John 3:16

by the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on John 3:14-21. An audio version of this sermon is available here.

(Holding up a cardboard sign that says “John 3:16”) Have you ever seen one of these? I tend to see signs like this in the stands at sporting events — especially when someone knows the camera is on them. I’ve seen this on vanity license plates. I’ve seen it on signs in people’s front yards by busy highways. I’ve seen this simple reference in all kinds of places.

Now, the reason you see this reference in so many places is that many people say this verse is the heart and soul and center of the gospel Good News. The whole message about Jesus and the Church and Christianity, they say, can be summed up in this one sentence: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

Of course, the thing about summary statements is that they have to be unpacked. You have to take the summary keywords and expand upon their meaning, in order to bring out everything the statement has to say. And different people unpack John 3:16 with different understandings.

One way that John 3:16 is understood, a way I think is very common in American Christianity, and especially in American Evangelical Christianity, goes something like this: God loves the world so much that God wants to save it, rather than destroy it. Now, the world deserves to be destroyed: because of sin, because of rebellion against God’s commandments, the world needs to be punished, and the punishment for sin is death. But because God loves the world, God wants to save the world — or at least a part of the world — and not destroy it after all. So God gives his Son Jesus to die on the cross, to suffer on the cross the punishment that should rightly fall on all of us, so that we won’t have to be destroyed. And if you believe this, if you accept as true that Jesus died for your sins and that God will now no longer punish you, then you are saved, then you are rescued from perishing when this world is destroyed, and you are given assurance of eternal life in heaven with other faithful people who have believed like you. I think that’s the way a lot of people who hold up their “John 3:16” signs understand the meaning of their famous verse.

But this understanding is not without its problems. It seems to set up a dichotomy in God between judgment and love — and I don’t think there are any dichotomies in God. It seems to draw a big dividing line between those who believe and those who don’t, between those who will get into heaven and those who will be made to perish — and I don’t think God draws big dividing lines. And it seems to say that the whole meaning of the good news is about getting into heaven, as if there is nothing good or meaningful or encouraging to say about our life on earth here and now — and I think God cares a lot about our life on earth here and now.

So is there another way to unpack John 3:16? Can we open up this famous verse with a different understanding?

Here’s what I think it means: God loves the world. Period. No judgment, no punishment, no destruction. God loves the world. God created the world for love, so that God could share the gift of love with something that was not God, so that God could nurture the universe into evolving and growing and developing creatures that could love each other and could love God back. That doesn’t mean there’s no such thing as sin, it doesn’t mean God makes no judgment and no distinction between what is loving and what isn’t loving. But it does mean that God does not simply destroy sin, it means that God has made a solemn promise, a covenant, to deal with sin not by destroying it but by loving it into redemption and reconciliation. God loves the world.

God loves the world so much that God sends the Son, not just to die, but to live, to live with us as one of us, to show us how a human life can be when it is lived in the fullness and height and depth and breadth of God’s own holy love. Jesus reveals God’s love with a human face and a human voice and human hands and in a human way that we can see and touch and relate to and love back in our very human ways. Jesus’ death on the cross is the sign that God loves us so much that God will be with us even in the worst pain and suffering and loss and humiliation we can imagine, and God will raise even that up to a meaningful role in a new life. God loves the world so much that he sends the Son to show that love.

And God shows us this love in Jesus so that we can love like Jesus, too. That is really what it means to “believe” in Jesus. We today usually use the word “believe” to mean accepting something as true even if we can’t logically prove it. But the word originally meant much more than that. Our word “believe” comes from an Old German root word for “love.” Believing in someone is connected to loving someone. The Latin word “credo” — from which we get our word “creed” and repeat in church every Sunday when we say “We believe in God...” — comes from the word “cardia,” which means “heart.” To believe in Jesus is to take to heart in Jesus, and to give your heart to Jesus, it means to enter into a loving and trusting relationship with Jesus, and with the community of disciples that follow the way of Jesus, so that the divine love we see revealed in Jesus begins to be revealed in us, too. God loves the world so much that he sends the Son to show that love, so that we can give our hearts to that love and live that love as well.

And when we live that love, then we do not perish but have eternal life. In this understanding, eternal life is not something that comes to us only in heaven, beyond this world, but is something we can begin to know and experience in this world, in this life, here and now. The Greek phrase that John uses here, which we translate “eternal life,” literally means “the life of the ages”; and what that phrase points to is a vitality, an aliveness, a creativity that endures through all times and places. Age after age, epoch after epoch, year after year, day after day, even moment after moment, things change, the world is full of changes, governments rise and fall, weather systems form and disperse, people come and go, health waxes and wanes. Things change; and yet through all that change there is something that endures, something that is always there, some fundamental creativity out of which all the changes come and into which all the changes return. That steady, trustworthy, always-there creativity is what John calls “the life of the ages,” or “eternal life,” the life that comes from God and will not let us go. Eternal life, if we understand it this way, is a quality of vital creativity that we can come to know in the justice and peace and love we work for here and now, with each other, in this life — and that will also endure with us as this life changes and opens up into a height of life, a heaven of life, beyond anything we now know. When we believe in Jesus, when we give our hearts in trusting relationship with Jesus, then we begin to live with divine creativity here and now and forever.

“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” God loves the world so much that God sends Jesus to show that love, so that we can give our hearts to that love and live a life of love that endures through all our changes and through all the ages. That’s what I mean when I hold up my “John 3:16” sign.

In this Lenten season, when our spiritual disciplines and faith practices help us cut through distractions and prepare with joy for the Paschal feast, let us stay focused on this central gospel truth: God loves us so much that God gives us Jesus, so that, giving our hearts to his love, we may share his enduring life. Amen. 

A Necessary Upheaval?

The Rev. Shelby Ochs Owen

John 2:13-22 

March 11, 2012

An audio version of this sermon is available here.

When our oldest son Graham was just a little boy, maybe around 7 or 8 years old, I read the story from the Old Testament to him about the prophet Isaiah’s call.  This is where God is calling him to be a prophet, and protesting, Isaiah says, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips.” And then one of the seraphs, one of those strange heavenly beings, brings a hot coal from the altar and touches Isaiah’s lips with it.  Graham’s response was a very poignant and resolute, “There is violence again in the Bible!”  It would not be the only time I was speechless to my children’s utterances. Graham was right.  There are many instances of violence in the Bible, including today’s Gospel reading.

When you think about Jesus, what comes to mind?  Gentle shepherd? Teacher, healer? A quiet man with children surrounding him? Meek and mild, kind and humble? Well in today’s passage from John, we have anything but those common images, anything but the meek and mild Jesus.  Here we have a strong and powerful man who literally turns tables over, pours out the coins of the money changers, and taking a whip, drives out sheep and cattle which have been in the temple court. 

 As John is apt to do throughout his Gospel, the writer shows Jesus here as in control of the situation, as “large and in charge”, as one who knows exactly what he is doing and as the ultimate authority.  This is no meek and mild man who would show such inner strength, such conviction, as enacted through this burst of righteous anger, and an act, yes, of violence.  This is the side of Jesus many of us do not usually think much about, not the side most of us snuggle up to when we are feeling sentimental. 

When Jesus gets physically and verbally involved in the temple scene, he is reacting to the entire system itself, as well as its abuses.  The religious establishment is entrenched in its own practices, many of which have moved away from justice and truth, away from the love of neighbor, away from the reign of God.  Jesus’ setting things right is a response to the Jewish leaders not being open to the fresh revelation of God.  Since the building of the temple until this time the Jewish understanding was that God’s presence here on earth was centered at the temple.  And here is Jesus as the instigator of a major temple upheaval that would not have made him friends with the authorities.  In the cleansing of the temple, John shows the contrast between Jesus’ authority and the authority of the temple leadership.  And this marks the beginning of an ever-deepening conflict between Jesus and the Jewish leaders, one that will lead to his crucifixion. 

If we imagine this event would have upset the so-called authorities, Jesus will only continue to challenge them, continue to irritate, continue to throw the status quo on its ear as he heals people on the Sabbath, eats with tax collectors, talks to prostitutes, gives time and care to the Samaritans, whom most Jews considered enemies.  It seems that at his every step and turn, Jesus is doing the most loving thing for those whom he encounters, through acts of justice, truth, love and kindness.  And it also seems that at every step and turn Jesus is doing something to upset the establishment.  This temple cleansing is a necessary upheaval, a necessary shaking of a foundation, a necessary violence, if you will.  Jesus himself is the temple of God and here he shows unwavering determination and singleness of purpose to set things right, to bring the situation into the reign of God, to put the priority of love back in its proper place.   And we see that this new life poses a very deep threat to the existing order.

What does this mean for us?  How might we put the priority of love back in its proper place and let God’s love flow through us to build up this world to his glory. We might need a somewhat violent (maybe a better word is “aggressive”) change in order to get ourselves in line with the vision of God for us.  Jesus calls us sometimes to make radical changes as members of the body of Christ, both as members of a world-wide body, as well as our own seemingly individual lives.   Those changes he calls us to all point to the question: “What is the most loving thing I can do in this situation?”  With each situation, on every level, we can ask ourselves and ask God, “What is the most loving thing I can do?

~When we encounter economic injustice or our poorest are deprived of health care, the most loving thing might be to get politically involved or to work for justice from another angle.

~When we are working out our own personal finances the most loving thing would be to set aside enough so we can help others in need.

~When we have become safely embedded with our own bitterness, anger, or self-righteousness, the most loving thing would be forgive others and ourselves, even when it seems ridiculous.

Sometimes it is difficult to know what exactly the most loving thing in a given situation is and sometimes the loving thing is difficult.  We must love anyway.  When we find ourselves allowing anything, be it the establishment, pride, perfectionism, ambition, power, money, or self-comfort, to get in the way of loving God, loving ourselves and our neighbors, and we find ourselves unwilling to do the most loving thing, it might be time to overturn some tables.

Amen.

Things Human, Things Divine

The Rev. James Gilman

Based on Mark 8: 31-38

Introduction

            Question: What does Jesus mean when he says to Peter that he is “setting his mind on human things and not on divine things”? What are “human things” and what are “divine things”? How do we tell them apart?

            Peter is one of those guys who thinks he knows more about things than he really does. He is self-confident, insightful, and bold. He at least has sense enough to take Jesus aside before he rebukes the Son of Man; kinda like taking your boss aside and telling him where he went wrong. And look what Peter rebukes Jesus for: for saying that the Son of Man must suffer, that he must be rejected by the religious leaders and theologians, be killed, and “after three days rise again.”  I can’t help but chuckle at Peter, a little bit. But perhaps we sometimes live in a way that rebukes Jesus; sometimes we live in a way that prefers “things human” to all “things divine”; Perhaps sometimes we live in a way in which we “gain the whole world” but “forfeit our life,” as Jesus says it.

Difference: Things Human, Things Divine

            So what is the difference between setting our minds on human things instead of setting them on divine things? Jesus does give a clue. He says, “setting the mind on divine things” requires three things: first, it requires that I “deny my self”, secondly, that I “take up my cross”, and thirdly, that I ”follow” Jesus. From this we can infer what “setting the mind on human things” means; it means failing to do these things; it means failing to “deny my self”, failing to “take up my cross,” failing to “follow” Jesus. You can see that this is the perfect Lenten passage. It helps us see, along with Peter, how along with Peter, we often preoccupy ourselves with all things human: catering mostly to our own egos, our own needs; living chiefly for our own comfort and convenience; investing most of our time and energy and talents in entertaining and gratifying our selves. When I set my mind on human things, I work to avoid any kind of self-sacrifice, any suffering and cross-bearing, any personal inconvenience and discomfort.

The good news of Lent calls us to repent of our preoccupation with ourselves, and by God’s grace be transformed/figured in the image of God and God’s son. God freely offers us the power to turn from “human things” to divine things”.  We can choose repeatedly to set our hearts and minds on God and others until practicing divine things become an irresistible and joyful habit of heart. Yes, it requires self-denial; yes, it requires self-sacrifice and the cost and inconvenience of bearing a cross; yes, it means losing life as a preoccupation with ourselves. But at the same time self-denial frees us from the prison of ourselves, so that we find life and self again in the practice of divine things. 

So what are divine things? What am I to do? What are we to do?  I would like to answer these questions by drawing attention to what in the tradition of the church is called “Works of Mercy.” Check out your bulletin; it includes a list of these works. You’ll note that they are divided into two groups: corporeal or material works of mercy and incorporeal or spiritual works of mercy. 

Corporeal Works of Mercy                                         Incorporeal Works of Mercy

1. Visit the prisoner                                             1. Instruct the ignorant
2. Shelter the homeless                                       2. Counsel the doubtful
3. Feed the hungry                                              3. Comfort the afflicted
4. Give drink to the thirsty                                 4. Admonish the sinner
5. Visit the sick                                                   5. Forgive offenses
6. Clothe the naked                                             6. Bear wrongs patiently
7. Bury the dead                                                 7. Pray for the living and the dead

I would add to this list “Care for creation” as a work of mercy. For several decades now this list has been attached to my office door. The refrigerator would be a good place as well. Doing these things, doing some of these things, is what church tradition over the centuries has identified as setting our minds on things divine. Each of these things is rooted in Scripture; each behavior requires me to deny my self in some significant sense; it requires that I deny my ego the constant gratification and entertainment it otherwise desires. God’s grace empowers me to choose to take up a burden of mercy for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of the welfare of others. In doing so, by constantly setting and re-setting my mind on divine things, these works or mercy begin to shape and re-shape my choices, my habits, my life.

            Consider the works of “visiting the sick” and “comforting the afflicted”. It may be someone you know here at church, it may be a neighbor or someone you don’t know.  Both of these works of mercy require denying the self and bearing a cross; they take time, energy, wisdom, and compassion. Works of mercy require that we forego ourselves in service to others; they require an investment of resources, time, and energy in caring for others. Or take the example of “forgiving offenses” or “bearing wrongs patiently”. Many Christians live month after month, even year after year, with egos that refuse out of stubbornness to forgive another, often someone in their own family. We set our minds on human things when we blame and seek retaliation; we set our minds on divine things when we forgive offenses or bear wrongs patiently. Both forgiveness and patience require that we sacrifice the demands of our ego and bear a cross of mercy, granting to the offender what God through the cross of Christ has granted to us. I can hear someone object; “But we have to take care of ourselves too. Indeed we do, we must care for ourselves just as Jesus cared for himself. And Jesus teaches us that one of the best ways to care for ourselves is to help others. Works of mercy more than any single other thing, I would say, strengthens our selves and heals our egos. 

So, check out the list. Every day there is opportunity to accomplish some work of mercy. Which works of mercy are you engaged in? Which do you feel called to practice? Which you can set your mind and heart on? Think for a moment of a couple of these works of mercy that you can practice; that you know God is calling you to do. God’s grace gives us the power to deny our egos the comfort food they demand and the courage to take up the cross of mercy for the sake of another. Christ in his mercy bore that cross for us; as followers we are to bear that same cross of mercy for others.

Conclusion

            Recently I read the autobiography of Albert Schweitzer. By the age of 30 he concluded that he had ”gained the whole world” but “forfeited his life”; that he had spent his adult life helping himself and not much time helping others. He was by then a professor of philosophy and theology; he was a preacher, a biblical scholar, an author, an expert in Bach, and an accomplished organist, who performed in some of the great cathedrals of Europe. Yet as a Christian he grew uneasy with his life; a life, he concluded was devoted almost entirely to himself and to his own success. He came to realize he could not justify calling himself a Christian unless he devoted himself to divine things, to what he referred to as “the direct service of humans.”  Schweitzer quotes today’s gospel passage: “Whoever would save his life shall lose it, and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel shall save it.” The rest is history. He completed medical school and spent the bulk of the rest of life setting his mind on divine things, working in Africa, serving people who otherwise had little access to medical and health care.

            Setting our minds on divine things doesn’t require us to go back to school or to Africa; it only requires that we occupy ourselves with practicing towards others the same works of mercy with which God in Christ redeems us. It’s never too early in life or too late to practice divine things, to practice works of mercy. When we receive Holy Communion we are not only thanking God for his work of mercy in our lives, but at the same time are promising to practice towards others those same works of mercy. May God grant us the power and grace to keep that promise.

            

Angels Waited on Him

by the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on Mark 1:9-15. An audio version of this sermon is available here.

Sometimes it happens that I read a passage from scripture that I’ve read before, read dozens of times, read every three years it’s come around the lectionary cycle — I read a passage of scripture that I think I know through and through and through, and I see in it something that I’ve never seen before. That’s one of the marvelous things about reading scripture: there is always something more you can discover.

That happened to me as I was studying our Gospel reading for today: Mark’s account of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. Most of us are more familiar with the temptation stories in Matthew and in Luke, and in comparison Mark’s story seems very brief, very compact, as if Mark has left out some details in order to make the story move along faster. Mark, for instance, doesn’t have the devil saying “Turn these stones into bread,” like Matthew and Luke do; Mark doesn’t show Jesus quoting scripture to silence the tempter, like Matthew and Luke do. At first glance, Mark’s story seems to be the “condensed version.”

But I think Mark is not just leaving out details that Matthew and Luke leave in; I think Mark is trying to make a particular point, and he is choosing the details that point to his point. And one of those details is that Mark never says that Jesus in the wilderness was fasting. For Matthew and Luke, and for the way most of us understand the story, the fasting is essential: Jesus goes without food for forty days, and after forty days he’s hungry, he’s famished, he’s weak, he’s vulnerable, and it’s in that moment of vulnerability that Satan comes to tempt him, to try to lure him away from his mission as Messiah. Fasting and resisting temptation are two key elements in this version of the story — and because they’re two key elements in the story, they’re two key elements in the way we think of Lent, our forty-day season to act out this story in our lives, our forty-day season to go into our spiritual wilderness along with Jesus.

But if Mark tells the story differently, then perhaps we should think about Lent differently, too. And Mark doesn’t say that Jesus was fasting.

What Mark does say is this: “He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.” It’s that last clause that really caught my attention: “angels waited on him.” What does that mean? It sounded kind of familiar, so I started looking at other Bible stories, stories from the Hebrew Scriptures that Mark and his audience and Jesus would have known, would have drawn on for their understanding of God and God’s ways.

And I found a story about Elijah, that archetypal prophet and wild man of God, that told that when Elijah was on the run from Ahab and Jezebel, in danger of his life, he came to a place and collapsed under a broom tree — hungry, exhausted, worn out — and he fell asleep there. And he dreamed (or had a vision) that an angel came to him and said to him “Rise and eat, or you won’t be strong enough to do what God has for you to do.” And Elijah looked and saw beside the angel a loaf of bread and a jar of water, and he ate and drank, and went back to sleep. And the angel came a second time, with another loaf, and Elijah ate and drank again. And then the text says “he went in the strength of that food for forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.” The angel gave Elijah food good enough for forty days. (The story is in the 19th chapter of the First Book of Kings, if you want to look it up.)

I found another reference, this one from Psalm 78, that refers to the manna that sustained the Children of Israel in their forty-year wilderness wandering — one of the seminal events that formed the people as God’s People — Psalm 78 calls the manna “the bread of angels.”

The Hebrew Scriptures have this symbolic thing going on with forty units of time, and angels, and bread.

And Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days, and angels waited on him. And the new thing I see in this story is that I think Mark wants us to understand that the angels were bringing Jesus bread. Jesus wasn’t fasting, Jesus wasn’t going hungry, but Jesus, like Moses and Elijah before him, was being fed by God.

Now that changes the story a lot — but I think it changes the story in an instructive way. For Mark, the purpose of Jesus’ sojourn in the wilderness was not to push himself to the limit and be weak and vulnerable and be tempted by Satan to betray his mission from God. For Mark, the purpose of Jesus’ sojourn in the wilderness was to test how deeply he trusted God, to put himself totally in God’s hands and trust that God would provide, to learn from his own experience that God would indeed give him everything he needed to do his mission. Being fed by angels in the wilderness is a sign and a symbol for the sustaining presence of God that empowered Jesus to do everything for God he was sent to do. Learning to trust in that sustenance of God is what prepares Jesus to go forth to proclaim and enact the coming of the kingdom of God.

And if that’s what Jesus’ sojourn in the wilderness is all about, then perhaps that is what our Lent should be all about, too. Sometimes I think we make Lent too much about fasting and abstinence and self-denial, we focus too much on giving up and going without. We give up chocolate or meat or alcohol, because we like these things, and going without them makes us feel limited, makes us feel vulnerable — and when we experience cravings for the things we’ve given up, because after all we do like them, then we feel that as temptation, as being lured to do something we said we would not do, and we know we have to be strong and resist temptation for God — or, sometimes, too many times, temptations become occasions for recognizing our weakness, and how we need forgiveness from God. And there’s nothing wrong with that — resisting temptation and asking forgiveness are good spiritual disciplines.

But I also think that Lent can be so much more. Like Jesus in the wilderness, our Lent can be for us a time to learn how God sustains us, how God feeds us; Lent can be for us a time to deepen our trust in God to give us everything we need to do the mission God gives us to do. Notice that I said “give us everything we need” — that’s not necessarily everything we want, or everything we desire, or everything we think we absolutely have to have. Fasting and self-denial are good for paring down our appetites and teaching us the difference between what we crave and what we need. But the main point of Lent is not to give up; the main point of Lent is to be free, free of the anxious craving to make sure we can meet our every desire, at our own time and in our own way, and free instead to turn to God and trust that God will give us every strength and gift and patience and insight and courage and compassion and joy we need.

So this Lent, I invite you to take on a spiritual discipline or faith practice that helps you become more aware of how God sustains you. If you customarily give something up for Lent, that’s okay, do that too. But in addition to giving up, I invite you to take on, take on reading from scripture every day, or following the Lenten devotional, or sitting quietly and breathing, or pondering big questions and big ideas, or looking out the window and watching what goes by and giving thanks for everything you see. Take on some practice that will help you open your mind and heart and spirit to recognizing the ways God is with you in the moment, in every moment, and how God is right now feeding and nourishing and sustaining you with the gifts you need to do the work of love God gives you to do. Let this Lent be for you a time to be free of anxious worry, and instead to learn to trust ever more deeply in God's providing.

Jesus was in the wilderness forty days, and angels waited on him. May God’s messengers of love sustain us too, as we walk these forty days the pilgrim way of Lent. Amen.

The Startling Reality

            In today’s Gospel reading we find ourselves up on a high mountain with Jesus and his inner circle of disciples, Peter, James and John.  Since mountains are often places of revelation, often associated with being near heaven, we can safely assume something special and important is happening here.  This story of the Transfiguration which appears in all three of the synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, always appears in our lectionary at the end of the Epiphany season.  As we have had many epiphany experiences, manifestations or examples of God’s glory, throughout the last several weeks, today the season after Epiphany ends with a spectacular passage of Jesus in all his radiant glory.

            No doubt, these three disciples are delighted to be able to get away privately with Jesus, to talk to him without all of the crowds that have so often been present.  When they get to the top of the mountain Jesus is transfigured before them, his clothes become dazzling white, he is radiant with God’s light, Elijah and Moses appear and they hear God’s voice!  Imagine the terror and amazement they must feel, imagine the shock, the surprise, the confusion and then the joy that accompanies this glimpse of the divine presence.  This is a moment that reveals the eternal splendor of Jesus as the Son of God, a glimpse of the here and now as well as a glimpse into the future.  This is such a strange scene that perhaps it can be more easily comprehended intuitively than logically.   Here we see the revealing of the startling reality of Jesus’ inner nature, the reality that Jesus is God.

            And how does the disciple Peter respond? “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.”  He may have associated this moment with the end times, where Sabbath rest had been promised; hence, it would have been appropriate to construct these booths or dwelling places.  He also, though, may have simply been wanting this holy moment to last, wanting to prolong this moment where the divine presence was so compelling, so spectacular, so “real.”  Peter is one of us!  The Divine Presence has gripped his heart and even though he cannot fully comprehend its significance, he wants it to last.  And yet this moment, this amazing and holy moment, does not last.

            Moses and Elijah disappear and Jesus and his inner circle head back down the mountain.  They head back to the valley. Worse yet, Jesus, as so often happens in Mark’s Gospel, tells them not to tell anybody what has occurred until the Son of Man has risen from the dead.  Can’t you just envision maybe two of the disciples hanging back a little while Jesus walks with the other one, whispering, “WHAT is he talking about? How are we going to keep this a secret?  And what is all this rising from the dead language about?” These disciples must have been affected by what they experienced, this encounter with the Divine, even if they could not explain it, even if they could not understand it in that moment.  And maybe it was a gift that they were not to tell anyone so they could just let the experience germinate in their minds and hearts and contemplate the mystery of it and not be persecuted and cast out as lunatics.

            Have you been to the mountain top?  Had a moment when you know you have encountered something quite spectacular, something holy; where you have encountered the Divine Presence? Maybe you did not even know it was the Divine Presence but you were deeply moved or touched?  Epiphany experiences can happen in all kinds of ways, in all kinds of situations because God is present in all things.  An encounter with the Divine can happen in church but it can happen anywhere else, too.  We have glimpses of the Divine when we witness beauty, perhaps through a particular painting or through music, through gifts of forgiveness, received and offered, through acts of love. You know that moment when you see it or when you hear it, when your heart is “strangely warmed” (John Wesley).   As much as we want to hold on to these experiences, like Peter wanting all three of the holy men to stay in their dwellings on the mountain, we need to remember these moments for the gift that they are, reminders of the startling reality that God is with us, sometimes seen and unseen, known and unknown. 

            This past Wednesday night, I had what I would call a mountain top experience.  One of my very dearest friends Robin was ordained an Episcopal priest in Blackstone, Virginia.  The entire service was an uplifting one but there was one moment which seemed particularly holy.  As is our Episcopal tradition, when the Bishop prayed for the Holy Spirit to come upon Robin, he laid his hands on her head and all of the other priests, there were actually about 35 of us, laid our hands on her as well.  I had a wonderful vantage point and could see what looked like spokes in a wheel as each hand and arm reached toward my friend.  The Holy Spirit was very obviously present.

            When asked later what she felt in that moment she said that she felt this deep peace within and support coming from every side, reminding me of St. Patrick’s breastplate – “Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ behind me, Christ above me”!   The joy in the church was so palpable, so luminous.   The memory of it brings all of that joy right back to me.  Can I fully understand the significance of this mountain top experience? I am certain I cannot. I am left to contemplate the mystery of it.  And I know from experience we do come down from the mountain at some point.  Back to a world where there is conflict and difficulty. But for all the wonder that these epiphany experiences can bring, this interfacing of the earthly and the heavenly, we need to remember that Jesus walked back down the mountain with his beloved friends. He was in the valley with them every bit as much as he was on the mountain.

            We all have moments when it is difficult to remember that God is with us, when we are experiencing health problems, or family difficulties, frustrations with our political leaders, fear in our economic situation or when we become apathetic or caught up in our own small worlds.  And yet God is indeed with us, not watching from afar with disinterest, but up close and personal and offers his luminous light in every situation if we can trust him. We want these elusive moments with God to last.  The startling reality is that God is everywhere, in every situation, on the mountain top and in the deepest valley, in every moment offering his radiant love.  Do we have eyes to see it?  Do we have faith with which to receive God’s love?

Amen.

The Laughter Barrel

John P. Wilkinson -  Trinity Episcopal Church – February 12, 2012
You can listen to this sermon here.

I have tried my best throughout this last week to decide what seems to be the connection between our Old Testament lesson and our gospel lesson 

And it’s leprosy, at first hearing, that seems to be the thread of connection.  But I think it’s something more universal than leprosy.  I think the first thing that unites these two passages is — desperation.  Namaan and the leper in Mark are both desperate to be healed, to be made whole.  They’ll do anything to be healed, to be whole.  Namaan travels miles and spends a lot of money based on the word of a slave girl, all in the hope that some unknown prophet in some far away conquered land might be able to rid him of this disease.  It doesn’t happen the way Namaan had in mind, he has to swallow his pride and eat a little crow, but it does happen, he is healed, and he gets it — he gives God thanks and praise.

Likewise the leper who approaches Jesus risks it all just by getting close.  Now leprosy could be anything from a rash to a flesh eating bacteria.  It didn’t matter.  People were scared to death of leprosy.  People lived in absolute fear of leprosy and all those who had leprosy.  So, if you had a skin disease you were made into an instant outsider.  The law in Leviticus was clear: “The person who has the leprous disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head be disheveled; and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean!  Unclean!’  And he shall live alone, his dwelling shall be outside the camp.” (Lev. 13:45-46)

So if you had leprosy you lost everything — job, family, place in the community

It was everything.   It therefore had multiple dimensions – medical, religious, social and financial.  The afflicted person (medical) was considered to be ritually unclean (spiritual) : LEPERS WERE REQUIRED TO LIVE ALONE AND TO MAINTAIN A DISTANCE OF FIFTY PACES FROM other people  (social) .  If the leper touched another person or was touched bay them the other person was; considered to be diseased and ritually unclean until examined by a priest and pronounced clean.  In other words both the disease (medical) and the ritual impurity (spiritual were communicable.  The afflicted person was unable to work, and was thus reduced to begging (financial).  Most likely his family was also reduced to begging ((financial) medical: in a lot of ways sounds like our world.  I mean, we live among lepers.  Sometimes we’re the leper and other times we treat others like lepers.  And there’s no question we’re all in search of wholeness.  If we’re  honest we can admit that there  are so many  different ;kinds of barriers that separate us human beings that make us or somebody else a leper   fear, mistrust, misunderstanding, anger  loneliness, the most and the inability to communicate with each other, the inability  to communicate even with those we love the most and are closest to.  In so many ways we move through life shrouded in desperation.  Either we feel like a leper to the world  – or we have chosen others to be treated like lepers, untouchables and unclean

Just think what happened with those Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed.  Think about how something as seemingly mundane as a cartoon not only fanned the flames of hatred, but brought on such a bad case of leprosy that people stopped talking and started killing one another Now, I don’t think this was a question of freedom of the press or free speech.  The cartoonists have every have every legal right to print these cartoons.  Freedom of speech is just a smokescreen we hide behind so that we don’t have to address the real issues, so we don’t have to have to address the real issues, so we don’t have to examine the actual leprosy just as the Muslims hide behind the claim that Islam does not permit any depictions of Mohammed (which only applies in certain parts of the world.

— everything.  The leper who approaches Jesus shows his desperation by breaking the law, by coming into the city, and getting close enough to Jesus that he could talk to him.  He’s lucky he wasn’t stoned.  But Jesus has pity on this poor desperate leper and heals him.  Suddenly, the leper’s desperation is turned to joy!  Jesus tells him to go and show himself to the priest, to prove that he’s cured, and also, Jesus tells him, don’t talk about this healing with other people.  In other words, Jesus didn’t want to be known only as a healer, or worse yet, as a magician.  But so overcome with joy is this former leper, that he can’t control himself.  He goes and blabs to anyone and everyone.  This former leper becomes not just a proclaimer of the good news; he actually becomes the good news.  His joy, his laughter is absolutely infectious and spreads more quickly than any form of leprosy the world has known.

This “joy factor” is another aspect that unites Namaan and the former leper in Mark.  Both of them experienced an outpouring of joy.  But this uncontrollable sense of joy was not just because they had been healed.  No, it was because they had been made whole; they could re-enter the community, they could go home to their families, they could get back to their jobs, they could live life again. 

This is where I think we have to be careful to distinguish between healing and wholeness.  Lot’s of people are healed from a disease but go back to living the same dead-end lives they were living before they got sick.  To be made whole is something else.  It is to be changed, it is to be transformed, it is to know that God is at work in your life, it is to be overcome by joy.  To be healed can mean a lot of things, death is a form of healing.  But to be made whole is to be enveloped by a peace that passes all understanding, it is to know a joy that bubbles up uncontrollably, it is to know the power of God’s grace in one’s life, and it is to respond with thanks, with gratitude, with laughter.

So what we really have is a series of contrasts.  We have the contrast between those who have leprosy and those who don’t; between a fearful culture and desperate people; between people who long to know wholeness and the one who can make them whole.

In a lot of ways it sounds like our world.  I mean, we live among lepers.  Sometimes we’re the leper and other times we treat others like lepers.  And there’s no question we’re all in search of wholeness.  If we’re honest we can admit that there are so many different kinds of barriers that separate us human beings, that make us (or somebody else) a leper — fear, mistrust, misunderstanding, anger loneliness, the inability to communicate with each other, the inability to communicate even with those we love the most and are closest to.  In so many ways, we move through life shrouded in desperation.  Either we feel like a leper to the world, untouchable and unclean — or we have chosen others to be treated like lepers, untouchable and unclean.

Just think about what’s happened with these Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed.  Think about how something as seemingly mundane as a “cartoon” has not only fanned the flames of hatred, but has brought on such a bad case of leprosy that people have stopped talking and started killing one another.  Now, I don’t think this a question of freedom of the press or free speech.  Of course, these cartoonists have every legal right to print these cartoons.  Freedom of speech is just the smokescreen we hide behind so that we don’t have to address the real issues, so we don’t have to examine the actual leprosy.  Just as the Muslims hide behind the claim that Islam does not permit any depictions of Mohammed (which is only true in some parts of Islamic world).  No the real issue, the leprosy, we face has more to do with the fact that we simply, and yet profoundly, do not understand one another and no one, so far, is willing to sit down and talk.  It’s easier to treat one another as lepers.  It’s easier to avoid any chance of coming together, because, heaven forbid it, we might be transformed by one other, we might be changed, we might even come away liking one another, we might sense the movement of God and experience joy — and we just can’t have that, can we?  We can’t risk that possibility, can we?

Resa Aslan is a Muslim and a journalist.   Writes that, “the sad irony (in all of this) is that the Muslims who have resorted to violence in response to this offense are merely reaffirming the stereotypes advanced by the cartoons.  Likewise, the Europeans who point to the Muslim reaction as proof that ‘Islam has no place in Europe’ have only reaffirmed the stereotype of Europeans as aggressively anti-Islamic.”

Stereotypes are a form of leprosy that keeps people apart.  It’s a form of leprosy that we willingly take on because it offers us a safe haven form having to interact with the other and the other unknown.  It’s just easier to adopt this form of leprosy than it is to risk reaching out and touching or being touched.  It’s not until human beings are able to see one another as children of God that we’ll be able to sit down and begin to try and understand one another.  This is true not just for Muslims and Christians, or Muslims and Jews, its also true for grown ups and teenagers, for blacks and whites, gay and straight, liberals and conservatives, old hymn lovers and new music lovers.

Because, you see, it’s not just a matter of being willing to reach out and touch.  We can control that.  We can control when we reach out and who we touch.  No, it’s also, perhaps more importantly, a matter of being willing to risk being touched, touched by God and changed, transformed, made whole. 

Author and poet Maya Angelou, in her book “ Discovering family Roots in Slavery” talks about how on many plantations the slaves were not allowed to laugh.  There was a rule against it.  So when the urge to laugh became uncontrollable, when the urge to laugh became absolutely irrepressible, they had what they called “the laughter barrel.”  At the moment when they couldn’t hold it in any longer they would, under the pretext of getting something out of the barrel, lean way down inside and let it all out.  They would laugh and laugh and laugh.

Now, Maya Angelou goes on to say that what was behind such a strange rule was — fear The plantation owners feared that if the slaves were allowed to laugh, they might laugh at the masters.  Or, worse yet, the laughter of the slaves might become so infectious that the masters would start laughing with the slaves.  And how can you laugh with a person one day and have that person be a slave the next?

Think hat the community of Trinity church must become the modern day version of the laughter barrel.  We live in a world that is in many ways hostile.   Our church is our safe place.  It’s where we can come and let it all out.  It’s where we can come and wrestle with the tough issues.  It’s where we can come and be held accountable and hold others accountable in love.  It’s where can come and seek the presence and guidance of God’s Spirit.  It’s where we can come and experience wholeness.  It’s where we can come and talk about our experiences of grace.  And the church is where we can come and practice not only letting our joy out, but also sharing our joy with that hostile world out there.

You see, it’s not just about being together here in the church, it’s about being the church.  Like the leper in Mark, it’s not just about spreading the good news; it’s about being the good news.  And this is where we learn to be the good news.  This is where we are touched, where our identity and character is formed by God’s Word, God’s sacraments, God’s Spirit.  This is where we practice being authentic persons, genuine vessels of God’s care and compassion. 

Look around you, this is God’s gift of a laughter barrel where lepers are welcome and so are tough questions.  There’s no question that leprosy, in any of its many forms, is infectious.  There’s no question that our world is sick and suffering.  But we cannot forget that health and wholeness can be just as infectious. We cannot forget that God’s will for the world is peace and salvation.  That’s why it’s so important that we learn to genuinely express the joy we experience through the touch of Jesus in our lives, not just here, but out there.  That’s why it’s so important that we learn to laugh for joy in ways that share good news, in ways that cause us to become the good news!  All in the hope that as we touch and risk being touched the world might be infected by God and reduced to the uncontrollable need to laugh...together. 

Amen.

Lifted Up to Serve

By the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on Mark 1:29-39
An audio version of this sermon is available here.

Our Gospel reading this morning begins exactly where last week’s Gospel left off, picking up the story of Jesus’ first acts of mission right after he taught in the synagogue for the first time, with an authority that could command even the unclean spirits. In today’s reading we hear about more firsts: Jesus’ first healing, and the first time a crowd gathers around him, and the first time he goes off by himself to renew his mission in prayer, and the first time he leaves one town in order to share the good news in many places. All these “firsts” set the stage for the rest of the gospel, giving us the keys to understand what all of Jesus’ acts of mission are all about. That’s especially true of the healing of Simon’s mother-in-law: this first healing shows us the heart of all of Jesus’ healings, including the way Jesus heals us today.

So here's the story: After Sabbath service in the synagogue, Simon takes his new teacher Jesus home to the house he shares with his wife, and his brother Andrew, and his wife’s mother — remember that in those days the “nuclear family” as we think of it was virtually unheard of — so that they can all partake of the Sabbath meal. That was an important custom for them, as indeed it still is today. Over the years I’ve been invited to a few synagogue services on Shabbas, and the spreads they put on after service have been a wonder to behold. It wasn’t that different in Simon’s time — except perhaps that it was more common to have the meal at home than at the synagogue itself. And in the home, it was the pride and joy of the mother of the house to serve the feast. Her principal role was to provide hospitality, to create the atmosphere and the openness where the whole household could relax and enjoy and rest in God and know their blessings — which was, after all, the whole purpose of the Sabbath day. Now creating an occasion like that may sound like a lot of work, like a big burden; but remember this was the Sabbath, no work was allowed on the Sabbath, all the work had been done the day before, and all the mother of the house had to do for the feast was gather the household, set out the food, and open the space for joy. That was what Simon invited Jesus to come to his house to share.

There was just one problem: Simon’s wife’s mother, the mother of the house, was sick in bed with a fever. She couldn’t provide the hospitality. All the work was done, all the food was prepared, the feast could go on — but without the mother of the house it just wouldn’t be the same. Her fever was not just a physical ailment threatening her own bodily well-being; her fever was a disruption in the whole household, a break in the web of relationships that held them all together, a diminishment of all their lives. Their Sabbath day to relax and enjoy and rest in God and know their blessings couldn’t be the fullness it was meant to be, because Mother’s fever got in the way of their enjoying God’s gift of abundant life.

So Jesus gets the fever out of the way. He goes in to where Mother is lying in weakness and pain, and he takes her by the hand, and he helps her get out of bed, and the fever leaves her, and he brings her into the main room where everyone is waiting, and she begins to dish up the food and pass around the plates and make sure that everybody’s happy. Jesus physically cures her of the fever — but more importantly, Jesus restores her to her place in the household, he gives her back her role as the provider of hospitality, the one whose joy it is to open up the space where all may know joy. So when Jesus heals her, he heals the entire household, he restores their entire web of relationships, he brings them all to a greater joy, he helps them all to know a more abundant life.

And the way Mark tells the story, there are two key words in his narrative that really reveal the heart of what this healing is about. Mark says Jesus “lifted her up,” which on the face of it looks as simple as “he helped her to stand.” But the word Mark uses here is the same word he uses for what God does for Jesus on the third day after the Crucifixion. In the Resurrection God lifted up Jesus to new life — and I think Mark wants us to hear the echo of that in the way Jesus lifted up Mother to more healthy abundant life in her context. And when she was raised up, she began to “serve” — and that’s the other key word, the same word Mark uses when Jesus says about himself, “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve.” Serving is a specific characteristic of Jesus. So Mark is making here a pointed word-connection between the healing of Simon’s mother-in-law and Jesus’ own life and mission, in effect saying that Jesus heals Mother by helping her to be more like him. More than just a physical cure, the essence of Jesus’ healing is to share with others some of his own abundant life, so that they may be raised up to service, lifted to a new degree of vitality in order to show forth God’s gift of wholeness and peace and hospitality and right-relationships and joy with everyone around them, just like Jesus himself. This healing of Simon’s mother-in-law prepares us to see that the heart of all of Jesus’ healings is to help people become more like him, to help people share in Jesus’ own abundant life.

And that is how we are meant to understand Jesus’ healing presence among us as well. Jesus shares his abundant life with us, so that we may be more like him, to carry on his mission of service and hospitality and justice and mutual well-being and joy in our world all around us. When Jesus heals us it may or may not involve physical cure — but it always involves us being lifted up to a greater abundance of life, so that we may help others to greater life too.

And I saw some wonderful examples of being lifted up to greater life at our Diocesan Council last week. Delegates and clergy from all over our diocese came together to approve a plan to transform how we organize the leadership and resources of our diocese to do Christ’s mission in our time and place — and we began to take counsel on how we will seek out a new bishop when Bishop Powell retires, to lead us in this new direction. Council guests from the Presiding Bishop’s office, and our link diocese of Bradford, and the violence-torn region of Kadugli in Sudan, and the Diocese of Western Tanganyika, all helped us to see and feel how our diocese is connected to the greater life of the church in many places and conditions. Former child soldier turned rapper Emmanuel Jal lifted up the Youth@Council to an abundant energy to pray for peace. Youth and adults at Council packed 175,000 simple, nutritious meals to be sent to South Sudan. And through it all I sensed an abundant vitality, a wonderful liveliness, from the people of the diocese themselves, a sense of the powerful things God is doing among us, and a real eagerness to join God in that mission of service and joy. The healing of Jesus, the wholeness of Christ, was evident among us at Diocesan Council the whole entire time.

That was one kind of experience of the healing presence of Jesus among us, in a very large-scale, public way — kind of like the public healing in front of Simon’s house in today’s gospel. But of course Jesus’ healing is with us in smaller, more personal, more intimate ways, too, as it was with Simon’s mother-in-law. Jesus lifts us up to serve abundant life in the midst of cancer, or depression, or sorrow, or surgery, or stomach flu, or even the common cold — or any way our distress is taken up and transformed by compassion and caring and right-relationship, so that the wholeness of Christ’s love can shine through even our broken places. Sometimes with physical cure, sometimes without, Jesus heals us by raising us up to greater communion in serving, so that we together can share in more abundant life.

Our Gospel today tells us about the first healing of Jesus, and in doing so it reveals that the heart of all of Jesus’ healing is to lift us up so that we may be like him, and, like him, we may serve for peace and life and right-relationship and joy. May the Spirit of Jesus fill us with this healing, now and always. Amen.