Archive for the 'NEWS' Category
Today’s citations:
2 Samuel 7:1–14a
Mark 6:30–34, 53–56
Good morning, saints – is how Pastor Laurie at Spirit of Grace Church in Oregon greets parishioners in worship. I am glad to be back among you, and glad to be back to our preaching series on kings.
As we planned our recent trip to Oregon, my husband Paul and I decided to forego the indignities of air travel and take the train. It left us with lots of time on our hands, during which time I read some articles on Twitter.
One of them, written by Jerry Useem from The Atlantic, was about power – political or social power – and what it does to the human brain. It was quite fascinating. Historians and now several scientific studies have shown that power causes a form of brain damage; in particular, to the parts of the brain which manage empathy.
This might be no great shock to you, but to have it scientifically proven is pretty astounding. The article interviews Dacher Keltner, a UC Berkley psychology professor who conducted many of the cited experiments and lab work. From the article, quote, “Subjects under the influence of power, [Keltner] found in studies spanning two decades, acted as if they had suffered a traumatic brain injury—becoming more impulsive, less risk-aware, and, crucially, less adept at seeing things from other people’s point of view.†Another expert, neuroscientist Sukhvinder Obhi at McMaster University in Ontario, discovered in a brain scan study that, quote, “power impairs a specific neural process, “mirroring,†that may be a cornerstone of empathy.â€
Mirroring is a more subtle form of the mimicry that happens between the powerful and their inferiors – say the way people laugh when their superiors laughs, or tense up if we can feel that person is tense. Mirroring actually happens in the brain itself. When we see someone perform an action, the part of a healthy brain associated with that action lights up in response. In the brain of someone who is powerful, however, it was shown that this response doesn’t occur.
This gives us a specific neurological reason for what Keltner calls “the power paradox,†the strange tendency to forget all of the social tools one used to gain that power.
It’s possible this occurs because when we are powerful, we use less energy trying to convince others to do what we want, and since we are in charge of more people this can help us become more efficient. But that pride, that hubris, has many terrible consequences.
The bad news is that Dr. Obhi, the neuroscientist, discovered that explaining the idea of mirroring to people before a second test did not change their ability to empathize. The good news is that Dr. Keltner, the psychologist, found that in some cases, a person recounting a time when they didn’t feel powerful could help keep them in touch with reality.
You can imagine that a regular person who becomes very powerful could easily lose touch with the world, but just imagine someone who has always been powerful, and how difficult it would be for them to rearrange the way they had always seen the world.
Actually, we probably don’t need to imagine that hard.
Knowing this, don’t you think it’s amazing that God, the most powerful force, the source of all life, is not only able to connect deeply with all of creation, but wants to?
King David, who in the passages before today’s reading has seen and celebrated God’s awesome power while traveling with the Ark of the Covenant to his home, now feels that it deserves a grand house of cedar rather than a tent. This is a normal response to his good fortune. He feels grateful and wants to share his blessings with God. At first, Nathan sees nothing wrong with this, but later God corrects him. God tells Nathan to remind David about the great salvation of the people from Egypt, and adds that there has never been a commandment for a house. God does not need a house from David, for God’s blessing on his line is unconditional and therefore impossible to return, which keeps things in balance. God then reminds David about his own roots as a shepherd, a seventh son, a nobody. God anchors David in his humble past, then lays on David the responsibility of producing a son who has the spiritual strength to create a house for God, a concrete symbol of that special relationship, in the future. David’s job is to always remember the easy trust he has had in God so far. Modeling that for the people is the most important thing. The grand gestures can come in the next generation.
We move from King David to King Jesus, and we see a shift. Jesus seems immune to the temptations of power. He refuses the offers from Satan in the wilderness. The section missing from the Gospel reading this morning is the story of the feeding of the five thousand, and then his walking on the sea. That last one, and the stilling of the storm, are the only non-healing or exorcism stories of Jesus showing his power. He rarely shows power for its own sake, choosing instead to feed and heal people, literally using power to bring others closer to him and to each other. In fact, in the Gospel of John there is even a story where the people try to make Jesus king by force, and he takes off to the mountains to be alone.
Mirroring, then, seems to come naturally to Jesus as he gains power, which is the exact opposite of what should happen to a regular human brain. And maybe this is only one way of how God chose to be incarnate.
Perhaps we could even say that in Jesus, God was choosing to “mirror†us. Perhaps God knew that, by doing so, our relationship could finally go both ways.
How incredible is that?
God eschews sovereignty, pushes away a royalty that oppresses or bullies in favour of trying to be more like us in order to love us better. God, loving us as deeply as a parent, was able to see the best of humanity and therefore took that on to mirror us and teach us – and yet also chose to do so in a very humble form, the form of a poor brown man in an occupied land, a man who like all of us started out as a defenseless baby. God wanted to reach out to the most vulnerable and therefore mirrored them. God chose solidarity with dust.
How do you even respond to that kind of love?
Accepting it is the first step, and the difficulty of doing that should not be underestimated. It’s the work of a lifetime.
But there is more to do.
Accepting love gives you real power, the kind of power that can last or languish. You can only really accept it if you’re willing to let it change you.
And maybe that looks like remembering our roots as fragile things who need love, who are worthy of love, who are only here by love, for love.
When I was at Spirit of Grace I met a wonderful man called Fliegel. We talked at length about the world and its many problems and hurts, and particularly about his fears and frustrations for his own country.
“I think the United States needs to get rid of this idea of independence,†he said. “I think what we need for the new era is a declaration of interdependence.â€
Don’t you love that?
We are all part of a sacred web of life, and there’s no way to opt out of it. If we are called to be more like Christ – or like God in Christ – then maybe we need to try to mirror each other more. Maybe we need to mirror the earth more. What would it be like to mirror the earth in your life? What would it be like to be solid like a stone, or nonviolent but gently cajoling like water, or hopeful like a lark in the morning, or wide open like a prairie sky? What would it be like to gather wisdom, to gather the building blocks of a whole new self, from the creatures all around us?
Maybe like falling in love, every day.
Imagine that.
Citation: Esther 1:1-5, 9-20
Vashti is the kind of character that makes some of us want to get up and cheer. Her story may even sound a little familiar – if you’re a Shakespeare fan! This story was almost certainly in the Bard’s mind as he penned the famous final scene from The Taming of the Shrew. Vashti, like Godot, is one of those famous folks who is famous despite never being seen or heard from in the story which contains her.
There’s something refreshing about this moment full of pomp and ostentatious wealth being popped like a balloon because one woman refused to be objectified. This one act of defiance has made Vashti a hero for many women, Jewish and Christian alike, and in the era of the #MeToo movement she’s a most appropriate matron saint to women tired of being sexualized against their will.
Unfortunately, we don’t know what happens to Vashti after her husband’s childish display of masculine fragility. Since he’s rich he can fix his problems by throwing money at them, and so he disposes of Vashti and seeks out a new queen by – no kidding – arranging the ancient version of a beauty contest. The winner, he decides, will be his new queen. Lest the reader despair, his new wife is Esther, whose methods may be more cunning than Vashti’s, but proves that she too is not afraid of her husband, using her privilege and power in court to save her own people from annihilation.
Both Vashti and Esther show us that women have many ways of asserting themselves. Over the course of a lifetime, we may find that some days it’s more effective to be clever and cajoling like Esther, and some days it’s best if, like Vashti, we choose open defiance, refusing to participate in our own oppression no matter the consequences.
May we all embody both the courage of Vashti and the cunning of Esther.
Citation: Genesis 16:1-14
At first glance, this is one of those stories that may appear to have little to say us today. Abram and Sarai have no children, which would have reckoned to them as a curse among their people. God has promised Abram children in the previous chapter – and has also promised that Abram’s descendants will be slaves in “a land that is not their own.â€
This sets the stage for Hagar, the Egyptian slave given to Abram as another wife by her mistress Sarai.
The bearing of children for someone else was common in family units. We see it in other Biblical stories. What’s painful about this story is the treatment of Hagar by both Sarai and Abram. You’ll notice that they never refer to her by her proper name, and do not speak to her, only about her.
The angel of God is the one who first speaks Hagar’s name, the first one to truly see her. Although it seems cruel to tell her to return and submit, we could see this as a gentle chastisement against her scorn of Sarai. The angel also adds that Hagar’s son will be Ishmael, which means “God will hear†– a sign that God sees and knows Hagar in her pain. She’ll also bear not just one son for Sarai but many children, for herself.
Here comes the most beautiful part of the story. Hagar, named and seen by God, names and sees God herself. The name “El-roi†is commonly translated “The God who sees me.â€
To name something is to claim it.
Hagar the Egyptian slave girl trusts in God in a way that Abram and Sarai have not been able to do yet. Fittingly, it is in the next chapter that they receive new names, Abraham and Sarah. Only after Hagar, the abused one, is seen and blessed do these heroes of the faith receive the treasure God has promised.
To an audience accustomed to seeing the Egyptians as enemies, this was a radical story of a God who could enfold all nations, all creatures, into Her embrace.
Today’s Citations:
2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10
Mark 6:1-13
So far in our summer series on kings, we’ve explored what kind of ruler Jesus is: a ruler who is a refugee, a prisoner, a prophet, someone who shows us great power by sharing it with others.
And up until this week, for the most part, King David has proven to be not unlike King Jesus, in that he enjoys God’s favour and the love of the people. Today, we hear the story of him anointed king by the people. Now we actually heard about Samuel anointing David already – God clearly saw David as a king long before the people accepted him. But now the people are finally on board. They have accepted God’s chosen one, and unlike Saul, we know that David trusts God completely. The people say that David, who once kept sheep, will now keep the nation as sheep. This was a popular metaphor for kingship at that time, but it’s also an approval of David’s whole person, because even though folks saw kings as shepherds, being a shepherd not a glamorous job.
Quick sidebar: I had some fun thinking of metaphors we could substitute for this today. Our king is like the fast food worker who feeds us quickly and affordably when we are hungry and poor. Our queen is like the jewelry store worker who guards us, her jewels, from thieves. Our emperor is like the care aide who provides for our most basic needs no matter how tired she is. Our ruler is like the janitor that makes sure we stay healthy by keeping things clean and working properly.
These are all jobs that many people take for granted but that none of us could do without – just like being a shepherd was then. And we are hearing the people tell David that they welcome that part of who he is, and celebrate it.
And then we have the story of Jesus rejected in his own hometown. Here, his being a carpenter is not celebrated but mocked. “Who does he think he is?†they say. They also call him “the son of Mary.†Back then, almost no-one referred to men as sons of their mothers; they would call them the sons of their fathers. To call him “the son of Mary†was another way of mocking Jesus.
It isn’t just the Gospel reading that shows us the differences between the triumph of David and the shame of Jesus. For me, there was an unexpected moment of discomfort in the naming of the place of David’s anointing.
David is crowned at Hebron, which is in the West Bank in the Holy Land.
I have been to Hebron. I was there as part of a course a year and a half ago. It’s the kind of place that you lie about going to. When you are coming home from the Holy Land, you are asked many questions about why you came, what you did there, what and who you saw, and even who you are and what you do back home.
All of us were coached on how to handle that interrogation. We were given a list of places to tell security we had been to, places which were acceptable for Christians to visit, like Bethlehem. Hebron, we were told, was not a safe place to admit to having been to. We were told to only say we had been there if we were asked directly.
Hebron’s a dangerous place. The tomb of Machpelah is the jewel of Hebron, the oldest continuously used prayer space in the world, which houses the tombs of the fathers and mothers of the Jewish faith. It is also so holy to Muslims that it’s an acceptable place to complete the hajj pilgrimage if they cannot go to Mecca. It’s also been the site of many massacres, most notably in 1994 by a Jewish-American extremist and his followers, who opened fire on worshippers, killing 29 and wounding 125. Not long after that event, armed guards and metal detectors were installed outside and inside. The building was split into a Jewish prayer space and a mosque with two separate entrances, and the tombs of Abraham, Sarah, Jacob, and Leah within are guarded by Israeli Defense soldiers with assault rifles. You have to be very careful when taking photos of the tombs not to include the soldiers in them.
In the mosque, where many pilgrims greeted us with smiles, we met the imam, who told us that Muslims were regularly subjected to searches, and sometimes even barred from sections by the Israeli authorities.
Before we went into the mosque (it took about twenty minutes to get clearance to enter), we hung about one street which had a shop that offered gifts and free sage tea. Children called to us to invite us over. Men tried to sell wallets and woven accessories on their own. Other than that one street, though, the portion of the city we saw was eerily silent – very unusual considering how close it was to such a holy site. A few kids sat on steps and watched us warily. Stray cats searched through garbage. I took photographs of protest graffiti on walls, including a beautiful white dove with an olive branch in its beak. When the Muslim noon prayer time arrived, the songs of the muezzin, who call Muslims to prayer over crackly loudspeakers, erupted all over town simultaneously, louder than we’d ever heard in the other places we visited. The dean of the college offering the course told us this was a sign of resistance against the Israelis, many of whom make noise complaints to the police against them.
Hebron is not a glamourous place, the kind of place that feels utterly alien to a Western city kid like me.
And while today a king like David would never be crowned there, Jesus could be. I believe Hebron, atmospherically, would have felt familiar to Jesus and his disciples. Imagine going into a creaky old house in the heat of summer after many weeks with no rain, and the first thing you smell is gunpowder – not just a little but a lot, a thick heavy cloud. That smell’s going to change how you move around in there, right? That’s kind of how it felt to me, and that gave me a lot of sympathy for those who reject Jesus at Nazareth. In the text we hear that some “took offense†at Jesus. Why? What’s so offensive about healing? Well, in a powder keg town, you want to keep your head down. Here in Vancouver we can go out to protests and make a fuss about things that are worth fussing about – and even some that aren’t!
But in a powder keg town, if you don’t keep your head down…boom.
All it takes is one match, one rock, one healer to light an empire’s fuse.
Nazareth was a small town. People would have grown up with Jesus and his family. They cared about him, and here he came, preaching and teaching and healing right out in the open. And then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, he started teaching his followers how to do that stuff too. This was now an organized effort – even more dangerous.
This week’s story is here to remind us that following this king has consequences. Throughout most of history people could only get in trouble for not following kings. This is completely upside-down! And yet that is in keeping with our upside-down king, who chooses children and outsiders to make up his royal court. That’s good news for some, bad news for others, because for some of us it takes a conscious effort to become outsiders, while others have always been and always will be outsiders.
If this sounds frightening, don’t worry. We don’t do it alone. Every justice movement that has brought good to the world only accomplished its holy work because people did it together. And we do our work together. And we are cared for better than any other servants, because God our ruler not only sends us out to harvest what She herself has planted, but invites us to come inside Her house and be fed – and not even in some dingy servants’ quarters but here, together, at Her table.
Like family.
The Resistance Lectionary is a writing project I decided to start after reading a zillion awesome Twitter threads and, most important, having wonderful conversations with a new friend who is searching for how to embody her faith in a world where Christianity is struggling to figure out who it belongs to.
After many years of feeling completely at odds with the Bible, I encountered it in a far more intimate way in seminary and discovered an incredible story that was so much more than I was led to believe. As usual some stories are elevated and repeated over and over while others go unnoticed and unknown. After the 2016 election, it became more important to me than ever to be loud and proud about the kind of Christianity I grew up with – the Christianity that showed up and stood up for the lost and downtrodden and oppressed, the Christianity that wasn’t afraid to go toe-to-toe with the law and propose the unimaginable, the Christianity that made its home among the societal rejects and proclaimed them not just “children of God” but holy and beloved.
I’ve collected passages from the Bible that I believe demonstrate that kind of radical boundary-breaking scandalous faith through stories and characters that challenge every armchair theologian’s response to the text which has influenced so much of Western culture, and will post short reflections (200-500 words each week).
Here is my first.
PART 1: “WHAT DOES THE LORD REQUIRE?”
Citation: Micah 6:6-8
We’re at Ground Zero of the social justice passages with this gem. We quote it, we tweet it, we sing it. It’s one of those passages which seems unfamiliar to many who cry against the so-called culture wars, demanding personal purity ahead of solidarity. It lays many of our high-minded, privileged debates about appropriate and civilized behaviour to rest with a real mic-drop moment: Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with God, simple as that.
It’s a prooftext those of us who hate prooftexting can get behind.
But how often do we look at the whole thing? The part we quote most comes at verse 8: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good…†But we don’t often look at the section before that, the original question of what one must do for the liberating, boundary-breaking God and the proposed responses of sacrifice and offerings.
We children of the twenty-first century West are far removed from temple-sanctioned blood sacrifice (although we could argue long into the night about whether we have truly evolved beyond the general idea of blood sacrifice). However, there are still pseudo-sacrificial performative acts that we seem to believe will make us “good†before God and yet may not be what God truly wants from us.
Knowing this, perhaps we can reimagine that first section thusly:
“With what shall I come before the Lord,
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before God with repressed sexuality,
with religious patriotism?
Will God be pleased with thousands of Scripture quotations,
with tens of thousands of calls for civility?
Shall I exchange politics for faith,
anger at injustice for inner peace?
God has told you, O child of earth, what is good.â€
That last verse, though, that can stay as is. Don’t you think?
Today’s citations:
2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27
Mark 5:21-43
Now that church school is over we welcome the children of St. Margaret’s to join us for our preaching series on kings. The grownups may notice that I’m changing my tone a bit to be more accessible to our children.
This is our fourth Sunday working through the story of the first kings of Israel, Saul, David, and Solomon. We’ve noticed so far that many of the stories are given to us in chunks with big gaps.
And guess what? Today there’s another big gap!
The Hebrew Bible passage today is David’s lament over Saul and his sons, killed in battle. A lament is a way to express sad feelings – usually in song. So David sings a song about how sad he is that Saul and his sons are dead.
Now this might be confusing, because Saul and David are rivals. We learned that the people of Israel wanted a king, and though God didn’t think it was a good idea, she chose Saul to be their king. But Saul wasn’t a very good king, and didn’t listen to God, so God decided to make David the new king.
Saul was not pleased with this, and he was especially not pleased with the fact that David and his son Jonathan were best friends! So Saul tries to kill David, but David always escapes.
That gap I talked about earlier includes David trying to escape from Saul, while becoming a famous warrior. Unlike Saul, David always listens to God. Unlike Saul, who spoke to God only through the prophet Samuel, David can speak to God directly, one-on-one – and he does whenever he’s about to do something important.
David is also shown to be a good person. Twice in the story, he spares Saul’s life even though he has a chance to kill him, while Saul forgives David each time…and then seems to forget all about it. Saul also fights with his son Jonathan, who tries to tell Saul that David has never done wrong, but Saul won’t listen.
One day fate catches up to them, and Saul and Jonathan are killed. David cries for his best friend…and Saul, and sings about how brave they were.
David’s heart is full of kindness and mercy toward others, and trusts totally in God. In these chapters, David is a role model, showing us how we should be with God.
What’s interesting, though, is that David does not stay perfect forever. We will hear about that story in the next couple of weeks.
What happens to the good king David? It might have to do with power.
See David isn’t born a king. He is born a shepherd, the youngest of the sons of Jesse. When Samuel asks Jesse to bring his sons to Samuel because one of them will become king, Jesse doesn’t even bring David! He thinks that there’s no way David would be the one. And yet, David is the one.
And of course many of us know the story of David and Goliath. David goes out to meet the giant Goliath [and help me out, everyone].
Does he go out wearing armour? No! Saul tries to put armour on him and it’s too heavy, so he takes it off!
Does he bring a sword to kill Goliath? No! What does he bring? Five stones from the riverbed, for his slingshot. And he doesn’t even need five! The first one brings Goliath down.
David is not powerful on his own. God is always with him. But you’ll notice that once David becomes king, he does well for a little while, but eventually falls victim to pride and greed.
This is different from what happened to Saul, whose sin was never really trusting God. David trusts…but maybe the power started to go his head.
David is at his most generous and kind when he has no power, on the run from jealous Saul.
Not everyone who has power is unkind, just as not everyone who has no power is kind. But when we know what it’s like to be weak or helpless, it’s often easier to help others who are. History shows us that the more power a person has, the more they want. And the longer someone stays powerful, or rich, or celebrated, the harder it is to remember a time when they weren’t. And if you have always been those things, it’s even harder.
You can see this with all of those isms: racism, sexism, classism, ableism, nationalism, homophobia. All of these things are ways for one group to say they’re better than another, to say that the other group is stupid or evil. They all come from one group having power over another, and trying to hold it instead of letting go.
Jesus, a king greater than David, shows us how we should really hold power.
In the story, a kind person, Jairus, begs Jesus to save his daughter. I say he’s kind because back then, a lot of people believed that daughters were not as important as sons. Jairus loves his daughter so much that he begs Jesus to save her, even though the people with him think there’s no point because of how sick she is.
Jesus being Jesus of course agrees to help – by using his healing power.
Then we get the story about the woman with the hemorrhage. A hemorrhage is a constant flow of blood, which sounds bad enough, but it was even worse. Not only had this woman spent all her money trying to get better, but the ancient laws written in the Book of Leviticus wouldn’t allow her to be a full member of the community because of her illness. Desperate, she sees Jesus, and her faith in his power is so strong that she decides to touch his clothes. This was a risky thing for her to do. Jesus was a rabbi, a holy man, and again, according to the ancient laws, a sick woman like her should never touch him. It sounds mean, but people believed back then that you had to be healthy and ready to do or touch something holy, because if you weren’t you could get hurt: the ancient version of touching a hot burner.
But the woman touches Jesus anyway, maybe thinking he wouldn’t notice.
Again, Jesus being Jesus, he does notice.
Listen to the words the story uses: He became aware that power had gone out from him.
Jesus in this story is like one of those big transformer batteries – humming with power. And this woman reaches out, and a little bolt of goes from him to her, like lightning hitting a tree. Maybe it felt that way to her too. All of a sudden she stops bleeding.
Jesus has so much power, but he’s happy to walk through a crowd letting anyone touch him. But even though the disciples tell him nothing happened, he notices, and looks around until the poor woman comes forward. She’s afraid because she touched a holy man, and thinks he won’t be happy, because a holy man knows those holy laws.
But he doesn’t scold her. He congratulates her for her faith, and says it has made her well.
It sounds funny: the story already said she was healed, but Jesus says she’s healed again.
Maybe this let everyone else know that she was healthy again, and could come back.
All kings have the power to divide and unite.
And of course, the story doesn’t end there, because then, after Jesus willingly shares power again: power enough to bring a little girl back to life, giving her the chance to rise up and be known as one who conquered death. I see this story as a feminist story, if you can’t tell. Little girl, get up – rise up, claim yourself.
This is what King Jesus wants for all of us – to come to him with all of our fears and hurts, to not be afraid to touch him, to come to him even when we think it’s too hard or too late to do so, because it never is, never.
Any king can be cruel, and any king can be kind. What makes King Jesus special is that he came not to be served, but to serve.
Today’s citations:
Isaiah 40:1-11
Luke 1:57-80
Our third installment of our preaching series on kings takes a detour as we celebrate the birth of John the Baptist.
So far in our journey together, our stories have shown us the importance of letting God be the absolute monarch of our hearts, and about what kind of monarch God is. God’s will is never done solely through the work of the powerful, but becomes most purely manifest in the secret work of seeds and servants. This not only shows us that God is truly just, but that God and the kingdom are truly inclusive: all are invited to join in the celebration, regardless or colour, creed, gender, orientation, age, or ability. If this seems too good to be true, it would be, for an earthly kingdom.
And speaking of celebrations, let’s take a look at one of the tasks God has given those who proclaim Her kingdom: that of herald and prophet, performed by both Isaiah and our bizarre, beloved brother John.
We have two days in our calendar where we celebrate John the Baptist. The first is today, a happy occasion, where we celebrate his miraculous birth. The second, which we celebrate in August, is John’s beheading, a decidedly more complicated feast which nonetheless shows us that as beautiful as God’s kingdom is, it is nearly always opposed, often violently, by the kingdoms of earth.
We’re most accustomed to hearing about John the Baptist in Advent. Many of us can’t hear that Isaiah reading without also hearing Handel’s Messiah. The prophet Isaiah was active during the reign of King Hezekiah, lionized in Scripture as one of the righteous Israelite kings. He introduced many temple reforms and defeated King Sennacherib of Assyria, the empire seeking to claim Israel as a vassal state. Eventually, however, the kingdom was swept into exile by the Babylonians.
Isaiah was Hezekiah’s advisor, a courtly prophet unlike the poor vine-dresser Amos or the locust-eating wildman John, and the text that bears his name (which actually consists of three separate books) includes both poetry and prose. The three chapters preceding today’s are all narrative, stories about Hezekiah and his dealings with the Assyrians and Babylonians. We then shift abruptly into the poetic songs of Chapter 40, which anticipate a final restoration to Jerusalem embodied by the whole of creation, a reconciliation of the exiled to the arms of God.
You can understand why this would have been so important to early Christians, living under the yoke of Rome waiting for the return of the Messiah. The word Messiah means “anointed,†a royal ritual practiced across cultures for thousands of years.
Isaiah also offers us a window into perhaps the most important gift the Western world ever received from the Jewish people: the idea that God’s strength was not solely determined through the successes and failures of Her chosen people. The belief of the ancient Near East was that when nations went to battle, gods went to battle. The Jewish people, always at the fertile crossroads of vast empires, suffered many defeats and decimations. This difficult history pushed them into a more nuanced understanding of what a truly powerful and loving God would look like. Christians, attesting to God made man in Jesus, had an even steeper learning curve: what kind of God could not only die but be murdered shamefully by the state?
God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom.
That’s one herald and prophet. Let’s look at the other.
While all of the Gospels attest to a relationship between Jesus of Nazareth and John the Baptist, it is only the Gospel of Luke which gives us a full birth narrative for John, and only in Luke is he said to be related to Jesus. Many scholars believe that the writer of Luke wrote to a community that included Gentiles who may not have been familiar with the recurring themes of Hebrew Scriptures, and so he wove many of those motifs into the story as both a nod to the Jews and a teaching tool for the new believers. Elizabeth, like Hannah, like Sarah, though righteous and devout, is barren, which in the ancient Near East was a source of shame. This sort of upside-down series of surprises is a constant theme in the Gospel of Luke, and dovetails well with our exploration of God’s upside-down kingship.
These stories are important not only because of the beauty of God’s redemption, but because they demonstrate that the theologians who collected these stories into our Bible were far more intelligent that we give them credit for. Unlike so many contemporary prosperity gospel heretics and theologically lazy autocrats, these theologians thumb their noses at the false doctrine of just-world theory, the idea that everyone gets what they deserve. In John’s birth we also a wonderful depiction of privilege transferred from the priest Zechariah – whose voice, which would have been held in high honour, is taken away, while his wife Elizabeth gains a voice. Not only that, but we see another comic irony where Zechariah doubts his incredible angelic visitor and thereby loses his voice, while as far as we know Elizabeth receives no angelic visitor but somehow knows the name God has chosen for the baby and recognizes Mary as the “mother of her Lord.â€
Once Zechariah gets his voice back, he prophesies – an anticipation of the work his son will do as the herald of the Messiah.
As heralds, we too are called to lead the whole world into pilgrimage, to point creation toward the shining sun of our King. This must be approached with joy and humility. Remember Christians did not come up with inviting the world to the party on our own. The Book of Isaiah proclaims that all the world will be gathered up into God’s embrace. This is a treasure we received from our grandmothers and grandfathers in Judaism. We march beside them, not ahead.
As prophets, we too are called to name God’s truth and intent for Her beloved cosmos. It’s important to note that while modern ears tend to think of “prophecy†as an utterance predicting the future, the biblical understanding of prophecy was more about “truth-telling.†You’ll note that Zechariah’s prophecy is more concerned with what he has already witnessed – the grace and mercy of God – than it is with what will happen in the future, which only takes up four of the eleven verses of his song.
All of us are capable of being prophets, naming truth and speaking out against injustice.
In the chapter of Isaiah before today’s passage, a Rabshakeh, or high ranking advisor of the Assyrian King, visits the Israelites to boast that their God will not deliver them from the empire. Let our conviction be so strong, because our world is full of such proclamations of disaster. Our world is full of petty empires who take delight in their own fascism, who have stopped their ears to the weeping of babies in cages and desperate parents. Our world is full of the so-called faithful who have so little faith in God’s power to redeem the world that they will throw their allegiance behind liars and manipulators. Our world is full of oppressed people who still have the strength to cry out against their oppression.
As prophets, we must remember that the wicked are like chaff that the wind drives away. As heralds, we must remember that the kingdom is breaking in:
In the powerful who set aside their voices to give space for the powerless; in the powerless who trust in their redemption; in the Body of Christ which is here and in countless churches across the world right now, doing its work of healing, redemption, and rejoicing. We must not fear, for our king is alive and enthroned forever.
Let’s end with a portion of Psalm 2, so appropriate in a world like ours.
The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord and his anointed, saying,
‘Let us burst their bonds asunder,
and cast their cords from us.’
The One who sits in the heavens laughs;
the Lord has them in derision.
Then God will speak to them in wrath,
and terrify them in fury, saying,
‘I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill.’
This week’s citations:
1 Samuel 15:34 – 16:13
Mark 4:26-34
Last week we began our summer preaching series, and I introduced the big theme, which is to reclaim the idea of God as a monarch – a king or a queen. A lot of people feel uncomfortable with this idea nowadays, because kings and queens have been pretty iffy over the course of our history, using their power to keep others down and taking a lot more riches than they need. But God is unlike any king or queen that has ever been on earth, because God turns the whole idea of absolute power on its head.
Last week we talked about divided allegiances. Some of us answer to our parents and teachers, some of us answer to bosses at work, some of us answer to Bishops – Archbishops. We also answer in a different way to our friends and partners. And this is all fine, but ultimately we are to answer to God above all others.
That doesn’t mean we neglect our other relationships. It means that we allow God to teach us how to manage those relationships. So we care for our friends and partners, and love them, and we listen to and respect those who have authority over us like our parents and bosses and teachers and Archbishops.
But if there comes a moment where those who have authority over us demand more respect than God in our lives, or if they push us to do something that we think God would not want us to do, we should put God first. Not because God is bossy but because God is love, and love should always come first. And since sometimes love looks gentle, and sometimes love is fierce and says, “No, that’s not okay,†sometimes we find ourselves at odds with the world around us. Think of someone like Martin Luther King, Jr., or Malala Yousafzai, or our friends on Burnaby Mountain fighting for the environment.
The good news – the gospel, even – is that God doesn’t expect us to have faith and take big risks for something abstract, or “out there.†God has shows us something concrete, something “right here,†and something totally unexpected.
So what kind of monarch is God?
First let’s look at what God isn’t.
Last week we heard that Saul became king, and there was a big gap in the reading from Samuel. This week there’s another big gap. Saul is made king, and Samuel and God are hopeful that things will turn out okay. The people ask for a king, and God, against her better judgement, decides to give it a shot, because God loves the people. In the text that’s missing, the people even admit to God that maybe asking for a king wasn’t a good idea. Samuel says, “Just let God be the real king here.â€
But then the story shows them messing up again and again. Saul offers a sacrifice, which he’s not supposed to because that was Samuel’s job, he makes an oath without thinking it through which puts his son in danger, and he does not follow God’s instructions.
All of his slip-ups have to do with trying to gain more power than God wants him to have. What’s really interesting is that Saul’s intent doesn’t matter. Sometimes he disobeys instructions but says that he did it to give greater glory to God.
God’s no fool. God can see that kind of doublethink a mile away. And if you were paying attention to the news this week you probably did too. The Bible is a tool as well as a book, and you can use a tool to build a house or a gallows.
Finally God gets so frustrated that she tells Samuel, and Samuel goes to Saul and says, “You haven’t been listening!†Saul says, “Yes I have!â€
Samuel says, “God has rejected you as king,†and Saul says, “Okay, I messed up, but it was only because I was scared. The people kept nagging me to give them what they want.â€
What kind of excuse is that? You’re the king!
Despite everything, Saul wheedles and whines until Samuel agrees to help clean up his messes.
But it’s too late. As we learn this morning, God has already chosen someone else.
And who has God chosen?
A shepherd boy – the youngest of the seven sons of Jesse.
Again, this person is chosen entirely according to God’s will, and is not what anyone expects. Again, like with Saul last week, there is a secret coronation long before a public one. And once it has occurred, the Spirit of God comes “mightily†upon David, and leaves Saul tormented by an evil spirit in its place.
Here’s where the Samuel reading and the Gospel come together beautifully. Remember Saul became king with the help of a servant boy, who brought him to the appointed place to meet Samuel. And again, it is a servant who suggests that David be brought to Saul because David’s music will calm the evil spirit.
God is with the servants. God is with the Hebrew midwives who save the children in the Book of Exodus. God is with Jochebed and Rahab and Jael and Ruth and Tamar, women who are disgraced and oppressed and yet find themselves doing God’s work in secret, without glory in their own lifetimes but remembered in our Hebrew Scriptures.
Massive royal dynasties are set up through the secret work of servants. And God, who was so annoyed with Saul, still brings comfort by returning the Holy Spirit to his house through David – secretly.
Jesus’ parables today are all about secret work, aren’t they? In fact most of the Gospel of Mark is about hidden work. We can plant our seeds, and we can water them and put them in the sun, but that’s all we can do. All of us know that thrilling moment when we go from feeling a little foolish checking a pile of dirt every day to feeling amazed and excited when the first shoots pop out. Somehow, in the dark, in secret, seeds burst forth into shoots, and shoots grow into stalks, and stalks bear fruit. Just imagine the awe and gratitude of farming people who depended on those tiny seeds to live!
Here, Jesus teaches and models the faith that we need to allow God to be our monarch. The parable of the Sower, Jesus says, is the parable by which all of his other parables are understood. That means the Kingdom of God comes from us taking risks. Scatter the seed, trust that it will grow and flourish where it should, and if it doesn’t fall on good soil, that’s up to God. God knows where it will flourish, and there’s little we can do to determine that.
Saul was afraid to take risks. He didn’t trust that God’s authority would steer him right. He performs the illegal sacrifice because Samuel is running late. He makes the rash oath that puts his son at risk because he is afraid he cannot win the battle without it. He doesn’t trust that God will show up. He demands more control.
Jesus surrenders control completely. He sows seeds everywhere, and gets in trouble for it, not because he was saying things that people didn’t know, but because he was sowing seeds where polite society said he shouldn’t – among lepers and tax collectors and sinners! No wonder people got so angry about what he was doing! If seeds could bear fruit among the lowest of the low, what hope did the powerful have in holding on to their power? What could earthly authority mean when the gates of the powerful could be broken down in an instant?
This is the kind of monarch we are called to serve: the kind that doesn’t want our money or land or labour but our hearts, and not to keep them in a golden box, but to scatter seed upon them. She wants to give us something in return.
That’s the only kind of king worth kneeling to.
Let’s pray together, because that’s how we prepare the earth of the heart. We’ll be receiving our seeds here at the table in a few minutes.
Remember that while you can protect and nurture your seeds with the water of faith and the sunlight of love, only the king, only God, can make them grow.
Having been left in charge of St. Margaret’s while the rector was on sabbatical for the summer, I decided to start a preaching series as we journey through the saga of the kings of Israel. My first one was preached June 10th, 2018. The series will continue through August 26th and will be shared in full here.
This week’s citations:
1 Samuel 8:4-20, 11:14–15
Mark 3:20–35
Being as how this is Heidi’s last Sunday before her sabbatical, you might wonder why she’s not up here, as you’re going to be tired of hearing my voice by the end of the summer.
Well, Heidi wanted to spend her last Sunday with our children, and it’s the perfect way for us to begin a special journey through the summer months while Heidi is away.
See, I noticed that the lectionary readings take us through the story cycle of the monarchy in Israel, starting with the call of Samuel and moving through the coronations of Saul, David, and Solomon. We don’t always have the time to link story cycles together the way we can in the summertime when that whole long green and growing time stretches out before us.
So I thought, starting today and ending August 26th, where the cycle ends, we could talk about kings – and not just kings, but leaders of any kind, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
And if that sounds just awful to you, well, on July 15th I’ll be away, so you can hear my dear friend Rev. Paula Porter Leggett talk about something else.
We began our story cycle with the birth of Samuel from barren Hannah, and last week we heard about the call of Samuel and that emperor of awkward moments where Eli says to his protégé, “Well, what did God say? Did he say anything about me and my sons?â€
“Ummmmmmmm…â€
Things aren’t looking good for Eli, but I like to think that Samuel got his first piece of real wisdom from Eli’s reaction to the news, which was quiet acceptance of God’s will. It couldn’t have been a surprise to poor Eli, right?
What the Eli and Samuel story sets up for our journey can redeem the image of kingship for those of us who find it uncomfortable, something we’re going to come back to again and again:
God is not a monarch like any other monarch we’ve seen before. God overturns every assumption on its head, and I think this makes the image of the kingdom something worth reclaiming.
So let’s begin our journey.
Something really fascinating about the First Samuel passage is that it’s been cut up into pieces. We don’t get the first two verses and there’s a giant chunk taken out of the middle – we jump from Chapter 8 to Chapter 11. Those first two verses are a significant subtraction, because we learn that, like Eli, Samuel has two corrupt deadbeat sons. It’s the writer’s signal to us that Israel still has all the same challenges it ever did. I love the Hebrew Bible for this refreshing honesty.
Anyway, seeing that Samuel’s boys are a wash-out as successors, the elders come to Samuel and say, perhaps more plainly than he would like, “You’re old and your sons do not follow in your ways.†In Hebrew they start with “Hine,†which the King James Version translates as “Behold,†but which is more actually translated as “Hey!†or “Look here!†It’s rude, but maybe they felt they didn’t have time for civility. They want to be like other nations, to have a king.
But this is God’s chosen nation. They are not meant to be like other nations. They are meant to absorb them, or graft them onto themselves.
Then they add insult to injury by saying they want someone to lead them in battle! Who’s been leading them in battle this whole time?! God has been fighting for them since the Exodus!
God’s annoyance might make more sense to us now, but what’s amazing is God’s response. People like to talk about how the God of the Hebrew Bible is all fire and brimstone, cruelty and jealousy, but far more often you will find this God, who says, “They can have a king, but it’s going to turn out poorly. Make sure they understand that,†and then follows that up with as much meddling as She can get away with.
And so the huge chunk taken out of the middle of the passage tells us how Saul came to be the first king of Israel. It involved a lot of cheeky maneuvering by God and Samuel – choosing him ahead of time through the machinations of a servant boy, staging an event where it looks like he was chosen by lot, documenting the rules of kingship as a safety net, the possession of Saul by the Holy Spirit to lead an army to liberate a lowly tribe (which of course brings out the isolationists who get angry with Saul for risking their lives for these lowlifes), and finally a formal coronation.
Strangely enough, next week’s passage leaves out another huge chunk of text. We go straight to the selection of David and bypass most of the rest of the Saul story. What we miss is that Saul, after doing so well at the beginning, almost immediately drops the ball and begin to first ignore the will of God and then to abuse his power.
So God tried Her best – don’t give Her all the flack!
This story shows us not only the boundless love of a God who truly is like a parent, letting us make mistakes while trying to mitigate the consequences as best She can, but the shortcomings of earthly authority. When Samuel warns the people of the consequences of monarchy, he lists war and stolen labour. Back then, one’s children working for the king was not something to celebrate. Any work they did for him was work that didn’t benefit their own family – some errant chunks of Marxism in our morning Scripture, hey?
All of Samuel’s and God’s objections to monarchy are rooted in a belief that for its time was truly radical: that equating an earthly king with the divine patron of the nation, a belief nearly universal across the ancient Near East, was idolatry. Only God was worthy of ultimate obedience, and that obedience should never be divided.
And yet, human beings constantly choose division of allegiance, over and over.
So how does this relate to our Gospel story?
Jesus explains that division of allegiance leads to destruction. A kingdom divided cannot stand. The worst thing about that truth is that it’s true for good and for ill. The undivided kingdom of God would be a kingdom where all flourish because we would love God and our neighbour. And the undivided kingdom of fascism and totalitarianism, while cruel, also tends to be a pretty high-functioning one. Dictators know that when you erase all alternatives to power, getting people to sacrifice their lives is a lot easier.
Jesus also shows us that there are social consequences to choosing allegiance to God alone. His family is embarrassed and tries to restrain him, or in the Greek, control him. It should be noted that there is a translation error – although the English suggests that people in the crowd are saying Jesus has gone out of his mind, the Greek suggests that this is actually spoken by his family. They don’t understand what he’s doing. And the scribes, justly frightened of acts that could lead to punishment from Rome, the great Empire, disavow his work as demonic.
But we also learn that life is there for those who choose God. I think of the sound of a hundred voices singing, “Courage, my friends, you do not walk alone†as water protectors on Burnaby Mountain were being arrested. I think of the wormwood branches that my friend Pastor Brian gave me, branches which to me looked quite dead, but planted in new earth are indeed beginning to sprout anew.
The structure of monarchy calls for undivided hearts. Knowing our frailties, God chose to embody this fully in the person of Jesus Christ, a model for a king truly worthy of undying devotion: a brown poor oppressed king, who feeds people not by co-opting the labour of the poor but by offering up his own flesh and blood; who served us not by demanding accolades but by healing without cost; who was exalted not through war but through ultimate surrender at the hands of a hostile state, only to once again lay claim to our allegiance by conquering not Empire but death.
That’s the only kind of king worth kneeling to.
We’ll talk about this more next week.
For now, let’s prepare to receive his gifts, free for the taking.
Let all who hunger come and be filled.
Meda Stamper, an American Presbyterian preacher, wrote that in the Gospel of John “misunderstandings move the dialogue forward.â€
I feel like that is the truest Trinity Sunday statement I’ve yet heard. We’re not really sure what the deal is with this concept, but our misunderstandings do seem to move the dialogue forward.
The readings don’t really help, although Isaiah and Paul sing such a good duet here. We have the prophet whose unclean lips are purified with a burning coal carried by a seraph, devoutly covering itself from the glory of a God so magnificent that the whole Temple is filled with the holy garments, the prophet consecrated to preach news of frightful disaster and war so that the unjust oppressors know the depth of their depravity and may be saved in the final redemption. This is our story of God the Creator, the one who made us.
We have Paul the Apostle, who cries out, “Who will save me from this body of death?†and answers his own question: Jesus will redeem not just one nation but the whole of creation from sin and death, and there is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for we did not receive a spirit of slavery but of adoption. This is our story of Jesus, the Son, the one who redeems us.
And then we have this passage from John, and it’s…just weird.
And of course it is, because this is our Holy Spirit passage, and the Holy Spirit is a little weird. It’s the part of the Trinity that is the hardest to grasp, and if you don’t believe me, take a moment in your head to think about explaining each person of the Trinity to someone who had never heard of Christianity before. God? Easy. Jesus? Sure, we have stories! Like a bunch! Holy Spirit? Eeehhhh…
We tell this story as though it’s an isolated episode, but the Greek tells us that the story is actually connected to the sentence preceding it – the last sentence in John’s second chapter.
“When he was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival, many believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to testify about anyone; for he himself knew what was in everyone.â€
The following English word that begins our passage is “Now.†The actual Greek word used, though, is δε. This word should really be translated “but,†or “on the other hand.â€
So Nicodemus is special. Jesus doesn’t choose to get chummy with anyone – so Nicodemus seeks him out. And he says, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. No one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.â€
Now whenever you hear this passage you always need to be thinking ahead to Chapter 4 – that’s the story of the woman at the well. Neither Nicodemus nor this woman can be read apart from each other. Nicodemus comes by night; she comes at noon. Nicodemus knows Jesus comes from God because of his signs; the woman is impressed with Jesus’ knowledge, but believes because of his self-identification.
The signs are not enough. Nicodemus isn’t there yet.
This is where it goes off the rails. These two are really having different conversations. My New Testament professor Harry Maier used to say reading the Gospel of John was like getting on the bus to UBC and ending up on Mars.
“Wow, Jesus, you must be special because of the amazing things you do!â€
“Very truly I tell you, no-one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.â€
BAM. Mars. Not in Kansas anymore.
No-one can see, ἰδεῖν, physically see, the kingdom of God without being γεννηθῇ ἄνωθεν, “born from above.†Or “born from the top.†Or “born again.†Or some other meaning we’ve since forgotten.
We’re supposed to laugh at Nicodemus, because he doesn’t get it – and yet put enough years between us and the community of John’s Gospel and we’re all Nicodemus.
And that’s appropriate for Trinity Sunday too! Many centuries ago all our important pointy-hatted folk got together to hash out doctrinal stuff. Who was Jesus? How was he God? How was the Holy Spirit in on it? How were they three and also one? What if I show you with this shamrock? Nope, that’s partialism and it’s a heresy, and so is modalism and Arianism and what the heck are those things, aw man, we shoulda stayed in bed as soon as we remembered it was Trinity Sunday…
Let’s find another way to enter.
“Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’â€
That might sound like a criticism. But maybe it’s comfort. “Don’t get confused. Anything born of the Spirit is confusing.â€
Then there’s that strange and haunting verse 8, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.â€
The Greek word for “wind†is pneuma, which is the same as the word for “Spirit.†This whole verse is a clever play on words, made all the more lyrical by the fact that the word translated ‘sound’ is more accurately translated ‘voice.’
People born of water and the Spirit are as free and as mysterious as the wind. We don’t know where they come from or where they’re going…but we hear their voices.
Who are those people?
They are the baptized.
Because we baptize in the name of the Trinity, don’t we?
Understand this does not make the baptized magical or more important than those who have not been baptized. My freedom as a baptized Christian is not of my own making, and it wouldn’t be even if I had chosen baptism as an adult, which I didn’t. Many of us who are baptized would agree that despite our best efforts, God leads us where She wills, so perhaps we ourselves do not know where we come from or where we’re going.
What the doctrine of the Trinity tells us at its most pure is that God is both relational and invitational. God is so concerned with togetherness that God, perfect and self-contained, chooses not to be alone but to create a whole universe which is completely other – not out of lack or loneliness, but out of the wisdom that “together is better.†And this wisdom, this passion, is manifested not only through something that God created, but through who God is. God chooses not only to MAKE together, but to BE together – three in one and one in three.
By virtue of our creation, we are blessed, and that is good.
In baptism, we throw ourselves into the deep end, and surrender our wills utterly. And if like me you were baptized as an infant, don’t feel resentment or insecurity that someone made that choice for you. Rejoice that, whether they knew it or not, they marked you for the kind of love that dances to the edge of eternity. They made a mockery of society’s expectations for you and said, “No – my beloved is going to be God’s beloved, and nothing else is going to matter.â€
People born of water and Spirit are free as the wind, and their voices can be heard.
If someone were to walk outside this church at just the right time, they would hear us, wouldn’t they? Singing a song they probably don’t know. Saying words they probably don’t understand. Telling a story they might not have heard before.
And completely independent of logical arguments, or a seminary education, or a full intellectual understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity or the hypostatic union, they may find themselves wandering in here.
Don’t be astonished.
We’ll see greater things than these.
We’ll do greater things than these.
