Couldn't Make It Up

Last week, I wrote about how excited I am that the lectionary is making its way through Galatians. Unfortunately, however, after this Sunday I won't be preaching for three weeks, and, by then, we'll be almost through with it. So this Sunday is basically my one chance to embrace Paul's no-holds-barred treatise on grace over law. This week's reading (Galatians 1:11-24) isn't the clearest exposition of that theme, but it still packs a punch.

Paul writes, "I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ." That seems easy enough. Paul wasn't a disciple of any of the disciples. He got the message of the gospel straight from Jesus. We know about the revelation on the Damascus Road. But, when I read the rest of this week's lesson and then went ahead and read all of Galatians 1 & 2, I discovered that this theme is far more important than an introduction to his argument or a passing rebuttal of some criticism he had received in Galatia. This theme--the gospel comes straight from Jesus Christ--is central to the whole book.

Paul repeats this point over and over: "I did not confer with any human being" and "I went away at once into Arabia" and "I did not see any other apostle except James." Why is this so important? Why does Paul go to such great lengths to remove any doubt that the gospel he received came from another human being? As the rest of Galatians unfolds, I think we find three reasons.

First, Paul is claiming apostolic authority. He is not a disciple of disciples. He got his commission directly from the Lord. As he would later explain in 1 Corinthians 15:8, "as one untimely born," Paul was the last apostle to whom Jesus revealed himself directly. Thus, his words, instructions, and teachings carry the same weight as those of Peter, James, or any of the other apostles.

Second, Paul seems to be addressing a false gospel that had begun to circulate in the churches of Galatia. As we heard last Sunday in 1:6, Paul write, "I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel." This claim of a straight-from-Jesus gospel gives him a claim to the one true, undiluted, undistorted gospel. He can, therefore, reject out of hand any contrary message as not authentic.

Third, and most importantly, the gospel as Paul has received it is something that no one could make up. The complete and total reversal that Paul experienced when this gospel was revealed to him by Jesus is something that could not have been manufactured by human effort. Paul writes, "You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it." Although he makes this argument more fully in Philippians 3, we see it already here in one of Paul's earliest letters. The only way Paul can explain this conversion from church-destroyer to church-builder is a gospel that comes straight from Jesus himself. No one else, Paul stresses, could have convinced him to abandon his life in Judaism and embrace the message of grace. In human terms, that message--that gospel--just doesn't make sense.

No one invents a theology upon which effort doesn't matter. That's a recipe for hedonism. Imagine creating a religion in which your behavior doesn't matter--in which your justification is guaranteed not by anything you do but by something someone has already done on your behalf. How do you get anyone to show up? How do you get anyone to give? How do you get anyone to care long enough? It just doesn't make sense. But, of course, it does. As we'll see in the rest of Galatians, this gospel of grace has the power to set us free. It is, in fact, the only thing that can set us free. Paul didn't find it; it found Paul, and now Paul is desperate to share this life-changing, straight-from-God gospel with others. (And so am I.)

Faith Sealed in Blood

Audio of this sermon is available here.

"The gospel is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God" (1 Cor. 1:18). In his first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul reveals an important truth about the gospel: it doesn't make sense unless it does.

Today, we celebrate the life and death of Justin Martyr, who was killed for his faith in 165, and that's exactly what he wanted to happen. Justin began life as a pagan in search of a philosophy. Wikipedia tells us that Justin tried Stoic philosophy, Peripatetic philosophy, Pythagorean philosophy, and finally Platonic philosophy before he found an intellectual home. Still, something was missing. He wanted a philosophy that meant something--that was real enough to change someone's life. For Justin, words were powerful, but he was looking for something even stronger, and that's when he found Christianity.

At that time, Christianity was illegal in the Roman Empire. Anyone who was found to be following the Way of Jesus was liable to torture and death. And Justin thought that was amazing. In his Second Apology, he wrote, "When I was a disciple of Plato, hearing the accusations made against the Christians and seeing them intrepid in the face of death and of all that men fear, I said to myself that it was impossible that they should be living in evil and in the love of pleasure" (II Apol., xviii, 1 - qtd by New Advent). In other words, if Christians were willing to be killed for their faith rather than renounce the philosophy of Jesus and even pretend to adhere to the expectations of Rome, they must have an admirable conviction. And the moral life of the Christians, typified in their willingness to die, was a life that Justin desired. He became a Christian philosopher and spent the rest of his life using his philosophical background to teach new disciples about Jesus. And the whole time he sought a faith so real that he would die for it.

In addition to his work in Christian philosophy and moral theology, Justin gives us several important doctrinal developments. He wrote about the Word of God and how the second person of the Trinity was active in the world before the Incarnation. For example, Justin was quite happy to call Plato and Socrates "Christians" even though they predated Christianity by centuries because they showed signs of divine inspiration--signs of the Word coming upon them. Similarly, his commitment to divine revelation through the Word helped solidify Christianity's use of the Hebrew scriptures as an integral part of its own story both in the foretelling of Jesus Christ and in its own Word-inspired testament. Most importantly, however, Justin furthered our understanding of the relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit through his exploration of the theology of the Word, sowing the seeds of Trinitarianism that would not be clarified until Nicaea in 325 and, later, in Chalcedon in 451.

And the whole time he sought a faith so real that he would die for it. Justin had been public in his adherence to the Way. He had even written letters to the Roman authorities, attempting to explain that a faith grounded upon a willingness to die was of such moral character as to be an asset to the Empire, but his arguments were unsuccessful. Eventually, Justin and six of his disciples were tried for following the illegal sect of Christianity. When he and his companions were given the opportunity to recant and offer sacrifices to idols as the Emperor had commanded, they, of course, denied. Reportedly, Justin said to his accusers, "That is our desire, to be tortured for Our Lord, Jesus Christ, and so to be saved, for that will give us salvation and firm confidence at the more terrible universal tribunal of Our Lord and Savior" (New Advent). They were scourged and beheaded. And, as Tertullian wrote, "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church."

What does it mean to believe that death in this life leads to life after death? What does it mean to believe so resolutely that Jesus' death is the key to true and everlasting life that one is willing--even eager--to die to underscore that belief? What does it mean to trust that no accomplishment--no teaching, no preaching, no act of love/charity or service--in this life amounts to anything when compared with the saving power of the death of Jesus Christ? Jesus doesn't ask us to throw everything away; he demands it. If the cross of Christ is worth anything at all, it requires us to abandon all claims to our own accomplishments. In the eternal sense, only Jesus matters. Justin saw that Christians were willing to die because they believed that Jesus was the only thing that mattered. Faith like that engenders faith.

No one is going to hold a sword to your throat because you believe in Jesus. That would be too easy. Instead, our martyrdom is so much more difficult. We must have the same faith as Justin--a willingness to give up this life for the sake of Jesus--without ever dying for the gospel. We must claim our own martyrdom. We must seek a faith so real that everything else fades away. We must commit to the cross of Christ and the Way of Jesus with such fervor that we cling to death as the only source of life. "The gospel is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those of us who are being saved it is the power of God." That makes no sense unless it does.

Cousins

I was always close to my cousins. We went to the beach together every summer. We visited our grandparents and played together in the house where our parents had grown up. We celebrated birthdays at each other’s homes. We went on long trips together and drove our parents crazy together. We annoyed each other and punched each other and pulled each other’s hair. We explored together and got in trouble together. From diapers to graduation gowns and everywhere in between, we grew up together. Looking back, I realize that I took those relationships for granted, and I am grateful for them now in a way that I could not have known at the time.

Every year, at the end of May, the church celebrates a moment when Jesus and John the Baptist met as cousins for the first time. Two expectant mothers, both carrying unexpected children, came together to offer each other comfort in a time of shared waiting. Long-barren and advanced in years, Elizabeth must have been surprised when Zechariah, her struck-mute husband, explained through gesture and a writing tablet that they were going to have a son. Although her friends would have celebrated the strange but joyful news, the women in her life had all become grandmothers and had long ago said goodbye to raising young children. For Elizabeth, therefore, these nine months were an experience that she had always dreamt of but had never expected to happen quite like this.

Equally excited and similarly lonesome, Mary, a teenage virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, received good news that also ostracized her from her family and friends. To be found with child yet unwed was a blessing wrapped in a scandal. Imagine trying to explain to those you love that God had sent this child into your womb. She received no baby showers or congratulatory hugs. Instead, Mary snuck off to her relative’s house, where she could share this gift with the only other woman on earth who could begin to understand what it meant for her to be carrying God’s child—even God himself—in her womb.

John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth were two men chosen by God even before they were born to bring God’s good news of salvation to the world. From the very beginning, they knew each other as cousins. Luke recalls for us that Elizabeth, upon hearing her kinswoman’s greeting, felt the baby leap inside her. “And why has this happened to me,” she asked, “that the mother of my Lord comes to me?” Even from that moment, the future identities of these cousins were clear. One was a forerunner, and the other was the expected one. One was the prophet that prepared the way, and the other came to complete what the first had predicted. One was the new Elijah, and the other was the Christ. And, until John was murdered by Herod, neither of them knew life without the other.

 
On May 31, we celebrate the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but this celebration is about more than two mothers-to-be finding much-needed comfort and encouragement in each other. It is, of course, about the cousins that grew within then. On this day, we celebrate the gift of the shared calling that those two cousins always knew. We dream with Luke about what it must have been like for each of them to grow up knowing that one belongs with the other. We imagine how those cousins played together, learned together, and caused mischief together because we, too, know what it is like to share a childhood with cousins. Today, I give thanks for the gospel and the beautiful and exceptional yet ordinary and familiar stories it tells. These are the stories of God’s family, and they are our stories, too.

This post originally appeared as the cover article in The View, the parish newsletter for St. John's in Decatur, AL. To read the rest of the newsletter, click here.

Necessary Miracle

I love the story of the raising of widow's son in Nain (Luke 7:11-17), but I wonder whether I love it for the same reasons that Luke wrote it. The story itself is a short, direct, uncomplicated miraculous raising of a dead man. There's not a lot to pick apart here.

Sure, one could focus on how Jesus seems to press the limits of the laws of clean and unclean by touching the bier upon which the corpse is being carried, but I think that would miss the point. Also, one could preach a sermon on how a compassionate, uninvited Jesus walks up to the emotionally distraught widow and gives her a word of comfort--"Do not weep"--and then follows it up with the miraculous revivification, but I don't think that's the most important part. The RCL Track 2 gives us a parallel with 1 Kings 17 and the resuscitation of the son of the widow of Zarephath by Elijah. Perhaps that suggests that Jesus is a new Elijah but, because Jesus doesn't beg the Lord for intervention and, instead, intervenes on his own, also shows us that he is even greater, but I still don't think that's what Luke had in mind. I think Luke needed a dead-raising miracle, and he put one in the story.

If you read ahead at the verses that follow this Nain miracle, you find that the disciples of John the Baptist had come to Jesus to ask, on John's behalf, whether he was the one upon whom the people of Israel were waiting. Jesus replied, "Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me" (Luke 7:22-23).

This blended quotation by Jesus of passages from Isaiah (8:14, 15; 29:18; 35:5, 6) is very important for Luke. This is Luke's understanding of the messianic expectation and its fulfillment in Jesus. If you had asked Luke, "Why is Jesus important, and what does he represent for God's people?" his answer would have been something like, "In Jesus, the longings of God's people are fulfilled in that the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them." If you read Luke from start to finish, you can't help but see that this is the center of his telling of the gospel. This is Luke's good news.

But Luke needed a dead man to be raised, and so we have Luke 7:11-17. I'm not so cynical or skeptical to think that Luke invented this story to fill out his list of messianic qualifications. But Luke is the only one who tells this story, and he also inserts it into his account rather clumsily. Nain is about 30 miles from Capernaum, which is where the first part of Luke 7 takes place. That's a lot of ground to cover. Plus, nothing else takes place explicitly around Nain. So, in short, I'd guess that the widow's son was raised from the dead in Nain at some point in Jesus' ministry, but Luke weaves it in here to make a point. And the point Luke makes is the real focus of this story.

There were lots of messianic expectations in Jesus' day. Some expected a military leader to help overthrow the Romans. Some looked for a charismatic priest to come and renew the worship of God's people. Some hoped for a king. Some expected a prophet. For Luke, however, none of that was as important as the rescue of the needy. The blind can see. The lame can walk. The deaf can hear. Even the dead are raised. And, saving the most important for last, the poor hear the good news, too. The raising of the widow's son in Nain isn't just about the raising of the dead. It's about the fulfillment of God's promised reversal of fortune that happens not at the national level but at the personal level. It's about one woman getting her son back. It's about one blind man receiving his sight. It's about one poor, single mother hearing that God's good news is for her.

Don't read and preach on Sunday's gospel lesson in isolation. It doesn't make sense without Luke 7:22-23. This is good news for everyone.

Who Is Worthy?

When more than one gospel account records a particular story, I like to see if there are any differences in the way the story is told. When there are substantial differences, it likely says a lot about the complexity of the text or how the particular gospel writer has adapted it to make it fit into his larger narrative. In this Sunday's lesson from Luke 7, we hear about the healing of a centurion's servant that is very similar to the account in Matthew 8, but there is one critical difference that shifts my focus away from the healing itself and to the conversation that takes place before the servant is healed.

In Matthew's version, the centurion approaches Jesus and informs him of his sick servant. When Jesus offers to come to the centurion's house and heal the servant, the Roman soldier stops him, saying, "Lord, I don’t deserve to have you come under my roof. Just say the word and my servant will be healed." Then there's a conversation about authority and faith, all of which make for a spectacular sermon on Jesus' identity and his ability to engender faith in unexpected people. And all of that is essentially what Luke tells us, too, but Luke offers a prologue, and the prologue changes everything.

In Luke's version, the centurion doesn't approach Jesus--ever. Instead, the centurion sends some elders of the Jews to speak to Jesus on his behalf. Take a minute to read what Steve Pankey wrote on Monday about how the faith of the centurion--a hated instrument of the despised, unholy Roman Empire--amazed Jesus in order to get a sense of how remarkable it is that the centurion had made friends with the local Jews. Then, come back to this blog and consider how the word "worthy" is used in Luke's telling of the story.

The Jewish leaders come to Jesus and say, "He is worthy of having you do this for him, for he loves our people, and it is he who built our synagogue for us." In other words, they are informing Jesus that this centurion (wink, wink) is the sort of fellow who deserves his special attention. After reading Steve's piece, I'm less amazed by the centurion's faith and more amazed that the Jewish leaders would celebrate him in this way. That's the miracle--that the Jews considered this centurion worthy of anything. But, by the time the Roman officer picks up on the word, the sense of worth has been turned upside down.

As Jesus approaches the man's house, the centurion sends friends to intercept Jesus and say on his behalf, "Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; therefore I did not presume to come to you. But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed." Again, the language mirrors that used by Matthew, but the repetition of the word and the reversal of the sense with which it is used is stark. "Despite what the elders should say, I am not worthy." And Jesus marvels at his faith.

What does it mean to be worthy? Both versions allow the preacher to focus on the humility of the centurion, but Luke draws our attention to it. In every worldly sense, the centurion is worthy of Jesus' attention. He is faithful. He is observant. He is a peacemaker. He supports the Jewish people under his charge. He gives to them and their causes. He is identified as the one who built the synagogue. But, instead of showing up himself to be applauded for his good deeds the way a wealthy donor might, he sends messengers. He's not interested in the credit. He's just hoping for some help--a little salvation.

Who is worthy? No one is worthy, not even one. Luke gives us a Jesus whose assessment of a person's worth is different from his peers. The centurion is no exception--only, this time, the issue isn't whether his colleagues can see the worth of society's outcasts but whether they can see that worth isn't measured in accomplishments or favors.

New and Old

This is a sermon preached for the minor feast of Bede the Venerable. Audio of this sermon can be heard here.


If Jesus promised to make his disciples "fishers of men," what kind of bait did he teach them to use?

Early in the morning, while it was still dark, my friend Tim and his father and I loaded up the truck and headed down to Weeks Bay to go fishing. For teenagers like us who grew up on the coast, it didn't get much better than fishing on a Saturday morning. We pulled a jon boat behind the truck, but, when we got to the water's edge, we didn't put the boat in the water. Nor did we get the fishing rods out of the truck. First, before we could do anything else, we had to get some bait.

We walked down to the beach not far from the boat launch and stepped into the water up to our calves. Tim's father took a cast net, folded it up, cradled it in his left hand, held one part of the net with his right, gripped the other side of the net with his teeth, as I had been taught, and twisted his body, uncoiling his arms and the net and letting go with his mouth all in a synchronized effort that unfurled the weighted net in an almost perfect circle before it hit the surface of the water and sank out of sight. The line attached to the end of the net was fastened securely around his wrist, and, as he drug it onto the shore, in the dim morning light, we could see silvery fish flipping and flopping under its weight. Bait.

There were all sorts of sea critters in the net, many of which did us no good, and the three of us sorted through the catch, placing what we could use into a bucket and throwing what we couldn't use back into the bay. After a few more casts, we had all the bait fish we needed, and we walked back to the truck, placed the net in the bed, backed the trailer down the boat launch, and headed out for a morning's fishing.

"The kingdom of heaven," Jesus tells us, "is like a net that was thrown into the sea" (Matthew 13:47-52). This is the seventh and final parable in Matthew 13--a chapter full of parables about the kingdom. The Parable of the Sower, the Parable of the Weeds, the Parables of the Mustard Seed and the Yeast, the Parables of the Treasure Hidden in a Field and the Merchant in Search of Fine Pearls, and, finally, the Parable of the Net. "The kingdom of heaven is like all of these things," Jesus says, "and I'm saying these things to you so that you will get a glimpse of how God and God's kingdom work." In his analogistic way, Jesus was painting a series of pictures of the kingdom of heaven not to give his audience a complete understanding of the kingdom but to show them that God was (and is) doing something none of them expected. Like a dragnet or seine, everything and everyone was caught up in what God was doing in Jesus, and Jesus was showing those who would listen that they didn't need to worry about what got dragged along. Good and bad, it was all going to be sorted out later.

"Anyone who is properly trained as an expert on God's kingdom," Jesus told them, "is like the master of a house who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old." In other words, those who know about the kingdom know that our understanding of that kingdom comes from ancient traditions and new insights. Like the good host of a family's Thanksgiving dinner, if the menu was exactly the same every year for a century, it might get a little stale, but no one wants to show up for Thanksgiving and find nothing familiar on the table. It must be both--old and new--and, like the master of a house, those who speak of the kingdom are able to weave both strands into their understanding. And, if you think that's easy, try asking people in the church to change.

Today we remember the Venerable Bede--historian, churchman, and doctor or "teacher" of the church. Bede is most well known for his work The Ecclesiastical History of the English People. He lived in the 7th & 8th centuries, and, back then, history wasn't a popular subject. If you didn't read Greek and Latin, which is to say if you weren't fabulously wealthy and well educated, you didn't care about history. Just tell me what I need to know to make it through today. Why would I bother learning how Christianity made it to England hundreds of years ago? But Bede knew and cared, and he wanted others to care as well. He translated the most important theological texts of his day into the vernacular, enabling the spread and enrichment of a distinctly English Christianity. He taught and wrote and documented and compiled. He wrote biblical commentaries and doctrinal treatises. He spent his life making the riches and wonders of the church available to his people, and laid a foundation for Anglicanism--not the denomination but the way of thinking. His work, respecting the old and bringing it into the new, made Christianity in Great Britain its own expression of the faith.

But that was then, and this is now. Our heritage as Episcopalians is that of old and new. We come from that stream of Christianity that is simultaneously traditional and ground-breaking. But how many of us are willing to break new ground as a church? The world is changing, and we are having a hard time keeping up. In this century, it may not be a language barrier, but there is a cultural separation between traditional, mainline Christianity and the world around us. The world still needs Jesus, and we have Jesus to share, but, if we're only setting the table with the same old silver, I'm not sure anyone will come and eat. Anyone who would share knowledge of the kingdom of heaven must be like the master of a house, who brings out of his treasure new and old. We've got the old. We're good at old. Maybe it's time for us to remember our history and do something new.

Hospital Visit

My cell phone rang, and the caller-ID showed a local number that I did not recognize. I must have been in the mood for sport because I answered it anyway. “This is Evan,” I said, making no attempt to mask my expectation that I would soon regret it. But I didn’t. “This is the hospital switchboard,” the voice said, identifying herself. “A nurse has asked to speak with the chaplain, and you’re on call this week.”

Not long after I moved here, I volunteered as an after-hours chaplain for our local hospital. Along with thirty or so other ministers, I agreed to take one night a month in the event that a patient or member of staff requested a pastoral visit when the full-time hospital chaplain was off-duty. In four years, I was only called twice. Recently, however, our hospital has stopped using a staff chaplain, and the volunteers have been asked to take a week at a time—day and night—in case someone needs a clergy visit. Not expecting many calls, I was happy to help.

The switchboard operator connected me to the nurse who had requested the visit. She explained that the patient was facing some tough decisions and seemed particularly vulnerable. She had asked the patient if she would like a minister to come to her room and talk and pray with her, and, when the patient said yes, she made the call. I thanked her and told her that I would be there in a few minutes.

On the drive across town, I allowed my mind to rehearse how the bedside visit might go. I knew only the scantest details, and I practiced various scenarios—some serious, others comical—to help prepare myself for the encounter. I imagined how I might explain my clerical collar to a Christian from a denomination where the clergy do not wear a particular outfit designating their vocation. I considered what I would say to her if she told me that she wasn’t a Christian but wanted to become a follower of Jesus before she died. Remembering some of the strangest moments from my time in seminary, I pretended that she might have had a psychotic break, chuckling at the bizarre possibilities that could be waiting for me. Returning to reality, I pondered what I would say if she told me that she was afraid of dying.

Although I frequently get the chance to spend time with parishioners in their moments of great vulnerability and need, I don’t often have the opportunity to spend that time with strangers. I walked into the room and met a delightful woman who was facing some difficult circumstances. Usually, my hospital visits last three to five minutes, but this one lasted most of an hour. She told me about her family and the deaths that they have experienced over the last five years—a sibling, both parents, and a son. She told me about her church and the new pastor who had buried those family members but, other than that, whom she had not really had the chance to get to know. She told me how she had always been the strong one who held things together for her family and friends, and she admitted in a roundabout way that her reality was quickly changing. I gently asked her about the next few weeks and months that lay ahead of her, and I offered some words of comfort and encouragement. And then I left.

I don’t remember her name. I doubt she remembers mine. Most of my pastoral relationships last for years. As a parish clergyperson, I have the privilege of celebrating births and watching children grow up and rejoicing at their weddings and seeing people in the primes of their lives and walking with them as they age and, eventually, saying goodbye to them when they die. That doesn’t happen all at once, but, in a parish, it happens all the time—an ongoing cycle of life that all of us share. But an hour with a stranger whom I will almost certainly never see again is no less special or authentic than a lifetime spent with people whom I love. Even a one-time, never-repeated bedside encounter is an opportunity for sharing a love and concern and care that lasts.

 
Love is a powerful thing. We love our parents and siblings and spouses and children. We love our teachers and neighbors and friends. But will we love a stranger? On the drive to the hospital, I rehearsed several different scenarios, but I never considered that I might fall in love with the woman I met. It does not matter that I do not know her. God has made a space in my heart for her, and I still hold her in prayer. Whom might you love today? Whom will you allow into your heart?

This post originally appeared in The View, the weekly newsletter from St. John's in Decatur, AL. To read the rest of the newsletter and learn more about St. John's, please click here.