Learning To Be Rich Toward God

 

July 31, 2022 – The 8th Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 13C

Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23; Colossians 3:1-11; Luke 12:13-21

© 2022 Evan D. Garner

Video of this service can be seen here with the sermon beginning around 17:15.  

If I were a rich man,
Ya ba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dum,
All day long, I'd biddy biddy bum,
If I were a wealthy man.
I wouldn't have to work hard,
Ya ba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dum,
If I were a biddy biddy rich idle-deeddle-daidle-daidle man. [1] 

In the 1971 film adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof, Tevya the dairyman sings those words at first while shoveling hay for his lame horse but later while dancing around his barn, triumphantly waving his arms about as he imagines what his life would be like if he only had more money. “If I were a rich man…” Who among us doesn’t sing some form of those words in their heart? If I were a rich man…if I had a little bit more money…if I got paid what I’m really worth…if I won the Mega Millions jackpot…then my life would be better…all my problems would go away. But would they?

Twenty-one years ago this summer, I sat in the small home office of farmer in the middle of Illinois as he looked at soybean and corn futures on a computer monitor and tried to decide what to do. A faithful man, who made buckwheat pancakes every morning of his children’s lives whether they wanted them or not, this farmer explained to me that commodity prices had been depressed for several years. Instead of selling his entire harvest each year, he had put much of it into silos, hoping that the prices would increase, but they hadn’t. Now his barns were full. He had no place to store his crops. And he didn’t know what to do.

“I know what I will do!” the rich fool in Jesus’ parable said to himself. “I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all of my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’”

In the parable Jesus tells the crowd, the rich man did not get rich by accident. He might have been a fool in God’s eyes, but everyone in the town knew him to be a shrewd businessman. He knew that when the land produced abundantly—a bumper crop—the price of grain would fall. Rather than sell his harvest at a discounted price, the man decided to use his capital to tear down his barns and build larger ones, increasing his capacity to wait out the glut. Maybe next year there would be a drought. Maybe global supply chains would be interrupted and geopolitical instability on the heels of a global pandemic would send prices through the roof. This rich man could afford to wait. And the longer he waited the richer he would become.

Except that he forgot one thing: “You fool!” God said to him. “This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” The man who excelled in agribusiness somehow forgot that his life was on loan and that the owner of that debt could call it in at any minute. There is no barn big enough to store enough grain that we could ransom our own lives.

But Jesus wasn’t giving advice to rich farmers in ancient Palestine, nor was he speaking to middle-class farmers in modern-day Illinois. He was speaking to a crowd of ordinary people in response to a man whose brother had refused to divide his father’s estate and share it with him. “Tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me,” the scorned sibling had said to Jesus. And the parable of the rich fool was Jesus’ way of teaching all of us how to be rich toward God.

Notice that the brother—not unlike the rich farmer—assumed that he was in the right. Instead of asking Jesus for an interpretation of the Jewish laws of inheritance governing his particular situation, he jumped to the end and asked Jesus to tell his brother to split the estate between them. “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity,” Jesus might have responded, quoting Psalm 133. Although there were rules that determined how much of an estate should be given to each brother, scripture makes it clear that it is better—even ideal—when siblings can live together on the family estate and share their inheritance rather than liquidate the property and divide the proceeds among them. But this angry brother was already beyond that. They were past the point of negotiations. He wanted his check, and he wanted it now.

But how will an inheritance check make everything better? How will all that money help a man feel his parents’ love when he cannot even sit down and break bread with his sibling? Like fences and neighbors, careful estate plans make for better sibling relationships, but the key to maintaining a healthy family isn’t making sure that everyone gets the right amount of money. It’s remembering that a parent’s love cannot be measured in real estate or an investment account. It’s making sure that material things do not take the place of what really matters. It’s remembering that one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.

We all want to be the rich farmer. We want to have enough grain stored in our barns that we can say to our souls, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” Tevye’s song becomes our retirement plan. If I were a rich man, I wouldn’t have to work hard. If I had enough money, I wouldn’t have to worry about anything. If I save enough, I won’t need anything else. Everything will be taken care of. But our lives do not consist in the abundance of possessions. Our true security does not come from a retirement account or a pension or an inheritance check. That is vanity.

If the most important question in our life—the one we ask the most—is, “When will I have enough,” then we are not being rich toward God. We cannot belong to God if our bank accounts make us feel like we belong to ourselves. Everything we have belongs to God, and we must give it all back. The rich farmer didn’t produce anything. The land did. The angry brother didn’t earn his inheritance. His parents did. You are not responsible for your own success. God is. And learning that truth is the first step to becoming rich toward God.

But that truth runs contrary to everything our economy, our nation, and our lives were built upon. There is no truth more difficult for us to apply to our own lives, yet no truth is more central to our salvation. Your entire life is one big loan from God. It is an obligation you can never repay. And you don’t even have to try. 

In fact, until you stop pretending that the sum total of your life’s accomplishments is anything other than a gift from God, you’re going to have a pretty hard time figuring out that God’s love is the only thing that can save you. Not your money, not your career, not your family, not your perfect plans, not even your best success—the only thing that can save you is God’s gift of love that is Jesus Christ. And God has already poured that love out upon you in lavish measure. If you want to experience that love—if you want to know the freedom from anxiety that comes from that love—if you want to be rich toward God—stop storing up treasures for yourself and start giving it all away.

[1] Lyrics from “If I Were a Rich Man” by Chaim Topol from Fiddler on the Roof. Connection with this parable made by Klyne Snodgrass in Stories with Intent, 2008, p. 400.

There Is Another Way

 

July 17, 2022 – The 6th Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 11C

Genesis 18:1-10a; Colossians 1:15-28; Luke 10:38-42

© 2022 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video of the entire service can be seen here with the sermon starting around 18:50.

Mary and Martha—paragons of contemplative practice and faithful service—which sort of disciple do you wish you were? And which one are you actually more alike? Before you start beating yourself up for not “having a Mary heart in a Martha world,” let me offer a word of caution: be wary of preachers or authors or gurus who would take this gospel lesson and turn it into a prescription for intimacy with God in an age when busyness always seems to get in the way. That isn’t what this gospel lesson is about. 

This story isn’t about Jesus choosing between two disciples, praising the one who sets aside the physical tasks associated with hospitality while shaming the one who neglects the higher calling of sitting at his feet. This story isn’t at all about what sort of disciple you should be. It’s a story about two women—sisters who encounter Jesus—one who encounters him as a faithful disciple and one who entertains him as a curious host. The preference we are invited to choose isn’t contemplation over action but devotion over fascination. The point of this passage is for us to leave it not merely interested in knowing more about Jesus but committed to following him wherever he may go.

A deep dive into the biblical text helps us hear from this story what Jesus would teach us. Set aside for a moment what you might remember about the other Mary and Martha duo we encounter in the gospel according to John. Those women, sisters of Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead, were both faithful followers of Jesus. Luke’s version of the sisters may come from the same household, but Luke remembers them differently—not only omitting their brother’s role in the story but introducing the women as merely minor characters—not as known disciples but as women whom Jesus encounters along the way. Luke never mentions them again. So all we have to go on is the text in front of us—a text that describes one woman as if she were a faithful disciple and the other as if she were a faithful host.

Imagine, if you can, what it felt like to watch this scene unfold in the home of a first-century Palestinian Jewish woman. A famous rabbi and his travelling companions have come into your town, and Martha, a woman of some standing in the community, has welcomed them into her home. Normally, a woman would not have occasion to invite strange men under her roof, so we can only assume that Martha was unusually wealthy and well-connected.

The word that Luke uses to describe the welcome that Martha offered Jesus (ὑποδέχομαι) is a technical term for one who accepts full responsibility for the welfare of one’s guest. It is the highest form of hospitality that one can provide. Luke is the only biblical author who uses that word, a word he also uses to describe how Zacchaeus received Jesus after climbing down from the sycamore tree (Luke 19:6). When this noble woman welcomed Jesus and his disciples under her roof, she was duty-bound to provide for their every need, so she could use all the help she could get. 

Imagine, then, looking across the room and seeing the host’s sister, not busy setting the table or refilling cups, but sitting, lounging, longingly and lavishly at the feet of Jesus. Who does she think she is—one of his disciples? Back then, women couldn’t afford to be disciples. Sure, they were offered their fair share of gender-specific teaching from the religious authorities, but women had too much work to do to sit around and study at the feet of a rabbi. They had to help with the family business and take care of the family home. In many households, not much has changed. 

To the onlookers in that house, Mary didn’t belong at the feet of Jesus. She belonged at her sister’s side, faithfully and dutifully serving their guests. Everyone in the room, when they heard Martha tell Jesus to send Mary into the kitchen to help, knew that the rabbi would set everything straight. A faithful teacher and custodian of the Jewish way of life would surely reinforce the sacred traditions of their people. But, when Jesus opened his mouth to offer his opinion on the matter, he didn’t send Mary away but instead invited Martha to join her.

“Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled by many things,” he said to her. “Only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” Watching Martha try to serve all the guests by herself, you couldn’t help but notice how frenzied the host had become. Luke tells us that she was “distracted by her many tasks,” and the word translated as “distracted” (περισπάω) has as its root a word that means “to be drawn about” or “to be dragged around.” Martha was literally spinning around the room, bouncing from one concern to another, unable to stay ahead of the demands placed upon her. 

Pushed to her limits and infuriated by her sister’s neglect, Martha asked Jesus, an arbiter of morality, to reinforce societal expectations. Apparently, she didn’t know whom she was dealing with. “You are worried and disturbed by many things,” Jesus said back to her. Martha’s distractions had escalated into full-on anxiety. Literally, Jesus’ words meant that Martha’s being drawn about (περισπάω) had caused her to be pulled apart (μεριμνάω). We might say that Martha had “gone to pieces,” implying that she had lost not only her composure but also her sense of herself. In fact, the word that Jesus used to identify Martha’s worry is the same word he would later use to teach his disciples that they should not worry about their life, what they will eat, or what they will wear (Luke 12:22). That sort of worry causes us to forget who we are and whose we are.

All the while, Mary, on the other hand, seemed completely oblivious to the chaos that was swallowing her sister. Pressing the noise and distraction out of her mind, she sat, listening to every word Jesus spoke. How different these sisters were! As if to make the distinction between the sisters even clearer, Luke records the last word Jesus said about Martha’s behavior as “many” and the first word he used to describe Mary’s as “one.” Although, in order to make sense of the text, translators need to rearrange the words, those who heard Jesus’ assessment of the sisters would have felt sharply the way Jesus turned from the many concerns of Martha to the singular focus of Mary.

Now that he has Martha’s attention, he invites her to consider an alternative. “It doesn’t have to be this way,” Jesus seems to be saying to his overwhelmed host. “Don’t focus on what the world expects of you. That doesn’t matter. It doesn’t even matter what our spiritual ancestors would expect of you. Only one thing really matters, and your sister Mary has found that one thing—a better path—and nothing can take that away from her.”

This passage isn’t about leaving behind the servant’s heart of Martha in order to attain the meditative heart of Mary. It’s an invitation to discipleship that cuts through all the societal, familial, religious, and cultural barriers that get in the way of our following Jesus. This isn’t a rejection of being busy; it’s a rejection of being busy for the wrong reasons. Jesus isn’t critical of Martha’s efforts at hospitality but of the way she gets pulled apart by all the demands on her—pulled apart until anxiety causes her to lose touch with what really matters. There is another way, Jesus tells her.

Sometimes we are called to sit at Jesus’ feet until time itself stops and all the concerns of life melt away. And sometimes we are called to prepare a banquet for Jesus so wonderful that nothing could distract us from the one who comes to be our guest. Sometimes we follow Jesus with our minds, and sometimes we follow him with our hands, but those who belong to God in Christ must always follow Jesus with their whole hearts. The invitation to discipleship is an invitation to a way of life in which God is our only priority. All other ways of being and belonging—all our identities and our allegiances—become subject to the will of God.

I hear in this passage a profound and gracious invitation to those of us who feel pulled apart by all the demands that distract us from what really matters. We are children of God who belong to God because we belong to Jesus Christ. Nothing can take that away from us. Whenever we feel the chaos and anxiety of trying to serve two masters or experience the frustration and emptiness of being told that we don’t have enough time to be a true disciple, Jesus gently reminds us that only one thing matters. When we follow Jesus and give our whole selves to God, every moment, every action, every decision of our lives take on the clarity of our deepest identity as God’s children. That is the better way, and no one can take that away from us.

Vulnerable Invitation

July 3, 2022 – The 4th Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 9C

Isaiah 66:10-14; Galatians 6:1-16; Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

© 2022 Evan D. Garner

Video of this service can be seen here with the sermon beginning around 23:45.

The followers of Jesus have a lot of work to do. Jesus is coming, and with him comes the reign of God—the power and authority and presence of the divine will in every aspect of our lives. Jesus is coming, and he has sent his followers out to prepare for his arrival—to get every town, every village, every home, and every heart ready to receive him and the kingdom that he brings.

A mission that expansive requires an unimaginable level of commitment. More and more people are needed to share the good news of Jesus’ coming, so Jesus commissions his followers to carry out that work through ever-expanding relationships. “The harvest is plentiful,” he explains, “but the laborers are few; therefore, ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” There are too many people and places for a handful of disciples to reach on their own, so each disciple is asked to recruit more for the work we share. Being a follower of Jesus means inviting others to join in this movement until the good news of God’s loving reign has transformed the whole world into the dream that God has for all of us.

Back in the first century, Jesus appointed seventy disciples and “sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go.” These did not include the twelve disciples, whose names we know so well. These were seventy others, whose names are never mentioned—members of the movement who knew that their purpose was to go ahead of Jesus and get people ready for his arrival. Like an advance team, which comes to a city before a presidential visit or a country music concert, these seventy disciples were entrusted with great responsibility. 

Where would Jesus stay? Who would welcome him and his disciples? Who would feed all of them? Where would he speak—in the local synagogue or out on a beach or mountain side? Who would come and hear him preach? Back before Facebook or email or telephones or newspapers, how would people know that Jesus of Nazareth was coming to their town and that with him the kingdom of God was coming near?

Two thousand years later, is our mission all that different? Jesus is coming, and with him comes the transforming, redeeming, reconciling reign of God. In the cross, God has made us one with Godself and with each other. Our sins have been forgiven, and the powers of evil and death have been dealt a fatal blow. Wealth and greed and the economic disparity that they cause must give way to the universal prosperity of God’s kingdom. Hatred and prejudice and the violence that they fuel cannot withstand the coming reign of God. War and environmental degradation and the famine that they produce cannot persist when God’s will is manifest throughout the earth. Nothing can stop the fulfilment of God’s promises, which is drawing near to the world in Jesus Christ. 

Oh, there is so much work for the followers of Jesus to do. The harvest is still plentiful, but the laborers are still few. We need help. The annals of Christian history may not record our names either, but we are the ones who have been commissioned to do this important work, and there is too much work for us to do it all by ourselves. We must invite other people to know what God has done and is still doing. We must invite them to join us in the good and holy work of preparing to receive the reign of God and the one who brings it to the earth. We must tell them that Jesus is coming, but, usually, when I hear someone say those words—“Jesus is coming!”—I want to run off in the opposite direction. That’s because the people who say them usually seem to care more about their own reign and making me conform to it than inviting me into the glorious, gracious, loving reign of God. So, if we’re going to invite people to do just that—to prepare for the coming of Jesus—we must invite them in a way that is as counter-cultural as the kingdom we proclaim.

“Go on your way,” Jesus says. “See I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road.” Jesus’ strategy for his advance team is the opposite of what we would expect. Instead of telling them to pack a suitcase so that they can look clean-cut and professional, he tells them to take not even a change of clothes. Instead of giving them some money so that they can display signs of financial security and independence, he tells them to beg their way from town to town. Instead of encouraging them to make friends throughout a community so that a larger number of people might join their cause, he tells them to pick a house and stay there. 

Imagine a poor, disheveled stranger coming up to you and saying, “I have found the one in whom and through whom all of God’s promises are being fulfilled. He is the one who can bring us true prosperity and peace.” Imagine being invited into a religious tradition whose spokespeople aren’t icons of prestige and power, of wealth and accomplishment, but of humility and simplicity. Imagine being invited by them to follow Jesus. We might as well invite people to join our church because it will cost them all their money, their freedom, their power, their reputation, their family, and even their own lives. What kind of strategy is that for growing a church? But isn’t that exactly what Jesus is calling us to do?

The coming of Jesus and the coming of God’s reign, which Jesus brings, represent the overthrowing of all institutions of earthly power. If the kingdom of God stands in stark opposition to the kingdoms of this world, how can we belong to God and God’s rule when we immerse ourselves in the ways of earthly power? How can we belong to the one who belongs to the poor when we ourselves want nothing to do with them? How can we invite others to receive the reign of God when we hold up earthly things like wealth and power as the symbols of ultimate value?

The servants of Jesus invite the world to receive the reign of God by becoming utterly vulnerable in the world’s eyes. Those who would go before Jesus and prepare others to welcome him must embody with their lives the reign of God which they proclaim with their mouths. Are we ready to do that? This vulnerability is not the same thing as passivity. We are not called to sit idly by and wait for God to come and sort everything out. That isn’t discipleship; it’s fatalism. Instead, we are called to believe with our whole hearts and minds and souls and bodies that in Jesus Christ God has revealed a fundamental and unbreakable truth that is more valuable than anything that the world could ever give us. And that truth is this: our fundamental value comes not from who we are or what we accomplish but only from God’s unconditional and sacrificial love which is given to the whole world. 

When we believe that with our whole selves, we can afford to become vulnerable. In fact, when we belong to the one who establishes the reign of God by dying for the sake of the whole world, we cannot help but become vulnerable. That’s because, when we belong to Christ, we leave behind the fiction of defining ourselves according to the values of this world and begin to embody the values of God’s reign. And the world is eager to know that truth.

The vulnerability that comes from faith does not remove us from the world’s problems but always presses us deeper into them. It pushes us right into the midst of the ungodly circumstances in our society until God’s reign takes hold fully within them. By confronting the powers of this world with our allegiance to the reign of God, we become vessels through which that reign takes hold. That is how we invite others to prepare to receive Jesus, and that is why we have been commissioned by Christ to go ahead of him with nothing but the clothes on our backs and the good news of God’s love in our hearts. 

 

Suffering Cannot Win

June 12, 2022 – The 1st Sunday after Pentecost: Trinity Sunday

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15

© 2022 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video of the entire service can be seen here with the sermon starting around 25:40.

Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us. But how do we know that? How do we know that Paul’s words are true?

Paul makes a bold claim in his letter to the Romans. He writes these words to Christians who gather not in public places like our church but in underground rooms, where his letter is read aloud, because those who hear it know that arrest and torture and death could come knocking at any minute. They have seen their loved ones hauled off by the authorities. Many have lost their homes and their jobs. Family members have betrayed them. And Paul wants them to remember that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope—a hope that does not disappoint us. How can we know that those words are true—for the Christians in Rome and for us as well?

Paul doesn’t explain how that process works—how hardship and struggle, rather than undermining our faith, actually reinforce it. Instead, he writes as if his readers already know that to be true. This is not a philosophical claim that he makes—one that arises from intellectual inquiry—but an experiential truth lived out by Paul and the Christians in Rome. There is no worldly logic that can explain to us why our suffering is a reason to boast and celebrate, yet Paul encourages his readers with a confidence that transcends the logic of this world.

How can we believe that, too, when every evolutionary principle written into our DNA tells us that suffering is something we are supposed to escape? As the Dread Pirate Roberts said to Princess Buttercup, the Princess Bride, before his true identity was unveiled, “Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” Maybe Paul is just selling something. Plenty of preachers, who fly around the world in fancy jets, tell their congregations that God is calling them to give until it hurts. 

But Paul does not write these words from a place of comfort and security. As Scott Gunn, a friend a colleague wrote this week, “From anyone who hadn’t suffered like Paul had, this might seem shallow and ignorant of people’s pain. But in context it’s a stunningly beautiful message of hope and consolation.” Paul knew suffering. Struggle and hardship were part of his résumé. As he wrote in one of his letters to the Christians in Corinth, “We commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, [and] hunger” (2 Cor 6:4-5). For Paul, suffering was not a sign that he had failed in his mission to be faithful to God but a reminder that in Jesus Christ he had found a peace that not only surpasses any hardship in this world but one that actually overcomes it. 

“Since we are justified by faith,” he writes, “we have peace through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Because of Jesus’ faithfulness—even to death on the cross—and because our faith that that death and his resurrection have secured for us a perfect and complete relationship with God, we have peace—a peace that gives us reason to boast. We boast first in our hope of sharing the glory of God. That’s the easy part. Christians love to boast that one day, because of Jesus, we will wear the starry crown and dwell with him in paradise. And that’s a good thing for us to hope—that, when this life is over, we will live with God in heaven.

But Paul goes further than that because the peace we have in Jesus is more than a promise for the life to come. That peace has power in this life as well. That peace enables us to boast even in our sufferings because we know that, as people of faith—as people into whose hearts God has poured God’s love through the Holy Spirit—those sufferings are not a sign of our failure in God’s eyes but a reminder that what Christ has done for us can never be defeated. Because of Jesus, we know that our suffering teaches us endurance and that endurance builds up character and that character is itself our proof that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

In other words, the right and perfect relationship with God that we have been given through Jesus Christ is more than a ticket to heaven. It is our guarantee that the suffering we endure in this life is not a sign that God has abandoned us but a reminder that God never will. Is that easy to believe? Of course not. It is hard to maintain confidence that, despite all the suffering in the world, God is still God and that God, in ways that surpass our understanding, is already bringing all things to their good and glorious fulfillment. But, if our faith in Jesus will mean anything to us besides an escapist fantasy, we must seek that peace in this life as well. 

We must strive for the truth that Paul knew not only in his mind but in the wounds he bore for the sake of Christ. We must pursue that sense of belonging to God that, because of Jesus, can never be broken. We must dwell in that love that God has poured into our hearts not only when we imagine what awaits us in heaven but also while we endure what we face on the earth. Because of Jesus, we are not only loved and redeemed by God when this life is over but even now. We boast, therefore, not because we suffer but because we know that suffering cannot defeat us. And surely that is something to celebrate.

Power for Intimacy

 

June 5, 2022 – The Day of Pentecost, Year C

Acts 2:1-21; Romans 8:14-17; John 14:8-17, 25-27

© 2022 Evan D. Garner

 Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video of the service can be seen here with the sermon beginning around 20:30.

Imagine waking up every morning and starting your day by anticipating all of the encounters you expect to have so that you can translate them ahead of time from the language you know best into one that everyone else will understand. If you are not fluent in the language that everyone else around you takes for granted, you have to take that extra step in order to live in their world. Who will you meet? Who will you talk to? Your clients, coworkers, and boss. Your teachers, bus driver, and friends. The person at the Starbucks drive-thru. The cashier at the grocery store. The doctor who evaluates you. The police officer who pulls you over. Everyone and everything outside of your own cultural community requires translation.

Once, at a train station in Catalonia, I spent five minutes trying to recall what I had learned back in high school Spanish so that I could ask the station attendant whether the luggage lockers, which advertised a price for 24 hours of storage, would automatically spring open when the time was up. I was pretty impressed with myself when the question rolled off my tongue without too much trouble. But I was in no way prepared to understand or respond to whatever it was that the attendant said back to me in Spanish. Remembering the vocabulary and grammar of a language is a long way from knowing that language because really knowing a language requires knowing a people.

When the day of Pentecost had come, the disciples were all together in one place, waiting and watching and praying for the Holy Spirit. Before Jesus had ascended into heaven, he told them to remain in Jerusalem until they had received the power of the Holy Spirit. He had explained to them that with the Spirit’s might they would become his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and even to the ends of the earth. But none of them could have expected what happened when the Holy Spirit showed up.

Like an untamable wind, the Spirit filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, descended and rested on each one of them. Wind and fire—symbols of God’s awesome presence and power that were as ancient as God’s relationship with Israel—those were the signs that the Spirit had come upon the disciples just as Jesus had promised. But, when the violent rush was over, instead of wielding the power of God to triumph over their enemies or secure their place in the courts of power, the disciples opened their mouths and began to proclaim the mighty acts of God in the language of every nation under heaven. And the crowd that had gathered because of all the commotion was amazed.

“Aren’t all of these men Galileans?” they asked. “How is it, then, that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? How is it that we, who have come from all over, can hear these simple tradesmen proclaiming the stories of God’s power in the languages of our birth?”

You may have noticed that, even though the crowd included individuals from all over the world, everyone who was there that day was Jewish—either by birth or by conversion. After listing all of the places from which the crowd had come, Luke, the author of the Acts of the Apostles, identifies them all as “both Jews and proselytes,” another word for converts, who we are told included both “Cretans and Arabs.” The feast of Pentecost, after all, was a Jewish festival that had brought together faithful Jews from around the world. But it’s easy to forget that anyone who had made that pilgrimage from another land would have expected to hear the stories of their people’s salvation spoken in the language of Israel—in Hebrew with, perhaps, a little Aramaic thrown in from time to time.

Whenever someone from the diaspora who was born somewhere like Pontus or Asia, Egypt or Libya, came to worship God, they would have to translate their prayers from the language of their birth into the language of the temple. And, if they wanted to share fully in the celebration, they would need to reimagine the mighty acts of God, taking them from the Hebrew in which those stories were told back into the language they knew best.

Imagine having come to the capital city of your religion, the center of your people’s spiritual life, prepared to transact your religious business in the language that you’ve been taught is the only one that God will accept, only to discover that a ragtag group of barely-literate men from out in the country are proclaiming the central stories of your people in the same language that your mother used when she sung you to sleep. What would that tell you about the nature of God and what God was trying to do in that moment?

This phenomenon was so unbelievable that some in the crowd could only make sense of it by appealing to the effects of alcohol. “These men must be drunk!” a few exclaimed, “filled with new wine,” though that possibility didn’t really make any sense either. What was God doing in that moment? Peter stood alongside the other disciples and explained what was happening, saying, “This is what was spoken through the prophet Joel, when God declared, ‘In the last days, I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your little ones shall see visions, and your old folks shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, no matter their gender, I shall pour out my Spirit, and all people shall prophesy.’”

A long time ago, centuries before this day of Pentecost, God had promised through the prophet Joel that a time would come when God’s Spirit would be active not only among the official, institutionally appointed prophets, but among all types of people—young and old, male and female, rich and poor, slave and free. In those last days, there would be no limit on whom God would use to proclaim God’s salvation. And Joel promised that those last days would be a sign that the end was near—that all of God’s promises were coming complete, that God was preparing to rescue all of God’s people and bring back together into one those who had been scattered across the nations of the world.

Peter and the other disciples, who had been told by Jesus nothing more than that they should wait for the Holy Spirit, looked around and realized that this was it. This was the moment when those last days were beginning to unfold. This was the sign that God was bringing all things to their completion. This was how the salvation of the world, which had already been accomplished in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, would take hold among God’s people—by a radical, Spirit-empowered proclamation that had no linguistic or ethnic bounds.

But this was more than mere translation. Instead of God’s people having to work their way back to God, God was prepared to meet them wherever they were—not only by inhabiting the language they knew best but by coming into every aspect of their lives. Every story, every celebration, every joke, every nuance could now be infused with the saving love of God. Nothing was off-limits anymore. That’s the power of the Holy Spirit. No translation or cultural adaptation was needed. God had always promised to bring God’s people back together again, and now God was doing that not by imposing upon a dispersed people a mandated uniformity but by offering them a universal intimacy. And, eventually, that same Spirit would carry the good news of God beyond the people of Israel, including even the Gentiles in the reconstitution of God’s covenant people.

The disciples couldn’t have imagined what sort of power the Holy Spirit would give them, but should it surprise us that the God whose Son died for our sake would seek intimacy with the world even while we are still scattered in our own various ways? Should we be surprised that the way that God brings God’s people back together is by coming to them—to all of them—in order that they might know God’s saving love as intimately as their mama’s voice? The good news of God that we proclaim today is that you don’t have to become someone you’re not in order to find God. In Jesus Christ, by the intimate power of the Holy Spirit, God has already come to you no matter who you are.

Desperate for Ascension Day

 

May 26, 2022 - Ascension Day
Luke 24:44-53

I want to start by confessing that I do not have a very good (ie well developed) theology of the Ascension. Every year, part of me is sad that Ascension Day falls on a Thursday, which means that so few of us will participate in the celebration, while another part of me is thankful that no more people get to hear me try to make sense of an event I don't really understand. But the more I think about it the more I am convinced that we need Ascension Day now as much as ever.

Luke tells us that Jesus bid farewell to his disciples and then, as he was blessing them, "withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven." I want to note two things about Luke's description of the Ascension. First, Luke is the only one who mentions it. Second, he says a lot more than that.

Luke is the only one who describes the Ascension with any narrative detail. Here at the end of his gospel account and again at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, Luke describes what happened when Jesus was taken up (note the words) into heaven. In John's gospel account, Jesus talks a few times about the Son of Man ascending into heaven (1:51; 3:13; 6:62) and, at the empty tomb, tells Mary not to hold onto him because he has not yet ascended to the father (20:17), but none of the gospel writers besides Luke makes any attempt to convey what happened when Jesus took his leave of the earth. Mark finishes with the discovery of the empty tomb. Matthew describes how Jesus commissioned the disciples to preach the gospel to all nations, promising to be with them even to the end of the ages. John finishes his account with a meal of bread and fish and a commissioning of Peter on the seashore. But Luke is the only one to try to explain what happened in the end.

I think that's both a symptom and a contributing factor for why we have such a poorly developed theology of the Ascension. All the gospel accounts talk about the cross and empty tomb, but only one says anything about Jesus disappearing up into the clouds. It's hard to understand. It's hard to imagine. If Jesus isn't here any more, where is he? Where is heaven? Where does God really live? Up there somewhere? Is that where we go when the world comes to an end--up into the sky, into the stratosphere, into outer space, into another galaxy far, far away?

That brings me to the second aspect of Luke's account of the Ascension that I want to talk about--everything else he says. This isn't just a story of Jesus disappearing up into heaven. Notice all the richness of the text. Jesus says to his disciples, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you--that everything written about me...must be fulfilled." His parting words are about fulfillment and completion. The Ascension is inextricably tied to and an expression of the fullness of Christ as the fulfillment of God's loving promises.

In Luke's account, like those of John and especially Matthew, Jesus uses this farewell moment to commission his followers: "Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things." Thus Luke makes it clear to us both that this Ascension moment is a completion of his identity and ministry as Messiah but also, at least in part, the enabling act for the disciples' proclamation and witness of that fulfillment. In other words, the Ascension is both the culmination of Jesus' identity as Christ and the focal lens through which his followers bear witness to that culmination.

Finally, Luke notes that, as Jesus was ascending, he blessed those who watched, and they responded with worship. This is the first time in Luke's account that anyone worships Jesus. Worship, of course, belongs to God alone. That's the first commandment on the top ten list of commandments. The Ascension of Jesus, as Luke recalls it for us, is also a moment when Jesus' identity as one who is worthy of worship, which is to say God himself, is proclaimed and received by humanity.

The Ascension, in other words, is not just Luke's ending to the earthly ministry of Jesus. It is, in fact, the culmination of our understanding of Jesus as the fulfillment of God's promises, which is achieved as God with us. The Ascension is not only the logical conclusion or corollary to the cross and empty tomb--God's vindication of Jesus--it is the very means by which the incarnate one "returns" to God (inadequate language) while still remaining God-incarnate.

I live in a world in which evil is rampant--Buffalo, Uvalde, Ukraine--and I am desperate to know that what Jesus said and did and represented to the world was not just a moment in time--an event for the history books--but an offering and a promise that have already changed the way the universe works. If Jesus were just a prophet, his remarkable words would be worth receiving and embracing, but they would have no power over evil because evil cannot be defeated by human intentions. If Jesus were simply God trapsing about the earth in a human suit, adopting our lifestyle for a while, his life and death would be inspiring, but they wouldn't make an ultimate difference in my life or in this world. 

Only because in Jesus Christ God has assumed the fullness of our humanity and retains that union beyond the earthly ministry of Jesus can I know that what happened in the cross and empty tomb was not just a fireworks show for the ages but the ultimate defeat of sin and evil. Jesus is not just a chapter worth rereading but a fundamental shift in the power of the universe that does not have an expiration date. Jesus is still flesh and blood, wounded by the cross and vindicated at Easter, but now present with God the Father just as God the Son has been for all eternity. That is our future. That future is assured, even now, even in the midst of gun violence and narcissistic warfare, because in the ascended Christ we can see ourselves in the presence of God. The Ascension means that Jesus did not shed his humanity when he returned to God but brought us with him. And that's a hope I need to hold onto, especially today.

The Healing of Our Incapacity for Self-Improvement

 

May 22, 2022 – The Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year C

Acts 16:9-15; Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5; John 5:1-9

© 2022 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon is available here. Video of the service can be seen here with the sermon beginning around 19:50.

When Jesus was learning how to be a rabbi, it’s clear that he didn’t pay attention during CPE. CPE is an abbreviation for clinical pastoral education, the grueling but enlightening program that is designed to teach would-be ministers how to provide spiritual care to others. For me, it was ten weeks of full-time hospital chaplaincy work with a bunch of reflective practice and group discussion thrown in. But, as much as anything else I did in seminary, CPE taught me how to be a pastor because it taught me how much I didn’t know. It taught me that, no matter what I thought I knew about the patient in front of me, they were always better at telling me what they needed than I was at assuming. One of the most important lessons you are supposed to learn is how to let a patient be in charge of their own healing—a lesson that Jesus clearly ignores.

“When Jesus saw [the man] lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’” And the man never said yes. Instead, he recited for Jesus all of the reasons that he could not be healed: “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” Literally, by the time the man who could not walk had crawled down to the water’s edge, dragging his lifeless legs behind him, the miraculous bubbling of the water, which was known to be a source of physical healing, had been claimed by someone else—someone who could get there more quickly. And so the man was stuck.

At that point, the textbooks say that Jesus should have said something like, “That sounds really difficult. What do you think you’ll do about that?” Or Jesus could have just stared back at him, offering a well-rehearsed look of pastoral concern, silently waiting for the man to ask him for help. But Jesus didn’t do that. He didn’t wait. “Stand up, take your mat and walk,” Jesus said, working within that paralyzed man the miraculous healing that somehow Jesus knew he sought even before the man found the voice to say it. 

Thirty-eight years. For thirty-eight long years, the man had waited and hoped for a healing that was always beyond his reach. We don’t imagine that he stayed by the pool all of that time. Surely he had a doorway or a lean-to where he could drag his beggar’s pallet when the weather was bad, but he always came back to the place where healing felt close by even if it was still too far away. If only the man could recognize the one who was standing before him—the one who had asked whether he wanted to be healed. If only he could see beyond his own predicament and realize that Jesus wasn’t looking for a justification for his thirty-eight-year incapacity but offering a way out—offering him the healing that had eluded him for so long. When Jesus asked if he wanted to be healed, why didn’t the man just say yes?

Maybe he did recognize Jesus. Maybe he had heard stories about this miracle worker. Maybe he had learned from others that this rabbi had the power to grant a healing that even the magic waters could not give. Maybe, in that split second after Jesus asked him whether he wanted to be healed, the man sized up the situation and decided that the rabbi was more likely to grant his request if he laid out his pitiful story, tugging at Jesus’ heartstrings.

Or maybe the man had been lying there so long that he had forgotten how to hope for healing. Maybe thirty-eight years of watching other people get to the water first had inscribed into his imagination a pattern of failure that seemed unbreakable. Maybe the man did not ask Jesus for healing because he couldn’t—because he couldn’t see it, because he couldn’t dream it, because he couldn’t even hope for it.

What happens to us when even our desire for healing, wholeness, and restoration is so worn out that it cannot stand up on its own? What happens when the thing within us that is the sickest is one the thing we need most in order to get better? It’s like telling someone with depression that they need to try harder or saying to an addict that, if they only made better choices, their life would improve. What good is that? Like the man beside the pool, sometimes we need more than physical healing in order to get better. Sometimes we need someone to restore the brokenness in our spirit before we can start down the path that leads to true healing. Sometimes we need someone else to love us because we’ve forgotten what it means to be lovable.

We believe in a God who loves us even before we love God back. We belong to a God who claims us even before we recognize the one who calls us God’s own. But, somewhere along the way, Christianity became a religion that looks just like every other self-motivated pursuit in the world. That’s because human beings are far more comfortable with a god who gives us what we deserve than a God who loves, saves, and redeems those who don’t deserve it. We’d rather believe that good people go to heaven because they’re good than admit that bad people go to heaven because God loves them anyway, but at least we can find comfort in restricting access to the pearly gates to only those sinners who demonstrate adequate repentance. We might not expect the man to crawl to the water under his own power, but he had better want to be healed bad enough to ask for it—to even beg for it. But what good is a God who only accepts those who think, say, or do the right things or wish they could when we’re the ones stuck on a tattered cardboard pallet, unable even to accept the offer of help that is standing right in front of us?

Jesus died and was raised not in order that reasonably good and good-intentioned people might get something better but so that totally broken, sin-sick human beings like you and me could have even our incapacity for self-improvement transformed and redeemed. We do not believe that people go to heaven because they live a good life or because they sufficiently turn away from the bad. Instead, we believe that we go to heaven because God loves us and heals us and saves us regardless of the choices we make and the life we live. I can think of nothing more hopeless than being responsible for my own salvation—than lying by the side of a pool for a lifetime with the healing I need always out of reach. We need a healing that we cannot achieve on our own, and thanks be to God that, in Jesus Christ, God gives it to us.

I don’t know what went through the mind of that paralytic when Jesus asked him if he wanted to be healed, but I do know that Jesus didn’t wait for the man to do his part before he healed him. God is not waiting for us to do our part. That’s the good news. That’s grace. That’s unconditional love. The healing that God offers us in Jesus Christ starts not when we meet God halfway but when we realize that we don’t even know how to stand up on our own—that without God’s help we can’t even imagine how things could be any different. That’s where God meets us, turning what is as good as dead into a new and flourishing life. Into our deepest incapacity and even into the paralysis of our own volition, God reaches out and offers healing. When we believe that, we, too, can stand up and walk.