Proper 18B-24
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago
Today’s gospel is an English translation of a Greek text about a man who didn’t write but who spoke and taught in a third language called Aramaic. Our bible records what people remembered, what they could not forget, about Jesus. We have but a few precious untranslated words in Jesus’ native tongue. They’re sprinkled throughout Mark’s gospel like word-icons. There is “Abba,” or ‘daddy,’ Jesus’ name for God. There is, “Talitha cum,” or ‘little girl, get up.’ On the cross, Jesus cried out “Eloi, eloi, lema sabachthani,” ‘my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’
We have another of these Aramaic word-icons in our gospel today, “Ephatha,” ‘be opened.’ The gospel of Jesus unlocks fisted hands, hearts, and minds. Last Sunday Jesus opened the eyes of the Pharisees to the cancer of religious legalism. Today Jesus opens the ears and speech of a man who could not hear or speak from birth.
Ephatha is the work of the Holy Spirit—as when Jesus’ own heart and mind opened to the radical inclusiveness of the kingdom even for the unnamed Syrophoenician woman. She persistently, faithfully, and annoyingly confronts Jesus. She didn’t care about social conventions or what other people thought. She was fiercely motivated by love for her sick child.
It is shocking, but here, we confront Jesus in his full humanity. In this miraculous story the unnamed woman becomes a preacher to Jesus. He insulted her but she persisted. Ephatha. Her words break the Kingdom of Heaven wide open for Jesus. His consciousness is raised about including the Gentiles—that translates today to people of different faiths and of no faith. No one is outside the embrace of God. Let your heart and mind be opened.
Many of us grew up with a Jesus who was perfect. He had to be, because the theology we constructed around his deity required it. “Perfect Jesus” was technically human, but his incarnation fell several steps short of actual humanness. “He never messed up, never fell short, and never had to say he was sorry…The problem with “Perfect Jesus,” of course, is that he doesn’t exist. [Perfect Jesus can’t really help us because he’s not really one of us.] The Jesus who appears in the Gospels is not half-incarnate. He is as fully human as he is fully God. Which is to say, he struggles, he snaps, he discovers, he grows, he falters, he learns, he fears, and he overcomes.” (Debi Thomas, “Be Opened,” Journey with Jesus, 9/02/18).
Personally, I am thankful for Mark’s candor. Ephatha. Jesus was open to learning and so must we be. As we mature, we learn things, both individually and as a people. Somehow, we apprehend the falsehoods that were always hiding in plain sight. We begin to perceive new opportunities to show up and show out for God. These are what the Church calls Kairos moments. They are opportune moments of decision which come along every now and then in every life, when faith invites action to advance the gospel and the way of love. As Martin Luther said, we are saved by faith alone and not the works of faith that we do, and yet also, faith without works is dead.
In our own time, the Divine lure has opened a Kairos moment for reckoning with racism in America and the complicity of the Christian church in sustaining the unholy belief in White Supremacy reaching all the way back to the Doctrine of Discovery in 1493 by which the Church sanctioned the subjugation of people and lands around the world.
Back in the 1970’s stand-up comedian Richard Pryor made white audiences laugh till they cried talking about “driving while Black.” In the ‘80’s and 90’s Gangster Rap, Rodney King, and the L.A. riots exposed the ugly face of racism in America. In Chicago, we’ve had a front-row seat to gun violence and the propagation of intense urban poverty connected to racism.
Last week, Kari, Leah, and I drove past the place where George Floyd was murdered in south Minneapolis. The entire block has become a holy place. Ephatha. Let us be opened to the vision of a new and better future together. Like the Syrophoenician woman, listening to and seeing new truths can be an unwelcome experience. Kairos moments are, by definition, an interruption. New insights lead to new demands that, If we are honest, can lead to defensiveness, denial and disputation rather than constructive, compassionate action. You can try to shut it out and insulate yourself but then, you will have shut yourself off from the gospel. Ephatha is what encounter with the gospel looks and feels like. How shall we respond? We must respond with a new birth of love.
Probably the first Christian creed came from an early baptismal liturgy: “For you are all children of God in the Spirit. There is no Jew or Greek; there is no slave or free; there is no male and female. For you are all one in the Spirit.” Those words, quoted and slightly revised by Paul in his letter to the Galatians, may have even been said at his own baptism. “And they may well be the oldest words to survive from the ancient Christian movement. That means the very first Christian creed was not about the nature of God or the Trinity or the divinity of Jesus, but it was about us — a creed of human solidarity and the breaking down of ethnic, economic, and gender barriers to create a community where there is neither favoritism nor privilege to those who the empire deems important.” (Diana Butler Bass, Sunday Musings, 9/07/24).
Ephatha. This is a Kairos moment. Perhaps, it is always a Kairos moment. The divine lure is breaking through cultural norms, old prejudices, and what we thought we knew to bring us again into common cause with each other, and with the all people, and extending beyond that to include all non-human life.
We can feel it. We dread it. It takes shape in countless dystopian dramas, plays and movies of recent years. Modernity has us locked in Pharoah’s Egypt. As in days of old, every day compels us to make more bricks, and to make more today than yesterday. The world is speeding up and going faster and faster often for its own sake and at the expense of our wellbeing—at the expense of all things living—indeed, even life itself. In the immortal words of Joni Mitchell, ‘we paved paradise and put up a parking lot.’
Ephatha. German sociologist Hartmut Rosa is among those bringing words and concepts to illumine the path to alternative way of life beyond the suffocating logic of modernity centered on what he calls ‘resonance.’ It is something new rooted in something very old and very real. Perhaps we’ve all had experiences of resonance when where we’re interrupted by beauty; where we feel connected to something, where we feel pulled into a conversation and where it doesn’t feel like time is controlling us and that we’re being kind of overcome by time, but where we feel in it and it feels full. These are experiences where we feel like something resonates with us.
Where can we find places of resonance today in which we may work together to begin to remake the world? Hard boiled scientists like Hartmut Rosa point to the church and to liturgy and to the gospel. Ephatha. This is a Kairos moment. Come let us walk together. Let us listen to poets, artists, theologians, and scientists pointing to human solidarity and oneness with God. Can we really be a living sanctuary of hope and grace?
Just as the Syrophoenician woman taught Jesus about his mission, we trust the voices of the suffering, the lost, and the lonely to guide us. Let our worship, our sacraments, our songs, and prayers be the means and methods of attunement to the healing power of grace which already, always and everywhere resonates in and through all people and all life things now. We awaken to what’s wrong to move closer to what’s right because faith without works is dead, but faith lived in love is life.
Worldwide Web of Belonging
SermonProper 22B-24—St. Francis, pet blessing
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago
Word of God Word of Life? For the second week in a row the declaration following today’s gospel feels more like a question than an acclamation. There’s a lot to trip us up here—about sex, gender, and relationships. Some commentators have said that as soon as the word ‘divorce’ is read out loud—a whole sermon spools off in our heads that listening to anything else difficult.
Thank God for St. Francis and St. Clare who teach us how to see the gospel in today’s gospel! We honor these saints, along with our furry, fluffy friends today. St. Francis of Assisi, Friar, and Renewer of the Church, and his co-conspirator, confident, and advisor, St. Clare, are among the most well-known saints outside of the twelve apostles of Jesus.
Giovanni Bernadone was born into wealth in the late 12th Century. He was called Francesco as a child because his father, who was a textile merchant, often traveled to France and admired the French. The name stuck. Francesco, or Francis, had a vision in the church of St. Damian where he heard God say to him, “Francis, go and repair my house which is falling into ruin.” Francis took this literally and sold a good sum of his father’s goods to repair St. Damian.
After being disinherited by his father, Francis took a vow to wed Lady poverty. He wrapped himself in a peasant’s smock and a rope belt and began his mission. Soon many followers also took up poverty as a calling, and they tried their best to live out the Sermon on the Mount.
Francis and Clare of Assisi, focused on imitating Jesus not just worshiping him. In fact, he often did it in an almost absurdly literal way. “He was a fundamentalist—not about doctrinal Scriptures—but about lifestyle Scriptures: take nothing for your journey; eat what is set before you; work for your wages; wear no shoes. This is revolutionary thinking for most Christians, although it is the very “marrow of the gospel,” to use Francis’ own phrase. He knew that humans tend to live themselves into new ways of thinking more than think themselves into new ways of living” (Richard Rohr, “Practicing the Gospel,” Daily Meditations, 9/30/24).
The more he found God within himself, the more he saw God outside himself where every detail of nature spoke to him of God. Francis saw that each of us are part of a great web of belonging. As the Franciscan penitent Angela of Foligno exclaimed: “All creation is pregnant with God!” Nothing is outside the embrace of God’s love. This is why we take this day to bless our animal companions, acknowledging our kinship with them and our shared joy in a shared life with them. (Ilia Delio, preface to Franciscan Prayer: Awakening to Oneness with God (Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2024), vii–viii, ix–x.)
Both Francis and Clare valued orthopraxy (right and faithful living) as preferable to merely verbal orthodoxy (correct teaching). At the heart of Franciscan orthopraxy is the practice of paying attention to nature, people on the margins, humility, and mission instead of shoring up the home base. His early followers tried to live the gospel ‘simply and without sugar coating,’ as Francis told them.
Francis and Clare’s teaching are echoed by St. Paul, who wrote, “When we are weak, we are strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10). These words of Paul’s could be the motto of the early Franciscans. The apostle Paul, following Jesus, forever reversed the engines of ego and its attainments, and it is this precise reversal of values—and new entrance point—that Francis and Clare of Assisi understood so courageously and clearly.
Centuries later, this way of living the gospel became known as the ‘little way.’ Until we discover the “little way,” we almost all try to gain moral high ground by obeying laws and thinking we are thus spiritually advanced. Then religion too easily becomes a weapon in our hands to subdue, control, and exploit the weak—the exact opposite of the way of Jesus that St. Francis and St. Clare revealed to us.
St. Francis is a reminder to me, and to the whole church, that sometimes less is more. Less domination, more companionship with creation. Less stuff, and more belonging. Less dogma, and more devotion to simple things. God has made us for each other as equals and not as part of a system of hierarchy and submission.
This is the insight that unlocks the gospel in our gospel and all the other readings too. The western Christian imagination has been haunted by hierarchies that were developed by Plato and Aristotle, and not Jesus, and certainly not God. This not-gospel is called the Great Chain of Being which imagines a ladder extending down from higher to lower, from master to slave, from God to angels, then to human beings who are sub-divided into hierarchies of gender, role, and race, then to animals and plants, and finally, to the earth itself. Unfortunately, this hierarchical lens stuck in western culture, forming a kind of template for the way we still think today.
Yet, when we swap Plato’s Chain of Being for Francis’ and Clare’s Great Web of Belonging today’s lessons read differently. Indeed, they become stories of radical reversal of hierarchy. “The Genesis story of Eve’s creation isn’t about some secondary, divine afterthought of femaleness. “Bone of my bones; flesh of my flesh” is the shocking recognition of sameness and equality — not difference or superiority…. The Hebrews passage lifts human beings to an honor higher than the angels — being crowned with glory and honor and subjecting all things to the work of our hands!” (Diana Butler Bass, “The Great Web of Belonging,” Sunday Musings, 10/06/24).
We see that Jesus’ teaching about divorce is shocking because it makes women equal to men. Women may not be cast into poverty at the whim of their husbands. Women as well as men may initiate a divorce. Jesus insists that the law was made for humanity, not the other way around. Devotion to God is demonstrated not in complicated codes, but in how we extend God’s love and mercy to one another—especially the “least of these.” Our concept of marriage is profoundly corrupted when the images it invokes are all negative: possessiveness, property, rigidity, stubborn adherence to duty. This is a travesty, a betrayal of true fidelity. We hold the forever promise of covenantal relationship in the earthen vessels of our lives. When they become shattered, God offers healing and new beginnings.
Perhaps most shocking is Jesus’ teaching about children. Children were on the bottom rungs of the old chain of being. But Jesus insisted that to them the Kingdom of God belongs! The Bible doesn’t uphold hierarchy, it subverts it. Yet tragically, there are many, many, Christian men who still insist they are the lord of their household. These also insist upon narrowly defined gender roles and would police our most intimate relationships, tell us who we are allowed to love, what constitutes a real family, and a meaningful life before God.
We’ve read the bible through a hierarchical lens for too long. Francis and Clare pierced this self-serving lens and showed us that we are part of a great web of belonging. We belong. Human community and all things now living are part of a great circle of empathy and mutuality. Thanks be to God.
With One Voice
SermonProper 21B-24
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago
Moses has finally had enough. He has confronted Pharoah, eluded the Egyptian army, crossed the Red Sea, come face to face with God at Mt. Sinai, delivered the Ten Commandments (not once but twice) but now he’s at the end of his rope. ‘Just kill me now,’ he says to God.
What’s put Moses over the edge? The complaint seems like such small potatoes. The people cried out that they preferred their life as slaves in Egypt because they were sick of the freedom food God provided them in the desert. They couldn’t even look at it. Manna, literally ‘what’s it?’ The people are literally weeping at the door of their tents because they don’t have any meat. In response, God will ultimately provide quail in addition to water and manna. (Numbers 11:31-35). But the story underscores just how difficult it can be for us to change, even when that change is manifestly good.
I think of Cypher in The Matrix who strikes a bargain with the slave-masters because he is sick of the Malt-O-Meal like ooze the free people of Zion eat every day. It was not for 30 pieces of silver, but a fake steak, that he betrayed his crew and all humankind. Cypher said to his Overlords, “You know, I know this steak doesn’t exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious.” But it’s not real. Cypher preferred a big juicy lie to the hard plain truth. Do we sometimes fall into the same trap? Little problems nag us until we lose sight of the big picture, and strike a bad bargain?
I shake my head at my ancestors in faith and at characters like Cypher, but I must acknowledge I have mostly failed to eat less meat as I have planned to do in response to the climate crisis. Changing habits is not easy. Remember that eating manna wasn’t just about eating tasteless food. It also meant participating in an economy of just-enough-ness. The manna economy God imposed prevented anyone from storing up extra manna for tomorrow. Each person could take only what they needed for the day. That meant no one could make a buck selling it or controlling it. Leftover manna quickly spoiled and became rotten. Eating what was provided required trust in God’s providence for their daily bread.
I wonder, what it would be like to live with just-enough? How much would I have to sacrifice to live in balance with what the planet can provide equally for everyone? Would I, like my ancestors in the desert, be willing to sacrifice my freedom to sustain my standard of living? This is exactly the bargain people in countries like China are making today –at least—it is the bargain the ruling party has offered them to keep the peace.
Change is difficult even when it is demonstrably good. Moses and the Israelites were learning how to adjust to their newfound freedom. Another challenge was the shift to shared leadership. Again, this change was good. Moses was burned out. He had become a one-man bottleneck addressing the disputes and attending to the needs of the people. So, God distributed a small share of the spirit placed upon Moses among 70 leaders in the camp. Of course, no sooner had they done so when two of the newly appointed and anointed leaders, Eldad and Medad, were accused of not properly following orders. But Moses said to [them], “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!” (Numbers 11:29).
Shared leadership meant surrendering control. The disciples also demanded Jesus stop someone doing the Lord’s work because he was operating outside their franchise beyond their control. Notice, the disciples want Jesus to prevent someone from doing what they have failed to do (just a few chapters before). They complain that ‘…he [is] not following us” (Mark 9:38-39). They did not say he is not following you, Lord Christ.
“Envy and jealousy are near-sighted sins. They limit our vision and focus our attention on ourselves and our status” (Culpepper, p. 323). Western religions tend to teach that we are punished for our sins. Yet could it be rather that we are punished by our sins? Through water and the word, through bread and wine, Jesus said, you are salted with fire and purified by grace for the flourishing of the whole world. The antidote to sin and the resistance to positive change is salt. The Holy Spirit transforms our bitterness and the things that spoil community. A little salt might have been all Cypher needed.
Jesus says salt is a good metaphor for how grace is working in us now. I may be stubbornly resistant to change, even to changes that are manifestly good, but God’s grace working in me helps me open to what is good and true –even when it may be hard or require sacrifice.
What can salt do? Salt lowers the melting point of ice and raises the boiling point of water. The salt of grace opens hearts and deepens compassion to help us avoid conflicts that would otherwise boil over in us and among us. Can the salt of grace help us prevail in the Middle East, in Sudan, and in Ukraine to bring lasting peace?
Salt blends flavors together to make them complementary. Any good chef knows spice can add flavor on the outside, but salt changes the texture and flavor of food from the inside out. Salt welcomes diversity. Dwelling in the presence and promises of God makes us salty. Jesus said, ‘by their fruits you shall know them,’ (Matthew 7:20). We pray for the salt of grace overcome religious division and prejudice so all people of faith may with one voice sing praises to God.
It was Martin Luther who taught us to recognize the Christian gospel anywhere and everywhere at work in the world. Luther said, ‘whatever preaches Christ is the pure and salty gospel, even if Judas Iscariot said it. Conversely, whatever doesn’t preach Christ is not the gospel, even if Saints Peter or Paul said it.’ It is the salty heart of faith that recognizes the truth about our siblings in Christ –even when we disagree, even when we play for opposing teams, even though we belong to different religious tribes.
God can use whatever flavor you bring to season the world. As we deepen unity with God, we become more fully ourselves, unique and distinct. With the salt of grace, God has prepared a banquet from the meager stuff of our lives. Bring me who you are. Bring me your weaknesses. I will strengthen them. Bring me your doubts. I will quiet them. Bring me your shortcomings and your limitations. I will season them. Like salt that is poured out from the saltshaker we are cast into the world. Let us follow Christ Jesus on the way of the cross. Let us be salty so that the whole world may know of God’s grace.
The Disciples’ Dilemma
SermonProper 20B-24
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago
While the world wages war, Christ calls us to wage wisdom. Waging wisdom requires highly specialized armaments. James made us a list. Outfit yourself with “purity, peace, gentleness, reasonableness (a yielding spirit), mercy, good fruits, impartiality and sincerity (James 3:17). These are not the kind of weapons which can be purchased or procured but are fruits of the Spirit God brings into being to fill faithful hearts and minds.
In the disciple’s way of thinking, the coming of the Son of Man would operate according to the same logic that built and perpetuated the Roman Empire. Jesus would rule from an earthly throne like King David. The disciples couldn’t understand how victory fit with talk of loving our enemies, turning the other cheek, or suffering for the sake of the gospel. Jesus taught them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all” (Mark 9:35). Jesus taught them to wage wisdom, not war.
Jesus asked them. “What were you talking about on the way?” (Being “on the way” is a metaphor for discipleship in Mark’s gospel. We encountered this evocative phrase last Sunday. We will see it again in coming weeks. In Greek, the word translated the ‘way’, can refer to a road or a path, or it can refer to a way of life.) Jesus and the disciples are walking to Capernaum, heading south to Jerusalem, toward the cross. Jesus told them a second time saying, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again” (Mark 9:31).
In response, the disciples are silent. They don’t know what to say. You can almost see them looking at each other—there he goes again. “They had argued with one another who was the greatest” (vs.34). You might think the disciples were impossibly dense. Reading Mark’s gospel we think, there they go again. But to be fair, we might try replacing the word, ‘cross’ with ‘noose’. Jesus was telling the disciples the Son of Man was not going to assume the throne in Jerusalem, but be betrayed and lynched, like a common criminal. Take up your noose, Jesus was saying and follow me. It’s no wonder the disciples were confused.
While Jesus waged wisdom the disciples were still striving for worldly things. Their sense of privilege and entitlement was a tightly drawn circle around themselves, rather than an open circle making room for those whom Jesus called them to serve. Yet, I wonder, are we so different? (David Lose, Luther Seminary)
Jesus stopped to give the disciples an object lesson. He gave them a children’s sermon—using a real child. Now understand, in the world inhabited by the disciples, children were not the focus of adult energy that they are today. Children were potentially human, but not fully human, until they survived long enough to become adults. Jesus brought the child from the margins into the center. (Barbara Lundblad)
Jesus taught them to welcome the little children. Not because children are innocent or perfect or pure or cute or curious or naturally religious. Jesus wanted them to welcome the child because the child was at the bottom of the social heap (Barbara Lundblad). Jesus wanted them to become warriors of wisdom.
Open your hearts to receive one such as this, Jesus told them. These are those whom we strive for. These are the siblings to whom you now belong through your baptism into Christ. Where violence makes enemies, wisdom de-polarizes conflict. Where violence desensitizes and degrades, love re-humanizes and restores bonds of relationship that are otherwise, impossible. The way of wisdom, compared to war, is an invitation to conquer fear through compassion; to bind people in community through the capacity to become vulnerable rather than through the threat of violence.
Jesus is Lord and Savior of all. Christ Jesus has dominion over all creation. Yes. But he rules from a cross and an empty tomb. He wields, not bullets, or bombs but the transformative power of mercy, love, and forgiveness. Jesus may not have been the Savior the disciples wanted or expected. Yet he is the Savior we most need. Jesus clears the path that leads to love and the abundance of life.
This was the disciples’ dilemma. Jesus waged wisdom, not war. Yet, the choice has remained a difficult throughout the history of the church. The idolatry of wealth and power has deep, deep roots in the colonial Church and in American Christianity. How many Christians in America today would be shocked to realize that Jesus was not white? Or to consider that all our amassed privilege and wealth and power are not earned, or God ordained but instead ill-gotten and stolen? (Angela Denker, Red State Christians)
Many Church people still long for a Messiah to have dominion over secular America by force and threat of violence. They are once again attempting to write a different ending to the gospel. They prefer an ending in which Jesus ascends the throne, not the cross. But, unlike the first disciples, they are not being silent but preparing to take control.
I am speaking, of course, about Project 2025 and of so-called Christian nationalism which is neither Christian nor patriotic but opposed to the gospel of Jesus and to American democracy. “Project 2025 is a plan to impose a form of Christian nationalism on the United States. Its patriarchal view does not recognize gender equality or gay rights and sanctions discrimination based on religious beliefs. Christian nationalist ideas are woven through the plans of Project 2025 and the pages of Mandate for Leadership. Its thousands of recommendations include specific executive orders to be repealed or implemented. Laws, regulations, departments, and whole agencies would be abolished. It portrays anyone who opposes its sweeping ambitions as being enemies of our republic” (Paul Rosenberg, “Meet the New Apostolic Reformation,” Salon Magazine, 01/02/24).
So, here we are again. Like the first disciples, we face a choice. Look to Jesus to wage wisdom, not war. Remember Jesus’ object lesson. Look to for those in your midst, Jesus said, who have no standing, no wealth, no voice, no value, and there, you will find me. These are the siblings to whom we now belong through our baptism into Christ. “Oh, may our hearts and minds be opened, fling the church doors open wide. May there be room enough for everyone inside. For in God there is a welcome, in God we all belong. May that welcome be our song!” (ACS #1038).
Lifting the Veil
SermonProper 19B-24
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago
“Who do people say that I am?” (Mark 8:27). Jesus and the disciples are walking toward Caesarea Philippi. The city was well known for its temple to the Roman nature-god, Pan; and also, for honoring Caesar who was often regarded as divine. Jesus questioned them as they walked among the crowds loyal to Roman colonial power.
The disciples parrot what they have heard others say. You are the return of John the Baptist; or of Elijah; or one of the prophets” (Mark 8:28). Readers of Mark’s gospel are already clued in to the correct answer. Here, now, in 2024 we know the whole story, don’t we? Yet, hindsight is not always 20/20.
When you picture Jesus walking and talking on the road to the disciples, does your mental image include any women? What about Mary Magdalene (Mark 16:9-10 and John 20:17-18), and the other Mary (Matthew 28:8-10), or Joanna, and others (Luke 24:9-10) who are named in all four gospels as among the first to witness of the resurrection? Magdalene, Joanna, and Susanna were among the first funders of Jesus’ mission (Luke 8:1-3). If these women had kept silent about the empty tomb, there would not be a church today.
Scan your heart and mind for images of God. Somewhere near the top of a mental google search for most of us is—a bearded man, or a king seated on a throne. Or sadly, of an angry Jesus, ruling from this throne, threatening us with damnation and provoking fear rather than inspiring love. Then it may be a welcome surprise that God told Abram, ‘My name is El Shaddai’ (Genesis 17:1). This name for God occurs 48 times in the bible. It can mean a “mountain refuge,” or literally, the “many breasted one.” It is a wonderful feminine image of God as divine mother and sustainer of us all. Yet, why are we not surprised, ‘El Shaddai’ is most often translated as ‘God almighty,’ or even ‘Lord God almighty?’
Words matter. Our words about who God is might matter most. Our images of God shape us. Reading the bible through a patriarchal lens often means we have missed the message. Like Peter, we know the correct answer—Jesus is the Messiah. Yet, like Peter, our ideas about who Christ is are way too small. Peter fell miserably short in understanding what Jesus must do. When Peter tried to redirect him away from Jerusalem and the cross Jesus rebuked him saying, “Get behind me Satan” (Mark 8:33).
We do the same thing all the time. We want Jesus without the cross. We want the gospel without the suffering. We want strength without becoming vulnerable.
Christendom made a deal 1,700 years ago not unlike the one Jesus rejected from Satan when Constantine first attempted to colonize Christianity under the guise of Empire. “For all these years since, biblical Christianity –forged in the cross, humility, and poverty—has been at war with a co-opted Christianity that forgets Jesus’ gospel of liberation and instead seeks to use his story to entrench wealth and power in the hands of a few white men.” (Angela Denker, Red State Christians, 2022, p. xx)
For 1,700 years the Church increased its power by scaring people. We are all too familiar with a church of the past that operated as some type of protection racket, casting fear rather than inspiring love. Words matter. The truth matters. Thanks be to God, the gospel of Christ shines through our patriarchal blinders, points past the power of Empire, and illumines the way to our future together in Christ.
Words matter. James cautions us to choose our words wisely, so as the prophet Isaiah says, we may ‘know how to sustain the weary with a word’ (Isaiah 50:4a). What you say can unite people, or it can create great division in a community. We may have been entertained this week by countless humorous memes about eating cats and dogs, but in Springfield, Ohio it’s not funny. Bomb threats at schools and hospitals have shaken people’s lives.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Gospel-centered teachers and prophets can lead us forward. One of them is French scientist, world-famous paleontologist, Jesuit priest, theologian and mystic, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881 – 1955) who answered Jesus’ question in our gospel today, but unlike Peter, had much more expansive notion of who Christ is.
The word revelation comes from the Latin revelare, which means “to lift the veil.” Christ is God’s self-revelation. The church’s traditional doctrine of the Incarnation teaches that God was born in the flesh. Yet, said Teilhard, ‘what has the church done with this radical teaching at the center of its faith? Instead of allowing it to point to the oneness of heaven and earth…the church has said this truth applies only to one, namely, Jesus and that this one is an exception to humanity rather than a revelation of the deepest truth of humanity.’ (Teilhard as quoted by John Philip Newell, Sacred Earth Sacred Soul, p. 176)
Teilhard perceived “At the heart of matter is the heart of God…Without leaving the world, we plunge into God.” (pp.171-172) I wonder how the world might be different now had our ancestors sought out new people and places with wonder and expectation of encounter with the divine rather than with greed, domination, and control?
We urgently need a new meaning of the cross. The cross is about offering ourselves, including even our failures, in the holy service of love and of new beginnings. Together, we bear the weight of the world in its journey of unfolding. We are “on the way” like Jesus and the disciples on the road to Caesarea Philippi (Mark 8:27).
We will encounter this evocative phrase repeatedly in coming weeks. The Greek word translated the ‘way,’ can simply refer to a road or path, or it can refer to a way of life. Jesus will be “on the way” next week when the disciples argue among themselves about who is greatest (9:33-34). Jesus will be ‘on the way’ next month when the rich man asks him what he must do to inherit eternal life; and again, when he will tell the disciples a third time about the cross and resurrection. (10:17, 10:32). Many of you know that ‘The Way’ became a title of early Christians (Acts 18:25, 26; 19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:14, 22).
Little by little, on the way, we realize that only Jesus’ way of the cross can give us what we truly crave—a life that passes through death; bonds of fellowship that cannot be broken; a meaning to our mortal endeavors that cannot be erased, a life that joins us now with all life. God through Christ has shown us the way to life lived with others. It is the power of love. The power of trust. The power of faith. The power of tears. The way of the cross. Amen.
Faith Lived in Love
SermonProper 18B-24
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago
Today’s gospel is an English translation of a Greek text about a man who didn’t write but who spoke and taught in a third language called Aramaic. Our bible records what people remembered, what they could not forget, about Jesus. We have but a few precious untranslated words in Jesus’ native tongue. They’re sprinkled throughout Mark’s gospel like word-icons. There is “Abba,” or ‘daddy,’ Jesus’ name for God. There is, “Talitha cum,” or ‘little girl, get up.’ On the cross, Jesus cried out “Eloi, eloi, lema sabachthani,” ‘my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’
We have another of these Aramaic word-icons in our gospel today, “Ephatha,” ‘be opened.’ The gospel of Jesus unlocks fisted hands, hearts, and minds. Last Sunday Jesus opened the eyes of the Pharisees to the cancer of religious legalism. Today Jesus opens the ears and speech of a man who could not hear or speak from birth.
Ephatha is the work of the Holy Spirit—as when Jesus’ own heart and mind opened to the radical inclusiveness of the kingdom even for the unnamed Syrophoenician woman. She persistently, faithfully, and annoyingly confronts Jesus. She didn’t care about social conventions or what other people thought. She was fiercely motivated by love for her sick child.
It is shocking, but here, we confront Jesus in his full humanity. In this miraculous story the unnamed woman becomes a preacher to Jesus. He insulted her but she persisted. Ephatha. Her words break the Kingdom of Heaven wide open for Jesus. His consciousness is raised about including the Gentiles—that translates today to people of different faiths and of no faith. No one is outside the embrace of God. Let your heart and mind be opened.
Many of us grew up with a Jesus who was perfect. He had to be, because the theology we constructed around his deity required it. “Perfect Jesus” was technically human, but his incarnation fell several steps short of actual humanness. “He never messed up, never fell short, and never had to say he was sorry…The problem with “Perfect Jesus,” of course, is that he doesn’t exist. [Perfect Jesus can’t really help us because he’s not really one of us.] The Jesus who appears in the Gospels is not half-incarnate. He is as fully human as he is fully God. Which is to say, he struggles, he snaps, he discovers, he grows, he falters, he learns, he fears, and he overcomes.” (Debi Thomas, “Be Opened,” Journey with Jesus, 9/02/18).
Personally, I am thankful for Mark’s candor. Ephatha. Jesus was open to learning and so must we be. As we mature, we learn things, both individually and as a people. Somehow, we apprehend the falsehoods that were always hiding in plain sight. We begin to perceive new opportunities to show up and show out for God. These are what the Church calls Kairos moments. They are opportune moments of decision which come along every now and then in every life, when faith invites action to advance the gospel and the way of love. As Martin Luther said, we are saved by faith alone and not the works of faith that we do, and yet also, faith without works is dead.
In our own time, the Divine lure has opened a Kairos moment for reckoning with racism in America and the complicity of the Christian church in sustaining the unholy belief in White Supremacy reaching all the way back to the Doctrine of Discovery in 1493 by which the Church sanctioned the subjugation of people and lands around the world.
Back in the 1970’s stand-up comedian Richard Pryor made white audiences laugh till they cried talking about “driving while Black.” In the ‘80’s and 90’s Gangster Rap, Rodney King, and the L.A. riots exposed the ugly face of racism in America. In Chicago, we’ve had a front-row seat to gun violence and the propagation of intense urban poverty connected to racism.
Last week, Kari, Leah, and I drove past the place where George Floyd was murdered in south Minneapolis. The entire block has become a holy place. Ephatha. Let us be opened to the vision of a new and better future together. Like the Syrophoenician woman, listening to and seeing new truths can be an unwelcome experience. Kairos moments are, by definition, an interruption. New insights lead to new demands that, If we are honest, can lead to defensiveness, denial and disputation rather than constructive, compassionate action. You can try to shut it out and insulate yourself but then, you will have shut yourself off from the gospel. Ephatha is what encounter with the gospel looks and feels like. How shall we respond? We must respond with a new birth of love.
Probably the first Christian creed came from an early baptismal liturgy: “For you are all children of God in the Spirit. There is no Jew or Greek; there is no slave or free; there is no male and female. For you are all one in the Spirit.” Those words, quoted and slightly revised by Paul in his letter to the Galatians, may have even been said at his own baptism. “And they may well be the oldest words to survive from the ancient Christian movement. That means the very first Christian creed was not about the nature of God or the Trinity or the divinity of Jesus, but it was about us — a creed of human solidarity and the breaking down of ethnic, economic, and gender barriers to create a community where there is neither favoritism nor privilege to those who the empire deems important.” (Diana Butler Bass, Sunday Musings, 9/07/24).
Ephatha. This is a Kairos moment. Perhaps, it is always a Kairos moment. The divine lure is breaking through cultural norms, old prejudices, and what we thought we knew to bring us again into common cause with each other, and with the all people, and extending beyond that to include all non-human life.
We can feel it. We dread it. It takes shape in countless dystopian dramas, plays and movies of recent years. Modernity has us locked in Pharoah’s Egypt. As in days of old, every day compels us to make more bricks, and to make more today than yesterday. The world is speeding up and going faster and faster often for its own sake and at the expense of our wellbeing—at the expense of all things living—indeed, even life itself. In the immortal words of Joni Mitchell, ‘we paved paradise and put up a parking lot.’
Ephatha. German sociologist Hartmut Rosa is among those bringing words and concepts to illumine the path to alternative way of life beyond the suffocating logic of modernity centered on what he calls ‘resonance.’ It is something new rooted in something very old and very real. Perhaps we’ve all had experiences of resonance when where we’re interrupted by beauty; where we feel connected to something, where we feel pulled into a conversation and where it doesn’t feel like time is controlling us and that we’re being kind of overcome by time, but where we feel in it and it feels full. These are experiences where we feel like something resonates with us.
Where can we find places of resonance today in which we may work together to begin to remake the world? Hard boiled scientists like Hartmut Rosa point to the church and to liturgy and to the gospel. Ephatha. This is a Kairos moment. Come let us walk together. Let us listen to poets, artists, theologians, and scientists pointing to human solidarity and oneness with God. Can we really be a living sanctuary of hope and grace?
Just as the Syrophoenician woman taught Jesus about his mission, we trust the voices of the suffering, the lost, and the lonely to guide us. Let our worship, our sacraments, our songs, and prayers be the means and methods of attunement to the healing power of grace which already, always and everywhere resonates in and through all people and all life things now. We awaken to what’s wrong to move closer to what’s right because faith without works is dead, but faith lived in love is life.
Encircled By Love
SermonProper 16B-24
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago
“Alleluia, Lord to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. Alleluia. Alleluia” (ELW). Peter’s words sound familiar because they we often use them to announce the gospel. Yet, to my ear, Peter sounds almost deflated and disappointed. Upon hearing Jesus’ weird words about flesh and blood, “Many of those who up to that point had been following him said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” (John 6:60), “…and many of them no longer went about with him” (John 6:66).
“Eat my flesh. Drink my blood.” Jesus’ teaching conjured images of cannibalism in his follower’s minds. They thought he was talking about eating the material Jesus standing there in front of them, rather than the incarnate combination of flesh and spirit that gives life to the world. Judas appears to have been among those to cash in his chips. Jesus’ incendiary language about consuming flesh and blood seemed to go against a thousand years of biblical teaching and, among other things, set Judas on a course toward betrayal.
The Messiah people wanted was not the Messiah who appeared. Jesus invited the disciples to participate in their own costly transformation and to walk the way of the cross. But who wants that? Why can’t Jesus just redeem the world while we cheer from the sidelines? We’d all buy a ticket for that wouldn’t we?
Instead, Jesus says, ‘You are my blood. You are my body.’ You that eat this bread become part of me and members of each other, one with the poor, the helpless, the outcasts. This body expands way too far! This isn’t what we were hoping for. This isn’t really what we had in mind. And yet…to whom can we go? Lord, you have the words of eternal life (John 6:68).
John chapter six, which we have been chewing on for the past 5 weeks, could be read at Christmas. Might it bring us closer to understanding the scandal and terror of incarnation more than the happy manger story seems to do? The point of Jesus’ teaching isn’t dietary –it’s incarnational.
“Incarnation” literally means “enfleshment.” By his conception and birth Jesus became a living manifestation of the presence of God, not just now and then, not sometimes, but full-time, for all time. By our baptism into Christ, the Spirit is incarnate or enfleshed in us too, so that wherever we go, God goes with us. Immanuel—means God is with us—so we can pray with St. Patrick the encircling prayer he used like a shield and breast plate of protection wherever he traveled, ‘Christ with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.’
John proclaims in chapter one: ‘All who receive him, who entrust their lives to his name, he gives power to become children of God, who are born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12-13). As members of Christ, we are born from above by water and by Spirit (John 3:4-8). Jesus’ teaching honors our frail mortal bodies. Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Faith is an invitation to walk all our days in the awareness that we are encircled by God’s loving presence. We put on this heavenly garment of Christ to cloth our earthly bodies in grace.
Clothed in grace, we listen to the stranger. We forgive our enemies. We are generous toward the poor. Love is a more powerful motivator than the threat of violence. Being encircled in God’s life means that we are in the constant presence of a loving parent who broods over us, who counsels and teaches, who prays for us, and cries over us. This brooding Spirit gives life. It inspires creativity and transformation. It challenges us to look beyond our own interests to an integration of our well-being and the well-being of the planet.
Jesus’ words provoked a crisis of faith among the disciples. It caused them to rethink, re-order, and reform their religious life and identity. This would prove too demanding for many and they turned away. Throughout our history, Jesus’ teaching has repeatedly broken the church open to widen our vision, to redraw the boundaries of inclusion, and promote a deeper understanding. This natural, simple process of transformation—moving from order to disorder to reorder—does not often come without suffering and loss—whether in our personal lives, in our church, or in society.
We live in a time when scholarship has brought the teaching of Jesus into sharper focus, and we are now freer to proclaim the gospel with accuracy and confidence more than at almost any point in the past 1,900 years. Yet, we also live in a time when many religious institutions are in decline. It is a time of spiritual exile in the Western world in which we are once again being invited to reorder our understanding, to widen the circle of fellowship with those of a different faiths, and of no faith, and with all life, including non-human life in union with the living God who is revealed to us here, in Christ Jesus, in bread and wine, in water and the Word.
The body of Christ of which we partake has no address, no zip code. It is not limited to one people, nation, or ethnicity. The divine lure invites us to remember what our souls, at some level, have always known, ‘…which is that our true spiritual center is not Rome, or Jerusalem or Mecca or any of the other places that religion has claimed to hold special authority over us. Our true spiritual center is Earth and the human soul. Rome, Jerusalem, Mecca, and so on, have occupied a significant place in our faith traditions over the centuries but, essentially, they exist to serve Earth and the human soul, not the other way round….The source of truth is deep within each one of us and deep within everything that has being. Just as new science enables us to know that physically we live in an omni-centric Universe, so it is spiritually. The center is everywhere’ (John Philip Newell, The Great Search).
Lord Christ, “You have the words of eternal life,” as Peter said. In a complex, changing world, we affirm the constancy of God’s encircling love moving within all things. We put on Christ, like a warm blanket, like a suit of armor. So we may join ourselves to Jesus, heart and soul, body and mind, confident that God’s encircling and eternal care surrounds and protects us even as we to face life’s challenges and conflicts, sickness and death, threat and uncertainty. (Bruce Epperly). “Oh Word of God incarnate, O Wisdom from on high, O Truth unchanged, unchanging, O Light of our dark sky: It is the chart and compass that, all life’s voyage through, mid mists and rocks and quick sands still guides, O Christ to you” (ELW # 514).
The Fermented Life
SermonProper 15B-24
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago
The University of Chicago launched the Center for Practical Wisdom in 2016 to deepen scientific understanding of wisdom in everyday life. They found seven components of wisdom, including three they say are the most important: compassion, emotional regulation, and self-reflection. Wise people and wise communities are more stable, happy, trusting, decisive, and healthy. Researchers are excited because while intelligence does not usually increase with age, there are ways we can grow in wisdom.
Science confirms wisdom is good. Something the bible has been saying for 2,000 years. Sophia, or Lady Wisdom, is a master builder working beside God throughout creation. The author of Proverbs writes, “Wisdom has built her house” (Proverbs 9:1). When the house is ready, she throws a party for everyone. “Come, eat my food and drink the wine,” she invites the whole neighborhood to her feast (9:5). Eucharist is an extension of this party. When we meet Jesus at this humble banquet table we partake of his body and blood to dwell in the shelter of the Lord, and to become living stones that adding to the house that Wisdom is building now.
Who comes to mind when you think of people who are wise? Researchers report King Solomon still ranks high on people’s list as an example of a wise person—along with Jesus, Socrates, Lincoln, Gandhi, Mandela, and Churchill. On the eve of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, we pray to God for wisdom. What can King Solomon teach us about how to be wise? The answer may depend on how far we’re willing to go in separating the man from the myth.
The myth of Solomon reads like a fairy tale. As the story goes, King Solomon asked God for wisdom and God granted his wish and more. Visited by God in a dream, Solomon refused to ask for wealth, power, or long life. Instead, Solomon said, “I am only a child. Therefore, give your servant an understanding mind to govern your people, and to discern between good and evil.” God was so pleased with the king’s request; he promised not only to grant it — to make him the wisest in history — but to grant him every other measure of greatness as well. Untold wealth, matchless honor, and long life.
Solomon’s reputation for brilliance spread across the land. He made strategic political and economic alliances; maintained fleets of ships; built gorgeous temples and palaces; traded in luxuries such as gold, silver, and ivory; penned the greatest wisdom literature of his time; presided over the Golden Age of his kingdom; and finally handed over the throne to his son after a peaceable reign of forty years.
This is the Solomon story many of us know best—and is probably the reason his reputation for wisdom still ranks high in people’s minds today. But this story doesn’t offer much we can learn from or emulate. We are just plain out of luck unless God comes to offer us the same deal. Fortunately for us, there’s more to Solomon’s story that offers insight about where wisdom comes from and is also a cautionary tale about how easily we mess it up.
The bible gets real. We learn more about the man behind the myth. As this story goes there once was a shrewd prince named Solomon. Following the death of the king, the prince ordered the murder of his older brother — the rightful heir — and assumed his father’s throne with blood on his hands. He spent the earliest days of his reign carrying out the vengeance killings his father had requested before his death. Then, believing himself to have divine wisdom and a divine mandate, he set out to build the kingdom of his dreams — a kingdom of wealth, prestige, and power.
The king’s appetites were beyond excessive. He levied taxes his subjects could not bear. He conscripted thousands of people into forced labor. He assembled a harem of seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. He constructed pagan shrines and offered worship to gods who demanded child sacrifice. When he died a civil war ultimately split the kingdom in two. The famed king’s once-golden dream dissolved into chaos.
Solomon the myth is a happy story. But Solomon the man is the one who can teach us most about wisdom. Yes. For good or for ill, the story of God’s work in the world unfolds in and through the lives of ordinary human beings. But notice, Solomon demonstrated his greatest wisdom before God granted him his wish. He was humble, compassionate, and self-reflective. Solomon said to God, “I am only a child.” True wisdom begins with knowing our limits. Respect, reverence, and awe before God is the tap root of wisdom. Accepting criticism. Being open to learning/growing. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. (Psalm 111:10). This example of Solomon’s wisdom is an example we can all learn to emulate.
Solomon’s story is also a cautionary tale about how easily we can lose God’s dream in our own. His great wealth proved to be, not a blessing, but an obstacle. Too often, money creates a moral vacuum. Solomon remained wealthy while he sacrificed babies to Molech. Solomon’s dreams of acquisition and power very quickly left God’s dreams in the dust.
Walter Brueggemann puts it this way: “The wisdom that Solomon does not learn is attentiveness to those for whom God has special attentiveness. There are all kinds of dreams — of power and money and prestige and control. But the dream of justice for widows, orphans, and immigrants is the deep wisdom of Torah obedience.” And that’s the dream — God’s dream for the least and most vulnerable of his children — that Solomon never fulfills. (Debi Thomas, “The Beginning of Wisdom,” Journey with Jesus, 8/12/18)
At the Center for Practical Wisdom, one component they identify with wisdom remains controversial: spirituality. They define spirituality as feeling constantly connected with something or someone that we do not see, hear or feel. People can call it spirit, soul, consciousness, or God.
God. Yes, God is the beginning of wisdom. Look, here is spiritual food. Here is wisdom interwoven with bread and wine. Here is a poetic feast of spiritual maturity and a way of life that begets more life. Wine and bread are both fermented foods. They are each the result of a process of transformation that cannot be rushed and is often delicate. Bread must be worked, kneaded, left to rise, reworked, and baked. Wine is the result of weeks or months or even years of yeasts breaking down sugar and slowly turning fruit into alcohol. The incarnation of Spirit is God’s yeasty gift to us. Dwelling in the Spirit, our lives become fermented and fragrant as we slowly grow in wisdom. (Diana Butler Bass, “The Fermented Life,” Sunday Musings, 8/17/24) Immanuel’s mission is rooted in this. Our vision and our prayer is to be a living sanctuary of hope and grace.
Chew On This!
SermonProper 14B-24
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago
Jesus climbed a mountain and sat with the disciples. He looked and saw a large crowd following them. He bid them to sit down. (John 6:3) They were people of every nation, station, and denomination. There, beside Jesus, was Matthew the tax collector who once made a living working with the occupying Roman army. Nearby by was Simon the Zealot, who had once conspired for the violent overthrow of Rome. These political opposites sat together. Red and blue united in communion with Jesus. The gospel is political, but it must never be partisan.
Perhaps, there were others you might recognize, like the man once called the Gerasene demoniac, or, the leper who returned to say thanks, or the woman healed of a hemorrhage she had suffered for twelve years. The Samaritan woman could have been there, as could Jairus the synagogue leader, or maybe even Nicodemus, or Joseph of Arimathea, along with Lazarus, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of Jesus, Salome, and the other Mary’s who had supported Jesus’ ministry financially.
Many who shared the feast were deeply, personally connected to Jesus. Most were probably there because they were hungry, or because they were curious to see someone famous. Whatever their reasons, it didn’t matter. They gathered around Jesus. People of faith, and of no faith, and of different faiths. Yet each found welcome. Each person was fed. As it was then, so it is now. Whatever your background, regardless of your doubts and questions, you are welcome in this community of faith…and you are invited to the Lord’s table.
Jesus often taught from the table. In this way Jesus teaches us what family means. He was criticized for eating with tax collectors and sinners (Matthew 9:10-11, for example); others judged him for eating too much (Luke 7:34) or for eating with Pharisees and lawyers (Luke 7:36-50, 11: 37-54, 14:1). He welcomed them all, even Judas. He ate with lepers (Mark 14:3), he received a woman with a bad reputation at a men’s-only dinner (Luke 7:36-37), and he invited himself over to a “sinner’s” house (Luke 19:1-10). Jesus broke the rules, always making a bigger table, a wider circle.
Sadly, over time, as The Way of Jesus came to be called Christianity, and as Christianity later became Christendom, communion stopped being an inclusive meal and became a way to separate people into groups of insiders and outsiders—just the opposite of Jesus’ intention! Jesus continually interpreted the Law of Holiness from the Hebrew bible in terms of the God whom he has encountered—and that God is always compassion and mercy. Instead, over time, Christendom emphasized the priest as the “transformer” instead of the people as the transformed.
Each of the Sacraments is a reliable means to receive God’s abundant grace. One Sacrament need not precede the other but each leads naturally to the other. The baptized naturally find their place at the Lord’s table. Others who first find welcome at the Lord’s table will then discover their full humanity in the living waters of God.
This is what the kingdom of God looks like. This is what Eucharist means. Seated en-masse on the mountain was the New Jerusalem. This is what Jesus taught us to pray. In God’s economy everyone receives their daily bread. Lord, give us—all of us, this very day—our daily bread, the bread that is you, the bread that in our lives can become nourishment for all!
The simplicity of this prayer that Jesus gave us can distract us from its wisdom and its challenge. At its heart is what Walter Brueggemann contends is God’s alternate food policy. The hungry are fed. The thirsty find drink. And yet, Communion is about more than the Recommended Daily Allowances of nutrients we need for good health. It is also about the discipline of the manna economy.
God provided manna in the wilderness. God said, “Each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day…. Gather as much of it as each of you needs…[and] let no one leave any of it over until morning” (Exodus 16:4-19). The daily bread of communion is an invitation to embrace the discipline of simplicity, of just enough, and of radical trust in God’s abundance. (Cathy C. Campbell, Sojourners Magazine, author of Stations of the Banquet: Faith Foundations for Food Justice.)
Jesus is the bread of life. My grandma Lois once taught me never to shop for groceries on an empty stomach. You’ll end up spending more on junk food that does not truly satisfy. Our most famished cravings do not fit in a grocery cart. We have a famished craving because we partake of the bread of death that only makes us hungrier and hungrier until we are exhausted. Jesus is the bread of life. The bread fills you up. It won’t let you down. It really sticks to your ribs because it is made with love and truly, it is love.
You may have heard the Latin phrase, made famous by the 17th century philosopher, René Descartes, cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am). Years ago, William Sloan Coffin, the chaplain at Yale University, suggested a subversive counter proposal which he thought truer to real life: “that it’s amo ergo sum (I love, therefore I am).” This Latin phrase, came from the title of a book in German by Christina Kessler, which can be translated to make the point more radical: “I am because I love.” Or as the farmer-poet Wendell Berry put it, ‘I only live to the extent that I love.’
The love of God which we call grace is the bread of life present always and everywhere. Taste it here at the Lord’s Table. Chew on it and meditate upon it, so that you may better see and greet Christ in your neighbor and become the food that nourishes the soul.
At the Iona Abbey, on an obscure island off the coast of a narrow peninsula in Scotland, where Christianity thrived for hundreds of years throughout the Dark Ages of Europe, the invitation to eucharist is phrased this way:
The table of bread and wine is now to be made ready. It is the table of the company of Jesus, and all who love him. It is the table of sharing with the poor of the world, with whom Jesus identified himself. It is the table of communion with the earth, in which Christ became incarnate. So, come to this table, you who have much faith and you who would like to have more; you who have been here often and you who have not been for a long time; you who have tried to follow Jesus, and you who have failed; come. It is Christ who invites us to meet him here. (Iona Abbey Worship Book (Wild Goose Publications: 2001)
Be Truthful, Gentle and Fearless
SermonP
Proper 13B-24
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago
I don’t know where it came from. There among all the stickers, beach passes, photos, and reminders on my refrigerator door is a quote attributed to Mahatma Gandhi. It says, “Be truthful, gentle, and fearless.” More than 80 times in the gospels, Jesus precedes a teaching with the words “I tell you the truth.” He says here in the gospel of John that he is “the truth” and the “the true bread from heaven.” True to Jesus’ words, Paul teaches in Ephesians that to love a person, a people, or a nation you must tell them the truth.
Our reading from Second Samuel offers good advice about how to tell the truth to others and ourselves, and about how to receive the truth from others. Bathsheba is one of five women Matthew lists in the genealogy of Jesus, along with Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth, and Mary. Each of these women have their own #MeToo stories, and each of these texts of the abuse of patriarchy, is an essential part of Jesus’ story.
The prophet Nathan is a good example of how to speak truth to power. Nathan is truthful, gentle, and fearless. With the delicacy and craft of a bullfighter, Nathan kindles King David’s anger toward a certain a rich man who had stolen, killed, and eaten the beloved lamb of a poor man. Nathan deftly turns that wrath back upon David. When David insists on hearing who the evil man is so that he may have him punished, Nathan declares, “You are that man!” (2 Samuel 12:7).
Speak the truth. Be gentle and fearless. No one is above the law. One amazing thing about our bible is that it does not hesitate to say that all our heroes are flawed. King David proves his worth, in part, because he doesn’t try to deflect, deny, or defend himself when confronted with his guilt. King David realizes his wickedness and repents. By tradition, psalm 51 is the by-product of David’s grief and regret. “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me” (Psalm 51:10-11). David’s example of personal integrity resonates through the ages.
To love Jesus is to serve the truth with gentleness and fearlessness. Paul encourages us to speak the truth in love so we may grow and become the mature body of him who is the head, that is Christ (Ephesians 4:15). Jesus said, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” To believe in him is to dedicate ourselves in the service of love and truth. We are made strong enough to do this when we partake of the bread and wine at communion. Jesus is the true bread of heaven. Here, in John 6, just as clearly as in the Lenten readings about Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, Christ teaches us that bread is more than just what we eat. Bread is the great sign and metaphor of the kingdom.
It’s interesting. “Jesus didn’t talk much about the church, but he talked a lot about the kingdom…. In contrast to every other kingdom that has been and ever will be, this kingdom belongs to the poor, Jesus said, and to the peacemakers, the merciful, and those who hunger and thirst for God. In this kingdom, the people from the margins and the bottom rungs will be lifted up to places of honor, seated at the best spots at the table. This kingdom knows no geographic boundaries, no political parties, no single language or culture. It advances not through power and might, but through acts of love and joy and peace, missions of mercy and kindness and humility. This kingdom has arrived, not with a trumpet’s sound but with a baby’s cries, not with the vanquishing of enemies but with the forgiving of them, not on the back of a warhorse but on the back of a donkey, not with triumph and a conquest but with a death and a resurrection….
When we consider all the messes the church has made throughout history, all the havoc she has wreaked and the things she has destroyed, when we face up to just how different the church looks from the kingdom most of the time, it’s easy to think maybe Jesus left us with a raw deal. Maybe he pulled a bait and switch, selling us on the kingdom and then slipping us the church. (Rachel Held Evans, as quoted in Daily Meditations, “A Glimpse of Love, Joy, and Peace,” Richard Rohr, 8/2/24).
Perhaps we would prefer that God would ensure that not all our leaders would be flawed. At least some of our institutions, governments, and congregations would always be worthy of our trust. But alas, we are human. Despite this, God made a choice long ago, to work with us, to dwell within us, to go before us, to renew, uplift and create in us a clean heart again and again after we transgress. We express this truth here, in our name, Immanuel. It means ‘God with us.’ God leads us flawed human beings on the right path as we strive to be truthful, gentle, and fearless.
The biblical word for ‘church’ is ekklesia. The ‘called out.’ The people of God is, essentially, “a gathering of kingdom citizens, called out—from their individuality, from their sins, from their old ways of doing things, from the world’s way of doing things—into participation in this new kingdom and community with one another….The purpose of the church, and of the sacraments, is to give the world a glimpse of the kingdom, [and] to point in its direction….” (Rachel Held Evans).
“For many people today, kingdom language evokes patriarchy, chauvinism, imperialism, domination, and a regime without freedom—the very opposite of the liberating, barrier-breaking, domination-shattering, reconciling movement the kingdom of God was intended to be!” (Brian McLaren)
“The kingdom remains a mystery just beyond our grasp. All we have are almosts and not quites and wayside shrines. All we have are imperfect people in an imperfect world doing their best to produce outward signs of inward grace and stumbling all along the way.” (Rachel Held Evans)
Be truthful, gentle, and fearless. This is our daily bread. Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35).This bread provides the proper nutrition to enables us to love and to receive love, to be called out of our small self, and drawn into the One Life we share in the kingdom of God that is both already and not yet.
Fed With Christ to Become Christ
SermonProper 12B-24
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago
Jesus bid the people to recline in tall grass on the shallow hills beside the Sea of Galilee. He gave thanks and divided the poverty rations of a small boy to produce a feast sufficient to feed 5,000 men (and their families). It was an occasion of welcome and grace in sharp contrast to the grinding economy of their Roman overlords.
It was a feast that defied all expectation and explanation. It exceeded what they needed and satisfied all that they wanted. God’s math doesn’t add up, it multiplies.
At this table we are fed with the life of Christ to become Christ. There is a miracle here for the taking being replicated and shared in big and small towns, in the countryside and in the cities throughout the world today.
Russ, Joe, Sam, Kari, and I had breakfast yesterday morning in a small town of 1,700 called Mediapolis, Iowa, with twenty thousand new friends. Despite it being Mediapolis, there was no cellular service in Mediapolis. That was typical throughout the week. Even texting was impossible at times.
We enjoyed all you can eat pancakes served with sausage, coffee and/or tang. We grabbed a small piece of shade in a grassy spot beside the road. We spent the whole week living outside. We drank from lemonade stands run by small children. We ate homemade pie and ice cream provided by churches and Amish families. We ate pickles and bananas. We ate pork chops from Mr. Pork Chop and Gyros, burritos, pulled pork, and stir fry from local vendors. It was a week-long party. I met a heterogeneous mix of people from throughout the country, Canada, and New Zealand.
RAGBRAI is an acronym for “Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa.” RAGBRAI began 51 years ago, in 1973 when two journalists, writing for the Des Moines Register, hatched a plan to ride across Iowa to interview and report on the people and stories they encountered. An estimated 300 people showed up to ride with them. 114 riders made the entire distance that first year. 500 riders joined them on the stretch between Ames and Des Moines.
Now, each year, the ride takes a different route through the state. Small towns vie for the opportunity to host. It is a display of small-town pride, community spirit, and entrepreneurship. 20 thousand RAGBRAI riders are like a river of money, or a happy swarm of locust. They carry almost nothing and must eat/drink whatever they can find along the way. Burning 5 or 6 thousand calories a day means eating a lot of food. RAGBRAI riders are privileged group of people who can take more than a week off, how can purchase good bikes, funny clothes, camping gear, a charter company to hall it each day, and of course, the food.
RAGBRAI is not a religious gathering, but I want to tell you it is an occasion of grace of the kind we need more of throughout America today. It’s an example of the kind of math that doesn’t add up but multiplies. It is the kind of miracle Jesus shows us at this table. Because God revealed to us in Christ is creator and Lord of all, it is a kind of miracle which is always there for the taking. It is the miracle of fellowship, community, shared joy, that yields the fruit of public trust, safety, and streets to live in.
This phenomenon has been richly described and documented by political scientist Robert Putnam twenty years ago in the groundbreaking book, “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.” Simple ordinary things we do together, like bowling, or chess, or en masse bike-riding, have a profoundly good effect in building community. His thesis and remedy for what ails us is simple. Americans are becoming more and more divided and distrustful because they are doing less and less together.
Putnam describes two types of togetherness that are important and essential: bonding togetherness, and bridging togetherness. Ties with other people who are like us provide bonding. These are the people, who when you get sick, bring you something to eat. It is really powerful and important but it can become really awful, hateful, and exclusive without the second kind of connection to others who are unlike us that Putnam calls bridging togetherness. Each is a kind of social capital. Between the two, bridging togetherness is more difficult to sustain than bonding togetherness.
RAGBRAI is an occasion for both types of togetherness. Teams riding together have an opportunity to draw closer and to bond. Riders and community members represent people of every age, background, orientation, race, political preference, and economic level. Simply by being together, waving, and saying hello builds bridging togetherness.
The food at this table bonds us and bridges us. Bonding and bridging togetherness is the miracle-in plain-sight Jesus revealed all those years ago on the grassy hills beside the Sea of Galilee. Looking at each of us, an outside observer would not be clear what we all have in common. Sharing the one bread and one body, the one cup of blessing bonds us as living members of each other.
Fed with the life of Christ to become Christ, this table is joined with altars around the world this morning, and with anyplace where the hungry are fed –such as the sharing table of Care for Real, now at their new location on Broadway.
On Sunday, August 25th will be an occasion for bonding togetherness, blessing of backpacks, a potluck BBQ, and ice cream social on the front lawn. Two weeks later, September 8th, for God’s Work Our Hands Sunday, will be an occasion for bridging togetherness as once again we host Care for Real’s volunteer appreciation BBQ that afternoon from 3:00 – 5:00 pm.
When we partake in Jesus’ life at the Lord’s Table, we become a part of one another. Almost seven hundred years ago, Lady Julian of Norwich (1342-1416) had a vision of this union which she described as “oneing.” She wrote, “The love of God creates in us such a oneing that when it is truly seen, no person can separate themselves from another person” (Chapter 65), and “In the sight of God all humans are oned, and one person is all people and all people are in one person” (Chapter 51). For it is in this oneing that the life of all people exists” (Chapter 9).
In Holy Communion, we are made one with God and each other. Fed by God, we share our bread. Welcomed by God we show hospitality to strangers. Shown mercy by God, we find room to forgive those who sin against us. Graced by God, we discover the way to build community and heal the divisions in our nation. We find strength to confront systems and powers that perpetuate injustice and degrade life. Come to the Lord’s Table. Come and eat. Come, eat, and live.