Sermons and thoughts on faith on Scripture from my time at Old Presbyterian Meeting House and Falls Church Presbyterian Church, plus sermons and postings from "Pastor James," my blog while pastor at Boulevard Presbyterian in Columbus, OH.
Over the years I had a few encounters with parents who cared for a special needs child. In a couple of instances the disabilities of the child were profound, and it required tremendous amounts of time and energy from the parents. Sometimes the sibling of this special needs child felt a bit left out. I can only imagine what this must be like, with so much of their parents' attention focused on a brother or sister. It would be easy to be resentful, but those I've met have generally not seemed so. The sometimes lament their situation and are frustrated by it, but they recognize their parents are doing what they must do, what love requires.
I thought about this when I read Jesus' words in today's gospel. The religious folks are offended - as religious folks tend to be - that Jesus is hanging out with sinners. But Jesus insists that they need him more, saying, "I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance."
Many Christians like to think of God in parental terms, and some are insistent about referring to God exclusively as Father. (That this is a problem for a Trinitarian view of God is a topic for another day.) And yet some of these same Christians seem to conceive of God in the most un-parent like way, lavishing love and blessings on those who are "right" while preparing the most dastardly punishments for those who are not.
If God is in some way a loving Father, then is stands to reason that God might be a bit like the parent of a special needs child, lavishing special love and care on those who need it more. It isn't a matter of God loving the "good children" any less. It's a matter of some children needing more from God if they are to live full lives.
We Presbyterians don't have confessionals, and it is rare that someone comes to me to confess anything. But we do have confession as an integral part of our worship services. Each week, in some form or fashion, thousands of Presbyterian congregations (and other denominations) pray a prayer of confession together, have a time for silent personal confession, hear a prayer of confession offered on their behalf, or some combination thereof. And then, we're forgiven. "Believe the good news! In Jesus Christ you are forgiven," or something similar is said, and then we move on in the service.
I occurs to me that I've never discussed with very many people how they experience that moment. I have heard complaints over the years that prayers of confession are "downers" accompanied by a request to drop them. I've had people tell me they didn't think the prayer in the bulletin applied to them. But I've never heard much about what it means or how it feels to be forgiven.
Jesus finds himself in hot water over his "Your sins are forgiven you," in our gospel reading today. We toss around forgiveness as freely and easily as a "Hi, how are you," on Sunday morning. But to some of the religious folks in the synagogue with Jesus, his offer of forgiveness was a huge deal, something they couldn't believe he had the authority to do.
And so Jesus heals a paralyzed man as proof of his authority. Makes me glad no one ever challenges my authority to forgive. Faith healings have never been my forte. Not much likelihood of me causing a stir in the sanctuary one Sunday morning with people in awe, glorifying God, and saying, "We have seen strange things today."
I wonder what things they thought were the strangest. Healing a paralyzed man is no small feat, but the original issue is the authority to forgive. And for that matter, did Jesus think this paralyzed man needed forgiveness more than he needed healing? Strange things indeed.
I think one of my own troubles with this passage is a tendency to think of God's forgiveness in terms of a category, something I have or don't. This is often linked to notions of salvation, and so forgiveness becomes about categories of in and out. But I'm gradually coming to see forgiveness as a wellness issue, as something that addresses addresses what ails us both individually and corporately.
When I look at my own life and the relationships I have; when I look at our society and the current state of partisan rancor, it seems that I and many others carry around with us lots of hurts and wounds, lots of grudges and enmity, and significant difficulty trusting others. We need to protect ourselves against the other. Sometimes this other is our enemy or opponent, and sometimes this other is someone we love. And all these relationship problems get carried over into our relationship with God. When we are angry at God, we often won't admit it. We feel the need to hide parts of ourselves from God for self protection.
And so all of us desperately need forgiveness. Not the "You're forgiven and now on God's good side" sort of forgiveness, but the restored relationship with God and others sort of forgiveness. We all desperately need this sort of healing forgiveness that frees us to be more fully alive, that frees us to discover deep joy in loving God, self, and others.
Jesus said to those questioning his authority to forgive, "Which is easier, to say, 'Your sins are forgiven you,' or to say, 'Stand up and walk'?" Strange things indeed.
How does God feel about the state of human affairs? What does God think about a world that is filled with war, where some are fabulously wealthy while others starve, where even in a rich country such as America, thousands of children live in poverty and receive a substandard education that will leave them trapped in poverty? How does God feel about a world that sees less and less need for God, that "believes" in God without that impacting people's behavior one whit?
One might expect God to be angry. Indeed many religious traditions speak of an angry God who stands ready to punish, who doesn't blink an eye over sending people into eternal torment.
Certainly God is angry in today's Old Testament reading from Hosea. It is the anger of a lover who has been betrayed. God is the faithful husband who has lavished gifts on a beloved, yet that beloved has sought other lovers. In pain and anguish, God threatens to lash out at this unfaithful spouse.
But then comes a most surprising turn. Out of God's woundedness comes an improbable therefore. "Therefore, I will now allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. From there I will give her her vineyards, and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she shall respond as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt." Though God is the injured party, though God is the one who has been wronged, God woos Israel. God seeks to fan the flames of love and restore the passion that has been lost.
This is what God does in Jesus. God's anger, God's upset at human folly and waywardness, at our continual chasing after things more alluring than God, issues forth in the surprising "therefore" of the cross. It is heard in Jesus' longing as he weeps over Jerusalem.
God as wounded lover is an image that needs to be claimed especially by the Church. For it is in the Church that God is most especially wounded. Those who have never known any sort of relationship with God cannot wound God in quite the same manner we can. For we are those who profess our love, but then sneak off to cavort with other lovers. Yet even for us, God says, "I will allure you. I will speak tenderly to you, so that we may once again know that love where each of us had eyes only for the other."
On those Sundays when I am not preaching and hear rather than speak a sermon, I often find myself wondering what I would have done with the same scripture verses. One hazard of being a pastor is the difficulty of listening to another's sermon without critiquing. But besides that, I often make judgments about the scripture itself. Sometimes it is, "Boy, I wish those verses had showed up when I was preaching." Other times it is, "I'm glad someone else had to wrestle with that."
Today is somewhere in between. On the one had, Luke 16's parable of the rich man and Lazarus 16 is rich with sermon possibilities. But on the other hand, the text speaks a message that may not be all that palatable. And so this is also a text that often gets domesticated.
Like Mary's Magnificat earlier in Luke's gospel, this parable speaks of a radical reversal, of the poor lifted up and the rich pulled down. Such language is unpopular. We prefer that all be lifted up, but Luke says in several places that good news for the poor is coupled with bad news for the rich. Because of our discomfort, sermons on this text often turn the parable into a lesson on helping the poor. We take a little food to homeless shelter and feel good about ourselves even though we remain heavily invested in a world where our suburban lives are sustained by migrant workers, children in third world factories, and our nation consuming unfathomable and unsustainable quantities of the world's resources.
How do you preach from a text where good news for some means bad news for others, and you're among the others? How are the rich and comfortable to find some good word in Jesus' Kingdom parable of reversal? To be honest, I am not entirely sure. But I suspect that good news for us starts when, like members of AA, we admit who we are, when we admit that our things and our personal comforts often blind us to those who are first in the Kingdom of God. I'm not sure we can hear much good news in these verses until we take that step.
What must it have been like to encounter the earthly Jesus, to meet him as he went about his ministry? When the gospels attempt to share something of this with us, they are no doubt hindered by the impossibility of rendering such an experience in words. But a common refrain in the gospels describes Jesus as "speaking with authority." This is in our gospel for today along with another common refrain, demons recognizing Jesus.
I think that both of these refrains are attempts to describe Jesus' spiritual presence. Jesus taught just as many other rabbis did. He read from the same scriptures and his teachings sometimes had much in common with others. But even when he said the very same thing as others it sounded different, and people could sense it. "They were astounded at his teaching, because he spoke with authority."
In the same way, demons recognizing Jesus speaks of this same spiritual presence. We don't live in the world of the gospel writers, a world that was filled with demons that caused all sorts of things we would attribute to other causes. But the fear expressed by these semi-divine agents of the First Century speaks to an incredible spiritual presence in Jesus, a vivid sense of God at work that could bend events toward God's will.
I think the Church would do well to focus more on this issue of presence. We need to realize that authority is less about facts and ideas well marshaled, presented, and argued, and more about God's presence. The hunger for spirituality in our day is in many ways a hunger for just such an authority.
The presence and authority that Jesus manifested was all out of proportion to the number of followers he had, the financial resources at his disposal, or his connections to people in power. It was the power of spiritual presence, of God actively at work in him. And as the body of Christ, the Church also must seek this sort of power and authority, one derived from God's presence palpably moving in our midst. Even in a day when congregations face shrinking numbers and financial resources, when we draw nearer to God, when we become more open to the Spirit, our authority grows, and we become truer to our call of being Christ to the world.
Jesus' visit to his hometown of Nazareth is narrated somewhat differently in the different gospels. And for my money, Luke's account is the most striking. Not only does Jesus explicitly identify himself with prophecies of a new age, of good news for the poor, captive, oppressed, and the coming of God's Jubilee, but he seems to go out of his way to upset and alienate the hometown folks.
In other gospel accounts, the good people of Nazareth are at first impressed but then remember that Jesus comes from no special background and has exhibited no remarkable qualities to date, and so they "took offense." But in Luke, while everyone is speaking well of him, Jesus gives offense. He starts talking about prophets not being accepted in their hometowns and then reminds everyone of times when God's saving power was offered to Gentiles and not to those in Israel. If Jesus wanted to be run out of town, he could not have done any better.
I don't know for certain why Luke chooses to tell this story so differently, but I suspect that his understanding of Jesus fulfilling Isaiah's prophecy, bringing good news to the poor and release to the captives, carries with it an inherently offensive message for many. This is perhaps even more so for "religious folks."
Religious people often anticipate and expect some sort of blessing from God for their religiousness. But the Kingdom that Jesus proclaims often seems to offer blessings to those outside the mainstream. Isaiah's prophecy speaks of the poor, the captive, the blind, the oppressed, and (in the Jubilee year) all those in debt and who have lost the family land over the years. According to Luke and Jesus, God's new day is about blessings showered on those in need, whom the world has not blessed, and this carries with it an inevitable offense to those who assumed they'd figured out the formula for God's blessing. And Jesus doesn't wait for the Jerusalem congregation to figure this out on their own. He goes ahead and smacks them over the head with it. (Jesus would have made a terrible pastor.)
Years ago, my wife wrote something she heard Bono (of U2 fame) say at a Washington, DC prayer breakfast. Bono quoted someone, but I don't know who. All it says on my refrigerator is, "Don't ask God to bless what you are doing. Get involved in what God is doing. It is already blessed."
Sometimes I think that many church folks, much like the good people of Nazareth, presume that we, as well as what we are doing, are somehow already blessed by God. Maybe that's why Jesus launches a preemptive strike that day in Nazareth. And I wonder what he would say if he stopped by one of our congregations and read a little Isaiah to us one Sunday.
I've always found today's reading in Acts somewhat curious. Paul comes across some fellows who are called simply "disciples" and "believers." There is no disciples of whom or believers in what, just disciples and believers. So these fellows must in some way be attempting to follow Jesus. But then we discover that these fellows didn't receive the Holy Spirit at their baptisms. In fact, their baptism apparently wasn't Christian but one connected with John the Baptist. (This doesn't necessarily mean that they had gone to be baptized by John in the wilderness. John's disciples were still active long after his death.)
So it would seem that these folks received a baptism of repentance from a disciple of John, and they also had heard and embraced the gospel of Jesus. But because they have not received the Holy Spirit, the story in Acts views them as not yet full Christians. They are almost Christian, but without the Holy Spirit, without being gifted by the Spirit in ways that would help build up the Church, they don't quite meet the minimum standards.
I once preached a sermon from this story that got one member terribly upset. She insisted that as long as she had faith she was "saved" (her word), and that was that. Everything else was icing on the cake. But these verses in Acts seem to disagree. They insist that if the Spirit is not present and at work in someone's life, they are not quite Christians, almost Christians. (I'm not talking here about the status of such folks when they die. I'm talking about whether or not they are part of the Jesus movement the Acts story calls "the Way.")
We Presbyterians have tended to be suspicious of things too associated with the Holy Spirit. We like things "decently and in order," and the Spirit is too unpredictable, too messy. Does that mean that we are almost Christians?
Today's reading from Luke continues the story of John the Baptist's ministry. Yesterday we heard John call those who came to be baptized "a brood of vipers." He warned them that the ax was poised to chop down trees that don't bear good fruit, and he said that whoever had two coats must share with anyone who has none; the same with food.
Today John says he is not the Messiah, but the Messiah is coming who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire. Also, "His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire." And after all these uplifting words about vipers, axes, winnowing forks, and unquenchable fire comes this, "So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people."
This is good news? The Messiah is coming, and he's ready to separate wheat from chaff, to chop down every tree that doesn't bear good fruit. This is something to get excited about?
Now one possibility is that Jesus is not exactly who John expected. He was hoping Jesus would give everyone their due but Jesus did a lot more forgiving than John foresaw. That's possible. But I think the reason Luke calls John's message good news is because it is the language of the coming day of the Lord, of God's Kingdom arriving.
The good news here is that God is about to inaugurate the new age. God is beginning the process of setting creation right, of lifting up the poor and freeing the oppressed. God has begun the work of transforming creation into what it was meant to be. Mary has already told us in her Magnificat that this will involve a leveling, a lifting up of some and pulling down of others. And John now uses traditional prophetic language to say this moment has arrived.
But still, I wonder how many of us with a lot more than two coats find this good news. When the inequalities of this world are in our favor, does a leveling sound like good news? I don't know about you, but I would prefer that people get lifted up to where I am rather than my being pulled down.
I wonder if welcoming the Kingdom doesn't require a radical sort of trust, trust that the things we count on for security are illusions, trust that letting go of what we have opens us to life that cannot be found in clinging to it, trust that I do not need to rise above others but need to move toward them. None of this is prosperity gospel type good news. But it seems to be good news in the eyes of God.
The governing board of the church I previously served once had a discussion about whether to sign a "commitment to peacemaking" from our denomination. Not a great deal is required of congregations that sign on, and it would seem a no-brainer given the Jesus says, "Blessed are the peacemakers." As a relatively new pastor, I had received something from our presbytery (that's our regional governing body) that indicated our church had never signed this commitment, and apparently presbyteries like to brag about having high percentages of congregations who have.
Assuming this had simply never come up before, I brought it to the next Session meeting and was stunned by the furor that ensued. Only a few board members were for signing the commitment, and the others thought this a blatant example of the church sticking its nose into politics, something it clearly shouldn't do. A couple of elders were offended and upset that this would somehow connect us to the Vietnam anti-war protests. By the way, this happened in 1997.
Today's gospel reading from Luke rattles off a long list of the politically powerful, beginning with the Roman emperor. Luke locates the ministry of John the Baptist squarely within the political structures of the day. And John tells the people of that day to get ready for something new. Interestingly, Luke specifically mentions tax collectors and soldiers, parts of the political structure of the day, among those who come to John for baptism. And what John tells them to do is contrary to the way the system worked. Tax collectors made their money by collecting "more than the amount prescribed," and it was expected that soldiers would use their power to supplement their meager salaries.
The verses that precede and that follow our reading also speak to the the political situation. The very fact that Jesus is a king and that he proclaims the kingdom of God speaks of politics. We modern Christians seem to forget that king and kingdom are political terms, and to proclaim an alternative kingdom to that of the Romans could get one killed. (Oh, that's what happened to Jesus, isn't it?)
The opening chapters of Luke are filled with political language. The poor are lifted up and the rich and powerful are pulled down. Jesus says he is the fulfillment of prophecies to release the captive and let the oppressed go free, that proclaim the year of God's jubilee, which by the way required the forgiveness of debts and the return of land to its original owners. What messy politics that would make.
There are certainly ways in which some Christians mix their faith and their politics badly, and this is the case for Christians on the right and the left politically. But there is simply no denying that John the Baptist calls people to get ready for a new day that is at odds with politics as usual. And Jesus calls people to become citizens of a coming Kingdom, a shift in loyalties that will, at the very least, call into question loyalties to current political structures and systems.
I don't think you can "spiritualize" the Kingdom Jesus proclaims. When it becomes divorced from how things are on earth, the status of the poor and oppressed; when it no longer calls the faithful to live in ways that conform to God's new day even if that causes conflict with this age, then the kingdom we proclaim is something quite different from what Jesus says has come near.
John the Baptist asks us all the question, What are we doing to get ready for a new regime, a new order, the one God is bringing? Are we living in ways that demonstrate our loyalty to the politics of our day, or are we living in ways that proclaim our loyalty to the promise, hope, and vision Jesus insists is drawing near?
For me and many of my seminary classmates, one of the most intimidating things about becoming a pastor was taking something called ordination exams. These were separate from seminary itself, given by the denomination. And they were really scary because until you passed them all, you could not be ordained, and generally were not allowed to look for a job in a congregation.
And so, most Presbyterian seminaries offer help with these exams. Just prior to my last year of seminary, we had a seminar on how to take and pass these exams. They walked us through the process, talked about how the exams were structured, and shared wisdom gleaned from exams in previous years. One time honored piece of wisdom went, “If you are struggling with a theological question, you can never go wrong talking about the sovereignty of God.”
The absolute sovereignty of God, the idea that nothing operates outside of God’s ultimate control, is a centerpiece of John Calvin’s work, and Calvin is the founder of our theological tradition. And this focus on God’s sovereignty lies behind a doctrine often associated with Presbyterians: Predestination.
Now the fact is that predestination was not dreamed up by Calvin nor is it restricted to Presbyterians. Augustine came up with the idea that God’s salvation is a gift given to whomever God chooses some 1600 years ago. And so predestination found its way into Roman Catholic theology. When Martin Luther broke off from the Catholic Church about 500 years ago, he emphasized Augustine’s teachings on grace and salvation as a gift, and so he kept predestination as a Lutheran doctrine.
So how did we Presbyterians get stuck with the predestination label? Well, it seems Calvin got a bit carried away talking about God’s sovereignty. Calvin reasoned that if God was totally sovereign, if nothing could happen without God’s okay, then not only did God choose those who are saved, the members of the elect, but God must have also chosen not to save the others. This is a little something that became known as double predestination. Some are predestined for salvation and some for damnation.
Even Calvin found this a bit uncomfortable and said it was a difficult doctrine. And Presbyterians essentially called the doctrine off a century ago. But I’ve always wondered how Calvin could have come up with the doctrine in the first place considering today’s verses from 1 Timothy. Is says right there that God desires everyone to be saved. And if God is totally sovereign, if everything God wills will be, then that sounds more like universal salvation than double predestination.
God desires everyone to be saved. Jesus is the mediator between God and all humanity, and he died for everyone. You’d have a hard time coming to that conclusion listening to some Christians. In their version of the faith, God seems almost gleeful at the prospect of sending folks who won’t believe the right things into eternal punishment. But according to 1 Timothy, God would surely be distraught and weeping at the prospect.
God desires everyone to be saved. Jesus died for everyone. Of course that begs the question of just what it means to be saved, of just what Jesus’ death accomplished.
I have become more and more convinced over the years that the Church went badly astray when it began to speak of salvation, of being saved, in terms of an either/or, in or out category. In this view, saved has to do with us believing certain things and so getting our tickets punched for eternity. Jesus’ death is a part of the magic formula that makes all this work. And we’ve been talking this way for so many centuries that we hear Jesus and we hear the Bible with salvation already defined this way. But I’m pretty sure Jesus didn’t understand saved or salvation this way.
Not everyone seems to realize this, but Jesus was never a Christian. He was a Jew. And as a Jew, his preeminent picture of salvation, of God’s saving activity, was the Exodus story. Passover is the biggest Jewish festival and holiday because of this. It celebrates God saving Israel, which of course has nothing to do with going to heaven. It is about being freed from slavery, about safety and security, about being rescued from oppression.
And not only was Jesus a Jew, he also identified himself as a prophet. Israel’s prophets had taken the salvation story of Exodus and envisioned a salvation extended to all creation, perhaps best known in Isaiah’s peaceable kingdom. This prophetic view sees God’s saving acts in the Exodus as prefiguring a bigger act that will rescue all, that will bring all creation to freedom, safety, and security, that will rescue all from oppression. And these prophets speak of this as a new day, as a new age, something Jesus calls the Kingdom of God.
Of course, just as freeing the Israelite slaves was a threat to Egypt’s Pharaoh, the Kingdom of God is a threat to all worldly kingdoms and governments and systems. All such systems depend on certain inequalities. Some must be poor so others can be rich. Some must lose for others to win. Some must work hard so others can enjoy leisure. Some must be at the bottom so others can be at the top. Some must die so others can live.
But Jesus says that the Kingdom, God’s new day, the end of all such inequalities, has drawn near. No wonder they had to kill Jesus. Speaking of a new way to heaven wouldn’t have been a problem. But declaring an end to Rome’s empire, to all empires, and calling his followers to become citizens of that coming community rather than this current one, well that’s something that will get you in serious trouble.
But Jesus stays true to God’s vision. He will not adopt the ways of this age, and he will not fight the powers of this age on their terms. He will not engage in hatred and violence. His Kingdom is one of love and peace and acceptance, and it does not come by force. And so Jesus dies.
His death makes clear how far our ways are from God’s. It shows clearly how far the powers of this age will go to preserve their power. His death condemns us all, for all of us, to varying degrees, are willing participants in and self-proclaimed citizens of this age.
But Jesus’ death also makes clear that the lengths God goes to draw us toward that new age, that new day that has come near. Jesus is willing to bear the brunt of human foolishness, of our commitment to systems that are passing away. God loves everyone, desires for everyone to become a part of a renewed and redeemed creation, and so God will not lash out. Instead, in Jesus, God will weep, suffer, and die. God will gently beckon, and God will wait.
But God does not just wait. Jesus also calls those who will follow him to be witnesses to the hope of God’s new day, to show by their lives the living Jesus, God’s love in the flesh, God’s desire for all people everywhere. And so we heard a letter to the followers of Jesus urging that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, including kings and those in high positions, the very people who sometimes persecuted and oppressed those early Christians.
God desires everyone to be saved. Jesus is the mediator between God and all humanity, and he died for everyone. And when we get caught up in this remarkable love and desire of God, when it takes root in our hearts, how can we help but see everyone with new eyes, with the eyes of Jesus. And when we do, how can we keep from sharing God’s love and embrace, with every single one of them?
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