preachers

"But how are they to call upon him in whom they have not believed?  And how are they to believe in him whom they have never heard?  And how are they to hear without a preacher?  And how can they preach unless they are sent?  As it is written, How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news." Romans 10:14  

I admit I'm not comfortable with the title "preacher".  When someone calls me "the preacher",I suspect they do so with some ambivalence.  I think the assumption is that a preacher comes to talk at people, spouting moral absolutes and biblical imperatives that judge, convict, and condemn the hearers.  Preachers purport to speak for God or maybe audaciously as God.  Preachers stand on street corners with bullhorns and condemn bad behaviors.  Preachers threaten people with the fire of hell. And they do so as those sent by God, as ambassadors or representatives.  Some are charlatans and salesmen and liars, for sure. Some are just adding to the noise.  And they make it harder for the authentic preacher to be heard. They bluster and shout and tell some people want they want to hear, just so that they will be praised by their hearers.     

 Now I'm not that kind of a preacher.  But I am passionate about the Word of God and the people of God.  And I believe there is good news, hopeful news, empowering and encouraging news to share with the world that is contained in the biblical story.  Stories about the hungry being fed, the blind receiving sight, violent enemies being defeated, prayers being answered, goodness overcoming evil, light overcoming darkness, the power of life defeating the power of death. There is also a way of life described and embodied by people in the bible.  From Abraham to Paul, the bible is full of fallible humans who, by the help of the Spirit of God, transcend their fallibility and enter into the creative work of God. There is redemptive suffering, liberation for oppressed captives, nonviolent resistance to evil, and sacrificial love found in the bible.  The bible contains a story worth sharing, but it does require interpretation.  The bible was not meant to be read privately.  It is a community's holy Word.  It seems that God appoints or sends people to do this sort of work of interpretation; someone who is just bold or crazy enough to ask the scripture and the God who speaks through it (to those with the ears of faith), "What does this mean?"  I think this is the task of a preacher.  To inquire and dig and search on behalf of the community of hearers who gather and on behalf of all the searchers for the truth about the things that matter the most.  This is the business of theology and the theologian.  Not to be confused with the academic or the biblical/religious scholar.  Though they are called theologians too.  I'm speaking of the human task of making sense of life from a perspective that requires God, a being than which nothing greater is possible--to paraphrase Anselm.     

Theology means a Word about God.  Divine speech. How we talk about God, ultimate things, things that matter the most.  The bible is the collected theology of an ancient middle eastern people that developed over the course of some 2,500 years. And yet, its content lives and breathes and gives meaning to contemporary life in 2015, too. There is a timelessness to it.                    

I've been preaching to a congregation for 10 years now. They hear me speak about biblical texts and God most weeks.  In 10 years, I guess I've preached about 500 sermons. But, I probably improvise on a hand full of common themes; Grace, compassionate service, beloved community, baptism, the table and Lord's supper, hospitality and generosity.   I'd like to be more versatile, more humorous, and more creative in my delivery and content.  But I suspect that's my concern and not the concern of my hearers.  They are more concerned about their own lives; the house, the family, their work, their physical and mental health, etc...And shouldn't they be? A Word about and from God that is disconnected from the world in which we live and move and have our being is not a word anyone can hear.  Thus the power and promise of the good news that Jesus of Nazareth was the Word made flesh. God comes to dwell with us and to know our stories and to claim us as beloved children.  

I'm convinced more and more that there is good news to be shared.  I'm convinced also that it is not good news if one is not willing or able to hear it as such.  And it is not good news if the announcer is not also thoroughly convinced of its goodness.  I'm convinced that Jesus of Nazareth was a preacher of good news precisely for the people who needed good news the most. And that any preacher's job is to find the people who long to hear good news and to share it with them, for them.  I'm certain that any preacher of good news will find in equal measure people who reject the message, hate the message, and care not for the message.  Chiefly because this good news threatens our own sense of what is good with an alternative narrative about the world in which we live.  A narrative that suggests that the losers and the poor and the brokenhearted and the oppressed and the weak and the dying and the insignificant are treasured, cherished, and valued by God the giver of life is a story that might threaten the winners and the powerful and the wealthy and the great.  Its why some preachers have been crucified.  What does it mean to be sent?  Who sends?  How does one know this?  What word must one speak?  What shall we say?  Can silence speak?  These are the questions the preacher asks.  

And there are no easy answers. Self-reflection is 90% of the work.  The other 10% is what comes out of my mouth. 

What would be good news for you right now?  What does your Spirit need to hear?  

Lord, give us your words; words of  life and love and freedom and grace.  Give us courage to speak and to listen. Amen.           

    

Sacrificial Love and Snakes

The art of preaching has two steps to it:  First, Find something or someone relateable in the text and uncover what God is doing with that character or characters. Second, if that doesn’t work, sing a hymn people like.  Well, today I’m not sure I followed either of these steps.  But as any good public leader knows, confidence trumps competence any day.  So, in confidence this is what I have to share today:

The Gospel of John puts a strange Old testament connection on Jesus’ lips right before the most famous gospel verse of them all.  And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so the son of man must be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.  For God so loved the world...Now that means that Jesus, reflecting on the crucifixion he was yet to endure, found its precedent in the book of Numbers.  So, one might conclude that the story in Numbers demonstrated God’s unending love and faithfulness for the people, right? Now maybe Jesus had a really strange idea of what love looks like or how God demonstrates love, but the Number story does not sound like a love story.  It sounds like a horror movie.  Like “Snakes on a plane” or “Anaconda”. 

So, it seems that the people of Israel, very recently rescued from slavery in Egypt, still on their way out, on the underground railroad as it were,with a longer journey than necessary ahead of them---not because God’s GPS was off but because the Israelites couldn’t follow.  Now, on the road they become hungry.  And they complain, pretty much right away.  Like the long car ride with the kids?  Whining in the back seat.  Imagine a large crowd of whiners.  They complain, and God feeds them.  Manna for breakfast and quail for dinner.  And plenty of water gushing out of a rock.  They get two meals a day in the desert on their way to freedom and they complain.  Their complaint, according to the storyteller went something like this:  We have nothing to eat out here and the food is awful too.  Ugh.  Parents, you know how this goes.  Kid:  What are we having for dinner?  (Assumption that you made dinner for them).  Parent: Chicken, broccoli, rice, applesauce.  Kid:  Ugh.  I’m not hungry for that.  Parent:  If you’re hungry enough, you’ll eat it.  Kid:  No I won’t.  I want something else.  Parent:  This is what I made for supper.  Appreciate it or be hungry.  Kid:  Ahhhhh.  Can’t I have cereal?  Parent:  NO.  Kid:  AHHHHHHHH. 

The Israelites say to Moses, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, we have no food or water here and wait hate the food her.”   Have you ever been to a restaurant for the first time, ordered from helpful waiters, promptly received your meal, ate it, and then complained because something wasn’t quite to your liking?  Or maybe eve received the meal, saw or tasted that something wasn’t right and sent it back?  Contrast this with our neighbors who do not have enough to eat. A complaining attitude rather than a grateful one.  Where does that come from?  Hearts enslaved to the world, where you scrap and strive to get more, get the next best thing.  We are taught to be dissatisfied consumers.

So the loving God sends poisonsous serpents to bite the people and they died.  The end. BUT they become acutely aware of their insolence, their sin against God. Maybe the snakes remind them of the story of the garden, Adam and Eve?  Clever of God to throw that in their face.  Because it was clear that the snake was a choice the first couple made.  They chose the snake over God’s grace.  Maybe that’s what God is saying.  You are free to choose.  Don’t choose the snake. And they cry out for mercy. God listens to their cries through the prayer of Moses and God gives them a medical intervention.  God does not take away the snakes.  God neutralizes the power of the venom with a bronze serpent on a pole.  Sounds like a potential idol is cast, but it is symbolic isn’t it?  God does not eradicate all the malaria-carrying mosquitos, God provides a net and the medical treatment.  The world and the God who made it are both dangerous.  We might face illness, violence, pain, weakness, loneliness, with fear and complaint and anxiety.  But God provides a way out. There is another way.  There is always another way.  Choose the way of God and live.   

A woman came to my office this week.  She was dropping off her mother’s clothes for Peter’s Porch.  She is the daughter of Monica Miller, who was murdered in Ephrata on February 18^th by Randall Shreiner. It was a domestic violence situation that escalated. What do you say?  The family wants this tragedy to shed light on the potential severity of domestic abuse and the inability of victims to escape from it.  They want to choose life and a way out for others.

So back to Jesus.  Remember, he is the one who sent us to the snake story.  Somehow, Jesus becomes like the bronze serpent lifted up for the people to see and live.  The cross, symbol of death, becomes life-giving.  How does this happen?  Theologians have theories.  Substitutionary atonement; restorative justice.  Call it what you want, God sends Jesus to provide the way out.  The way out of violence is non-violent resistance.  The way out of prejudice is radical inclusion. The way out of rivalry and competition is self-giving. Divine mercy toward sinful humans comes in the form of a single sacrificial death on a Roman cross.  When you need mercy, look at the cross. You will find it there.  Because in it God knows violence, suffering, and death.  God knows what it is like to be us.  In the wilderness.  Struggling.  Failing.  Dying.  Jesus knows. And the cross is the power of God to heal.  Amen.          

        

the one about the wilderness

Jesus is in the wilderness for 40 days and forty nights; he contends with Satan, the adversary, and angels minister to him.  The original Greek text describes this experience using verbs in the perfect tense, giving the entire scene the sense that this is an ongoing action or reality. Its as if Mark is saying here, Jesus was, and is, and continues to be in the wilderness, under attack, comforted by angels.  Why?  Because Mark is suggesting that the entire length of Jesus’ earthly life and mission is a wilderness struggle. 

Now when we think of the wilderness, our 1^st world notion is more or less nostalgic and romantic isn’t it? Like hunting camp or hiking in the woods or a vacation in a beautifully harsh landscape.  We saw some wilderness, some desert on our honeymoon.  But we also stayed at two resorts and at three meals a day.  Wilderness adventure makes for good TV too, from Survivor to Wild Alaska, there are shows that put people artificially in hard conditions to see what happens to them.  And we know there are people who take risks in the wilderness, climbing high peeks or camping in backcountry environments.  Dangerous places that risk our survival attract people.  We admire people who endure, even if we are unable or unwilling to push our own endurance.

But we also know-- from a distance mostly-- that there are many places in the world inhabited by people who must endure harsh conditions every day.  There are places where people live where children must walk many miles every day to fetch a daily supply of water.  We know there are places where crops don’t grow and the expanding desert displaces populations of people who used to subsist there.  We know people live in wilderness environments, not by choice but by circumstances of their birth and placement in the world.  There are places that challenge daily survival for millions of people on the earth today. 

The wilderness is more than a journey into a place where conditions for survival are hard.  The wilderness is also a spiritual reality.  According to the story, the Spirit drives Jesus out into the wilderness.  The word to drive out is ekballo, same word for exorcism.  Jesus is exorcized by the Spirit and cast out into the wilderness---a place of danger and adversity, of extreme challenge and discomfort. Why does this happen?  In Matthew and Luke, Jesus undergoes a series of tests to determine his willingness to accept his fate as the Son of God, sent into the world to sacrifice himself for the sins of the world.  But in Mark’s gospel, that identity formation experience is left out.  Jesus is not there to learn, to grow, to prepare.  Jesus is there to wage war. Now, I don’t picture Jesus as an army ranger here.  His warfare is not with conventional weapons.  He is there to wipe out the forces that threatened humankind, God’s precious children.  He is there to destroy the power of sin at work in the human family, causing adversity, struggle, hardship, hatred, fear, mistrust, inequality, prejudice.  Jesus experiences the adversity and challenge of the human community as a wilderness, every bit as harsh and deadly as the desert landscape in which he finds himself.  People will treat him like the desert terrain treats him. And he will be in the fight for the rest of his life.  He will die in the wilderness of public life at the hands of powerful, violent men:  unloving, unkind, unrelenting law-breakers like you and me.  We are the wilderness. We are the wild and the chaos.  Jesus is the calm and the peace. 

What is happening in your life that is like a wilderness experience?  Where are you experiencing adversity and challenge?  Where are you experiencing hardship and risk?  Where do you experience threat to your health, vitality, and peace?  We experience these adverse challenges and risks more often than we think.  Know that Jesus journeys with us into the chaos and uncertainty and worry and despair that is the wildnerness life we live.  And that this wilderness is God’ good creation waiting to be redeemed, set free from its bondage to decay and death.  In Christ, the wilderness is cast out and the Kingdom of God is established, a kingdom of order, peace, compassion, and love.  Amen.