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.
This is only vaguely about today's lectionary verses. None of them seemed all that well suited to what many are thinking about this day, the terrible suffering in Haiti. The gospel reading does speak of those first folks who responded when Jesus said, "Follow me." And I imagine that a lot of Christians, and non Christians, are wondering just what following Jesus means right now.
Pat Robertson apparently thinks it means pronouncing blame. He flatly stated that the devastating earthquake occurred because the Haitians made a deal with the devil centuries ago in order to throw off their French masters. Thus they are under a curse. How the apparently demented Robertson knows about this "deal," I have no idea. But his callous lunacy emerges from a question that many are asking. Where is God in this?
Sometimes people of faith seem extremely worried about protecting God's reputation, and the two easiest outs available are (1) blame the victim or (2) insulate God. Robertson finds it amazingly easy to do the former. Others take the tack of moving God far enough offstage so as not to incur any divine culpability. It was only natural forces at work. And yet such forces are presumably from the creative hand of God, and surely God could have intervened if God wanted to do so. And so at the very least, God has chosen not to help.
For me, a more faithful response is to stop making excuses for God and acknowledge that we often do not and cannot know the mind of God. Sometimes the only answer available to us is the one given to Job. "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth..." And sometimes the best we can do when we encounter terrible suffering is to stop trying to determine cause and start trying to help. Jesus says this in so many words when he is asked about whose sin caused a man to be born blind. Jesus says no sin caused the tragedy, but that it exists as an opportunity to reveal God's works.
Perhaps that is the best Christians can do in the face of the suffering we see on our televisions today. Let followers of Jesus simply do what he did when he encountered pain and suffering. He reached out to heal and to make whole. There isn't a soul reading this who cannot do so in some small way.
If you were asked to come up with an image to represent power and strength, what would it be? I guessing that it would likely not be a lamb. Popular images of strength and power when I was growing up included John Wayne, Superman, and any number of cowboy and military heroes. Not a lamb among them.
John's gospel presents Jesus very differently than in the other gospels. Jesus is always in control. Jesus never prays to be spared from the cross in John. Instead, the cross is portrayed as his exaltation. And John narrates Jesus' trial before Pilate in such a way that Jesus is much more in control than Pilate. Pilate is driven about by forces beyond his control while Jesus oversees the event.
And yet, one of John's primary images for Jesus is "the Lamb of God," a lamb who is slain along with the other Passover lambs. Strange that the gospel which depicts Jesus as the least human looking and the most god like would choose such an image. Perhaps this should challenge me to reexamine my own notions of power and strength.
Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.
Psalm 42 repeats this phrase twice. This is a prayer that longs for God's presence, the cry of one who has known God's blessings, but feels far from God now. It is an internal dialogue that calls the self to remember.
It is interesting how there are times in my life when God is so real to me, so present to me, that I have altered plans and headed my life in a new direction, sure that God was calling me there. But then there are times when that seems a distant memory, when life's experiences almost seem to taunt me in the manner of the psalmist's opponents who say, "Where is your God?"
Strange how easily time can rob a profound faith experience of its substance, how it can seem unreal, like a dream. Surely a part of faith is about a good memory that can say to oneself, "Why are you cast down, O my soul? Hope in the Lord, my help and my God."
Today's Genesis reading is the second of two creation stories in that book. This is the so-called "Adam and Eve" story, a story with very different points to make than the earlier seven day account of creation. A saw a quote recently that said this reading contains the first thing in God's cosmos that is "not good." You may recall that everything in the seven day account was declared "good" or "very good" by God. But in our reading today, after the man has been created, God says, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner."
It's worth noting that some folks have used this verse to argue for a subservient role for women, but the word translated "helper" is normally used to speak of God in the Old Testament, and I've never heard anyone claim that this means God exists to serve us.
God thinks we need to be in relationship, that our nature requires community. That's not all that stunning. Humans are clearly social creatures, although we sometimes seem to pay much more attention to career, success, etc. than we do to relationships.
God also seems to think that we need help. I think we resist this one even more. We like to think of ourselves as independent and self-sufficient. We like to do it on our own. The movie "Invictus" has called to attention the Henley poem I had to memorize in the eighth grade. It ends with the lines, "I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul."
The words may be stirring and they may have helped Nelson Mandela withstand 27 years in prison, but they are fundamentally untrue. Our fates are inextricably linked to others, no matter how great or heroic our achievements.
I think one of the hardest things for me to do is to ask for help, especially to ask for help in an area where I think I should be fully competent. It's as though I think such help would point to a personal failing on my part.
We Presbyterians are Calvinists, and Calvin said that the human tendency to idolatry was at the very core of humanity's sorry state. We think ourselves masters when we were created to be servants. We imagine ourselves sovereign when we all need to be rescued, to be saved.
Like Cecilia in The Patron Saint of Liars, we sometimes want to think that we are not one of "them." But in his baptism, Jesus aligns himself with sinful humanity, says that he is one of "us."
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult.
"We will not fear." So says Psalm 46, but I and a lot of other folks have trouble living this. The mountains might not be shaking or the waters roaring, but there's the economy and ever present fears of terrorism. Not to mention politicians and commentators on TV screaming for us to be afraid.
The Bible may insist that God is in charge of history, that even those forces that seem to be opposed to God are actually, in some mysterious way, moving things toward God's purposes. But it can be difficult to see that. Perhaps God is in charge of my spiritual well being. Perhaps God can safeguard my soul, but God seems pretty far removed from stock market tumbles that affect my retirement account, from political rancor that polarizes and paralyzes, from rogue nations bent on acquiring nuclear weapons.
As human knowledge has advanced over the years, the things we attribute to supernatural causes have steadily diminished so that God is directly in charge of less and less. And we sometimes seem to think that God can only be in charge of those things that we don't understand how they work. That makes it pretty hard to trust that God is our refuge, that we will not fear no matter how messed up the world might seem.
I suppose it's a good thing that God's faithfulness is not dependent on our trusting God. God's love for us simply is. 1 John says that we are able to love only because God first loved us. It also says "perfect love casts out fear." Hmmm. There seems to be an awful lot of hate, anger, yelling, and screaming in our culture. Is this because we're afraid, or is it actually creating more fear. If love casts our fear does hate add to it?
What if loving our neighbors, even loving our enemies, is less an ethical command and more a statement of faith, something we can do only if God's love transforms us, becomes so much our refuge and strength that we are no longer afraid.
Today is Epiphany, which officially ends the twelve days of Christmas. The word epiphany means an appearance or revealing of the divine, and the Christian festival of Epiphany celebrates Jesus being revealed to the Gentile Magi or Wise Men. (We celebrate twelve days after Christmas, but it is unclear when the Magi actually arrived. From reading the story in Matthew, Jesus might have been as old as two.)
The Daily Lectionary readings don't include the story of the Wise Men because it is found in the readings from another lectionary, the one used for Sunday worship. This lectionary has a full set of readings for an Epiphany service. However, the Daily Lectionary readings do speak of God's glory being revealed, a theme that fits the day perfectly.
One of those readings is from near the end of the book of Revelation. Revelation is likely the most misunderstood and misused book of the Bible (with Daniel a close second). It is not a book of predictions and timetables for the future. Rather it is an artistic and poetic call to hope. It reminds suffering First Century Christians that God is still in control, no matter how bad things seem. God controls history and it will move toward God's appointed end.
This promise is described in a wonderful vision of a new Jerusalem. "I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb." There is no temple in the city because nothing is needed any longer to draw near to God. All that separates humanity from God is gone. The vision also says that the city's "gates will never be shut by day -- and there will be no night there." In ancient times, city gates were shut for safety, closed when an enemy attacked and closed at night to keep out bandits and robbers. But Revelation hopes for a day when this is not longer necessary, when God is literally present with us, and all danger is gone.
We live in a world filled with fears and anxieties. Polls say that Americans are no longer optimistic about the future. But Revelation's hope for the future is not based in human ability to make progress, but in a faith that God ultimately controls all things, even the flow of history. And today we celebrate, remembering that God's love entered into human history as a baby born in Roman occupied Palestine, all those years ago.
Today's gospel reading contains part of the raising of Lazarus story. Jesus, who has delayed coming when he hears that Lazarus is ill, arrives after Lazarus is 4 days in the tomb. And when Martha - one of Lazarus' sisters - comes out to meet Jesus she says, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." She goes on to say that "even now," she knows that God will do whatever Jesus asks, but I found myself lingering at her opening complaint.
I know that this story has a "happy ending," but I keep hearing Martha's first words, "Lord, if you had been here..." I have to confess that I often go about my daily tasks as though Jesus were not here, as though my difficulties and struggles occur, in part, because God isn't present, because Jesus has tarried somewhere and left me alone.
I think a lot of mainline, Protestant congregations can feel the same way. They remember glory days from the 50s or 60s, and wonder what happened. Where is God now? Lord, if you had been here, things wouldn't have gone like this.
Jesus' response to Martha is often heard at funerals, but Jesus' words aren't really about hoping for resurrection after death. They are about God's power for new life that is present now. Jesus tells Martha that resurrection is not about a far off hope, but about a present reality. Perhaps I need to pay more attention to see where the power of resurrection is present and at work in my life and in the life of this congregation.
A blind man who sees and religious leaders who don't; that seems to be a theme of today's gospel reading. It contains part of a longer story about Jesus' healing of a blind man. We hear how some people who have seen the blind man begging have a hard time believing that the sighted man before them is the same fellow. And in the part of the story left out, the religious leaders throw the man out of the synagogue for stating the obvious, that if Jesus can heal a blind man, surely he is from God.
It is interesting how, when we are certain of something, facts to the contrary are difficult for us to see. "Don't confuse me with the facts. My mind is made up," goes one comical take on this phenomenon. Our certainties can make us "blind" to reality, even when we have the best of intentions.
The Pharisees are often depicted as the bad guys in the gospels. In truth, the Pharisees were a reform movement in Judaism, one that emphasized living by God's law over religious ceremony. I imagine that most of them were motivated by genuine religious passion, and they certainly had a lasting, positive impact on Judaism. But it seems that many of them couldn't fit Jesus into their religious certainties. What they already knew blinded them.
I think that the "blindness" caused by religious certainty is more difficult to overcome than other sorts of certainties. And yet many of our religious certainties are of questionable origin. Many Christians and non-Christians alike are absolutely convinced of the "immortality of the soul," but there is nothing in the Bible about this. Probably all of us have deeply held religious convictions that are either not true or half true; which might not matter much except when these convictions blind us to what God is up to.
A spiritual director once suggested a reflection exercise where I asked myself, "Where have I seen God at work in my life today, and where have I missed God at work in my life today?" But how does a blind man know what he hasn't seen? Perhaps I might pray the old hymn, "Open my eyes, that I may see..."
"Children of God" is often used as a synonym for human beings, but John's gospel says Jesus lets us "become children of God." Being adopted by God through Jesus means that we become more than we are by nature.
This is only vaguely about today's lectionary verses. None of them seemed all that well suited to what many are thinking about this day, the terrible suffering in Haiti. The gospel reading does speak of those first folks who responded when Jesus said, "Follow me." And I imagine that a lot of Christians, and non Christians, are wondering just what following Jesus means right now.
