Tag: Jesus

The Last Word for Love

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

Sermon for Sunday, October 26, 2014 || Proper 25A || Matthew 22:34-46

lastwordforloveEnglish is a strange language. We have thousands upon thousands of words – more than most languages – and more get added every year. And still there are plenty of instances in the English language where we employ the same word to speak about multiple concepts. I can’t bear to be in the same room as him. The apple trees are about to bear fruit. Yikes, there’s a bear in our campsite! Now bear with me. This idiosyncrasy of English often leads to confusion, especially among non-native speakers. What’s worse is that it can also lead to a concept being watered down, diluted when the various understandings of the word start to merge.

Such is the case with the English word “love.” We use the word “love” in so many contexts and in so many ways that we hardly know what the word means anymore. When I say, “I love you,” to my wife, I mean something wildly different than when I say, “I love that movie!” And yet, I use the same verb in both sentences.

So when Jesus answers the lawyer’s question about the greatest commandment, we find ourselves in a bind. Jesus chooses two commandments and both begin with the imperative to “love.” Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. Love your neighbor as yourself. How we go about living into these commandments has everything to do with what we think “love” means.

But before we go there, I find myself needing to scratch my Greek itch, as it has been months since I talked about Greek words in a sermon. So, if you’ll indulge me for a minute. While the English language has thousands upon thousands more words in it than ancient Greek, the Greeks of the first century had at least four different words that we translate as “love.” First, there’s eros, which is the love of attraction and desire. We get the word “erotic” from it. Then there’s philia, which is the love expressed in comradeship. A city in Pennsylvania bears this word in its name: Philadelphia. Then there’s sturgia, which is the love of a homeland as expressed in patriotism. And finally there’s agape, which is the love we’ll spend the rest of this sermon defining. This last word for “love” is the one Jesus uses in his answer to the lawyer’s question. And this last word for “love” inspires our fulfillment of Jesus’ two great commandments: Love God with all that you are and love your neighbor as yourself.

Because of the diluted nature of the word “love” in English, we might find it difficult to obey Jesus’ command to love. We might protest: “I can’t decide whom I love and whom I don’t. How can I help feeling the way I do?” The first problem we run into, then, is defining love primarily as an emotion. We get into trouble when we think of “loving” as a more intense version of “liking.” We all fall victim to this line of thought sooner or later, usually for the first time in high school. “Well, I like her but I don’t love her.” Or perhaps, “I like this top but I love those shoes.” When we mistake “love” for “liking a lot” we remove nearly all of the weight of the word, as Jesus uses it. Indeed, the Gospel according to John tells us that God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son. If God only “liked the world a whole lot,” I don’t know where we’d be.

When we move past this high school version of love, we find the deeper territory that our last word for love – agape – exists in. Far from being a simple emotion, love opens the door to the whole universe of emotion. Because God loves each of us, we each have the ability to love in turn. Shutting the door to love means shutting the door to the entire emotional realm and replacing it with indifference and isolation. But God does not desire this for us. God desires us to open the door, the same door God opened when God sent the only begotten Son to this sin-soaked world.

When we love, we invest ourselves. We become vulnerable. We may be hurt. Or we may be filled with joy. The ability to love is the ability to look past yourself, to see the heart of God burning in the chest of another, reflecting the burning in your own heart. And to have that burning move you to trust, to connect, to sacrifice. This burning may or may not kindle affection within you – that is, the emotion of “liking a lot” – but you will be “loving” just the same.

So the love that Jesus commands us to show for God and neighbor begins, not with the emotion of “liking,” but with a posture of openness, selflessness, and vulnerability. This is a scary way to live because it means living without a mask and without the protective armor we so often don unconsciously. This unconscious armor implores us to keep our heads down, to disengage, to do everything we can not to be spotted.

Going back to examples from school, how many of us had the opportunity to help a kid who was being bullied, but chose not to; chose instead to hover in the back of the pack, not laughing and jeering like the others, but not standing with the victim either. This bully-victim model stretches from school into all facets of life where there are power differentials. If we take seriously Jesus’ command to love, we will always choose to stand with the victim, to risk being tarred and feathered, to risk coming to the cross.

Yes, the kind of love Jesus commands us to live out is the very love that brought him to Golgotha. He could have sunk under the waves of uncertainty in the garden. He could have shrunk back into obscurity after causing a stir in Jerusalem. He could have slunk home, only to have his followers drift off in search of new messiahs. But love would not let him take that path. Out of love, he chose the path of selflessness and sacrifice. On the cross, naked, with his arms spread wide, the openness and vulnerability of love was exposed. But only with his arms spread wide could he reach out and touch everyone with his loving embrace.

The last word for love – agape – is not an emotion. This love is a state of being. This love is the word we use for the voluntary conviction that propels us to step outside of our selfish selves and to discover the riches of building up one another, of finding mutuality, of respecting difference, of speaking out against intolerance and hate, of standing with the victim until enough of us do to remove the label of victim forever.

This is the kind of love Jesus commands us to live. This is the kind of love Jesus died to express. And this is the kind of love that rose with him from the dead. You see, the love that Jesus commands us to live does not turn us into victims, although that’s what we’ve learned from years of wearing our unconscious protective armor. Rather, the love Jesus commands us to live moves us with him through death to resurrection. As we walk this road, Jesus strengthens us to live like he died: shed of our protective armor, with arms spread wide, ready to embrace the victims of this sin-soaked world and walk hand in hand toward the coming kingdom of God.

Giving to God

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

Sermon for Sunday, October 19, 2014 || Proper 24A || Matthew 22:15-22

givingtogod“Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Give to God the things that are God’s. Two weeks ago in the sermon and last week at the forum hour between services, we talked quite a bit about giving to God. We said that all giving to God is really and truly giving back to God. We said that good stewardship comprehends the intentional awareness that what we have isn’t really ours; therefore we cultivate an attitude in which all that we are and all that we have is a gift given back and forth between us and God.

But I was struck this week when reading Jesus’ words in our Gospel lesson that we never talked about what giving to God really looks like. If you think for even more than a few seconds about the idea, you realize that this act of giving is, in the end, metaphorical. Or perhaps a better word is ephemeral. We just don’t have the opportunity to hand something physically to God, as I might hand you a birthday present. The trouble is we use the language of “giving” so often when we speak of our interaction with God that I’m afraid we now tend to skip past the real world impact of this necessarily ephemeral action. So I’d like to spend the next several minutes exploring with you this real world impact and at least make a start at answering the following question. What do we really mean when we say we are giving something to God?

Notice first how often we use this “giving” language. Let us give thanks to the Lord God. It is right to give God thanks and praise. Give that burden on your heart to God in prayer. All things come from thee, O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee. These three common phrases illustrate the three biggest categories of our use of the term “giving to God.” We give our thanks. We give our burdens. And we give our material possessions, our stuff.

With each of these categories, let’s start with what they look like when two humans engage in them. Say Tom and Brad go out for ice cream. When they arrive at the cash register, they both reach for their wallets, but then Brad says, “I’ve got this,” and motions for Tom to put his wallet away. Tom then says, “Thank you” to Brad for the ice cream. What is happening in this exchange? Brad gives Tom something, a gift Tom wasn’t expecting. Tom says, “Thanks” in acknowledgement of the gift.

Thus, in regards to giving thanks to God, the act of giving thanks is the acknowledgement of the gifts God has given us. The act of giving thanks is our response to the giver. Therefore, giving thanks keeps us in right relationship with God because by it we practice again and again living into the reality that we are not the prime movers of our own lives. We are simply the respondents.

Our fallen world often causes us to drift toward isolation and disengagement. But the act of giving thanks reminds us that we are not, in fact, unmoored. We are tethered to the God who continually calls us into being. Our lives have a source. And they have a culmination. Both the source and culmination are the eternity of God’s love. In between, we stay anchored to God when we respond to God’s gifts with our thankfulness.

This is one of the reasons we share Holy Communion each week. We begin the Eucharistic prayer by stating how proper it is for us to thank God for everything. In the words of the various prayers, we catalog what we are thankful for. And then we stretch out our hands and receive the Body of Christ, a response to God’s love, which nourishes us to continue to respond.

So giving thanks anchors us to the prime mover in our lives. What about giving our burdens? Let’s return to Tom and Brad. Tom comes to Brad with a heavy heart. He said something that hurt another friend’s feelings. He tried to apologize but the damage had been done and the friend isn’t talking to him anymore. He’s afraid he has irreparably damaged their relationship. He needed someone to talk to and is so glad Brad is willing to talk. By offering an ear to listen and a shoulder to cry on, Brad helps bear Tom’s burden.

So how does this conversation change when it happens not between two friends but in the context of prayer to God? We don’t necessarily hear audible words of comfort or feel the warmth of a physical embrace. But something important happens nonetheless. Our burdens often make us feel small. They threaten to crush us under their weight if we spend all our time trying to hold onto them. In a way, our burdens function similarly to the idols we talked about two weeks ago. They can warp our lives around the need to carry them and end up taking all our energy.

But giving a burden up to God releases us from this functional idolatry. Rather than the burden being between us and God as a barrier, the burden is shared between us and God as a bridge. The burden becomes another way we connect to God, since we are both carrying it, as do two people trying to lug a couch up the stairs. So just as giving thanks anchors us to God as responders, giving our burdens tethers us to God in the sharing of the weight between us.

These two categories of giving link us to God, and so does the third, but we have to look more closely as we now move from the ephemeral to the concrete and turn to giving our “stuff.” Quickly, back to Tom and Brad. Tom needs a trench coat to finish his Halloween costume. Turns out Brad grew out of his old one, so he gives it to Tom to keep. The important thing to note in this exchange is the physical handing over of the item, wherein perhaps they shake hands or high five or express some form of camaraderie.

When we give God our stuff, we obviously don’t give it directly to God. God can’t use a trench coat, after all. Instead, we give our stuff to other people, either directly like when we purchase, cook, and serve food to those in need at the WARM shelter or indirectly like when we pledge money to God’s work at St. Mark’s. Our other two categories of giving tether us to God in one way or another, and so does this third category, but we have to look more intentionally for the link.

Thankfully, Jesus makes this link for us just a few chapters after our Gospel reading this morning. He tells us that whenever we give food to the hungry or drink to the thirsty or clothes to the naked, we are actually giving to him. Therefore, whenever we give to God some possession of ours, God grants us the opportunity to seek Christ’s presence in the person receiving the gift in God’s stead. By intentionally recognizing God at the heart of the receiver we connect more deeply with that person and with God who makes all connection possible.

This theme of connection animates all of our thanksgiving. We give God our thanks. We give God our burdens. We give God our stuff. In each instance, our giving anchors us, tethers us, connects us more deeply to God and to each other. This is what we mean when we say we are giving something to God; this is what happens: We respond to God with thanks, we partner with God in sharing our burdens, and we meet Christ whenever we give of ourselves to help another.

Someone Else Syndrome

Published on by Adam Thomas1 Comment

Sermon for Sunday, September 21, 2014 || Proper 20A || Matthew 20:1-16

SomeoneElseSyndromeMy twins are not quite two months old, and yet I wonder when they will first look at the other and feel jealous. It might be my imagination, but I swear I’ve seen a barely perceptible glint in my daughter’s eye while she’s rocking away in the mechanical swing and I’m holding her brother – a barely perceptible glint of envy. Her eyes haven’t settled on a color yet, but I would swear in those few moments that they were green.

I can’t imagine there is conscious thought about it, but some instinct of survival tells her that her brother is getting something that she’s not getting, that he’s privy to a better bargain than she, while he’s in my arms and she’s in the swing. They aren’t quite two months old, but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a primitive, pre-cognitive jealously rear its ugly head.

Of course, in a year or two, full-fledged active jealousy will come along. She will be playing with a toy and he will decide that toy is far more interesting than the one he is playing with. The green glint will flash across his eye; he’ll push his sister down and take her toy. At that point, he won’t be able yet to distinguish the horrible emotion he felt in that moment of envy, but he’ll feel it nonetheless.

Fast-forward a few more years, and the first day of middle school will come. They will step into school and immediately they will be bombarded by an overwhelming array of new and different ways to compare themselves to others, new and different ways to feel less than those around them, new and different ways to be envious. Someone will be wearing the sneakers he wanted to get, but – wretched parents that we are – we won’t want to spend the money because he’ll just grow out of them next month anyway. Someone will be wearing her hair the way she wanted to get it cut, but (darn it) if her hair just wouldn’t style that way. Too curly, the hairdresser will say.

I see these opportunities for jealousy in my children, and I also see the ancient nature of jealousy in our sacred texts. The first murder in the Bible happens because of Cain’s jealousy of his brother Abel’s sacrifice. Later, Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery because they are jealous of his status as their father’s favored son.

Jealously is one of those primal emotions that shows up in our earliest texts and lurks within each of us from an early age. Think back – when was the first time you remember feeling jealous? Someone else had the new Barbie doll. Someone else got picked for the team ahead of you. Someone else had a fruit rollup at lunch and all you had was a lousy vanilla pudding.

It’s this notion of “Someone Else” I want to focus on for the next few minutes. I’d venture to say that a goodly portion of the world’s problems has come about because of “Someone Else Syndrome.” This syndrome attacks on a global scale. Poverty, hunger, access to basic medical care and clean water – they all have their roots in the jealous guarding of resources. After all, there is enough food in the world to feed everyone. And yet some have too much and some have none at all. The Someone Else Syndrome attacks on a personal level, as well. Infidelity, covetousness – even bullying – have their roots in our incessant primal need to compare ourselves to others.

The Someone Else Syndrome is so prevalent in society, now and in Jesus’ time, that he addressed it in one of his parables, the one we read today about the landowner who invites workers into his vineyard. At the beginning of the story the landowner negotiates the appropriate daily wage with those who start out early in the morning. He hires more throughout the day, and the last enters the vineyard with not more than an hour left to work.

Up to this point, none of the workers has experienced Someone Else Syndrome yet, but it attacks with the first disbursement of wages. The latecomers receive the full daily wage, which prompts the original workers to expect quite a bit more. They compare themselves to the latecomers: “We worked twelve hours in the heat, while they only worked one. Could we possibly get nearly two weeks worth of wages for one day of work?”

But they are disappointed. They get to the front of the line and receive the same as everyone else. Now, if none of the workers were privy to the pay scale of the others, would the original workers have been jealous? Of course not! They would have received what they were promised and gone about their merry way. The simple fact that they compare themselves – and unfavorably so – to others makes them think they got a raw deal. The Someone Else Syndrome strikes, and jealously blazes up within them.

This Someone Else Syndrome strikes us, as well, all the time. Some of you might have been afflicted by it at breakfast this morning when your spouse nabbed the last of the orange juice. Or when you got to church and someone else was in your pew. I’m sad to say that each of us has a terminal case of Someone Else Syndrome. There is no known cure. But there is a treatment. The treatment involves dedication in prayer, practice of selflessness, and cultivation of the antidote for jealousy.

That antidote is generosity. Generosity comes in two forms. First, generosity flows from us when we share freely out of our abundance, when we don’t let our relentless comparisons to others trick us into thinking our resources are scarcer than they really are. Second, generosity compels us to desire good things for other people, independent of whether we get them, too.

The Someone Else Syndrome makes us think in zero-sum terms; that is, because someone else has something, we can’t have it, and therefore we must feel envious. But the generosity treatment exposes the lie of zero-sum thinking. A generous heart rejoices in the blessings others have received, and this joy leaves no room for jealously to strike. Someone else had the new Barbie doll; well, I’m glad to see her so happy. Someone else got picked for the team ahead of you; well, he was having a bad morning and that just made his day. Someone else had a fruit rollup at lunch and all you had was a lousy vanilla pudding; well, I’m not sure what to say about that one. It seems my generosity treatment is still in the early stages.

But you get the idea. Generosity flips the Someone Else Syndrome on its head. We are all connected to one another, so when one person is blessed, we all are. When we practice generosity, even as the Someone Else Syndrome tells us to be jealous, we access the source of all blessing. We access the love of God, which is the very thing that connects us to the Someone Else we’re supposed to be jealous of. The more we practice generosity, the closer God will draw us to all the Someone Elses in our lives. And the more joy we will share together, in community, in friendship.

So this week, I invite you to start actively combating the Someone Else Syndrome we’ve all had since childhood. Ask God for the strength to practice generosity, to rejoice at the fortunes of others, to share the joy of their triumphs and then to bear with them the pain of their defeats. Don’t let the Someone Else Syndrome cut you off from one of the greatest gifts God has given each of us, but which we fail to receive so much of the time. This gift is the joy made manifest by God’s love connecting each of us, one to the other. This gift is the capacity to rejoice no matter who is the object of good fortune. This gift is a heart overflowing with generosity.

The Challenge of Christ’s Presence

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

Sermon for Sunday, September 7, 2014 || Proper 18A || Matthew 18:15-20

challengeofchristspresence“For when two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there among them.” I’ve always heard these famous words of Jesus as an astonishing promise, as a steadfast assurance that Christ is present in our midst no matter what. If you’ve ever been to a church gathering where only a few people showed up, I bet someone said, rather wistfully, “Well, when two or three are gathered…” I’ve said the same many times as a way to remind myself that what we’re doing when we gather as the church, as the body of those whose faith and action is motivated by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, is important, no matter the size of the group.

This is all well and good, but I think our wonderful verse of scripture suffers from the same ailment as the most famous verse ever, John 3:16. I call it the “fun-sized candy bar” problem. Now bear with me: At Halloween, all the candy in the supermarket starts showing up in big bags filled with little individually wrapped units. They call them “fun-sized,” but I don’t understand what’s fun about getting a smaller candy bar than normal. In the same way, we wade into dangerous biblical territory when we individually wrap single verses of scripture, isolating them from their neighbors and from the larger interpretive ecosystem as a whole. It’s easy to get the Bible to say exactly what you want it to say when you pinch a verse from here and snipe a verse from there.

So this week, I went back and read the Gospel surrounding our famous, fun-sized verse: “For when two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there among them.” Right before these words, Jesus counsels his disciples in the proper way to deal with broken relationships amongst members of the church. Right after these words, Peter tries to nail down the number of times he’s obligated to forgive someone. He pegs the number at seven, but Jesus multiplies that by eleven, essentially saying, “Forgiveness should be limitless.” Thus the interpretive ecosystem, within which our fun-sized verse lives, seems to be about how difficult it can be to live together in community. Community can be messy, especially church, because church is for broken people. It would be for perfect people too, but there aren’t any of those.

So while I still see the beautiful promise embedded in Jesus’ words about being among us when we gather, I now also see something else. I see a challenge – a challenge to share the Spirit of Christ residing in us with others and to recognize and honor the Spirit of Christ residing in them. Jesus promises to be with us whenever we gather in his name. This is Gospel truth if I’ve ever heard any. Our challenge comes when we strive to make this truth evident in our lives.

I invite you, as we begin another program year here at St. Mark’s, to join me in this challenge. After being with you these past seven months, I’ve seen so much evidence of Christ’s presence in our midst, but from here on out I invite each and every one of you to name that presence when you see it flourishing in one another. Name it aloud. Celebrate it. Thank each other for making the Spirit of Christ more present in our midst. When visitors or guests pass through St. Mark’s, I want them to depart knowing Christ better than when they entered. I want them to meet Christ when they meet you. And I want you to meet Christ when you meet them.

I’m conscious of the fact that we enter rather ephemeral territory when we speak of being and seeing the Spirit of Christ. It can all be a bit theoretical or metaphorical. But we need something we can sink our teeth into, that we can really engage in. Therefore, in full awareness that what follows is only a tiny portion of the ways we can be and see the Spirit of Christ, I’d like to name three specific actions that each and every one of us can do – today, even – to live into the challenge of Jesus’ presence in our midst.

The first is inviting. One of my favorite stories of Jesus comes from the first chapter of the Gospel according to John. A pair of John the Baptist’s disciples hears their teacher call Jesus “the lamb of God,” and so they follow him. Jesus asks them what they’re looking for and they in turn ask where he is staying. “Come and see,” he replies. Come and see. He doesn’t tell them where he’s staying; instead, he invites them to join him. This is the first of many invitations Jesus offers throughout the Gospel. Each subsequent invitation involves Jesus expanding his followers’ comfort zones and moving them to embrace the abundant life he offers to all.

When we take seriously Christ’s presence in our midst, we embrace his attitude of invitation. We open ourselves up to the vulnerable nature of the new. We reach out our hands to those we don’t know, those whom we consider “other.” And in so doing, we discover one of the secrets of life: there’s no such thing as a stranger.

When we reflect Jesus’ priority of invitation, our group gathered in Christ’s name becomes permeable. We draw others towards us with the charisma of the Spirit of Christ: with our welcome, our hospitality, our utter delight in saying, “Come and see,” to those hungering for spiritual connection. Jesus drew people to him, and when we accept the challenge of living with him in our midst, we will draw people to us, as well.

Along with inviting, our next action is serving. One of the holy invitations Jesus offers to all is to serve in his name. His was a life of service to those who were poor and marginalized. He healed people not just by curing ailments, but by seeing a person standing before him when society saw only a problem or a disease or a demon.

When we take seriously Christ’s presence in our midst, we embrace his attitude of service. We actively seek out ways to step outside of our comfortable bubbles and rub shoulders with those on the margins. I spent an hour at the WARM shelter in Westerly last Wednesday, and the opportunities for us to serve their population are myriad. I can’t wait to imagine with you how to expand our work with them.

With inviting and serving, we come to our third action, which is sharing. On the night before he died, Jesus shared a meal with his friends. We participate in this same meal each week as we share his Body and Blood with each other. In this sharing, we become Christ’s Body, a group gathered in his name, strengthened and unified by his Spirit.

When we take seriously Christ’s presence in our midst, we embrace his attitude of sharing. We take an interest in each other’s lives. When we ask how you’re doing, we really want to know. When we embrace, we feel the kinship of Christ holding tight even after we let go. We share our talents and our resources with the group because we are stronger together.

Our sharing strengthens us for service. Our serving broadens our understanding of invitation. And our inviting expands our circle of sharing. Each of these actions responds to the challenge of Christ’s presence in our midst. When we gather together in Christ’s name, he is here among us. This is Gospel truth. This is the reality that makes our lives what they are. This is Jesus’ promise to us. Embedded in that promise is our challenge to make visible, to make tangible the gift of his presence. So this year at St. Mark’s, we will invite any and all to come and see what God is up to. We will serve those on the margins. We will share our lives with each other. We will gather in Christ’s name. And Christ will be among us.

—
Art: Detail from “The Disciples at Emmaus” by Eugene Delacroix (1853)

Trailblazer

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

Sermon for Sunday, August 24, 2014 || Proper 16A || Matthew 16:13-20

(A problem with our sound system rendered the audio for this sermon unusable.)

TrailblazerFor as long as I can remember, my father has worn a cross beneath his clothing, resting on his skin close to his heart. So when my parents gave me a cross of my own to wear when I was in my early teen years, I was thrilled. I was going to be just like Dad, wearing my cross all the time, even in the shower! The trouble was I kept losing it. I couldn’t wear the cross all the time because I played soccer, and there was a “no jewelry” rule. So it would get lost in the depths of my soccer bag (which was not a place for the faint of heart). The chain broke once, but I managed to find the cross beneath the seat of my car. Then during my freshman year of college the chain broke again, and I lost the cross for good.

At that time, I was just beginning to glimpse the edge of the expanse of the life God was calling me into, so I was quite upset at losing my cross. I’m not naturally a superstitious person, but I took it as a bad omen. So two weeks before I turned nineteen, I went to a local tattoo parlor and emerged a few hours later with a Celtic cross indelibly inked on my back. It was my way of telling myself that I was, indeed, a follower of Jesus, that if push came to shove there was no way to deny my identity. At baptism I was marked with oil as “Christ’s own forever,” but now I was visibly marked as Christ’s own.

And yet, walking out of the tattoo parlor on that fine January day, I don’t think I could have told you what it meant to me to be a follower of Jesus. I think I could do a bit better job today, but such meaning-making will take the rest of my lifetime to unfold, so check back with me again sometime. What’s telling is that – in my tattoo experience – I identified as “follower.” Since I put myself in the position of “follower,” for me Jesus took on the identity of “guide.”

As my guide, or better yet my “trailblazer,” I envisioned Jesus walking ahead of me, as if we were tramping through a marsh and he knew where it was safe to place one’s feet. Because he was my trailblazer and I his follower, I attempted to step where he stepped and to stay on the path he showed me. When people learned I was in the process to become an ordained minister, they asked if I was following in my father’s footsteps. I responded, “No,” because in my mind, we were both following in Jesus’ footsteps. Thus, in my language and in my imagination – two of the most potent vehicles for meaning-making – I identified as the follower of a trailblazer.

But the trailblazer-follower relationship is only one of myriad possibilities. And this is why today’s story from the Gospel according to Matthew is so important for us today. You see, when Jesus asks the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” he’s really asking them, “What kind of relationship do you want to have with me?”

This powerful secondary question hovers just beneath the primary one because no matter what the disciples say, they set up the presumption of a relationship. Let’s take Simon Peter’s answer, for instance. I imagine his words rushing from Peter’s mouth all at once, as if an unseen force reached into his heart and yanked them out: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.”

So if Peter names Jesus “Messiah,” what title would Peter use for himself to relate to this identity? Would it surprise you if I said soldier? The title of “Messiah” was something of a political identity at this time in Israel. The Jewish Messiah was supposed to be a warrior like the great King David, who swept away the forces occupying Israel with his martial prowess. It’s not a coincidence at all that Matthew sets this exchange in the city of Ceasarea Phillipi, a city named for the Roman Emperor. Peter’s confession of Jesus as Messiah tacitly sets Jesus against the power of occupying Rome. That Peter identifies as a soldier in the Messiah’s army is made clear both in his use of a sword when Jesus is arrested and in the very next passage after ours today. We’ll read it next week, but here’s a spoiler. Jesus reveals to the disciples what is going to happen to him – namely something basically the opposite of kicking the Romans out of Israel – and Peter is stunned to hear the Messiah will die. Another set of words rips itself from Peter: “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.”

It takes the rest of the Gospel, and indeed the rest of Peter’s life, to fathom Jesus’ understanding of “Messiah.” Peter’s journey takes him from confession to denial to redemption to proclamation as he struggles with his relationship to Jesus in light of calling him Messiah. By the end of his time in the book of Acts, Peter has moved from soldier to something of a herald of Jesus’ understanding of Messiah-ship.

So Peter undergoes a long transformation of his identity in the light of calling Jesus Messiah. I still think of Jesus as my trailblazer, and I try to follow his steps. But what of you? When Jesus puts this question to you, who do you say that he is? And what does that say about the kind of relationship you want to have with him?

Perhaps you answer that Jesus is “Lord,” which makes you his “subject.” If so, this means you cede your sovereignty over to him. You surrender your will to his. You are a vassal and he is your liege. We might not want to give up our autonomy to a higher power, knowing as we do how badly that turns out most of the time here on earth. But Jesus is a Lord who is trustworthy and true, and giving up our wills for his leads not to enslavement but to freedom.

Perhaps you answer not Lord but “Teacher.” This makes you Jesus’ “student.” If so, you desire to learn all you can from him, both by searching the scriptures and listening for his instruction as you pray. We have so much to learn from Jesus our teacher, and we will never graduate from his class, not until we “know fully, even as we are fully known.”

Perhaps you answer not Lord or Teacher, but “Savior.” Thus, you relate to Jesus as someone who needs saving. He is the knight in shining armor and you are in distress in the dragon’s lair. As our savior, Jesus accomplished the great work set before him between the cross and the empty tomb. But if we let him, his presence in our lives continues to save us from all the small, yet debilitating, ways we drift towards annihilation.

And if not Lord or Teacher or Savior, how about “Friend?” If Jesus is your friend, then you are his. This is not blasphemy, for Jesus calls his disciples friends in the upper room on the night of his arrest. As a friend, a companion, Jesus is not walking ahead of us blazing the path. Rather, he is walking with us, hand in hand, as we discover the way together.

Of course, these ways of answering Jesus’ question are not mutually exclusive. Jesus is trailblazer and Messiah and Lord and teacher and savior and friend. And that is just a small sampling. Answering his question – “Who do you say that I am?” – does not limit our relationships with him, but it does define them. Discerning how we relate to Jesus at any given time or in any given situation will only serve to strengthen our relationships with him. And the more we follow our trailblazer and proclaim our Messiah and serve our Lord and learn from our teacher and reach out to our Savior and walk with our friend Jesus Christ, the better and fuller and deeper will we answer his call in our lives.

—

Art: Detail from “Handing Over the Keys” by Raphael (1515)

The Faith System

Published on by Adam Thomas1 Comment

Sermon for Sunday, August 17, 2014 || Proper 15A || Matthew 10:21-28

thefaithsystemGood morning! It’s good to be back after three weeks away. I know I’ve only been next door, but it seems like another world when newborns are filling all your waking (and the few sleeping) moments. I seriously thought about skipping this sermon entirely and just showing you baby pictures for the next ten minutes, but then I realized lemonade on the lawn might be a better venue for that. So, let’s get down to the sermon.

Having newborns in the house has a way of making you get back to basics. It’s not easy to care for them, but it is simple. Feed. Change. Soothe. Try to catch a few zz’s. Repeat. Likewise, today I’d like to get back to one of the basics of following Jesus Christ. I’m going to talk about faith – specifically about how faith works in our lives. Hopefully, at the end of this sermon we will all rejoice that, while faith seems like an abstract, ephemeral concept, faith is in truth the fuel that fires our lives.

To start this little discussion about faith, we need to clear up one minor issue. In the English language the word “faith” is a noun. This grammatical construction makes it normal for us to ask a question like “Do you have faith?” Faith here is the object of your possession: “Yes, I have faith.” This sounds like completely correct and acceptable English, right? The trouble is, while faith is a noun, it should be a verb. I should be able to say “I’m going faith-ing today” or “We faith-ed yesterday and we’re going to faith again tomorrow.” But those sentences sound really strange, don’t they? I wish they didn’t. The word “faith” is a noun but whenever you use it, I hope you will remember it should be a verb.

Here’s why. We can possess things like concert tickets and hiking boots, but such possessions just sit on the counter or in the closet until we need to use them. If we have faith in the same way we have concert tickets, then we run the risk of storing our faith in the kitchen cupboard until we think we need it. But faith doesn’t work like that. Faith cannot be stored up or hoarded. We might get into situations where we say, “If I just had a little more faith…” But this turns faith into a commodity, something we can trade for something else. That’s not how faith works.

Thinking of faith as a verb removes it from the kitchen cupboard and puts it in our actions. We cannot store up or hoard our actions like we can our possessions. Rather, each action tumbles into the next in a never-ending stream. The problem we run into here is that, since the word faith isn’t actually a verb, we have trouble imagining what faith as action looks like. You know exactly what I mean when I say, “I saw someone running on my walk to church this morning.” But you’d have difficulty conjuring up the image if I said, “I saw someone faith-ing on my walk to church this morning.”

Because of this difficulty, I’d like to invite you to imagine with me a reality that we don’t often think about. When God created animals, God gave us all sorts of biological systems that allow us to live. The respiratory system lets us breath, the circulatory system cycles our blood through our bodies, the digestive system turns food into nutrients. There’s the nervous system, the endocrine system, the lymphatic system and so on. But we were made in God’s image and likeness, which means we have one more system that other animals don’t have. We have a spiritual one to go along with all our biological ones. We have a faith system.

The faith system works a lot like our muscular system. We all have muscles. We need our muscles to do simple tasks like getting out of bed, standing up, even smiling. We also need our muscles to do more difficult tasks like running a marathon or lugging a couch to a third floor walkup. Exercising hones and strengthens our muscles, making them more durable and less likely to fatigue. But whether we exercise or not, our muscles still put in work day in and day out.

So, too, with our faith system. The faith system spurs us to seek out life-affirming relationships, to support one another in our daily walks with God, to reach out to those in need, to welcome anyone into our midst, and to share with them the good news of God’s love. The faith system also sustains us through dry, desolate periods, giving us enough endurance not to give up quite yet. Like our muscles, our faith can get weary and fatigued. But also like our muscles, we can exercise our faith to hone and strengthen it, to make it more a part of our actions and less a thing sitting on the shelf in the kitchen cupboard.

If we’re going to exercise our faith, then we should figure out exactly what we mean when we say the word. We’ve already said how faith is a noun that should be a verb. Faith then is the action that happens when we participate in our relationships with God. Faith borrows the best parts of trust, confidence, humility, and zeal and molds them into our response to God’s presence in our lives. From trust, our faith borrows the willingness to give ourselves over to the power of another. From confidence, our faith borrows the courage to take the leap into God’s waiting arms. From humility, our faith borrows the recognition that God (and not we ourselves) initiates the action that results in the giving of ourselves up to God. And from zeal, our faith borrows the passion actually to get going and do something.

In today’s Gospel lesson, the Canaanite woman actively engages her faith system. She trusts that Jesus can help her. She has courage actually to do something about that trust, even in the midst of the disciples’ and Jesus’ own dismissal of her. She shows humility when she kneels before Jesus, calls him “Lord,” and asks for help. And her passion erupts when she counters Jesus’ statement about the children’s food. All she needs is a crumb, she says, a scrap discarded to the floor. Jesus calls her faith “great.” But no matter how great our faith is, we each have a faith system that God gave us so we would be able to join God in relationship. The more we exercise our faith system – the more we act out our faith – the deeper can we go in our relationships with God.

Imagine if we exercised our faith in the same way we exercise our muscles. Going to the gym once doesn’t do much, but going every other day can work wonders on our bodies. God yearns for us to have this kind of dedication to our lives of faith. When we are serious about exercising our faith systems, we build time into every day to be in prayer with God. We start with faith and allow it to motivate all our other actions. We take part in the act of worship, both on Sunday mornings and in the moments of our days when our faith shows us special signs of God’s presence that our eyes alone might not see.

I invite you today to remember that faith is not a commodity or a possession. Faith is the active component of our relationships with God. Faith is a noun but in our lives let’s make it a verb.

—

* Art: detail from “Allegory of Faith” by Tintoretto (c. 1564)

Inside the Golden Box

Published on by Adam Thomas1 Comment

Sermon for Sunday, July 13, 2014 || Proper 10A || Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23


InsidetheGoldenBoxOkay, to start off: I’m not going to preach this morning about my rapidly approaching fatherhood. But I just want to point out God’s divine sense of humor in us reading in the Hebrew Scripture a story about the birth of twins. Rather, this morning, I’m going to preach about God’s persistence and God’s extravagance. To do this, I’d like to talk about the second of my three days of Godly Play training.

In Godly Play, Jesus’ parables reside in golden boxes, and on this second day of training, the leader invited the students to pair up and choose a box. Now, I don’t remember if I chose the parable of the sower or if the parable of the sower chose me, but either way, my partner and I opened our golden box to reveal a long piece of brown felt, three types of ground depicted on wooden cutouts, some tiny birds, and a sower with arm sweeping up from his satchel of grain.

We laid out the parable and started learning how to tell it in Godly Play style. We rolled out the long piece of felt underlay and slowly placed the types of ground on it. In Godly Play, everything happens slowly and deliberately. You take each piece out of the box, hold it, look at it, and draw the children into the story through your own focus and intentionality. Well, at that day of training, as I had just learned this theory, I was extra careful to move slowly, deliberately, and intentionally. I studied each piece as I removed it from the golden box. I held the sower. I held the birds. I held the rocky ground. I held the thorny soil. I held the good soil.

At the end of my first rehearsal of the story, all I could think was this: “Why waste so much seed?” Out of four types of ground, only one yielded grain. A mere 25 percent of the seed was successfully planted. The rest was stolen by birds or scorched in the sun or choked by thorns. What kind of sower would waste three-quarters of his seed?

Turns out, God is that kind of sower. Our God is a God of abundance, of surpassing love and extravagant grace. God scatters the seed of God’s word everywhere in creation and within the hearts of all people. What might seem like waste to us who are so often concerned with the scarcity of things, to God the scattering of seed among all things is simply standard operating procedure. The word of God is eternal. The word of God is never going to be exhausted. Thus, God can scatter as much of the seed of the word wherever God wants with no care given to it ever running out.

The prophet Isaiah proclaims such a reality when he speaks this word from God: “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (55:10-11).

So if God’s word accomplishes that for which God sent it, what of the seed that seems to be wasted? What of the seed that fell on the path, on the rocky ground, and among the thorns? These questions were on my mind as I continued preparing the parable of the sower for presentation at Godly Play training. But it wasn’t until I was putting away the parable for the final time that God gave me the gift of a small insight. I had already put the sower, the birds, and the types of ground back into the golden box. All that was left was the long strip of brown felt, the simple underlay for the other pieces. I sat there staring at it.

In a parable story, the felt underlay exists mostly to give shape to the other pieces. But as the first thing you pull from the golden box when you begin a story, the underlay can also serve as a warm-up activity to fire the imaginations of the children. “ ‘I wonder what this could be?’ you say,” as you turn the felt over in your hands, looking at both sides before smoothing it out on the floor. It’s a chocolate bar, a child might offer. It’s a brown snake. It’s a belt for a giant.

But as I sat there staring at the brown underlay all alone, I said, “I wonder what this could be?” and the answer came back, “It could be me.”

The brown felt upon which I placed the different kinds of ground could be any of – is each of us. Each of us, at various moments in our lives, has been the path upon which the birds came and ate. We have been the rocky ground. We have been the thorns. And hopefully, at some points, now or in the past or future, we have been the good soil. Thus, the kinds of ground upon which God’s seed falls are not different people, but different moments in the lives of each individual person.

Sometimes we receive the word with apathy and allow the birds to eat it up. Sometimes we dedicate ourselves with renewed fervor, only to have the fire burn hot and quick and die as soon as it started. Sometimes we allow the cares of the world to drown out the whispers of the abiding promises of God. And sometimes…sometimes we are receptive to God’s word, and the seed sprouts up abundantly.

I said at the beginning of this sermon that it would be about God’s persistence and God’s extravagance. Have you noticed them yet? The sower could plant the seed only in the good soil, but instead the sower flings it far and wide, trusting that even on challenging ground, the seed makes some impact. This is God’s extravagance – an expansive gesture of love and grace on the receptive and unreceptive alike.

And what of God’s persistence? Well, to extend the metaphor of the parable, the birds eat up the seed only to deposit it somewhere else. The seeds that die by scorching sun and choking thorn still sink into the loam to fertilize the ground. Thus, none of the seed is wasted; even the seed that falls outside the good soil can accomplish the purpose for which God cast it in the first place. Likewise, when you and I are at places in our lives when we are not exhibiting traits of good soil, God still casts seed upon us, knowing that even a hint of the word can make an impact, however small. Each seed cast upon us when we are unreceptive prepares us to become good soil at some future time. God yearns for us to be good soil, but God can wait because God is persistent.

As you take stock of your current relationship with God, ask God what kind of ground you are right now. What steps can you take to partner with God to till your soil into the kind receptive to God’s word? Trust that God continues to shower seed upon you because of God’s extravagant grace and persistent love no matter how many rocks or thorns stand in the way. The good news is this: sooner or later, in this life or the next, God’s word will take root in each of us because the sower will never run out of seed.

—

Art: The Parable of the Sower Godly Play story

The Comfort and the Challenge

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Sermon for Sunday, June 22, 2014 || Proper 7A || Matthew 10:24-39


comfortandchallengeSometimes when we pull a piece of the Gospel out of its natural habitat and read it in our cozy New England church, the impact of the words changes. Take the lesson I just finished, for example. How surprised would you be to learn that Jesus is trying to comfort his disciples with these words? You just heard them. They don’t sound very comforting, do they?

Certain passages of the Gospel cut through the dusty weight of years and touch our hearts in the same way I’m sure they touched the hearts of Jesus’ original followers. Others, like today’s, meander towards the present time and get a bit lost along the way. So let’s see if we can follow the path back to Jesus’ lips and hear anew these difficult words. Then we can bring them back to the present and hear what they have to say to us now.

Today’s Gospel lesson comprises the end of a set of instructions, which Jesus gives to his inner circle before sending them out to do the work he has appointed them to do, namely to cast out unclean spirits and cure disease. If we had started the passage sooner, we would have heard Jesus instruct the twelve disciples not to take any extra clothes or food with them, but to rely on God’s provision in the form of hospitality. If we had started the passage sooner, we would have heard Jesus tell them not to worry about what they will say when brought before the authorities, but to rely on God’s Spirit to speak through them. If we had started the passage sooner, we would see what a challenge Jesus sets before his friends, a challenge to rely on God – for sustenance, shelter, endurance, eloquence, in all things really.

This show of reliance on God in the face of challenging circumstances might even be the reason Jesus sent his friends out in the first place. They were living billboards for the kind of life Jesus promoted: a life of trust in God, a life in which you put God first and everything else fell into place. Jesus’ disciples trudged from town to town with nothing but the clothes on their backs, good news on their lips, and the power to heal in their hands. Now some scholars tell us that they didn’t bring extra clothes or food so they wouldn’t be juicy targets for bandits out on the dangerous roads. And I’m sure that’s part of it. But the more compelling story is their acceptance of the challenge to rely on God for all things.

And I’m sure the story was compelling: compelling enough to make new disciples and new enemies. And this is where Jesus’ supposedly comforting words for today arrive on the scene. First he reminds his friends that his opponents have openly called him Beelzebul (that is, the father of demons). If they call me such a name, he says, then don’t expect kind treatment. But even if they treat you poorly, “Have no fear of them.” In fact, Jesus tells his friends not to be afraid three times in this passage, just to make sure the words sink in.

Don’t be afraid, he says, because, while they slander you now with false words, all will be revealed in time. Don’t be afraid because, while they can hurt your physically, they cannot touch the soul, which resides with God for safekeeping. And don’t be afraid because your Father in heaven knows you intimately, knows even how many hairs are on your head. If you do happen to fall to the ground, God will be there to pick you up again.

So far, Jesus’ words are speaking comfort to the challenge. Jesus trusts his disciples to rely on God, and this trust will help them overcome their fear. But now we move to the more difficult words, the ones which the long march of time has mangled. As we listen to them, we have to remember one immutable fact that separates our experience from that of Jesus’ original followers. We do not live in a part of the modern world that is charged with religious fervor. Indeed, in our part of the modern world, the religious fervor tank is approaching empty. I don’t know about you but when people discover I am a practicing Christian, their responses range from total indifference to mild surprise to pleasant curiosity. I can count on less than one hand the number of times my identity as a follower of Jesus has been met with unmitigated derision.

Not so for his original followers. Their world was charged with religious fervor. The very idea that someone like Jesus might be teaching something new would be downright offensive to many people. Jesus’ reinterpretation (and in some cases strengthening) of the Jewish law was a punishable act. The words Jesus speaks in the rest of today’s passage are not intended to strike fear into the hearts of his listeners (as they might do to us), but rather to lay out plainly the state of affairs if you were to take the leap and join Jesus’ team. Such a leap would cause division, as symbolized by the sword. Such a leap could separate families. Such a leap could lead to physical death.

The religiously charged atmosphere was hostile to change, and with his words here, Jesus shows that he knows exactly what he is asking his friends to do. But in the final verse of our passage, he also tells them that it’s worth it: “Those who lose their life for my sake will find it,” he says.

So, as we bring Jesus’ words with us back to our modern moment, what do they say to us? Well, the comfort remains. “Do not be afraid” always rings true and always will. But the things we might be afraid of have changed. In fact, our fear might ironically spring from Jesus’ own words: what he meant as comfort has become our challenge. He says, “What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.” As religious fervor leeches from our land, speaking about how we make choices because of God’s movement in our lives – indeed, being on fire for God’s service – has somehow become impolite, even taboo. But we have good news to share, and we have God’s work to do. And we can do so invitingly, unapologetically, and – yes – fervently. Our faith is nothing to be ashamed of. So be open, and rely on God to find the right words and actions to display your allegiance.

In Jesus’ day, he upset the status quo by deepening and expanding the meaning of what it meant to be a follower of God. He spoke comfort and challenge in equal measure to attract and galvanize people to join him in his mission to re-imagine what God was doing on earth – indeed, to make earth more like heaven. In our day, we follow Jesus’ lead when we continue upsetting the status quo. With God’s help, we offer hospitality to the stranger when society tells us to shut our door. We offer generosity to the needy when society tells us to hoard what’s ours. We offer friendship to the lonely, dignity to the outcast, love to the unlovable. This is our story, and it is a compelling one.

Just as Jesus sent his friends out to heal and serve, so he sends us out. He sends us out in trust and not in fear. He sends us out, knowing that our road will not always be an easy one. But he sends us out always walking a road he trod before us, a road that leads, yes, to the cross, but then past the cross to the empty tomb and the glorious new life God offers to all.

—

Art: Detail from “Jesus Walks in the Portico of Solomon” by James Tissot

Secret Names

Published on by Adam Thomas1 Comment

Sermon for Sunday, June 15, 2014 || Trinity Sunday, Year A || Genesis 1:1 – 2:4a

secretnamesAs most of you know, Leah and I are expecting twins in just a couple of weeks. I’ll let you in on a little secret. I am so excited. And terrified. And excited. Whenever I think of the immensity of the change that is about to take place in our lives, I get this “deer in the headlights” look on my face for a minute. But then I remember to breath, and I remember that we’re going to have a lot of help and support, and I remember what Jesus says at the end of today’s Gospel reading: “I am with you always.” And all that helps.

But I’m getting off topic. You all know we’re expecting twins. You know we’re hoping for six more weeks of gestational time, and you know we’re having a boy and a girl. But there’s one thing Leah and I have been keeping to ourselves – one thing we barely whisper even to each other. We’ve been keeping their names a secret.

(Now, before you get all excited, I’m not going to tell you their names today. You’ll have to wait until they’re born.)

As I sat down to ponder this Trinity Sunday sermon, I found myself wondering why we’ve been keeping their names secret. We don’t even use them when we’re alone. We still call them “Baby Girl” and “Baby Boy,” which took over a few months ago from their original codenames “Alpha” and “Bravo.”

All of this was on my mind while reading the creation story from Genesis that we heard a few minutes ago, and something struck me that I’ve never noticed before. Did you catch how many things God names in the first three days of creation? God calls the light “Day” and the darkness “Night.” God calls the dome “Sky,” the dry land “Earth,” and the gathered waters “Seas.” Likewise, in the second creation story, which follows what we read this morning, God invites the first human to name all the living creatures of the earth.

Thus, as Genesis tells the story, one of the things God creates is the act of naming. And God passes this act to the first human and by extension to us. Have you ever stopped to think how important names are? The simple act of naming causes us to value things in new and greater ways.

Think of it like this. I don’t know anything about trees, but you do. We go for a hike in the woods. I see a bunch of trees. But you see an Oak and a Chestnut and a Birch. You appreciate the curves of the boughs and the shape of the leaves. You know which root goes with which tree and which bird prefers to nest on which branch. I still just see a bunch of trees. But then you teach me the name of the Chestnut and how to recognize it. And suddenly, I see Chestnut trees all around me. I appreciate them in a new way because I can see them and name them.

Naming something brings out that something’s intrinsic value: value it always had, but which we don’t necessarily appreciate until we name it.

So what’s all this have to do with the Trinity? I’m glad you asked. Our understanding of God springs directly from our desire to name God. Yes, we have the word “God,” but in our experience those three letters do not do justice to the sublime coherence of grace and love and communion that we feel when we stumble into God’s presence.

So let’s train our imaginations to look back before God said, “Let there be light”; back before there was a creation for God to call God’s own. We believe that “God is love,” as the First Letter of John puts it, but if there was no creation to fill the role of the Beloved, then how could this be? Well, if there was nothing else to love, then God loved God. But we can’t stop there because true love always manifests as a relationship. And so in our futile attempt to find the right word to name God, we latch on to relational language and name God “Father.” We could just as easily use the word, “Mother,” as well. This sets up one side of a loving relationship, that of parent to child.

But the relationship is incomplete without the second person. And so we also name God “Son” to acknowledge the complete relationship between loving parent and beloved child. In the Gospel according to John, Jesus says that God “loved me before the foundation of the world.” This love between parent and child is so palpable that the love itself is the third member of the Trinity, which we name the Holy Spirit. Indeed, Paul tells the church in Rome that “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

This loving relationship between parent and child existed before anything else. Nothing existed that could substitute for or diminish the relationship. The love was pure, perfect, unsullied by deficiencies such as lust or anger or apathy or dominance. In fact, the perfection of the relationship meant that, while there was a Trinity of persons, a Unity of being was the ultimate reality. This Unity of being was the home in which the three persons dwelt: the Parent, the Child, and the Love between them.

When we name God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we show our willingness – our desire – to resonate to a deeper degree with God’s movement in our lives. Just like learning the name of the Chestnut tree and suddenly seeing them everywhere, when we name God with the relational words of the Trinity, we set ourselves up to notice God moving in our lives in myriad ways: as the Father, the Son, the Spirit; as the Parent, Child, and Love between them – Love that brings us into the relationship and ushers us back home.

As I contemplate the secret names of our nascent children, as I lift those five syllables daily to the heart of God, I remember the importance of names. Names reveal the intrinsic value of things. Names pulls us deeper and deeper into relationship. Names help us notice things our eyes have never seen before. This is why we have three names for One God. This is why God has given us the gift of revealing God’s personhood as a thrice-named Trinity.

As I pray the names of our unborn children silently to God, I continue to wonder why we are keeping them secret. And I think the reason is this: we are saving their names for the new and joyous relationship that will begin at birth. Right now, they are ultrasound photo and pulsing heartbeat and kick on the belly and empty car seat waiting to be filled. And they are hope. I feel so much love gathering up inside of me – more love than my heart can hold because my heart is too small right now. I think this is a piece of the kind of love God felt in that moment before creation when there was only a Parent, a Child, and the Love between them. This new love is overflowing the banks of my heart, flooding me, waiting for the rapidly approaching day when I will hold my children in my arms, smell the tops of their heads, kiss their tiny fingers, and whisper their names.

And the moment I do, my heart will grow. These two new creations, these two incarnations of the love of God will hear their names. And pieces of my heart will exit my chest, enter theirs, and beat in tandem with their new hearts.

* ART: Detail from “Trinity” by Andrei Rublev (c. 1410)

Six Word Witness

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Sermon for Sunday, May 25, 2014 || Easter 6A || Acts 17:22-31; 1 Peter 3:13-22; John 14:15-21

6wordwitnessI couldn’t help but notice the readings selected for today all have some flavor of courtroom drama. We have the Apostle Paul sightseeing around Athens and discovering an out of the way shrine dedicated “to an unknown god.” When he stands up to debate at the Areopagus (the Athenian equivalent of the Supreme Court), he proclaims to the Athenians that this unknown god is the God who created all that is, the God of Abraham and his descendants, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. At the end of his speech, some scoff at him and leave; others are intrigued and join Paul on his journey.

Continuing the courtroom theme, in the letter of Peter, the writer urges the reader to “always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence.”

And finally, on the night before he dies, Jesus makes a promise to his disciples: “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth.” You can think of this “Advocate” as the one who would stand up for you in court, one that would counsel you and speak on your behalf.

The courtroom drama of these three passages makes sense when we hop in our TARDIS and go back in time to first century Asia Minor. In the early days of the movement that would become Christianity, those spreading the word about Jesus were met with many reactions: anger, curiosity, rejection, embrace, incredulity, joy. Last week, we read the tragic story of the stoning of Stephen, the first person to die for faith in Jesus. Two weeks ago, we read about three thousand people being baptized after hearing Peter preach. Notice here that reactions to the proclamation of the Gospel at that time – at least the ones recorded in the book of Acts – were never tepid.

Now hop back in the TARDIS (that’s Dr. Who’s time machine, by the way), and come back to the present. We’ve all heard the news and seen the statistics. The church in the United States is in decline. More people than ever before marked the “none” box on the religion question of the 2010 census – note that’s none N-O-N-E, not nun N-U-N. The reasons for this are many and varied, and they are way beyond the scope of this sermon. Well, all but one is. You see, one reason for the downward trend is that over the last several decades the church has lost the ability to tell our story – the story of the God made known in the witness of the Bible and in Jesus Christ.

For too long, the church relied on its primacy in American society, a society steeped in the language and tradition of the Biblical story. When that primacy began to erode, the church didn’t realize how much it was relying on society as a whole to carry its message. And ever since that primacy evaporated entirely, the church hasn’t come to grips with how to proclaim this wonderful and life-giving story from its new position as underdog.

People nowadays – even many faithful churchgoers – just don’t know the story, both the Biblical story itself and how we fit into the story’s narrative trajectory. At the same time, we’ve entered into that underdog role. This might not sound like good news (and in many respects, it’s not, to be sure), but in one honest-to-goodness way, this news is good. This is the first time in history since the earliest centuries of Christianity that the church is not the dominant force in Western society. Back then people didn’t know the story either, or they didn’t know the version the apostles were telling.

What I’m trying to say is that we have reached a new apostolic moment. We have a story to share with a world that’s unfamiliar with this life-changing narrative. And I guarantee you there are people hungry to hear it.

Case in point: I’m a gamer. I love games. Video games are okay, but board games are my true love. When I lived in Massachusetts I frequented a local game store, the kind of store that sold games and had tables set up for people just to come in and play. The clientele of the store – think characters from The Big Bang Theory – were mostly those who would have checked “none” on the census form. But over the couple of years I played games there, an interesting thing happened. As people got to know me and found out what I do for a living, they started asking me questions – deep questions about faith and morality and how to know God. They were hungry for something beyond their own physical ken, for something deeper than today’s reality, for something…more.

This seeking happened occasionally, but often enough that I started thinking of myself as the chaplain of the game store. And I’m glad and feel so blessed to have been someone who could bear witness to my faith and to let them in on the story we all share.

I know this kind of witness and sharing can be so daunting. When we feel like the underdog or when we feel like we’re on trial, speaking up can be hard. But remember the promise Jesus gave the disciples: the Father “will send you another Advocate” to help you speak, to walk along side you as you share your part of the greatest story every told. Paul felt that Spirit when he spoke out in Athens, but you don’t need to be a Christian rock star like Paul to do it. All you need is six words.

You might be familiar with the Six-Word Memoir Project started by SMITH Magazine in 2006. Based on a legend that Ernest Hemingway was challenged to write a story in only six words (he succeeded, by the way),* SMITH Magazine invited people to share their life stories in only six words. Such an extreme restriction bred abundant creativity, and people continue to share six word stories today on blogs and Twitter.

This week, I invite you to write your own six-word witness to how you fit into the story of God’s creative and redemptive work among us. I’ll be honest: this is quite a challenge. I’ve been working on mine since Thursday and I’m nowhere close to happy with it. But the act of trying to distill my witness to God’s movement in my life down to six words has me currently wrestling with what parts of God’s story are truly the most important for me and which parts I fit into. And when I find those words, I’ll have something to say when someone inevitably asks me why I’m a follower of Christ.

I went through scripture looking for six-word stories to get us started. I’ll end this sermon with a few. Consider these some of the ways the Spirit of truth, the Advocate that Christ promises us, is still speaking to us.

Here’s a story from Genesis: God said, “Go.” So Abram went.

Here’s one from the psalm we studied two weeks ago: God’s my shepherd. I lack nothing.

Here are a few from Jesus himself: I am the resurrection and life.

The wind blows where it chooses.

And my favorite: Remember, I’ll be with you. Always.

Perhaps your six-word witness will spring from your favorite Bible story like one of these. Or maybe from your favorite hymn. How’s this one: Amazing grace will lead me home.

When we tell our story – even just six words at a time – we actively participate in it, and we invite others to join it, as well. We can trust our Advocate the Holy Spirit to help us bear witness to God’s constant and creative movement. This is our new apostolic moment, when the world is hungry and…

We have good news to share.

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* Hemingway’s (tragic) six word story read: “For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.”
Art: detail from “Jesus walks on water,” by Ivan Aivazovsky (1888).