Month: March 2018

Hope Restored

What happens when hopes aren’t realized?  When the things you have believed in or worked hard for fail?  Is it better to have no hope than to have hopes that are dashed?  These must have been the complex emotions of those people who left their nets, their families and their homes behind and hung all their hope on the itinerant rabbi from Nazareth.  As they followed, they witnessed time and time again Jesus teaching with authority, the healing in his touch, the grace in his voice and the blessing in his eyes. This was no ordinary rabbi.  And he spent his time with such ordinary people, which gave them hope. A hope that something special, even revolutionary was brewing. He spoke in riddles and parables but it all seemed to point to a claim he continued to make.  He was special. He was the son of God. He was Israel’s long-awaited Messiah.

But he hung out with the ordinary, even marginalized folk; not people of power, like the priests and lawyers.  He spoke about forgiveness and turning the other cheek, not a violent over-throwing of the Roman occupation. Jesus was different.  His kingdom was about giving up power and trusting the words of God fully. God was in control. God would prevail. God’s people must love God and love neighbor as oneself.  Even their enemies deserved their love. It sure was different than anything they had heard of before but they went along, often stumbling and doubting. Jesus was quick to correct but patient to the end.  Jesus made them believers in the Way. A new Kingdom was on the horizon. It would come about by God’s doing, not human action.

Yet, in the end, were they foolish to believe the world would ever operate differently?  Instead of love triumphing, it was the powerful, the wealthy, the possessors of violence and fear that dashed their hopes.  One of their own sold Jesus out for just thirty pieces of silver. That’s all it took. It’s hard to resist power and money.  Once Jesus was under the authority of the ruling class – the Romans – and their uncomfortable bedfellows, the priests and Sadducees, it all moved quickly.  The revolution was squashed with the violent death of a man who only loved everyone he met. His one crime? Exposing the excesses of the religious elite and their propensity to love themselves rather than embracing the privilege to serve God and others.

In the aftermath of such devastation. Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome were walking to Jesus’ tomb in the early morning light.  What must they have been thinking and feeling? The man who had so inspired them and gave them a hope they never knew possible was suddenly no more.  The authorities once again had proved who was really in charge. As Cameron Murchison mentions in Feasting on the Word, “The women on their way to anoint Jesus’ body (may have been) making peace not only with the death of Jesus but with the death of Jesus’ claim to embody the reign of God for the well-being of the world.”   What sadness, fear, and even depression must they have been feeling on that early morning walk? Have you ever walked in their shoes?

The utter despair of the time between Good Friday and Easter Sunday is all but lost on most of us who follow in the Way.  We leave the Good Friday service touched by the sacrifice of Christ but with chores to do, soccer games to attend on Saturday, and the Easter ham to prepare.  Life goes on. We know how the story ends.

But for these women, who thought the story had ended in death, and for the disciples, who fled in fear for their own lives, the darkness and despair were real.  So imagine, if you can, the disorientation, the confusion, the utter change in perspective the empty tomb and the angel provides these ladies. Utterly stunned? I imagine it would have taken time for me to work all this out.  To hash my experience out with other followers. Then, to begin to comprehend that, in fact, this new Way is possible. It is real. What’s more, the powers of violence and self-preservation had taken their best swing at God’s son and had fallen short.  The cracks of man’s kingdom were showing and God’s Kingdom was possible, after all.

It’s a great story – and a true one, too! So now we must ask: what does this reality, Jesus raised from the dead, mean for me?

  • How do I live in the reality of the resurrection when it seems like the powers of deception, confusion, domination, violence and self-aggrandizing are in firm control all around me?
  • What does resurrection say to me when my life seems out of control and hope is lost?
  • In whom do I trust?  The creator of all things and the one who raises the dead or what I see and touch and hear?
  • How does the power of God and the power of man present differently in our world?  Which is easier to follow?

The angel’s instructions to the women were to go and tell.

  • For the women, who expected to find Jesus’ dead body, would this have been a hard task?
  • When we experience amazing, transformative experiences, how do we respond?  Are we compelled to talk about the news? Is it fun or hard to share our experiences?
  • What happens when the new of resurrection is not shared?

May the sudden, good news of Easter transform our lives and make us eager to go and tell!

The Road Leading to Jerusalem

The beginning of Holy Week, the scene in which Jesus makes a “triumphant entry” into Jerusalem, is a scene that is ultimately political.  Jesus demands his followers make a choice between two kings and kingdoms. Since chapter eight, when Peter and the disciples recognize that Jesus is the Messiah – the King of the Jews – everything that Jesus has done and each step they have taken have led them to this point.  Jesus has continually set before them illustrations of what God’s Kingdom looks like against the reality in which they live. Parables and healings have been interspersed with predictions that such a movement will lead Jesus to the cross. Jesus makes it clear that we cannot have it both ways – loyalty to the status quo makes one an enemy of God’s Kingdom.  Likewise, loyalty to God’s Kingdom and King Jesus makes one an enemy to those that wield power through any means other than servanthood.

The stakes are high.  Jesus knows the costs and continues to explain them to his disciples.  Challenging the powers will get you killed. But the price of living fully the life God designed far outweighs the false choice of living life in competition with one another, looking out for oneself at the expense of others.  Servanthood is the calling God places on each of us – carrying one another’s burdens as equals, rather than rivals.

Jesus’ remarks, in Mark 10: 32-45, sum this up.  Jesus is on the road to Jerusalem with his disciples.  He knows this road will end in Jerusalem with suffering and humiliation.  The disciples still think it will end triumphantly. Which makes Jesus’ triumphant entry all the more jarring for we who know how the story goes.  Along the road, Jesus pointedly tells the disciples that he would be handed over to the authorities, not as a hero but as a traitor. Immediately, after what should be frightening news, James and John ask Jesus to “grant us whatever we ask.”  Those demanding words end up being a request for special status when God’s kingdom comes.

Ever been talking to your kids and as soon as you finish explaining some serious life lesson, they abruptly change the topic around something they want?  These two disciples seem to have had the same problem. Have the been listening? Do they not understand? Patiently, Jesus once again explains the difference between ‘pagan’ rules and God’s Kingdom.

You know how it is with pagan nations, he said. Think how their so-called rulers act.  They lord it over their subjects. The high and mighty ones boss the rest around. But that’s not how it’s going to be with you. Anyone who wants to be great among you must become your servant.  Anyone who wants to be first must be everyone’s slave. Don’t you see? The son of man didn’t come to be waited on. He came to be the servant, to give his life “as a ransom for many.”

It’s with this understanding that Jesus makes his entry into Jerusalem.  It’s God’s holy city but it’s a city far from God, filled with people more concerned with getting ahead, no matter who may get stepped on in the process.  It’s a city Jesus can’t rule over. It’s a city with an agenda moving in the opposite direction of his calling; living opposed to his rules. While the common among them may have greeted Jesus as a king, the powerful wouldn’t let Jesus get any further than this simple ride on the back of a donkey.

Such background work has been helpful to me as I approach Palm Sunday.  To see Jesus’ entry through the lens of his journey to Jerusalem, against the cultural norms in which he lived, and through the not-quite perceiving eyes of his disciples paints a picture of two competing ethics:  An ethic of self-promotion that isolates and an ethic of servanthood that welcomes community. For Mark, it’s the ethic of servanthood and community that motivates Jesus’ actions and stories during the week leading up to Good Friday.  This holy week, may the simple ethic of servanthood overcome the loud and prevalent ethic of self-promotion. May we make enough room in our busy days for the presence of Christ to slow us down and correct our inclinations for self and open us up to the blessing of serving others.

  • What keeps us from accepting the posture of servanthood?
  • How are we like James and John?
  • Is it easy to recognize the difference between self -promotion and servanthood?  Are the differences more subtle than we like to think?
  • What habits must we change in order to be a servant?
  • What positions or things are we holding on to that prevents us from embracing servanthood?
  • What does a community that submits to each other look and feel like?
  • How is that different than our present communities?
  • To whom is such a community the most attractive?

Read Mark 8:1 – 10:52 prior to class this week.  Challenge your class to do the same. Will Jesus’ triumphant Entry look different after a close reading of these stories?

Challenge your class to continue its reading during holy week, following Jesus’ passion: Mark 11:1- Mark 15:39.  Does the servant ethic continue?

Transforming Grace

The old Peanuts cartoon has Snoopy on top of his doghouse, anxiously waxing philosophical, asking:

“Where am I going?  What am I doing? What is the meaning of life?”

snoopy

Deep questions, certainly.  Trouble is, do we find ourselves asking that question enough?  What is the point of our life – of any life? What am I doing about it?  Does the direction I go make a difference?

For Paul, these were the big questions.  They were the questions he gave the rest of his life to understand and to give an answer for on behalf of everyone he encountered.  His own life was his biggest and best answer. He had been living the life of the upward and respected. He knew “what was what” and he worked hard to maintain his place in Jewish and Roman life.  But, one day, on the road to put those pesky Christians in their place, he met Jesus. And life as he knew it changed. What was up became down. And he understood love, mercy and grace for the first time.  For the first time, Paul didn’t and couldn’t earn his way. It was freely given. Which made him want to do a whole lot.  Not for himself but for everyone else. Because he now possessed a grateful heart.  Everything now was gift and the gift needed to be shared, not hoarded.

This is what led Paul to write all those letters, as difficult as they are to understand, sometimes.  Like Christ was transformed on the other side of the resurrection, so too was Paul on the other side of Damascus and so too are each of us every time the Spirit shows us just how out of control we really are, left on our own, yet how very blessed we have become to be called children of God.

So transformation is the heart of the matter of the lesson for this Sunday as it is also at the heart of the letter to the Ephesians.  God’s grace has transformed us to understand our whole existence, our direction, our whole purpose in a different light. We are fundamentally different creatures with a different purpose after our baptism.  The tension that remains is we live in a hostile world that either is looking in the dark while asking the same questions as snoopy or has completely ordered their lives around a purpose that amounts to little more than “me.”

For those of us who are new creations in Christ, Paul wants us to remember where, like himself, we have all come from.  And for those who haven’t yet discovered their potential newness, the household of God is to be a clear signpost for the hope they can have in a new life and purpose in Christ, and a firm direction for getting there.

The best I can do to help you guide your class in encountering Paul’s message is offer my own visual summation of Paul’s message in Ephesians 2 and to offer two perspectives from theologians much better versed in communicating just what transformation is.

First, I offer you Eugene Peterson’s overview of Ephesians.  To understand Paul’s overarching goals in his letter is to better understand his reasoning in chapter two.

What we know about God and what we do for God have a way of getting broken apart in our lives.  The moment the organic unity of belief and behavior is damaged in any way, we are incapable of living out the full humanity for which we were created.

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians joins together what has been torn apart in our sin-wrecked world.  He begins with an exuberant exploration of what Christians believe about God, and then, like a surgeon skillfully setting a compound fracture, “sets” this belief in God into our behavior before God so that the bones – belief and behavior – knit together and heal.

Once our attention is called to it, we notice these fractures all over the place.  There is hardly a bone in our bodies that has escaped injury, hardly a relationship in city or job, school or church, family or country, that isn’t out of joint or limping in pain.  There is much work to be done.

And so Paul goes to work.  He ranges widely, from heaven to earth and back again, showing how Jesus, the Messiah, is eternally and tirelessly bringing everything and everyone together.  He also shows us that in addition to having this work done in and for us, we are participants in this most urgent work. Now that we know what is going on, that the energy of reconciliation is the dynamo at the heart of the universe, it is imperative that we join in vigorously and perserveringly, convinced that every detail in our lives contributes (or not) to what Paul describes as God’s plan worked out by Christ, “a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth.  -Eugene Peterson’s introduction to Ephesians, The Message.

Our goal as teachers is much the same as Paul’s. To help Christ-followers understand that to celebrate the gift of God’s grace without any sign of real transformation is to miss the point entirely.  To be a new creation in Christ is just that – we are changed people; transformed, with a new way of seeing, understanding and relating to the world around us.  We have the answers Snoopy is looking for. Yet transformation most of the time isn’t the flash of blinding light Paul experienced. Rather, it is a gradual change that requires the prayers and the practice of a people, together.  It takes work. The church encourages this change in one another, but not for the sake of the church or ourselves. Instead, this transformation, though meaningful and deep, is for the sake of the world.

To better compare and contrast what Paul is describing in Ephesians 2, I’ve drawn a little diagram: image002

Lastly, one of the most creative storytellers and theologians in our recent history is Frederick Buechner.  Follow this link to read a moving description of Paul’s transformation and the different and purposeful work that came out of Paul’s conversion.  It is worth the read and paints a beautiful picture of the transformation found in embracing God’s grace. Good work doesn’t earn us a place in God’s good grace but God’s good grace motivates us to work to reflect a good and loving God.

Questions:

  • How do you know when someone has changed (transformed)?
  • Is all change good?
  • What makes for good change?
  • Is change easy?
  • In a system that elevates the individual above a community, what will be the sacred cows that stand in the way of transformation to Christ-likeness?

Encountering the Ten Commandments for the First Time, Again.

This Sunday’s lectionary text is a very familiar one – even for marginal church attenders and those have no desire for church.   It is the first account of the giving of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17).  We hear a lot about the Ten Commandments these days.  Especially where they should be or shouldn’t be displayed.  Everyone has an opinion.  Everyone is looking to control them.  But what does God have to say about the commandments that God gave?   These, after all, are created and given by God to humankind for our good.  In assuming this is an old and familiar story, are we missing how the commandments are life-giving?  In the fight for where they fit into our cultural life, are we missing the commandments purpose?

In my study this week, I’ve been challenged to see the commandments anew – as a life-giving gift that helps us lead a life that reflects the character and image of God.  If God is trustworthy, faithful, peaceful and desiring of relationship with creation, then we must live our lives in ways that resemble this.  Often, we read these commandments as negatives.  And they are written as such … “thou shall not…”  But the commands are parameters that are given for our benefit.  What if the class was challenged to write the commandments in the affirmative:  “Thou shall…”  or “You get to…”  or “Blessed are those who…”

In lieu of my own exegesis this week, (theological talk for critical explanation or interpretation of a text) I offer you all the following resources that shaped my study this week.  They are worth your consideration.  Two commentaries found online:

http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/sermon-starters/lent-3b-2/?type=the_lectionary_gospel  Be sure to scroll down to the Exodus commentary found after the commentary on the gospel lesson.

http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2368  This commentary is more dense but worth wading into.  Among other things, it address our proclivity to control God rather than to allow God to guide us.

Finally, a reflection from Barbara Brown Taylor, found in the Feasting on the Word preaching commentary:

“Since the giving of the Torah on Sinai is celebrated during the Jewish festival of Shavuot, a wealth of story and tradition surrounds the first hearing of the commandments.  One midrash says that the people had little choice but to accept Torah from God, since God plucked up Sinai and held it over their heads, threatening to drop the mountain on them if they did not received the commandments.  In happy counterpoint to this legend, more and more religious Jews observe the first night of Shavuot by staying up all night to study Torah, Talmud and other sacred writings together.  They offer this annual all-night gathering, known as tikkun, for the mending of the world.”

If nothing else, stories and traditions like these remind Christian interpreters of the Ten Teachings that these teachings have been around a long time.  They are never our possession, any more than the God who uttered them is.  Instead, we stand among a people counted as God’s peculiar possession, set apart by holy speech and practice for the mending of God’s holy world.”  -Barbara Brown Taylor

How can the world be mended by our living in response to the Ten Commandments?