s people once and for all from the earthly powers who oppressed them. Peter, it seems, wanted Jesus to reign in power here and now, but Jesus had been anointed by God to usher in the that reign which will not be complete until the last days.

And how do we know this? Because of the way Jesus described his God-appointed mission: “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” That didn’t sound like the messianic figure Peter and his contemporaries were hoping for, and it’s not the Messiah or Christ that we hear most Christians talking about today. Jesus suffered and died and was raised from the dead not so that he and his followers could seize earthly power and reign in glory here and now. He gave himself up to death and God raised him from the dead so that those who follow him through the path of sacrifice, suffering, and death might be raised with him into the new life of God’s perfect reign. Christians agree that Jesus has opened for us the way that leads to eternal life, but we forget that cannot enter that life unless we suffer and die for his sake.

When Peter heard Jesus describe his own death, he took Jesus aside and rebuked him, as if the role of master and disciple had been swapped. All too often, we Christians do the very same thing. We rebuke Jesus every time we tell him, “No, Lord, not your way but my way.” When he tells us that we must deny ourselves, that we must take up our cross, that we must lose our life in order to save it, we pull him aside and say, “Not today, Jesus. I don’t want to give up my life. I don’t want to deny myself—my wants, my needs, my freedom, my family, my body. I don’t want to carry that cross. It’s heavy and hard and frightening.” And to that Jesus says, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

To accept the beam of the cross upon our own shoulders and walk the heavy-laden path of self-denial and suffering is to accept for ourselves the same disgrace that was heaped upon Jesus. To be his follower costs us dearly in this life. There is no way to walk the path of Christ—of God’s anointed—and escape the shame of rejection and denial. And yet, when we avoid that path in this life, when we are ashamed of Jesus and his words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of us when he appears in glory.

“Who do you say that I am?” Jesus asks us. In the end, of course, Peter was right. Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ. But, if he is our Messiah, we must accept for ourselves the pattern that he has given to us. We must pray that the Holy Spirit will give us strength not to win the battles ahead of us but to lose them with humility and dignity. We must ask God to put to death within us that tendency to seek our own needs instead of others’. When it comes to claiming Jesus for our side and using him as the justification for our agenda, it is those who do so who fail most profoundly to grasp the nature of Jesus’ messiahship. We must instead ask God to grant us the wisdom of setting our minds on divine things in order that we might lose our lives for Jesus’ sake and for the sake of the gospel.  

Our Inevitable Hypocrisy, God's Unfailing Love

 

August 29, 2021 – The 14th Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 17B

Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9; James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

© 2021 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video of the service can be seen here with the sermon beginning around 17:30.

We face an interpretive challenge this morning as we read about Jesus’ encounter with the Pharisees and scribes in Mark 7. It’s easy for us to know whose side we’re supposed to be on, and that leads us to assume the worst of Jesus’ opponents and to think of them only as a Christianized caricature of who they really were. But the problem with that is two-fold. Not only do we fail to recognize the full humanity and faithfulness of the Pharisees, but we also fail to appreciate the power of Jesus’ teaching because it’s just too easy to write off what he says as intended for someone else—hypocrites of biblical proportions—and not for us. 

So today I’d like you to forget just about everything you know about the Pharisees and give them a second chance. You likely have heard preachers and Sunday school teachers explain that the Pharisees were among the most faithful, observant Jews of their day. But you may not have heard that they prayed and fasted and tithed not only for themselves but on behalf of their less-fastidious compatriots. They considered it part of their religious duty to go the extra mile and do the extra thing in order to give everyone—even the relatively unreligious in their community—a good start with God. In a very real way, the Pharisees were not the exclusive hardliners of their day but the generous progressives.

The Pharisaic movement in Judaism began as a reaction to the concentration of power among the religious elites. During the Babylonian exile, after Solomon’s temple had been destroyed and God’s people were removed from their land, worship needed to take on a different shape. There was no temple in which sacrifices could be offered, so faithful Jews began gathering on the sabbath wherever they could to read the holy scriptures, to celebrate the domestic traditions of their people like circumcision and keeping kosher, and to lift up their prayers and praises and laments. In order to maintain the traditions that defined them as a people, they had to improvise and find new ways of doing ancient things so that, even without the priests to help them, they could be a holy people in God’s sight.

After the exile was over and the people were allowed to return to their homeland, a controversy arose. Some wanted to go back to the old ways and rebuild the temple and forget everything that had happened during the exile, but others recognized that Judaism itself had changed and that what it meant to be faithful to God had changed. So, when the priests became the central authority in Jerusalem and insisted that everything revert to its pre-exilic pattern, a group of separatists, known as the Pharisees, refused to go along with their plan. Their faith had grown during the hardship of exile. Their newfound relationship with God was real, and they believed that all people—not just the priests—were called to a life of peculiar holiness.

When Jesus preached the nearness of God’s salvation in the synagogues and on the hillsides and along the shore, the Pharisees must have thought that they had found an ally. His populist approach would have reminded them of their own priorities—that a relationship with God was secured not primarily through temple worship but through individual holiness. But, when they saw him eating with tax collectors and sinners and touching unclean lepers and teaching disciples that they could pluck grain on the sabbath or eat with unwashed hands, they knew that they had a problem on their hands. They had spent centuries interpreting the Jewish customs in expansive ways that gave everyone access to a life of holiness, but, instead of furthering their work, this radical rabbi seemed to be throwing it all away.

“Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” they asked Jesus. When we think of the Pharisees as narrow-minded religious conservatives, we hear that question as if they looked down on those who weren’t holy enough. But there’s another, deeper issue at stake. In the Law of Moses, the only regulations about handwashing apply to priests in the temple. There are no rules about ordinary people washing hands or cups or pots or kettles. But, when they were without a temple, the God’s people had looked for ways that they could maintain their religious identity, and ceremonial handwashing became a universal practice—a simple pietistic way to remember that, as the people of God, all Jews were called to a life of holiness. “What’s wrong with that?” the Pharisees asked Jesus. “What’s wrong with the traditions that have helped our people remember that they belong to God?”

The problem, Jesus says, isn’t the handwashing but the distorted motivation behind it. “You hypocrites!” Jesus calls them. Quoting Isaiah, he says, “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.” The issue isn’t the Pharisees’ desire to make their religion accessible to everyone. It’s their tendency to confuse their methods for the thing they were intended to instill. In their attempt to democratize faithfulness, by defining in their own terms what it means to belong to God and insisting that others accept that vision, their progressivism calcified into its own version of reactionary exclusivism. Instead of making holiness available to everyone, they ended up denying that holiness to anyone who didn’t agree with them. When they could no longer tell the difference between their traditions and God’s commandments, the very ones who stood for allowing everyone in ironically became the ones who pushed others out.

Sound familiar? No matter how idyllic they are in the beginning, our attempts to mandate inclusion always result in the unintended consequences of judgment, condemnation, and hypocrisy. As Episcopalians, we are celebrated for our tolerance of everyone except those we perceive as intolerant. What does that say about our faithfulness? The way of Jesus will always expose the hypocrisy of our judgments because the way of Jesus is always more open and inclusive than we are. That way is built not on the holiness of the holiest among us but upon God’s own sacrifice and death for the sake of the world. Jesus Christ did not die for those whose lives reflect the perfect love of God but for sinners like you and me, whose best attempt is always doomed to fail. Our hope, therefore, is not that we would ever create a church or a religion or a community or a government that embodies the radical love and inclusion of God but that we would allow our vain belief that we could ever build it to die on the cross with Christ.

In times like this, when church and society are being pulled apart by the evil forces that deceive us and make us assume the worst in other people and the best in ourselves, our hope is found in Jesus. He helps us see our own hypocrisy for what it really is. And he helps us know that God’s love for us is not a reflection of our best efforts or even our best intentions but of God’s great and abiding love for the whole world. We can build no kingdom that supplants the reign of God, but thanks be to God that we don’t have to. We already belong to the one whose death and resurrection open the gates wide enough for all to walk in.

Fed By Christ

 

August 15, 2021 – The 12th Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 15B

Proverbs 9:1-6; Ephesians 5:15-20; John 6:51-58

© 2021 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video of the service can be seen here with the sermon beginning around 12:30.

What do you do well on an empty stomach? I am fairly productive first thing in the morning, when there’s nothing in my tank except a few cups of black coffee, but, by the early afternoon, if I have not eaten anything, things begin to go sideways. I get distracted. I get irritable. I get “hangry”—that particular kind of angry that accompanies a lack of food. I can’t say that I am at my best when my stomach is full, but, when it’s empty, I have my limits. Just ask my family or my colleagues.

As the academic year begins, our local schools are providing free breakfast and free lunch for all students through the end of the year. That’s good news for everyone. During the pandemic, our schools have looked for ways to feed hungry children, whose families normally depend on free or reduced meals at school for their children’s nourishment, but it hasn’t been easy with many children learning from home. No matter where you are, it’s hard to learn when your stomach is growling. It’s hard to stay focused when the pain of not eating demands your attention. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs puts physiological things like food, water, clothing, and shelter at the very bottom—the first need that must be met if a person is going to grow and develop—and an empty stomach leaves someone a long way from self-actualization—from being able to want to become the person you have been created to be. Just ask a kindergarten teacher.

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus’ teaching on the Bread of Life takes a bit of a regression—from lofty metaphor to basic reality, from philosophical aspiration to physiological necessity. What had been a provocative image for spiritual salvation now becomes an even more provocative image for physical sustenance. At the beginning of this teaching, Jesus likened the Bread of Life to manna in the wilderness, but now Jesus wants to compare it with his flesh—the literal “meat” of his body—in ways that would eventually become fuel for the cannibalistic accusations that were levied against the early Christians. But for us it offers the hope that in Christ God is concerned not only with our spiritual welfare but also with the most basic needs of humanity—with the hunger that so often seems to get in the way of our spiritual growth.

In Jesus’ time, manna was often used as an image for divine revelation. Wisdom and truth from above were likened to the flaky white substance that God gave the ancient Israelites on their journey through the wilderness. We, too, describe unexpected gifts as “manna from heaven,” acknowledging that something good has come to us from an unexpected source. When Jesus described himself and his teachings as “the bread that came down from heaven,” the religious authorities grumbled against him because they saw nothing otherworldly about him. “We know Jesus,” they scoffed. “We know his parents and his siblings. He didn’t come from heaven. He came from Nazareth!” Jesus may have grown up in Galilee, but we know that the wisdom and truth he brought to the earth had indeed come from above.

We have the advantage of two thousand years of theological interpretation and instruction. Back then, the religious authorities were struggling to see beyond the reality they knew. Jesus had offered the crowd a challenging message: that he was the one who had come to sustain God’s people not only for a wilderness journey but for all time. He was the one who could feed them in a way that could give them eternal life. But it’s hard to wrap your mind around that lofty truth when the spiritual equivalent of your stomach is grumbling. It’s hard to believe that Jesus can give us spiritual fulfillment when our faith in God is in its infancy. We need basic nourishment first.

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven,” Jesus said. “Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” If you thought spiritual bread was hard to digest, just wait until you try to tackle the body and blood of Jesus. Like a precipitating agent that causes a substance to fall out of solution in a chemical reaction, Jesus’ identification of the bread from heaven with his body pushes those who hear this message in opposite directions. 

Those who take issue with his claims about having a heavenly origin find this latest assertion impossible to swallow. No one eats human flesh. We don’t need a divine teacher to tell us that. And, according to Jewish law, blood can never be consumed because, as the life of a creature, it belongs to God. When Jesus begins to speak of his flesh and blood as if they are food for God’s people, the religious authorities need no more reason to write him off. That is sacrilegious nonsense.

But, to those who are hungry for the salvation that Jesus offers, who are looking to him to meet their most basic needs, this invitation to feast on his flesh and blood becomes not a gruesome, unholy practice but a way to meet God through the most basic of human pursuits. In Christ, we find God in something as ordinary and essential as bread. In him, we discover that God wants to feed us first in order that that nourishment might grow into something much more substantial.

Traditionally, we approach life as if there is a tension between the spiritual world and the physical world—between the soul and the body. But in Christ we discover that they are inseparable. By giving us his body, his flesh, Jesus invites us to receive him not through some rigorous spiritual practice but in something we can touch and smell and taste and chew and swallow. In case we missed it—in case we think that this is just another strange philosophical metaphor—halfway through this gospel lesson Jesus stops using the generic word for eating (φάγω) and replaces it with the word that means munching, gnawing, or chewing (τρώγω). When we feast on the flesh of Jesus, therefore, we do so not only in our hearts and minds but with our mouths and stomachs, too.

The Holy Eucharist, which we gather to celebrate today, is a strange and beautiful thing. We eat and drink the body and blood of Jesus not only to remember his death and resurrection but to partake in his life-giving body and blood. This is how we make our Communion with Almighty God—not by elevating our minds to the heavenly places but by receiving the corporeal Christ here in our hands and mouths and stomachs. How freeing it is to know that we encounter God not because we have molded our spiritual selves into the right shape but because God has taken on our flesh and given that flesh up for our sake! We meet God not only when our minds are perfectly attuned to spiritual realities but even when our stomachs are rumbling and the distractions of our physical needs press in upon our prayers. How is that possible? Because Jesus gave us not only wisdom and truth, which feed our spirits, but his flesh and blood, which nourish our whole selves.

This means that Holy Communion is not only a foretaste of the banquet that awaits us but also sustenance for the journey we are on in this world. It is how we carry the power of God with us into the world where God’s presence can sometimes be hard to discern. As John Chrysostom said of the Eucharist, “Christ has given to those who desire Him not only to see Him, but even to touch, and eat Him, and fix their teeth in His flesh, and to embrace Him, and satisfy all their love. Let us then return from that table like lions breathing fire, having become terrible to the devil; thinking on our Head [meaning Jesus], and on the love which He has shown for us.” [1] We return from that table and go out into the world like lions breathing fire not because we have ascended to the heights of spiritual contemplation but because Jesus Christ has descended to us and filled us with real food, his own flesh and blood, the Bread of Life. 

1.   Chrysostom, John. “Homily 46 on the Gospel of John.” https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/240146.htm. Accessed 13 August 2021.

From the Mountaintop into the Valley

 

August 8, 2021 – The Transfiguration

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

© 2021 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon is available here. Video of the service can be seen here with the sermon beginning around 18:05.

When was the last time you experienced a moment so wonderful, so beautiful, so joyful that you wanted it to last forever? The vacation you didn’t want to end. The honeymoon you wished would stretch on another week, another month. The victory celebration that you wanted to linger in forever. We all know what awaits us on the other side of those moments. The work that must be done. The ups and downs of marriage that inevitably come. The season after the championship, when we have to start the process all over again. But isn’t that where the real, deep, abiding joy is to be found—not by staying up on the mountain top but by coming back down into the ordinary, real world and bringing with us the memory of that moment as we reengage the challenges and struggles that await us?

In today’s gospel lesson, our friend and role model Peter found himself in the midst of one of those mountain-top experiences, and, as it began to fade, he allowed his desire to stay forever in that moment get the best of him. “Master,” he said to Jesus, “it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah,” not knowing what he said. He was groggy, weighed down with sleep, and, like he did so many other times, he opened his mouth before he really thought about what he would say. But sometimes those unguarded moments are the times when our deepest desires come out. 

Peter didn’t want to leave. Even if he didn’t understand what was happening, he knew it was good, and he didn’t want it to go away. He wanted to preserve this moment for ever. So, when he saw the great icons of the faith, Moses and Elijah, begin to fade away, he interrupted awkwardly and interjected himself where he didn’t belong. “Let us build three dwellings”—literally, three booths—“one for each of you, so that you—so that we—can all stay here forever.” In that naïve request, we see that Peter was motivated not only by a desire to remain on that mountain top but also by his desire to celebrate that moment for what it really was—the coming together of Law and Prophet and Christ, a complete manifestation of God’s great work of salvation in the lives of God’s people.

Although the story of Jesus’ Transfiguration is a central episode in Christian scripture, the telling of that moment is deeply rooted in the Jewish tradition of Sukkot, or the Feast of Booths. It has become a less important observance in contemporary Judaism, but in Jesus’ time, the Feast of Booths was as important as any other religious observance. The first-century Jewish historian Josephus called it the “most important and holy feast” in the Jewish year. Back then, it was simply referred to as “the holiday,” in much the same way as the days that connect Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are now called collectively the “high holidays.” 

When Peter suggests that they should build booths for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, a first-century faithful observer would automatically be taken to that annual festival, when people would come to Jerusalem from all over and set up their own temporary shelters or booths in order to remember and reenact their ancestors’ sojourn in the wilderness. That practice was a way to celebrate how God had led God’s people from slavery in Egypt toward freedom in the land of promise. 

Understandably, Peter thinks that this is the moment worth celebrating, that this glorious display of God’s saving work is the thing that should be bottled up, commoditized, liturgized, and dispensed back to God’s people. But, just like that time in the wilderness so many centuries earlier, this was a temporary moment on a journey toward something else. Remembering and celebrating moments like that can be helpful, as we celebrate this moment again today, but, when we get stuck in them and begin to mistake the transition for the destination, we lose sight of the salvation God is leading us to.

We don’t need help magnifying the mountain-top experiences of our lives. We need help finding hope in the midst of life’s valleys, and that’s what this episode is really about. Notice that Luke identifies for us what Jesus, Moses, and Elijah had been talking about. “They appeared in glory and were speaking of [Jesus’] departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.” Literally, the text tells us that they were speaking of Jesus’ “exodus.” The use of that word is no accident. That exodus, that departure, that salvation-giving journey would be found not on the mount of Transfiguration but in the depths of betrayal, suffering, rejection, and death that awaited Jesus in the holy city.

In case we didn’t pick up on the exodus allusion, Luke introduces this story with an explicit reference to Jesus’ death. The lectionary version of this gospel lesson omits that connection by abbreviating the first verse in order to make sure we don’t hear a reference to a part of the story that we may not have read recently, but I think it’s impossible to appreciate the Transfiguration without it. Listen to the unabridged version of the first verse of this passage (Luke 9:28): “Now about eight days after these sayings, Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray.” Luke wants us to know that, as we climb up that mountain with Jesus and the disciples, the words that had been spoken eight days earlier were still ringing in their ears. And what were those words? After Peter, for the very first time, had identified Jesus as the Christ, Jesus had said to the disciples, “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised,” and “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” 

That is the life-giving, liberating, salvation-granting exodus that awaits Jesus and the disciples in Jerusalem. No wonder Peter wants to stay on that mountain. We all want to stay on that mountain. It is easier to hang on to the joy we know rather than risk losing it amidst the struggle and suffering that await us, but God’s saving work in our lives is not complete on the mountain top. It is not finished in those transient moments of glory and joy that we experience up there among the clouds. Instead, it is wrought in the hard moments of pain and struggle that we encounter back down on level ground—in those moments into which we bring new confidence because of what we have seen on that mountain top. 

Remember that life’s struggles have been changed because of the one who was glorified on that mountain and yet descended again back into the brokenness of the world. God and God’s salvation are not waiting for us, hidden away on a distant peak. That salvation, which was on display in the transfiguration of Christ, has already come down into the muck and mire that we experience in order that we might be lifted from them. The glorification of Jesus Christ would be an unattainable goal if it were not for the cross and the tomb. That shining hope that he brought to the world would always be beyond our grasp if it had remained up on that mountain. Thanks be to God that it didn’t! Jesus didn’t stay up there so that we could admire him from afar. He came back down to where we are. Because of what happened in Jerusalem, his exodus becomes our exodus. His struggles redeem our struggles. Our hope is found not in the fleeting moments of transcendent glory we experience in the good times but in the one whose transcendence and glory come down and meet us in the ordinary, difficult places of life. Our hope is in the glorious  one who suffered and died for our sake, our savior Jesus Christ. 

Our Life's Work

 

What is your life's work? And is that the same thing as the way you have made a living?

This week, a fire broke out at Princeton Theological Seminary, and a friend and colleague posted on Facebook that we should give thanks that no one was hurt but also grieve how much must have been lost. "A whole lifetime is in many of our offices," she wrote. She's right. I can't imagine what I would do if I lost even my computer (yes, I back up) not to mention my office.

What is your life's work? Do you get paid to do it? Do you get paid doing something else so that you can afford to do the thing you really love to do? Whether we get paid or not, our life's work is the thing that consumes us. It is the occupation that fills our days and sometimes our nights. Sometimes it empties them, too. And it is easy and natural for us to associate our work with our living, but I'm not sure that's always the case.

In last Sunday's gospel lesson (John 6:24-35), we hear a lot about what work is and what work is not. Jesus tells the crowd that seeks him, "Don't work for the food that perishes but for the food that endures to eternal life." The crowd, however, isn't spiritually minded. They're after him not in search of ethereal enlightenment but physical nourishment. They don't understand what he means. "[If God is the one who will give us that eternal food], what must we do to perform the works of God in order to attain it?" Literally, they ask, "What must we do to work the works of God?" In other words, they're still thinking about the kind of work that gets you paid and fed. But Jesus has something else in mind.

"This is the work of God," he tells them, "that you believe in the one God has sent." And all at once their preconceptions begin to fall apart in their minds. Believe? Work? What does that mean?

My colleague Pam Morgan, in her sermon on Sunday, drew us back to the Garden of Eden--back to the paradise where Adam and Eve were given the fruit of every tree and plant in the garden to eat except for one. When they disobeyed God and ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, however, their eyes were opened, and, when God found out, he drove them out of the garden and told them that, for the rest of their days, they would have to work for their food. Pam reminded us that the ground would only yield to the human produce after he toiled over it. Work and bread, she said, were forever linked.

The most fundamental pursuit in our lives is to seek nourishment. We toil and labor in order that we might pay the bills and eat our daily bread. It's easy, therefore, for us to assume that work also defines our relationship with our creator--that just the ground is cursed by God in order that we might have to work in order to reap its harvest, we, too, must be cursed in order that we would have to work our way back into God's graces--back into the garden of paradise. But that's not true. It's never been true.

Jesus came to show God's people--to show us--that God's eternal provision isn't the kind of bread we have to work for. On the contrary, in order to receive it--to participate in it--all we are asked is to believe in it. "What must we do to work the works of God?" the people ask. "This is the work of God," Jesus says, "that you believe in the one God has sent."

What is your life's work? What is your deepest calling? Jesus knows that your stomach needs to be filled, too. He made sure to provide bread for the 5,000. But that was only a sign--a sign that pointed to something much bigger and much more important. No matter how it is that we work for the bread that perishes--that gets crusty, stale, and moldy--we are beckoned to make our principal occupation--our life's true work--the work of believing in the one whom God has sent, our savior Jesus Christ. Believing in Jesus won't fill your belly. Most of us still have earthly work to do in order to pay the bills and put food on the table. But when it comes to our place at God's eternal table--when it comes to belonging to God for all time--that work has been done for us. All we are asked to do is believe.

Sharing Hope

 

July 18, 2021 – The 8^th Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 11B

Jeremiah 23:1-6; Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

 © 2021 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video of the entire service can be seen here with the sermon beginning around 22:35.

Three weeks ago, I walked down Dickson Street with a group from St. Paul’s, and I listened as the crowd cheered wildly and joyfully at the sight of our church’s banner. The whole event was a joyful, hopeful celebration, but I felt something special when thousands of people, who have no real connection with our church, lifted their voices in shouts of appreciation because, as I interpret their enthusiasm, they were delighted to see a group of Christians walking in the Pride parade. Although I know that St. Paul’s has long been a symbol of love and acceptance in our community, until that moment, I did not appreciate what it means to be a part of a church that is willing to show up and stand up for Pride.

Ever since then, I have been wondering what comes next. Over the years, we have done a lot of good in this community. When the crowd sees us walking down Dickson, they aren’t cheering simply because we showed up this year but because of all that we have come to represent in this town. But, when the parade is over, we roll up our banner and pack up our feather boas and put away our rainbow hats and look forward to next year, when the crowd will cheer us on again. One or two from the crowd may come through those doors because they are bold enough to come and look for something more, but many others are content to say to themselves what each of us has heard many times before: “I don’t go to church, but, if I ever did, I would go to St. Paul’s.” Today’s readings from Jeremiah and Mark make me wonder whether it’s time for us to do something more.

Back then, they probably weren’t wearing as much face paint, but the crowds we read about in Mark 6 were no less enthusiastic. The disciples had returned from the journey on which Jesus had sent them out two by two. They had taught and healed and cast out demons in Jesus’ name, and they were wildly successful. Jesus and his disciples had become so famous that they couldn’t even get a few minutes by themselves to eat. So Jesus bid his disciples to come away to a deserted place by themselves. They got into a boat and sailed to a desolate spot on the shore, but the crowd saw where they were headed, and they ran along the shore to meet them. As the eager crowd passed through one village after another, more and more people left their homes and hurried to meet them. By the time Jesus and the disciples came ashore, there were more than 5,000 people waiting for them.

By the end of the gospel reading, Jesus and the disciples left that place in the boat and sailed to the other side of the sea, but, again, a great crowd met them there. So eager were the people to be healed by Jesus that they pressed in on him as close as they could. They knew that if they could only touch the fringe of his cloak everything would be alright—that all that was amiss within them would be healed. Even though he must have been exhausted, Jesus, we are told, had compassion on them. When he looked out at the crowd, he saw beloved children of God who were like sheep without a shepherd.

There are a few times in the Bible when God’s people are described as sheep without a shepherd. When Moses asked the Lord to raise up a successor who would lead Israel into the land of Canaan, he begged God not to leave God’s sheep without a shepherd (Numbers 27:17). When Micaiah the prophet foretold the death of the wicked king Ahab, he said that he could see the soldiers of Israel scattered on the mountains like sheep that have no shepherd (1 Kings 22:17). When Zechariah the prophet described the worthlessness of the spiritual leaders of his day, he lamented how the people of Judah suffered for lack of a shepherd (Zechariah 10:2). But perhaps worst of all was the condemnation uttered by the prophet Jeremiah, which we heard in our first reading. “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says the Lord.” In this instance, the leaders of God’s people had not only failed to keep track of their vulnerable sheep, but, like wolves in sheep’s clothing, they had actually scattered the flock, driving them away.

I wonder how often someone who was desperate for healing tried to approach God only to be driven away by worthless shepherds. I wonder how often in the name of religion someone with authority has refused to acknowledge the needs of the vulnerable who come to them for help. I wonder how often we, in the name of Jesus, have taken a stand with oppression not because we believe that it’s right but because we are afraid of admitting that we might have been wrong all this time. In every generation, there are so-called religious leaders who, instead of shepherding God’s people to spiritual safety, scatter them and chase them away, coming between them and God.

The truth is that we’re all desperate for healing. We’re all standing in our own crowd, of our own particular identity, hoping that we will be found, that our needs can be met, that our brokenness can be made whole. Some of us, like me, have the benefit of belonging to a crowd that hasn’t ever had to fight hard to be accepted or to be taken seriously. While our needs are just as real as anyone else’s, we aren’t as vulnerable as others, and we haven’t known what it means to come to the church house door only to find that we aren’t welcome—that the shepherds are determined to drive us away. But there are lots of other people who have felt that kind of rejection and exclusion by the church. And it shouldn’t surprise us that many of them have given up on religion. It shouldn’t surprise us that, when Christians show up and grab the microphone, people who have been wounded by the church expect something other than love and acceptance to come out.

The crowd on Dickson Street, when they see us, knows that we represent a different kind of Christian, but I wonder whether showing up every year is enough. In every biblical example of sheep without a shepherd, including the one from Jeremiah, God promises to raise up new, faithful shepherds who will care for God’s people. Moses was succeeded by Joshua. Ahab and the rest of the Omri dynasty were eventually overthrown by Jehu. Zechariah and Jeremiah both promised that the self-interested shepherds who had led God’s people astray would be replaced by a righteous Branch, who would bring justice and righteousness to the land. Jesus came and offered healing to those who needed it most—those who had no where else to turn, those who had no spiritual leaders to help them find the healing promises of God.

Are we willing to do more to help people who have given up on God because they have been driven away by worthless shepherds find the healing that God still promises them? I don’t mean a campaign to get disaffected people to fill the pews and the offering plate. And I’m not just talking about the crowds at a Pride parade. I think we are in a unique position to offer a message of hope to people who haven’t heard words of hope from Christians in a long time. We have spent years building a deep reputation of genuine love and concern throughout the community. People see that the members of this parish are committed to the transformational power of unconditional love. They literally cheer when they see us. Over and over, they say that, if they ever went to a church, it would be here with us.

You’re already here, so you already know the healing power of hope and love that we share in this place—not by reputation but from within. You know how good it is to be a part of this community of faith. Think of how many other people would enjoy being a part of what we do here. Might you do something more to share it with others? Jesus is sending us out, just like the disciples, to offer healing in his name. Whom will you invite to come and find it with us?

Good News That's Hard To Hear

 

July 4, 2021 – The 6th Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 9B

Ezekiel 2:1-5; 2 Corinthians 12:2-10; Mark 6:1-13

© 2021 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video of the entire service can be seen here with the sermon beginning around 16:15.

Why do people have such a hard time hearing certain things from those closest to them? Why do our children ignore us when we tell them that the person they have a crush on is nothing but trouble, but, when they hear it from their friends at school, they take it as gospel truth? Why do our parents refuse to listen to us when we tell them that they can’t say those things about women or immigrants or people of color, but, when the man who works in their yard invites them to recognize the full humanity of all people, it’s as if the scales have fallen from their eyes? Why are congregations eager to hear challenging, prophetic sermons from visiting preachers but take offense whenever the rector says something even remotely controversial?

Whatever it is, it’s not new. By the time we get to Mark 6, Jesus has done some pretty amazing things. He’s healed the sick. He’s cast out demons. He’s stilled the wind and the waves. He’s even brought the dead back to life. And now he’s come back home—back to his hometown, to the synagogue where he grew up. He’s been invited to preach, and, when he does, the people are offended.

Listen how Mark conveys to us how quickly their admiration turned to disgust: “‘Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?’ And they took offense at him.” It’s as if they were captivated by his wisdom and power until they remembered where he was from and who his mother and siblings are. “Wait a minute!” they said to themselves. “This is Jesus—the boy who grew up down just around the corner. Who does he think he is, coming back home and talking to us as if we didn’t remember him crawling around in diapers?”

When Mark tells us that they were offended at him, he uses a word that literally means “scandalized.” They weren’t merely put off by his words. They were tripped up, snared, stumbling-blocked because of them. But why? Because there was something incongruous about knowing a man since he was a boy and hearing that man proclaim the coming reign of God. They couldn’t hear this person they knew talk about the kingdom they didn’t. As Jesus declared, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” 

The closer you are to a prophet, the harder it is for you to hear what a prophet declares. And why? Because a prophet never tells you what you want to hear. The prophet brings the sharp, painful truth of God that is almost impossible to hear from someone you already know well—from someone who is a part of the life you already enjoy. What the people of Nazareth wanted was the sweet, smart, articulate boy whom they had celebrated as he grew up. What they got was a firebrand rabbi who came to turn their world upside down. And they weren’t having it. Jesus, we are told, was essentially ineffective in their midst—robbed of any power by their hardheartedness and unbelief. 

Is our response any different? The Jesus we know and love has been living in our homes and in our town and in our country for a long, long time. We’re familiar with him. He’s an intimate part of our lives. We even think of him as a friend. He’s loving and gentle and kind. He heals the sick and cares for the poor and welcomes the outcast. We love that Jesus. We admire his benevolent power and seek his life-giving ways. We appreciate the way he gently chastises us just enough to make us uncomfortable before quickly reminding us that he loves us just the way we are. He helps us see the world a little more like the kingdom of God but also permits us to take a piece of that vision back home free of charge—back to the families and jobs and lives we enjoy. He invites us to dream with him of a better place without asking us to give up on the place we already have.

But the Jesus we have welcomed into our hearts and homes isn’t the Jesus we read about in the gospel but the domesticated version whose spirit we have broken and whose power we have tamed. Jesus didn’t come to heal the sick. There were doctors back then who could take care of that. Jesus came to heal those who couldn’t find healing among the physicians of their day. He came to bring healthcare to those who fill up our emergency rooms and urgent care clinics because they can’t afford to go to a doctor until they’re desperate. 

Jesus didn’t come to cast out evil spirits in order that people like you and me could live a tranquil life. He came to overthrow the forces of Satan and the chains of the devil, which bind people to low-paying jobs and inhumane working conditions—the kind of jobs where people get Covid and then lose their jobs and then their homes because they can’t show up to butcher that chicken we buy for $1.89/pound so that the company that sells it can make a few more pennies and the stock price in our portfolios will go up.

Jesus didn’t come to still the storms that ruin our Fourth of July cookouts or quiet the winds that rock our fancy boats. He came to summon the primal forces of creation and subdue the destructive chaos of evil that is rampant in our world. He came to do battle with the hurricanes that devastate already-impoverished communities. He came to condemn the sinking apartment buildings that threaten to collapse. He came to stand up to the wildfires that our greed and ecological abuse are fueling. He came to save those whose lives are threatened by the sweltering heat that we have caused.

When Jesus came to the earth, he came not to bring the dead back to more of this life but so that those who die to this life—to this way of being, to the kingdoms that dominate our world—might be given a new and flourishing existence. We like to think that the heaven that awaits us is more of “Your Best Life Now,” but the unending reign of God into which Jesus Christ calls us is only found when we die to this world and the forces that have corrupted it—when we see that those forces are at work in our own lives—in our politics, our economics, our schools and hospitals, our cars and trucks, our consumption and waste—and recognize our need for repentance.

People look at me funny when I say that Jesus would have made a terrible rector. And that says as much about you and me as it does about him. There’s a reason he never stayed long in one place. There’s a reason that crowds cheered for him and disciples followed him yet the people who knew him his whole life rejected him. It’s hard to have the kingdom of God come nearby, and it’s especially hard when it moves in and takes up residence in your comfortable life. God’s reign displaces all of the powers and principalities in our lives. It will not share authority with any of the institutions we hold dear. Its demands are total and totally new. 

The kingdom of God that Jesus brings to the earth is most definitely good news for all people, including you and me, but it’s the kind of good news that challenges us to our very core. It promises us new and unending life, but we must first die to the life we know and enjoy if we are going to receive the one that God has promised us. Are we willing to die—to give up all of this—in order to be a part of God’s unending reign, or do we just want a Jesus who pats us on the back and makes us feel good about the life we already have?