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"WHAT ABOUT THE GOOD STUFF?"

11/3/2024

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November 3, 2024  *  Proper 26
 
I don’t have a specific scripture to speak on today, just a group of maybe disconnected ideas – at least they feel disconnected – but important.

Our messages for the past several weeks have dealt with how to tell what has been the voice of God, and what has been just humanity voicing its opinions – how to hear God actually speaking through the scriptures we read. 

When we finished last week, I said that was the end of all that for awhile and I was glad because I was tired of  reading instructions to go out and kill our enemies because God said it was OK, or to slaughter the obviously innocent because they were descended from enemies of hundreds of years before.  The same old battles for power and ascendancy seem to fill so much of the Old Testament especially.

So today I’m turning to prophets who called out for peace and justice among the people.  Not to discern if this was God speaking or not, but simply to show that it IS here.  But even here there is plenty of violence since these stories seem to always start with an angry God who demands retribution and punishment before we can get around to peace and charity.

The Old Testament, in particular, was not always blood and political mayhem.  Even here there were those who heard God’s voice as a voice of love – strange though some of it might sound to us today as a loving voice.  And we should not lose these teachings because we most decidedly need to hear them even today – especially today. 

Prophets such as Amos, Ezekial, Micah, and Isaiah spoke out strongly against those in power who bullied, used, and abused the powerless and poor all to their own advantage.  Religious rules existed which forbade such behavior – but they were, then as now – easily ignored by those with money and status.

This sample from Isaiah is a beautiful example of the genuine love and caring that we can also find in the midst of all the bloodshed:

From Isaiah 11 (1-9)
A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
    and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him …
    
With righteousness he shall judge for the poor --
Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist
    and faithfulness the belt around his loins …

And a little further along in this extended reading, comes this beautiful song of shared peace:
The wolf shall live with the lamb;
    the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
the calf and the lion will feed together,
    and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze;
    their young shall lie down together;
    and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
    and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
    as the waters cover the sea.
 
And here is one that we are all familiar with from Micah 6:8:
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
   And what does the Lord require of you?
  To act justly and to love mercy
 and to walk humbly with your God.

But Micah had much more to say to listeners then and still today.
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
    to the house of the God of Jacob,
that he may teach us his ways
    and that we may walk in his paths.
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
    and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem…
They shall beat their swords into plowshares
    and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation;
    neither shall they learn war anymore;  but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid,
    for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken…
And we will walk in the name of the Lord our God
    forever and ever.

These are promises from God – promises not only for the people of Micah’s time, or Isaiah’s.  These are promises for us today as they have been for all peoples down through 3000 or so years – years when the rich and the powerful have done what they want and the oppressed have been forced to bear it.

These are, however, not promises yet to come.  In God’s time these promises are now – always in God’s now.  There will be a time someday, and there is a time right now
When all shall sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid, for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken…

These promises are real someday to come and they are real today, this moment.  There is / will be peace and generosity and kindness in this world.  It is the Word of God – that we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever.

Let us not be so lost in the greed and hatred and fear that we overlook and forget the promises of Peace -- promises given for Then, and for Now, and for All time to come.

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WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR?

10/27/2024

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“If you are looking for verses with which to support slavery, you will find them.  If you are looking for verses with which to abolish slavery, you will find them.  If you are looking for verses with which to oppress women, you will find them.  If you are looking for verses with which to liberate or honor women, you will find them.

If you are looking for reasons to wage war, you will find them.  If you are looking for reasons to promote peace, you will find them.  If you are looking for an out-dated, irrelevant ancient text, you will find it.  If you are looking for truth, believe me, you will find it.

This is why there are times when the most instructive question to bring to the biblical text is not "what does it say?", but "what am I looking for?"  I suspect Jesus knew this when he said, "ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened."  If you want to do violence in this world, you will always find the weapons.  If you want to heal, you will always find the balm.”

― Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood
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This reading doesn’t come from the bible.  It was taken from a book titled, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, by Rachel Held Evans, a young blogger and writer who died much too soon in 2019 at the age of 37.  Two of her several books were New York Times best-sellers, including the one I just quoted.

I have to admit, when I first heard this book’s title, I cringed.  Back in the late 70’s and early 80’s the Christian publishing world was swimming with earnest books instructing women how to be good, subservient Christian women, recognizing the husband’s role as ‘head of the family’ and keeping our silence in church matters.  I hated those patronizing, dismissive, treacle-y books, and this title sounded like something written in that same line.

It isn’t.

For the past few months here – and actually a lot longer since it is a recurrent theme – we’ve been going through different readings from scripture and trying to discern which might truly be God’s words to us and which are just another human’s opinion.

I did not intend that this message should center on Rachel herself, but sometimes it can help us in our own journey to understanding when we find someone articulate who has faced the same issues.

Rachel Held Evans was born into an evangelical biblical-literalist family where every word was presented as straight from God’s mouth.  She believed her family’s teachings completely until her young adult years when she began to realize that she knew real flesh and blood people who were good and kind and loved Jesus and yet were condemned by the very teachings she claimed as her own.  She spent the rest of her too-brief life working to determine what she actually did believe and why.  What she could claim and what she could not of all she had been raised to believe.

Is there anyone among us who has not struggled with parts of the bible that don’t at all agree with what we believe or what we can believe is the voice of God speaking?

The title of this message is “What Are We Looking For?”  What is it we are expecting or hoping to find within the covers of this book?  The answer there depends largely on who we believe wrote it.  If you believe that every word came straight from God’s lips you are going to approach it differently than if you start out believing it is a series of stories about people’s experiences of something they believe to be God in their lives and their struggle to articulate that experience.

There are differences of opinion as to when the oldest parts of the bible were written but they were written at least 1500 years before the birth of Jesus.  That’s a lot of time and a lot of opinions.  Add in another 100 years to include that New Testament and understand the number of people who wrote parts of all this and we are faced with a whole lot of people, from many different backgrounds and beliefs writing over a very long time span. 

It isn’t simple and it’s when we try to make it simple that we can get ourselves all tangled up in theories and confusions of all sorts.  It isn’t simple at all.  As Rachel says in our opening quote:  If you are looking for an out-dated, irrelevant ancient text, you will find it.  If you are looking for truth, believe me, you will find it.

So – how do we look at scripture when we set out to learn from it?  Are we looking for reasons to put others down or an excuse to hate?  Or are we looking and expecting to find a God speaking to us of love and caring?  Are we looking for validation for our current actions or are we hoping to find clear directions for how we can best be part of following Jesus’ way?  Can we look at a story from 2500 years ago and see that, while we might not agree with them today, they were, perhaps, trying their best in circumstances we have never had to face?  Can we see how we can learn from their experience?

One more quote from Rachel  -- one I have great fondness for reads like this: “I have come to regard with some suspicion those who claim that the Bible never troubles them.  I can only assume this means they haven’t actually read it.”  I've known some of these people.

Those of us who do read it know that we will always find stumbling places but if we come to the readings with love and humility and a true desire to learn to live as our God wants us to live – a way that benefits us all – a way that lifts up this beautiful creation God has given us – we will find the answers here – here in scripture and in our hearts where the Holy Spirit lives with and in us.

We read, we discuss, we share – and we find God with us – always -- in the words.  

Amen.
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A QUESTION ABOUT NEIGHBORS

10/20/2024

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Luke 10:25-37

An expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?”  He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.”  And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”
 
But wanting to vindicate himself, the lawyer asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”  Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and took off, leaving him half dead.  Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side.  So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.  But a Samaritan while traveling came upon him, and when he saw him he was moved with compassion.  He went to him and bandaged his wounds, treating them with oil and wine. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him.  The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him, and when I come back I will repay you whatever more you spend.’  

Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”  He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
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After all our discussions of how and why John’s gospel account seems to differ from the other three gospel accounts and how carefully we need to work to understand just what the writers are trying to convey with their particular style, I thought it would be interesting to check out just how complex any gospel can be – and not just John’s.

The one we’re looking at here today is from Luke and it is chock full of language and history that the writer probably assumed later readers would understand.  Maybe we do, and maybe we don’t.

A lawyer one day asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life.  The answer wasn’t especially tricky, since it appears multiple times in scripture – In Deuteronomy, in Matthew, in Mark, and here, in Luke: 
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.”

Luke is the one who gives us this long story to explain just how that works.  But first, a little history.  After hearing the story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman last week it surely won’t surprise us to see how often the Israelites could insert their hatreds into their religious beliefs.  (Listen to any news story today – it’s still there.)

This time, Jesus' target audience, the Jews, hated the Samaritans (who followed the Law of Moses) to such a degree that they had destroyed the Samaritans' holy site  on Mount Gerizim about 100+ years before Jesus’ birth, because they believed they followed pagan beliefs. The Samaritans, in turn, hated the Jews and had more recently desecrated the Jewish Temple at Passover with human bones – human bones being “unclean.” 

This belief, likewise, plays its role in our story today.  The story comes around in response to the Lawyer’s question: “Who is my neighbor? – The one I’m supposed to love as I love myself?”  There are five active characters in the story as Jesus tells it -- a traveler who is robbed, beaten, and left half dead alongside the road, a Jewish priest, a Levite, a Samaritan, and an inn keeper. 

Because the nationality or ethnicity of the victim/traveler is never specified it is assumed he is Jewish.  The priest and the Levite both serve in the Temple, the priest as intermediary between the people and God -- offering sacrifices and prayers, and acting as judges.

Levites were a lesser level of priests.  They prepared the sacrifices and prepared the temple for public gatherings – serving as something like a sacristan or sexton.  Both groups were bound by purity laws.

In Jewish culture, contact with a dead body was understood to be defiling.  It is possible that both the priest and Levite assumed the man was dead and therefore passed him by -- avoiding him to keep themselves ritually clean.  

It’s sort of a gray area because they didn’t know he was dead, they just assumed that as the easier choice, whereas the better choice would have been to check to see if he were indeed dead (which of course, he wasn’t).  They both cared more for their own “purity” and sanctity than the chance he might be alive and in need of care.

Enter the Samaritan – the despised outsider – the true “neighbor” -- who apparently without hesitation tended to the injured man with his own hands and his own oil and wine – and provided for his further care – while knowing that he himself would most likely be ignored and rejected had the script been flipped.

While the Samaritan is indeed the hero of the story, my second favorite actor here is the inn keeper who took in the injured man and arranged his further care for partial payment and a promise from a stranger – a Samaritan at that – to pay the rest the next time he came through.  That may be the part of the story I find the most astonishing.

But we know who Jesus means when he speaks of the one who is the “true neighbor.”  It is interesting that in this question and answer between the lawyer and Jesus it is not Jesus who gives us the answer, although he certainly sets it up.  It’s the lawyer who possibly hoped to “catch” Jesus who ends up answering his own question “Who is my neighbor?” ….. “The one who showed him mercy.”

May we all go and do likewise.
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"Reframing Those Old, Old Stories"

10/13/2024

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Matthew 15:22-28
Jesus went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon.  Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.”  But he did not answer her at all.
 
And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.”  He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.”  He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”  She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”  Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith!  Let it be done for you as you wish.”  And her daughter was healed from that moment.
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After our Annual Fall Women’s Retreat last month I came home full of new ideas and new ways to see the work we do in our churches.  Since we were still in the middle of our Summer Sermon Series on John’s Gospel, I didn’t really have time to share much about the retreat and the teachings we shared there. 

Well, we’ve finished with John now, so we have time to go back and check out the retreat theme, “New Hope -- Where do we go from here?” a question that challenges us to live out the Gospel, empowered by the Holy Spirit in this present, postmodern world.  Our Keynote speaker, Dr. Sharon Jacob, visiting professor of New Testament, from Claremont, had plenty to share with us.

But before we get into that I want to – briefly – remind us that we are a story-telling people.  We humans have always told stories about ourselves and all that share this world with us – ‘how did we get here?’ stories, ‘what’s it all mean?’ stories, ‘why did this happen to me?’ stories – stories that shape us and stories that explain us. 

The Bible is a book of such stories.  Some we accept as not literally true but still making a good point, such as:  ‘Noah’s Ark’.  Some we accept in part while rejecting other parts such as the birth of the baby Jesus as a human child – most of us believe that part – but we ignore the part of that story that says the sky that night was lit up by angels singing praises to God (which absolutely no one seemed to remember at any time in the following 30 years.)

I titled this message “Reframing those Old, Old Stories.”  Reframing is a psychological technique that involves changing the way a person understands a situation, experience, or emotion, by changing the information that surrounds it – basically, putting it within a new framework.  – viewing it from another point of view that may change our interpretation of what we’ve read.

The reading we opened with today comes from an example Dr. Jacob shared with us, involving the story of the Syro-Phoenician woman and her demon-possessed child.  This one is available from both Matthew and Mark.

Now, as we’ve always accepted, Mark’s gospel is the first one written down and read by many.  We know that much of Matthew, put together later, was taken directly from Mark and there is one note in these two versions of the story that you and I have no way of knowing about unless we know a lot of Near Eastern history, yet this primary point makes all the difference in how we would hear this story if we heard it 2000 years ago – or today. 

In both versions a non-Jewish woman comes to Jesus asking him to heal her possessed child.  In both versions Jesus at first rejects her and her plea, comparing her to a dog (!) -- and in both versions, eventually changes his mind and heals the child.

In Mark’s telling, the woman is simply described as a Syro-Phoenician – a geographical descriptor telling where this story takes place and that the woman is non-Jewish and therefore not as important to him as the Hebrew people he usually walks among.  In Matthew’s version, she is described as a Canaanite woman -- and this matters. 

When the Hebrew people ended their forty years in the desert after escaping from slavery in Egypt, the area we generally lump together as the Near East, was inhabited by several different peoples of different ethnicities.  There were few solid boundaries between them and the whole area, in general, was referred to as Canaan and the people as Canaanites.  It was this loosely defined area that God “gave” to the Hebrews as their long-promised new homeland.

The Hebrews marched in and waged bloody war, killed off many of the inhabitants and settled in their promised land.  The Canaanites resisted and became generational enemies. 

But this was long ago – even in Jesus’ time -- and for Matthew to refer to the people who now lived in the northern realms as Canaanites was simply inaccurate – deliberately so.  That term was no longer used – they were simply Syro-Phoenicians – as Mark described the woman -- not the Canaanites they had invaded and battled centuries ago.

This was a case of Matthew pushing his readers into an Old Testament mindset to manufacture a justification for Jesus and his disciples to be so contemptuous of the mother who was pleading for her child’s healing.  We are being forced to few this woman and her child as outsiders – people not included in God’s special covenant with God’s chosen people.

Such a little thing, so easy to overlook with a casual reading – especially if we today don’t know the ancient history.  We aren’t going to understand that “Syro-Phoenician” is OK but “Canaanite” is not.  A small thing and yet it makes such a big difference in the story we read and our understanding of this Jesus person -- who we believe, from all other evidence, to be loving and kind – and yet somehow – uncharacteristically – comes across here as an arrogant jerk.

Mark tells us the same story, but without the layers of contempt that this woman would dare to ask Jesus for help.  Jesus is still rude (by our standards) but to a much lesser degree.  In many ways he is simply acting like a Jewish man of his time. 

Such instances occur all through the bible – and they color how we hear and interpret what the scriptures are saying to us.  In many cases, they can sway how we believe what the stories tell us.  We need to be ready to hear them and recognize them when we are seeking God’s intention.  As Jesus himself discovered as his ministry progressed, God’s promises are not only for the children of Israel but for all God’s beloved children.

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BREAD OF LIFE  -- (Last of the John's Gospel series for 2024)

10/6/2024

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John 6:35-40
Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.  But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe.  Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away, for I have come down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.  And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me but raise it up on the last day.  This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day.”
​
This will be (I think) the last in this current series of discussions looking into John’s Gospel and what makes it so often different from the Synoptic gospels.  This has not been the usual bible study format, going verse by verse in the order written.  Instead, we’ve somewhat randomly taken specific points of interest and delved a little more deeply than usual into those particular points.

I’ve left today’s subject to last because I think it may well be the most important for us.  We are a people of Bread and Cup and our Table Theology lies at the heart of most everything we do.  Our gathering at table and the words of institution are central to our worship – and yet these words did not appear anywhere in John’s gospel.  They do appear in each of the synoptics:

  • Mark 14:22-24   While they were eating, he took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.”  Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, and all of them drank from it.  He said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.
 
  • Matthew 26:26-29   While they were eating, Jesus took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.”  Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
 
  • Luke 22:14-20    When the hour came, he took his place at the table, and the apostles with him. He said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer, for I tell you, I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God …  Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.
 
But, again, none of this is included in John’s gospel account.  In all four accounts Jesus and his disciples are in Jerusalem for the Passover celebration.  In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, this is the only Passover mentioned and Jesus’ only appearance in Jerusalem.  Again, John is different.  Three separate Passover celebrations are mentioned here and this is apparently, Jesus’ third visit.

After the triumphal entry into Jerusalem -- which begins the final week of Jesus’ human life -- there was a meal -- it is mentioned, barely – John’s scripture simply says there was a meal.  And for the writer of John, apparently, the most important thing that happened at this meal was Jesus washing the feet of his disciples.  The rest of the evening is taken up with Jesus’ long discourse as he tries to squeeze in all that he still needs to say to his followers before his inevitable betrayal and arrest.

So – what – if anything, does all this have to tell us about our table theology?  We have four gospels – three of them place a strong emphasis on the institution of Holy Communion – one does not.  Does that in any way invalidate our gathering at the table?  I don’t think so – different places, different times.

We’ve recognized before that time and distance strongly affect what scripture has to offer us today.  There is some lack of agreement as to which of the four gospels was the last written.  For a long time most mainline scholars believed John was the last gospel written, but in more recent years there has been a strong argument put forth the John was next to last and Luke was the latest gospel.

Mark was written first, possibly as early as 30 years after Jesus’ with death, with Matthew following another decade or two later and John and Luke another two or three decades more.  The point being that there was a lot of time between Jesus’ death and any of them being written down.  It is totally unreasonable to expect that they could all four have chosen exactly the same moments to record.  Even the synoptics, similar as they can be, differ widely in a great many ways.

Add to this that John’s community lived at some geographical remove from Jerusalem, which was the physical center of the growing Christian faith.  His stories grew out of a community that had different sources for their shared Jesus stories, a community that faced different challenges and likely shared different ethnicities.

We today read scripture with an additional 2000 years of interpretation adding to (or perhaps confusing) our understanding.  We read trusting in the Holy Spirit to guide us and trusting, as well, our own gut reactions to what we read, our own understanding of this Jesus person – and we trust God to speak to us fairly and honestly, showing us all we need to see and hear to live our lives as God would have us lead them.

We read Mark and Matthew.  We read Luke and John, and we hear – through each of them --  that we are loved – and that is the most important message of all.
One Bread, one Body, one trusting, sharing people.
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"ETERNAL LIFE" ...   John Series, #10

9/29/2024

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After his long good-bye, after washing the disciples’ feet, after giving them his greatest commandment to love one another, Jesus spoke to his Father in heaven before going to the Mount of Olives to face his greatest betrayal…)
 
John 17:1-5
After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. 
     And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.  I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do.  So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.” 
​
I don’t know about you all, but I have been learning a lot of interesting things since we set out on this journey through John’s Gospel.  Things about John’s beliefs and about my own casual acceptance of the common meaning of certain words and phraseology as used in our reading of scripture.

There is one phrase in particular used quite often by the writer of John’s Gospel that apparently didn’t mean then what we have come to use it to mean now.  That phrase is “eternal life.”  Down through the centuries it has come to suggest life after this earthly life – as Marcus Borg put it, ‘Going to heaven after we’re through with this world and living forever there.’  This is the meaning most often found in the synoptic gospels in which the phrase appears eight times.

That, it appears, is not what John meant when he used it -- seventeen times – twice as many times as the three synoptics together – and those seventeen times all came from Jesus himself and coming from Jesus this phrase means something entirely different than life after death. 

  • Again, quoting Borg, “Jesus and early Christianity were primarily focused on the transformation of lives and the world on this side of death.  Of course, Jesus – and early Christians such as Paul – believed in an afterlife – that death was not the end – but that was not the heart of their message.  Rather, it was about the kingdom of God on earth and what the world would be like under the lordship of God rather than the lords of this world.
  • "This understanding was shared by John.  The Greek phrase translated into English as ‘eternal or everlasting life’ is better translated as ‘the life of the age to come,’ that Jewish hope for the transformation of life on earth in the here and now – for John, this life is not just a future hope, but a present active reality.”

And this  then is the heart of John’s Gospel message – that those who follow Jesus, those who hear and understand his words, those who seek to live in his way, have this eternal life and they have it right now.  Not in some far off future in some far off heavenly realm but right here and now.

Furthermore, it seems to tell us that this eternal life is for all whether they know it or not.  The “life of the age to come” is the life we live, here and now, but some of us see it and acknowledge it and are aware whereas others may for a time remain blind to it.  Being blind to it doesn’t mean we can’t have it – it’s just that we can’t live in it in it’s fullness without recognizing it.  It’s still here – we just aren’t awake enough to see it.

And all this is because of the one who existed from the beginning, before all else was – that Logos who was with God and was God and is yet God – the one who lives in us and with us and for us.

Then and now and always.

Thanks be to God – Amen.
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"I AM . . . "

9/15/2024

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Exodus 3:13-14
When Moses met the burning bush in the wilderness, the voice of God from within the bush spoke to him and sent him to carry a message to the Israelites, and  Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?”  God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.”  He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” 

Here we are.  We’re still reading our way through the Gospel according to John, trying to figure out and understand the Jesus we meet here.  SO why did we begin with a reading from Exodus?  You’ll understand (I hope) as we move along today.

This is our 9th session focussed on John's Gospel. We are familiar with the Jesus we've previously met in Matthew, Mark, and Luke  - he feels familiar to us – someone who seems more human, someone we can relate to from our own human reference. 

John’s Jesus, however, can seem very distant at times.  When he explains himself it often seems to me to be more of a lengthy abstract philosophical discussion than an actual description or conversation.  When he does interact with people – as when he heals someone – there rarely is any sense of actual connection with the person healed.  Jesus meets someone with a need – heals them – then moves on. 

It is, somewhat ironically, when we read the “I AM” statements that John puts in Jesus’ mouth, that he is most easily understood.  These statements are in the form of metaphors – words or phrases that are not literal descriptions and yet connect us clearly with an idea, a concept – archetypal images that exist deep down in our souls, that we all share to some extent.  We connect with those images and we see another side of Jesus.

There are seven or eight of these “I am”s in John’s gospel depending on how you count them.  They are set apart from simple sentences that describe an action or movement – such as, “I am going up the mountain to pray,” or “I am tired.”

The ones we’re talking about today are something different – times when Jesus makes statements describing himself in metaphorical language.  These “I AM’ statements always come from Jesus himself.
 
  • 1.Jesus said to them, “I AM the bread of life.  He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst” (John 6:35). 

  • 2.Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, “I AM the light of the world.  He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness but have the light of life” (John 8:12). 
  •      
  • 3.“I AM the good shepherd.  The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep” (John 10:11).

  • 4.“I AM the gate.  If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture”  (John 10:9).

  • 5.Jesus said, “I AM the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live” (John 11:25).

  • 6.“I AM the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser” (John 15:1).

  • 7.Jesus said to him, “I AM the way, the truth, and the life.   No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6).
  •  
Each of these paints it own image – an image unique to each person, built from memories and personal experiences.   It's the two "shepherd" images that speak the most deeply to me. They conjure up the images from the 23rd Psalm -- the still, cool water -- the green pastures.  The words that lead me to this sense of peace in an often chaotic world.  This Jesus calls me to follow and I do, willingly.  I connect with the other "I ams" but this on especially.

These images give us a pathway to Jesus – the Jesus who resonates for us and gives us a personal understanding – a personal connection to who and what this Jesus is.  Which one speaks most clearly to you?

And so, back to our reading from Exodus at the beginning today – John’s Hebrew readers would surely be familiar with this story – the calling of Moses -- from one of the earliest books of the Hebrew Scriptures.  And they would get the connection being made here – the connection that got Jesus in so much trouble with the religious authorities – the connection of himself with the I AM of the Old Testament.  Making clear the one-ness of Jesus with his Father–God.

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WHATEVER THE FATHER DOES THE SON DOES LIKEWISE

9/8/2024

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John 5:19-24; 26-27; 30

Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing on his own but only what he sees the Father doing, for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise. The Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing, and he will show him greater works than these, so that you will be astonished.  Indeed, just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whomever he wishes.”  

The Father judges no one but has given all judgment to the Son, so that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father.  Anyone who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.  Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life does not come under judgment but has passed from death to life… for just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself, and he has given him authority to execute judgment because he is the Son of Man.”

“I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just because I seek to do not my own will but the will of him who sent me.”
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Last week we heard the story of the lame man who had waited long years at the Pool of Beth-zatha (sometimes given as Bethesda or Bethsaida, it depends on your translation) but had never managed to receive the healing promised there.  Until the day Jesus happened to be there and, upon hearing the man’s story, simply told him to ‘pick up his mat and walk,’ and he did.

When the authorities (the Jews) heard this story and realized that it was done on the Sabbath, they were determined to track down the one who had broken this rule so that he would be properly punished.  When the “guilty one” was found to be Jesus, he simply explained that his Father was still working on that day and so therefore was he. The Son can do nothing on his own but only what he sees the Father doing, for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise – in effect naming himself as the Son of God and equal to Godself.  For this “crime” the authorities set out to find a way (since they did not have that power themselves) to bring about his death.

This is where we ended last week.

In today’s reading Jesus goes on with an expanded message explaining that he has every right to do such things as heal a lame man, whether it be the Sabbath or not, because his Father has given him this right.  He is the Son of his Father, doing his Father’s work. 

In John’s gospel, Jesus IS God’s Word to us.  As Frederick Buechner puts it: “Matthew quotes scripture, linking Jesus to holy writings from the past, Mark lists miracles, showing us what Jesus does among us, and Luke reels off parables, teaching us as Jesus did.”   All three spoke of the 30+ years Jesus lived among us here on this earth.

But Buechner goes on to say, “When God wanted to say what God is all about, and what man is all about, and what life is all about, it wasn’t words that emerged, but a man.  Jesus was his name.  He was the Word of God.”

In John’s gospel, we don’t often hear the familiar stories told by Jesus or told of Jesus, the ones we hear in the three Synoptics.  Instead, John’s version takes us back to the very beginning of everything and reminds us who it was who was already present at that magical moment when all that is first was.  The One who is the Son of the Father.  The Father has given him everything and he is here living among us and BEING the Word of God.  Jesus does the things he does because he can, and he can because of who he is.

Perhaps the best way to understand just who Jesus is and why he can do the things his does will be to hear the answer from Jesus himself, in the form of the “I AM…” sayings, and that is more than we can cover in our remaining time today so I think that is what we will tackle next week.

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JESUS HEALS A LAME MAN

9/1/2024

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Our message for today comes from John’s Gospel, chapter five, verses 1-18.  This is a very long reading so rather than reading it all at once, I’m going to incorporate it directly into the message as we go along.
 
It begins this way:  There was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went from Galilee up to Jerusalem. 

Now this phrase has always puzzled me because Galilee is clearly up in the north and Jerusalem down to the south.  This has nothing to do with our story, per se, by the way, but it is an interesting side note.  Maybe the language has puzzled you as it has me.  I finally got around to looking it up and found that “Going up to Jerusalem” means “ascending to a place of spiritual significance” and has nothing to do with geography.  It makes perfect sense when looked at from the right direction.  We’re going up to Jerusalem … But back to our reading:
 
Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew, Bethesda (or Bethsaida in some translations) which has five porticoes.  In these lay many ill, blind, lame, and paralyzed people.  One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years.   When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?”  The ill man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am making my way someone else steps down ahead of me.”  (The belief was that every so often an angel would come down and stir the waters of the pool and the first one into the water would receive healing.  This poor man, being crippled, and having no one to help him could never make it in time.)
 
Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.”  At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk. 

Now, what we’ve heard so far is a fairly standard healing story but from this point it takes a nasty turn.
 
Now that day was a Sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who had been cured, “It is the Sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.”  But he answered them, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Take up your mat and walk.’”  They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take it up and walk’?”  Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had disappeared in the crowd that was there. 
 
Later Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you have been made well!  Do not sin again, so that nothing worse happens to you.”  The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.  Therefore, the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the Sabbath.  But Jesus answered them, “My Father is still working, and I also am working.” 
 
For this reason the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was not only breaking the Sabbath but was also calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God.
 
In John’s gospel we will often hear a phrase that has caused a lot of pain.  Every time John writes about the Jewish authorities it is written as “the Jews” and even when it is just in print on a page, it manages to sound accusing.  It is the writer of Matthew’s gospel who most often seems to get the blame for giving Christians down through the centuries a misguided justification for persecuting “the Jews” as “Christ killers,” leading to centuries of brutal abuse, even to the point of having his writings used to ultimately excuse the horrors of the holocaust.
 
While Matthew’s writer is indeed awful in his writings, the truth is that John’s author is worse.  Jesus’s opponents are called “the Jews” with no distinction made among them.  They are from below (8:23); they are children of the devil – the father of lies (8:44) – all manner of name calling.  This is dangerous language in any context but most especially when we today ignore the historical context.
 
Jesus and his disciples were Jewish.  The writer of John was Jewish.  Most of the people he was writing for were Jewish – so surely he never meant to say that all Jews are evil.
 
We established early in this series that John’s gospel was most likely written between 90 and 110 AD.  The Jewish world would have been in disarray at this time after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD, close to 40 years after Jesus’ death, and 20 to 30+ years after the Temple was destroyed.  Add in the ever-growing numbers of non-Jewish Christians as the belief in the risen Jesus spread outward from Jerusalem and began to include people with no tribal ties to Jerusalem or other Jews and there were multiple opportunities for discord.
 
Scholars have for a long time now recognized that when John and Matthew wrote of “the Jews” they were referring to the traditionalist Temple authorities – the ones who arranged Jesus’ death and persecuted his followers, rather than Jews in general.  These were followed by later ones who were Jesus followers themselves, but insisted that any non-Jewish converts had to be circumcised in accordance with Jewish law.
 
There was much understandable hurt and anger in those days and hurt and anger generally do not lead to temperance in our language.  We know better today about John’s meaning when he rails against “the Jews” – we know and we still need to be better.  There is still hatred in our world today – hatred against Jews and LGBTQ+ folk, and anyone else someone names as "different."  Hatred in part engendered by and excused with hateful language still found unexplained in our scriptures.  We have work to do -- unding the damage done by the past and making our future better.
 
Next week we’re going to be dealing with this same story.  This week we’ve seen some of the practical results of this particular healing.  Next week we will be looking at the theological reasoning for this story and going deeper into John’s explanation of just who Jesus is in this gospel account and what we are intended to learn about him.
 
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What Does it Mean to Say:  "Scripture is a Human Product?"

8/25/2024

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Marcus Borg--
The Bible is a human product: it tells us how our religious ancestors saw things, not how God sees things.
​
~~ Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most
​

We’re going to step away from John’s Gospel for just this one week and look into a broader concept – one we’ve been skirting around for some time; one that’s been at the heart of our discussions about John’s writings.  We’ll come back to John next week but just for today I’d like to step aside from there and briefly look into the question of how do we understand scripture when it is clear to us that readings often contradict each other, tell different stories that don’t fit together, and speak with too many voices, each telling their own, unmatching versions of how things happened.

You all probably know by this time how I am about my love for random quotes—I’ll see something that speaks to me and stick it up on a post-it somewhere where it will hang out until I notice it again and it becomes fodder for a sermon.  This one didn’t even take very long to move to the head of the list. 

Just a couple of weeks ago I posted a piece in our weekly Newsletter.  It was something I found on-line, and it addressed the New Testament specifically, but I think it applies just a well to the Hebrew Scriptures:
  • “The New Testament [it says] makes a lot more sense once you realize that it was written by a scattered bunch of authors, vehemently disagreeing with one another, over the course of several generations, rather than a united front of authors channeling the Word of God with a single voice.”
 
This had been posted online under several different names, but I don’t believe it was ever attributed to any one author so, author unknown, but it certainly sounds like a reasonable, factual statement to me.
  • “The New Testament makes a lot more sense once you realize that it was written by a scattered bunch of authors, vehemently disagreeing with one another, over the course of several generations, rather than a united front of authors channeling the Word of God with a single voice.”

If we can accept this as factually true it removes many of our difficulties in reading and believing scripture.  And it helps even more if we can accept that the bible is less a single historically accurate document similar to reading the Congressional Record and more akin to parables, or better yet, stories told around a campfire – stories with a core of truth wrapped in a storyteller’s semi-mythological narrative.

William Sloane Coffin, who was a well-known peace activist and long-time pastor of the historic Riverside Church in New York City (and one of my favorite people whom I was privileged to meet and talk with in seminary) using words similar to those quoted from Marcus Borg, once wrote that “the Bible is a human product.   However, when we describe it as such, we are by no means denying the reality of God, rather, we are simply admitting that there is no escaping our personal and cultural history, nor the personal and cultural history of all writers, no matter what their subject matter.”

Another of my favorite bible scholars, Walter Brueggemann, reminds us; “We should never confuse biblical authority with biblical infallibility….There is no interpretation of scripture that is unaffected by the passions, convictions, and perceptions of the interpreter,”…..“Nobody makes the final read; nobody’s read is final or inerrant, precisely because the Key Character in the book, the one who creates, redeems, and consummates, is always beyond us in holy hiddenness.”

We hear the words of scripture as our own biases tend to lead us.  This message, it turns out, is a perfect example.  In discussing how we interpret the bible I’ve used quotes from three highly respected biblical scholars to bolster my point that all interpretation is shaped by our personal and cultural understanding – but it’s no accident that the three men I chose to quote are the one’s with whose thoughts I agree – or maybe those whose thoughts agree with me.

I didn’t do this to make a point.  I only realized it myself after I had written it.  There are dozens of other “experts” I could just as easily have quoted—but I chose these three. Because I like and agree with their interpretations.  This is how we often read scripture – glossing over versions that challenge us and disagree with us, and latching onto those verses that confirm what we already want to believe.

We all do it, and maybe there’s nothing wrong with that.  Maybe, if we are aware of this tendency and work at always truly seeking, we will then receive the understanding our hearts and souls need, and are ready for, at any given moment in our lives.

And remember the quote from Marc Borg with which we opened here?  I didn’t write this message with that opening in mind.  It was already finished – completed – before I discovered this quote.  I actually had to go back and edit Borg into my text so that it all hung together.   Finding the quote from him was like an assurance to me that this is what I’m meant to share today.

God leaves us little love notes like this from time to time.
​
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    Rev. Cherie Marckx

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