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.
The story of Jesus "cleansing" the Temple, where he chased out the money changers and those selling animals, is well known to many Christians (though only in John's gospel does it happen at the beginning of Jesus' ministry). But because the Temple operations were so different from anything modern people know, it can be difficult for us fully to understand what was going on.
The money changers were a necessity because people were not allowed to give offerings to God in Roman coins which bore the likeness of Caesar. Pilgrims who journeyed to Jerusalem from far off needed a way to convert their coins into something acceptable. Similarly, pilgrims who had journeyed long distances couldn't bring acceptable animals for sacrifice with them, and they needed to purchase these if they were to make the offerings prescribed by Scripture. These "business people" in the Temple courtyard were matters of convenience/necessity, perhaps not all that different from allowing people to pay their pledges by credit card or bank draft.
But Jesus seems unimpressed by such issues. His "zeal" for God's house demands that the focus be totally on God, that nothing distract or detract from offering worship, praise, and prayer to God.
How often do I enter into the sanctuary with almost no awareness of God's presence? Though I am leading the people in worship and offering up prayers and a sermon, it is surprising how easy it is to do so as a matter of performance and routine, reciting my lines like an actor on the stage.
The same sort of problem can afflict worshipers. People come into the sanctuary to see the show. I certainly don't know what is on the hearts of individual worshipers, but I've been doing this long enough that I feel confident saying that significant number don't think much about God being there.
It is easy for religion to slip into business as usual (even if there are no money changers or animal sellers to be found). We may even mention the need to up the pledges if we are going to keep all our current programing funded. But where is God?
It is probably a good thing if Jesus occasionally turns over some of our tables and rattles our routines a bit. Sometimes we need to be jostled out of business as usual if we are to turn fully to God. It is so easy to become preoccupied with our little religious operation. But as well intended as such operations usually are, they are not God. Sometimes they even get in the way of God.
But God is there, just waiting for us to push aside some of the clutter. In Jesus, God awaits us with open arms, longing for us to fall into the divine embrace.
Like many people, I've been watching images on TV and the Internet of the devastation in northern Japan, with death tolls expected to exceed 10,000 and an ongoing emergency involving several nuclear reactors. When I awoke this morning, I checked for the latest news from Japan, and then I read today's lectionary passages, hoping that something would speak to me from those verses, that providentially some particularly appropriate text would offer hope or solace.
But the lectionary readings seemed blissfully unaware of this tragedy. No reading seemed to have anything helpful to say. Of course these readings are simply from a list made long ago. Still, I was hoping.
Pastors are often with people who have just experienced some terrible loss, a child killed in an accident, a loved one struck down by some terrible illness. Sometimes they ask the awful question, "Why?" It's a legitimate question, but I'm not sure that they really expect much of an answer. I certainly don't have one. My usual answer is, "I don't know."
In seminary they teach you that what people need most at such times is your presence and not your answers. That's good advice because answers tend to fail on several fronts. To begin with, theological explanations of suffering don't really relieve pain. Being held tightly by someone who loves you is far more comforting than any theological rationale.
Far more problematic, explanations and answers often invalidate peoples questions and anger. More often than not, religious answers seek to protect God's reputation, to somehow insulate God from people's anger and pain. But if Jesus can scream an unanswered question from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Psalm 22:1) who am I to deflect angry questions hurled at God by those caught up in inexplicable suffering.
I think that our desire to explain can sometimes be a form of idolatry. We imagine ourselves capable of understanding all things, but as many have said, "Any god I can fully understand is no god at all."
I follow a number of pastors and religious folks on Twitter and such, and I'm happy to say that most of them have refrained from explaining the events in Japan. Instead they have simply kept the people of Japan in their prayers, sent donations to aid groups, and asked others to do the same.
There will be plenty of time later to reflect theologically on the events in Japan. But for now, the best "answer" is not unlike the best answer we can extend to a friend who has lost a loved one unexpectedly: an "I don't know" that does not try to quell people's anger, a loving embrace, and whatever practical help we can offer.
When Jesus began his ministry in First Century Palestine, he arrived into a world that was anxiously awaiting a Messiah. For a variety of reasons, messianic expectations were high. Some folks were even making preparations. One group, the Essenes, had withdrawn from society and set up an alternative community in the wilderness so they would be ready. From their writings, popularly called The Dead Sea Scrolls, we know that they expected a Messiah, or perhaps a pair of Messiahs, who looked little like Jesus.
In fact, ever since the Jews had returned from exile in Babylon some 500 years earlier, and the hoped for glorious revival of the throne of David had failed to materialize, people had been looking for the One who would change all that, who would finally fulfill the promises of all the world streaming to Jerusalem and Mount Zion.
People carefully examined the Scriptures, finding those passages that seemed to offer clues about where this Messiah would come from, how he would act, and what he would do. But there was no single image that everyone agreed on. Hardly surprising. Even today, Christian have many different images of Jesus. Christians agree that Jesus was Messiah, and yet we still have a warrior Jesus, a hippy Jesus, a blonde-haired blue-eyed Jesus, a meek and mild Jesus, a wise sage Jesus, and so on and so on.
So if we can’t agree on the exact nature of Jesus, imagine how difficult it must have been for people when all they had were some verses from the Old Testament. And how did they know for certain which verses were about the hoped for Messiah? How were they supposed to reconcile those verses that seemed to suggest very different sorts of Messiahs?
But, considering that Messiah simply means “anointed one,” and that this title, along with the title “Son of God,” had long be used to speak of Israel’s kings, it is hardly surprising that many Jews expected that the Messiah would revive the days of King David and then some. He would throw out the hated Romans and their puppet Herod. And depending on how literally you read your Scripture, he would either bring all the land promised to Moses and Joshua under his rule, or perhaps even all the world.
When Jesus was about to embark on his ministry, surely he knew well the varied images and expectations of a Messiah. And if Jesus is genuinely human, and Christians have long insisted that he is, he must surely have wrestled with just what it meant for him to be Messiah. He must have prayed and meditated and struggled to discern just what sort of Anointed One God meant him to be.
I take it that this is exactly what is happening when Jesus is tempted in the wilderness. He is tempted to become a Messiah not in keeping with God’s intentions. I’ve mentioned before that the devil’s “If you are the Son of God” temptations do not question Jesus’ identity as Son of God. Rather, they tempt Jesus more in the manner of, “Since you’re God’s Son, surely you will do this.”
Surely no Messiah worth his salt would ever go without or be hungry. What is the point of being King if you can’t have everything you desire? And what better way to frighten the Romans and get everyone’s attention than by angels carrying you down from the top of the Temple? And why not seize political power, toss ole Herod out on his ear, and take your rightful place on the throne of David?
Jesus’ temptations come right after his baptism, where he has heard God call him “my son, the Beloved, in whom I delight.” This seems to be the event that has precipitated the identity crisis being worked out in these temptations. And I think we have to undergo something similar. In our baptisms God claims us and says that we are beloved daughters and sons. And like Jesus, we must wrestle with just what that means. Like Jesus, there are popular identities for sons and daughters of God that we must reject if we are to find our true identity, if we are to live as the brothers and sisters of Jesus we are called to be.
During Lent, we are going to be looking at the our Christian identity. As part of our Lenten Wednesday night program, we will be doing a study based on the book, What’s the Least I Can Believe and Still Be a Christian? A Guide to What Matters Most. We’re also going to pick up themes from this study during Sunday worship. The book begins with ten short chapters on things Christians don’t need to believe. And some of these may help us in discerning those popular identities for daughters and sons of God that we must reject.
Some of the Christian identities rejected by the book include Christians being at odds with science, Christians not doubting, Christians caring about people’s souls but not the planet, and Christians having to take the Bible literally. All of these are images that are popular in our culture. Some of them have come to define the faith for non-Christians in a manner that I think has greatly damaged the Church’s witness to the world.
In the preface to the book, the author tells of meeting Danny, who said to him, “Preacher, you need to know that I’m an atheist. I don’t believe the Bible. I don’t like organized religion. And I can’t stand self-righteous, judgmental Christians.” But over time, Danny comes to realize that what he couldn’t stand was a false picture of Christianity, the Bible, and faith. His picture of Christianity came to him from people who embodied popular stereotypes of Christian faith but had clearly not done that difficult wrestling and discerning required to hone a true Christian identity, an identity rooted in the life and teachings of Jesus.
In the waters of baptism, God has claimed you, has spoken and said, “You are my beloved daughter; you are my beloved son.” This is wonderful news. God loves us and claims us as God’s own. But being loved and embraced by God is also a call to learn what it means to be a member of God’s household, to live into being God’s child. And being a child of God looks like… well it looks like Jesus. When Jesus says to us, “Follow me,” he is calling us to join him and learn a new identity, our true human identity in a life modeled on his.
Seeking a true, genuine identity motivates a great deal of human activity. People wrestle with what they should do with their lives. They pursue educations and careers. Not infrequently, step away from careers that no longer seem to have meaning or purpose.
People form relationships, seek that right person, and perhaps start a family. And they sometimes question those relationships and wonder if their identity as spouse, parent, child, provider, is really who they are.
Deep within each of us is a desire to discover who we truly are, to claim an identity that really fits. But we also have a strong need for security. We are frightened of risk and can be paralyzed by fear, holding on to the familiar over a new that is unknown. But faith calls us from where we are to something new. Jesus calls us to follow him, and in so doing, to discover a new identity that is who we really are, sons and daughters of God. And this is less about believing the right things and more about learning to live in the ways that fit our identity as God’s children. And I hope you will join with us this Lent as we do a little identity work, trusting the promise of the Holy Spirit to help us discern what we are not, and lead us into becoming who we truly are, the children of God Jesus is calling us to become.
It is not at all unusual to hear laments from once large, influential congregations about how things have changed. "Remember when we had 65 youth in the confirmation class? Remember when you had to come early or you'd have trouble finding a seat? Remember when we had eight women's 'circles' that were brimming over with women of all ages?"
In America, we tend to judge things based on size and growth. Bigger is better. More is better. Grow or die. In my profession, "successful" pastors are almost always "called" to bigger churches, but we are less "marketable" if our current church is not growing, or worse, is shrinking.
Now it is certainly true that congregations sometimes fail to grow because they are not welcoming and hospitable, because they do not understand that they are called to connect with and share God's love with others. Sometimes congregations shrink because they stop following Jesus and turn inward.
But sometimes congregations worry too much about numbers and success as it is measured by our culture. And sometimes we forget that we are called to be faithful, to follow Jesus, and that numbers and our culture's notion of success are not always good measure of our faithfulness.
"For you are a people holy to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on earth to be his people, his treasured possession. It was not because you were more numerous than any other people that the LORD set his heart on you and chose you -- for you were the fewest of all peoples." These words are spoken to the people of Israel as they prepare to move from their time in the wilderness into the land of Promise. And God tells them that they are not "set apart" (the meaning of holy) because of their successes or growth. They are set apart because God loves them.
As Christians, we say that God has claimed us in the same way. God loves us and sets us apart not because of our successes or growth, but because God so loves the world. We a holy people because God's love has set us apart for bold lives of faith that show God's love to the world. This is where our faith begins. This is where our Christian witness begins. Our successes are not our witness. Our witness is simply to share the good news of God's love in Jesus through our words and deeds.
Sometimes, amidst the anxieties that can emerge from a lack of growth or "success," we need to be reminded of how God loves us and calls us. Some congregations' "successes" of the past had less to do with faithfulness and more to do with a culture that virtually required church participation. But in a time when the culture not longer sends us members, we can rejoice that God's love for us was never rooted in our membership rolls. God has loved us, and God loves us still. And God's love frees us from fears and anxieties - as well as from being captive to the good old days - and calls us to be a holy people, a special people, a people marked and set apart to share God's embrace with all.
So it's Ash Wednesday. I was well into my 30s before I attended my first Ash Wednesday service, but they have become very meaningful to me. Yet, I still find something a bit humorous about hearing Jesus tell us to practice our piety in private followed by scores of worshipers going out in public with a mark on their foreheads advertising their Christianity for all to see. (Some churches do encourage their members to wash off the cross before going out in public.)
Despite this, I like the way Ash Wednesday and Lent call us to take stock, to examine ourselves and see whether our lives are properly aligned and oriented with regards to what is truly important. For those who call themselves "Christian," who claim an identity in some way rooted in the person of Jesus, this self examination asks if our priorities look like his.
Jesus' critique of public piety and his call to store up treasure in heaven rather than here on earth calls us to examine our core motivations. Are we motivated primarily by what's in it for us, or are we motivated primarily by the ways of the Kingdom, of God's will over my wants?
It is possible to hear Jesus' words as nothing more than a longer range version of "what's in it for us?" Don't seek short term gains on earth, but go for the long term rewards of eternal life. But I don't think that is what Jesus means at all. Jesus is the embodiment of what he teaches, and Jesus seems totally unmotivated by the hope of some reward. Rather he is motivated by the ways of heaven, which, according to his model prayer, is where God's will is done. Living a life motivated by the ways of heaven means working for the world to become a place where God's will is done as well.
"Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return." These words remind us that all our schemes and plans are transitory, but Jesus has invited to become a part of something new and permanent, that coming day where God's will is done here on earth as it is in heaven. Ash Wednesday asks us if we have ordered our lives around the self serving patterns of this world, patterns that are passing away, or if we have ordered our lives around what really matters.
I once knew a man who insisted that he and his wife never fought and that they never had. I didn't know him well enough to judge the truth of his claim, but my doubt must have been apparent, because he reiterated his assertion in several forms, as though he felt the need to convince me.
I didn't try to argue with him, but I do have trouble believing that in a healthy relationship fights are non-existent. If you are really engaged in a relationship and have any significant expectations of the other person, surely there will be times when some level of conflict will emerge. The only way I can imagine a marriage or other serious relationship without conflict would be if neither party really cared. And I have seen marriages like this, relationships so dead that the couple is able to coexist peacefully.
Relationship with God is certainly different from a marriage. Unlike marriage it is not a relationship of equals. Still, I have trouble envisioning a relationship with serious God which has no conflict. And given how enigmatic God can be and how many things there are about God that I simply cannot understand, it seems inevitable that God will disappoint me, that I will occasionally feel let down by God, and even that I will become angry with God.
In human relationships, it is not uncommon to hear one person speak of being upset, even angry, because a partner seems distant or absent. Sometimes anger and conflict grow out of a deep longing for a partner who will not or cannot share themselves in a meaningful way. And of the frustrations I experience in my relationship with God, this is my biggest. Sometimes God seems so distant and unavailable that it grieves me. Sometimes this grief can lead to a standoff with God, an arrangement not unlike a dead marriage where the couple manages to coexist while barely acknowledging each other's presence. But sometimes my longing turns to frustration and even anger.
I don't know if the writer of Psalm 42 is angry, but I do sense the mixed emotions of a relationship that isn't quite right. There is a longing for God, but also a sense of being abandoned. There are memories of better times, and a restless and troubled soul that wonders if that can ever be recovered.
Now I don't mean to encourage anger and conflict in relationship with God or humans. But at the very least anger does mean there is some engagement in the relationship. And if we never get upset or angry with God, is our faith a relationship, or is it just a belief in a concept?
When I am having a really bad day and nothing seems to be going right, it is remarkable how easy it is to slip into a "Woe is me" mindset. All the world seems aligned against me. Life's unfairness was never more clearly on display. And considering my vocation as a pastor, God has clearly forgotten about me.
When I gain a little perspective from such moments, I can see unflattering parallels with Jonah, who complained bitterly to God about the death of a vine that had shaded him from the sun. When God asked, "Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?" Job answered, "Yes, angry enough to die." And if you're familiar with Jonah's story, you know that his self-absorbed petulance was all the more remarkable considering that the issue at hand was the fate of the great city, Nineveh, with over 100,000 residents, as well a "many animals."
In a Jonah like mindset, encountering the Shema in today's Old Testament reading is a bit jarring. (Shema is a transliteration of the Hebrew word that opens Deuteronomy 6:4, "Hear, O Israel..." and has become the name of this core of Jewish teaching that the faithful are to recite twice daily, affix to their doorposts, etc.) "Hear, O Israel: Yahweh is our God, Yahweh alone. You shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might." In a "Woe is me" moment, it is disorienting to be reminded, "It's not all about you; it's all about God."
You needn't be religious to think that our culture has become much more self-centered, much more narcissistic. As a culture, we find it harder and harder to view something as good unless it is immediately good for me. And these narcissistic tendencies are as apparent in religious life as they are in the culture at large. I hear from many pastors that the most common complaint that they hear regarding worship is, "It's not feeding me." Even worship, it seems, can be measured primarily by how it does or doesn't "meet my needs."
But Jesus calls us to discover a wonderful freedom from this tyranny of self. His good news promises release from the anxieties and fears that so often drive us, a freedom that comes from giving ourselves over to loving God and loving others.
Very often, faith is understood to mean believing the right things. But I think true faith is about embracing this good news. True faith is something even the most devout among us struggle with because one of the most difficult things is turning our lives completely over to God. It is so hard for us to trust that giving ourselves to God without reservation and truly loving others will work out well for us. We just can't quite trust God more than we trust ourselves.
I'm not sure anyone ever fullys get there, but most of us know people who are better at it than we are. And most of us who are serious about faith have occasionally tasted this release from fear and anxiety Jesus' good news promises. And so, even on a "Woe is me" day, there is hope, even certainty that God's grace is drawing us toward life as we are meant to live it. The Spirit is working in us to help us become the "children of God" we are called to be.
When I was in seminary, I got to go on a three week long trip to the Middle East. From students who had been in previous years, I knew that one highlight would be an early morning ascent up Mt. Sinai where we would watch the sunrise. Our group assembled in the darkness around 4:00 a.m. Guides looked us over and decided if we were the right size for their camel. We then road the camels for about 45 minutes to a large flat area not too far from the summit and then hiked the rest of the way to the top. There, along with fifty or so other tourists and pilgrims, we waited as the pink glow of sunrise gradually gave way to a fiery, orange-red sun slowly emerging from behind the mountains of the Sinai peninsula.
I had seen pictures of this event in a seminary chapel service. I had heard a classmate speak of what a moving, “mountain-top” experience it was. I was all ready for my own experience, my own epiphany. But nothing happened.
Don’t get me wrong. It was a stunning view. I have some incredible pictures, and I cherish the memories. But God did not seem to be especially there. I did not encounter God’s presence in any profound way. I was hoping for a spiritual high, and all I got was a Kodak moment.
It seems to me that worship often suffers a similar fate. On some level, worship is supposed to be an encounter with God’s majesty, a brush with God’s holiness that inspires awe, praise, and commitment. But often, too often I fear, it is a collection of words and music, some of it perhaps beautiful, maybe even inspiring, but not because of God. Too often, many of us seem unaware of God even being here.
In our staff meetings we have been wondering a lot lately about this problem of encountering God, perhaps better, of failing to encounter God. And it’s not just a worship problem. Many people want to draw closer to God. The spirituality section at Barnes and Noble bespeaks a population desperately longing for the holy, the divine. There is a deep human yearning to connect with God. So why does this search so often seem to go awry? There are surely many reasons, but I found myself thinking about two that may seem a bit contradictory: an awe problem and an intimacy problem.
Annie Dillard has famously commented on the awe problem, noting how we come to worship blissfully unaware of what we are doing, like early polar explorers who carried with them fine china and flatware but neglected to bring warm winter clothing. She writes, “Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does not one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.”[1]
Dillard laments how casually we often come into worship, into God’s presence. We think nothing of sipping our coffee and checking our iPhones. We act pretty much as we do every other moment of every other day. We don’t really expect God to show up, at least not the God of the Bible who causes Peter, James, and John to fall on the ground trembling in fear.
Sometimes I think that worship fails to encounter God because it seeks a small, trivial god we can manage and control, a god we can carry around in our back pocket, a god whose only concern is whatever little existential crises we may be having that day. We’re not looking for a God who might rattle us to our core, turn our lives upside down, and call us to become something new and different and wonderful that gets the world ready for God’s new day.
But if part of our problem is that we’ve lost the capacity to be thunderstruck by God’s presence, equally problematic is that we have forgotten the language of intimacy with God. We know how to talk about God, perhaps even to send requests to God now and then, but many of us have become terribly deficient in communicating with God.
Last fall during the Sunday education hour, we had a class for worship leaders. One of those mornings we were talking about what made for a good public prayer, and several people pointed out a common problem in the prayers they heard in worship. Too often those prayers seemed aimed more at worshippers than they did at God. They used the language of explanation and description, talking more about God than with God. A lot of us pastors deserve to be skewered by this critique. We’re far too fond of using prayers to reinforce our sermons or demonstrate our verbal prowess.
But the prayer language Jesus taught us is intimate language. It addresses God not with formal titles but with a child’s familiar Abba, Daddy. And I think I hear God’s side of this in our reading today. We tend to translate the Bible in an overly formal manner. Abba, Daddy, becomes Father. And when we hear God speak on the mountaintop today, to my ear it comes across a bit too much like a royal decree rather than a Daddy’s joyful utterance, “This is my son, my beloved, my delight.”
Watch a mother or a father with an infant sometime, and listen to them “talk” with one another. There’s not a lot of information in such interactions. Such intimate language is often without grammar or even words. But no one would deny that they are communicating with one another. No one would deny that they are sharing powerful emotions, solidifying their bonds to one another, delighting in one another’s presence, influencing one another’s behavior, even if not a single intelligible word is spoken.
Lovers sometimes use similar “language,” a language that can sound like gibberish to one not caught up in the throes of love. And for centuries, this sort of talk was part of the language of Christian spirituality. But in our modern world, where language is used mostly to inform, explain, and influence, the Church has often forgotten how to join in the intimate “gibberish” of lovers, infants, and poets. And we have impoverished ourselves immensely.
Awe and intimacy might seem to be so far apart that they couldn’t possibly go together, but then you might say the same of Jesus being “fully human, fully divine.” And I am convinced that meaningful faith requires both awe and intimacy. We must encounter the awesome, even fearsome presence of a holy and other God that makes us dive for cover; otherwise we will imagine that God’s job is to serve us and meet our needs. And we must also encounter the grace of God that touches us and says, “Do not be afraid. I love you, and I long to show you life, true human-ness, in all its wonder.”
All praise and glory to the God of mountain peaks and oceans’ depths, who created far flung galaxies and the vastness of space, and who reaches out to touch us in the person of Jesus.
Thanks be to God!
[1] Annie Dillard, quoted in Eugene Peterson, The Contemplative Pastor (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1989) p. 83.
