Sit and Eat

Devouring Death

I preached this sermon at St. Lydia's on Sunday, January 22, as part of our exploration of the Gospel of John.  The text is John 6:22-56; read it here. 

 

 

The writer of John is a little bit of a trickster. 

Throughout the first six chapters of this gospel, 

he (or she) has acclimated us to a language of symbols. 

 

Jesus is the light of the world – 

this not a literal statement, but a metaphor. 

“In order to follow me,” he tells Nicodemus, 

“you must be born again.” 

Nicodemus is a bit of a fool, 

taking is words to literally, 

missing their metaphorical meaning. 

“I can give you living water,” 

he says to the Samaritan woman. 

She catches his meaning, 

she understands the metaphorical language. 

 

The writer of John has acclimated us to a language of symbols:

a world of metaphors in which ordinary things 

like light 

and birth 

and water

can have secondary, spiritual meaning. 

At this point in the gospel, 

we are just starting to wade into the deep places

in the pool the writer has created, 

immersing ourselves in this new language 

of evocative symbols as they gain dimension. 

 

By the time we roll around to chapter six, 

we think we’ve got it figured out. 

 

“I am the bread of life,”

Jesus says. 

A symbol, we think, a metaphor. 

Bread, which nourishes, 

which feeds, 

which sustains. 

Bread, which grants each of us life.

 

And then something strange happens. 

Then there’s twist:

 

“The bread I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

 

Swiftly, a hole is punctured in our world of symbolic meaning. 

And the knife that makes the hole

is the word, “shall,”

because it connected us, disconcertingly, 

to the future. 

“The bread I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

We’re suddenly pretty sure that “flesh,” is not a metaphor. 

 

It is as if time has suddenly collapsed, 

and this moment holds within it another moment, 

still many months off, 

another Passover, 

on another hill 

when what is broken will not be bread, 

but Christ’s very body.  

 

A body which, he instructs us, 

we are to devour. 

 

God must die. 

And we must eat God. 

 

All this is very strange.  

Disconcerting. 

The line between the literal and the symoblic 

unnervingly blurred. 

 

 

As I child, 

I remember reading a book called “Tuck Everlasting.”

The book was about a family, the Tuck family, 

who lived deep in the woods,

and drank from a stream that gave them eternal life. 

They would never die, and they would never grow old. 

A girl named Winnie learns their secret, 

and thinks it must be the most wonderful thing, 

not to die. 

But soon she learns that life everlasting 

does not free the Tuck family, but constructs a prison around them. 

They spend their days hiding away 

from anyone who might notice their secret – 

that they’re not getting older –

worriedly protecting the spring. 

They’ve evaded death, 

but along the way, lost the ability to live. 

 

 

The Gospel of John also tells a story of eternal life. 

But in this story, 

Christ is offering something very different 

than immortality bottled 

from a magic spring. 

The Tuck family side-steps death for years, 

and finds a life of stagnation,  

But Jesus invites death to dance, 

He moves in step, 

looks death straight in the eye, 

and comes out on the other side,

offering life to the whole world.  

 

To fine life, 

Jesus does not avoid death, 

but must instead devours it. 

And instructs us to

eat it up, 

eat him up, 

until the death and the life is a part of us, 

all of it,  

twisted together in our very body. 

 

All this is very strange.  

Disconcerting. 

As it's meant to be. 

It stands as a question mark, 

a riddle for us to puzzle over as we struggle to comprehend:

 

The one who eats this bread, 

this bread, my body, 

my body, the word,

the word, God’s breath, 

God’s life, 

my death.

The one who eats this bread, 

will live forever. 

 

Forcing the Question

I preached this sermon at St. Lydia's on Sunday, January 15, 2012 as part of our exploration of the Gospel of John.  The text is John 3:1-21, the story of Nicodemus.  Read it here.  

Before I preach a sermon, I always give a little context.  Here’s some information you might find helpful as you read.

• John’s characters function as symbols -- like blank screens you can project yourself onto as the reader.  Every character in John’s gospel is you. 
• Nicodemus makes the mistake many of John’s characters make: he’s extremely literal.  When Jesus tells him he must be born again, he wonders how you can re-enter your mother's womb.
• Nicodemus has a foil, whose story is told right after this one: the Samaritan woman.  He’s a man, she’s a woman.  He’s an elite Pharisee with power, she’s an outsider with no power at all.  He comes to Jesus at night while she comes to him during the day.  He cannot believe, while she does, immediately. 

 

* 

 

It would be so much easier if we could just stop at verse 16. 

For God so loved the world that she gave her only son 

so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life. 

 

Curtain.  

Credits roll. 

End of story.

Everybody wins, everybody feels good. 

 

It would be so much easier if we could just stop at verse 16. 

And let me tell you, 

your preacher and pastoral minister 

considered that option very seriously. 

I thought to myself, 

We don’t need that long speech at the end there. 

It was probably added by an editor later on, anyway. 

We don’t need words like “condemned,”

and “judgement.” 

Let’s just leave that part out?

 

It’s a testament to all of you that I didn’t. 

It’s a testament to all of you, 

whose tenacity and curiosity and desire to investigate these texts,

and not simply gloss over them in favor on an easy take-home, 

keeps me on my homeletical toes. 

And I’m thankful for it. 

 

But it would be so much easier

if Jesus didn’t have to get so damn confrontational. 

If he didn’t have to say things that make us feel 

divided, 

uncertain, 

pulled apart. 

 

Verse 18:
 

Those who believe in him are not condemned; 

but those who do not believe are condemned already, 

because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

And this is the judgement:

that the light has come into the world, 

and the people loved darkness rather than light 

because their deeds were evil. 

For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, 

so that their deeds may not be exposed. 

But those who do what is true

come to the light. 

 

 

John is annoying because all of his light and darkness symbolism 

makes him seem so either/or.

You’re either in the light or the darkness. 

You’re good or evil. 

You’re on one side or the other. 

Jesus, the writer tells us, is the light in a world of darkness,

and those who live in the light are drawn to him,

as if out of pure biological response:

like moths drawn to a glowing lightbulb. 

But those who live in darkness cringe away – 

creatures who, as if by nature, prefer to lurk in the shadows. 

 

The passage gives me the unnerving feeling 

that I am either one or the other, 

and I don’t have much of a choice about it. 

It’s just how I was made. 

 

 

 

Like all of the gospel texts, 

the Gospel of John emerged from a community of real people.

As we read the gospel, 

we can see reflected in its pages 

the particular concerns of the particular people for whom it was written:

The Johannine community.

The people who wrote this text 

and held it as one of their primary sources of scripture 

were a tightly knit community of ethnically diverse believers. 

They were Samaritans and Gentiles,

and Jews who had defected from Judaism, 

actually, more than defected – 

Jews who followed Jesus were being excommunicated from the synagogue 

during the time that this Gospel was put to paper. 

 

The Johannine community saw themselves as a persecuted minority, 

and they did what many communities do when they feel attacked:

they took on an “us against the world” mentality. 

To be a part of this sect (for that’s just about what it was)

you needed to be “entirely committed to the project, 

and willing to give up a great deal.”*

 

This Gospel is written to force the reader to answer a question:

Are you in, or are you out?

It can seem very either/or. 

Dualistic and exclusive.

Far removed from the coaxing and generous, 

evocative parables of the other three gospels. 

 

But I would argue that

John’s sharp, dualistic language 

is in fact a tool 

that, while at first divisive, 

sparks a chain reaction 

of experience 

that is much less dichotomous and more nuanced than we might have first imagined. 

 

And it all hinges

on how the story ends. 

Because, though, in chapter three

Nicodemus fades back into the night,  

apparently having been identified as a creature who lurks in the darkness, 

in chapter 19 

we find him anointing Jesus’ body for burial,

a follower of Christ as public as any other:

a child of the light. 

 

 

 

So how does this all fit together?

First, let’s remember the thesis of this Gospel

which is written, as we’re told in chapter 20

“so that you (the reader) may come to believe.”

The gospel has a purpose. 

The reason it exists is to draw us toward belief. 

 

From the perspective of the writers, 

belief means having your eyes opened

to a truth that you’ve been blind to. 

You may remember back in December 

I compared John’s understanding of “belief”

to Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz,

walking into a world of color.

 

For this gospel writer, 

seeing the true light 

means stripping away a false reality 

and blinking in the light of a new one. 

 

It’s an archetypal plot that appears frequently in literature and movies. 

Dorothy opening the door of her drab farm house 

to a new world in Technicolor,

Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole 

into an upside-down reality, 

even Neo in the Matrix choosing the red pill when it is presented to him

and swallowing it to discover a truth 

wholly unlike the one he had accepted as reality. 

 

What you will notice is that none of these three examples

are without a certain violence. 

Dorothy’s house, we are told, began to pitch and drop until she lands with a thud, 

Alice plummets, falls, and finds herself three sizes too big or small, 

Neo awakens to a fluid-filled chamber, retching and gasping for air.

 

The writer of John wants to pull back the curtain on a new truth, 

a new reality, 

but our awakening will be painful. 

The writer does not use a tornado or a rabbit hole, but language. 

 

Those who believe in him are not condemned, 

but those who do not believe are condemned already.

 

It is a language that takes you by the shoulders and shakes you, 

asking, Which one?  Which one are you?

Are you a child of the light or of darkness?

 

And if you’re anything like me, 

and anything like Nicodemus, 

you respond by shrinking back into the night. 

 

The difference between Nicodeumus 

and the Samaritan woman, his foil, 

is that he has everything to loose, 

and she has nothing. 

He is part of the elite ruling class,

and she has nothing. 

And when you’re Nicodemus, holding onto everything –

everything you don’t want to loose, 

everything that makes your reality pretty comfy and cushy and posh, 

you’re not so invested in a new reality, 

whether it’s the truth or not. 

And so she is more able to see and believe and follow, 

while he gets stuck on linguistics. 

 

The truth is that if you have money in a bank account and some cash in your wallet,

you are among the top 8% of the world's wealthy. 

And when you’re in the top 8%, 

you have a lot to hold onto.  

You have something to loose instead of nothing. 

And so the gospel text has the difficult task of shaking us free.  

This speech that Jesus gives, 

with its hard corners and sharp edges 

is harsh and disruptive. 

It’s written to rend a hole in the fabric of our reality.  

To say -- Where are you? 

Light, or darkness? 

Which one?

And it hurts. 

We storm away from it angry and uncertain, 

but like Nicodemus, 

a few pages later,

find ourselves called back.

 

His experience of ambiguity, 

of everything turned violently on its head

is not negative 

but needed.

Needed to rend the fabric of his world

open to a new reality, 

one that he may at first resist, 

but ultimately recognizes as the truth. 

 

 

Where is the tear for you?

 

Where is the rend in the fabric?

 

Are you angry about it?

 

Do you wish that it would go away?

 

Do you find yourself, 

uncertain as to just where you are headed,

stealing away to Jesus under the cover of darkness,

then retreating back into the night?

 

And how many pages later do you discover yourself,

on the ground, 

kneeling,

anointing his broken body, 

lavishing it with jar after jar 

of myrrh and oil;

until it runs down your hands and your arms, 

and you are dripping and perfumed, 

holding the one who you never even hoped to encounter,

holding God, maimed and lacerated 

in your hands, 

tending to the husk of his body,

because it is the truest thing you have ever known, 

though you still don’t understand it. 

 

Do your actions confuse you?

 

 

The leap the text forces 

is from head to heart. 

From logic 

to reflex. 

 

From a knowing of the mind 

to a knowledge that exists so deep within us 

we only hear its call in sleep or dreams

or in moments when it catches us unaware, 

gazing across the waves of humanity as they break 

and catching on the wind as it blows, a distant call,

that there is something more. 

And so we set out into the night. 

To find it. 

 

 

 

*Sandra M. Schneiders, Written That You May Believe (New York: The Crossroads Publishing Company, 2003), 37. 

 

Abracadabra, Presto Chango

I preached this sermon at St. Lydia's on Sunday, January 8, 2012 as part of our exploration of the Gospel of John.  The text is John 2:1-12, the story of Jesus turning water into wine.  Read it here.

 

 

We’re actually going to hear this story one more time…

well,

it’s more of an interpretation of the story. 

This is a reading from the Gospel of John by...

Rowan Atkinson. 

 

  

 

So, I’m not playing your this sketch just for giggles.

Like most things that are really funny, 

this sketch is funny because it hits on something 

that feels like it might possibly be true, 

and the truth of it scares us a little bit.  

When you think about it, 

doesn’t turning water into wine 

seem a little bit like a cheap parlor trick?

Especially when you’re, you know, the son of God?

There is something about it that makes me expect 

Jesus to take out a wand next.  

If Jesus’ first “sign” is a magic trick, 

is that really something we can believe in?

 

*

 

As it turns out, magicians were rampant in the first century. 

Just like traveling salesmen who pedaled potions and remedies from their carts, 

promising healing from whatever ails you, 

ancient Israel was full of traveling prophets:

itinerant preachers who came to town, 

performed miracles and healed the sick, 

then moved on to the next place just before the jig was up. 

 

Anyone who taught or prophesied in Israel 

was up against a tough crowd of weary and suspicious folks 

who had seen everything you can do with slight of hand and a couple of mirrors. 

 

After Jesus’ death, the rumors persisted:

that perhaps this whole thing was just some kind of elaborate hoax:

an act, staged by a bunch of disciples 

who couldn’t believe that their messiah wasn’t the real deal. 

 

That’s why we get such careful descriptions 

of the last hours of Jesus’ life and his burial 

in the gospel accounts:

the writers want their readers to be absolutely sure 

that the tomb was closed and sealed 

and that nobody’s running around the countryside with Jesus’ body.  

 

Maybe the story’s easier to believe if we do think that it’s magic. 

Later in the first century, certain Gnostic Christians 

were Docetists, believing that Jesus’ body wasn’t actually real, 

but an illusion. 

Sort of like a hologram. 

He seemed very real, walking and talking, 

but wasn’t actually, physically human, 

and only appeared to suffer and die on the cross. 

This idea was later branded heretical, 

but isn’t there something about it that’s appealing?

Less messy than a God who dwells with us in flesh, 

who suffers and dies.  

Maybe it was just an illusion. 

 

*

 

I am familiar with living under illusions. 

Perhaps you are too. 

One illusion I lived under for quite some time

was particularly convincing. 

It was called the,

“If I Don’t Look At It, It Will Go Away,”

illusion. 

 

There was another great one I remember from a while back. 

It was called the, 

“He Really Loves You, It’s Just Hard For Him To Show It” illusion. 

That particular trick was generally followed closely by another crowd pleaser:

the, “It’s Been Such A Stressful Time Lately; I’m Sure It Will Get Better.”

 

And finally, the big closer:

the, “I’m Happy.  No, Really.  I am.”

 

 

We can be pretty impressive masters of illusion ourselves. 

You may not have a trick deck or or a white rabbit, 

but sometimes it can feel that way. 

At times, you can convince yourself of almost anything, 

At times, you see only what you want to see. 

 

 

In fact, it’s exactly the same technique used 

by the traveling salesman who comes through town,

peddling his potions and claiming he can heal the sick. 

He preys on desire. 

He knows that when someone wants something badly enough, 

they’ll believe almost anything. 

 

*

 

Here is the reason Jesus is something more than a parlor magician. 

While you or I are able to stage elaborate illusions of our own, 

Jesus offers only the truth. 

But a different kind of truth than we’ve ever seen before. 

 

Stripped of my illusions, 

I tend to think that the only other option presented to me 

is a cold, hard reality. 

A harsh daylight that reveals everything as it truly is:

all angles and edges. 

 

But with Christ there is this strange thing:

a third option. 

A third reality:

God’s reality.

 

And in the Gospel of John, 

it’s called “life.”

And it’s so hard to describe, 

so hard to fit into words, 

that we’re forced to use stories and symbols and signs 

just to try to talk about it. 

 

It’s bread – but when you eat it you will never be hungry again. 

It’s water – but when you drink it you will never be thirsty again. 

It’s light – the true light – a light that the darkness cannot overcome. 

 

It’s like...a wedding.  

A wedding where you think the wine has run out, 

but then find that it hasn’t. 

That there is wine in abundance, 

and it’s sweeter and better than any you have ever tasted. 

 

It’s not an illusion and it’s not a mirage. 

It’s truer than our reality and realer than our dreams. 

It’s not an escape, but an entrance. 

 

The stone has rolled away. 

The illusions are shattered. 

The smoke is banished, the mirrors too. 

He has broken death open, 

and made a new way:

toward truth, and life. 

 

Do Not Start Fresh

I preached this sermon at St. Lydia's on Sunday, January 1, 2012, as part of our exploration of the Gospel of John.  The text is John 1:1-18; read it here. 

 

Part of my job as a preacher is to remind you when you are being lied to. 

 

It’s New Year’s Day.  January 1, 2012. 

This morning I took down last year’s calendar and hung a new one in its place. 

Last week, I made a new file in my drawer for my 2012 financial documents. 

And St. Lydia’s has a new budget, a fresh sheet on the accounting page. 

Most of the changes that take place as we shift from the old year to the new

seem to take place in document form --

a new, clean sheet of crisp paper, fresh and ready for a new year. 

 

Accompanying all of this grand shuffling of papers and calendars is the lie:

the intimation that, just like hanging a fresh calendar on the wall, we too can start over.

Make a resolution. 

Decide that this year will be different. 

Somehow reset our lives and start fresh. 

A different us:

the 2012 version. 

Us version 2.0. 

This new us is fundamentally different from the us we were in 2011. 

This new us springs energetically out of bed and goes to the gym three times a week,

or suddenly has no desire for cigarettes, or alcohol, or other vices, 

or magically keeps the house tidy and organized.

 

This new us is shiny and new, 

and feels recently purchased, like a new car, 

with a fresh, new us smell and sheen, 

a smile that is whiter and skin with a healthy glow. 

This new us is even more photogenic than the old, 

as evidenced by the new 2012 2.0 us that appears on facebook, 

always smiling riotously 

and having just a little bit more fun than everyone else. 

 

This is the lie:

That you can start fresh. 

That you can drop off the old, unwanted, weatherworn bits of yourself 

at the Salvation Army 

and pick up something fresher and more appealing.  

Something less complicated and easier to live with. 

 

 

 

 

There are two big problems that I see with this lie. 

 

The first is that it has us thinking that deciding to change

and changing 

are the same thing. 

It has us thinking that jumping out of bed to head to the gym three times a week 

is simply a matter of deciding to do it,

and with a little good old American stick-to-it-tiveness, 

we can revamp our lives entirely. 

 

The truth is that our less positive habits 

are a bit like lily pads on a pond:

from above, they seem to float on the surface of the water, 

but they’re rooted deep down, 

in the muck way at the bottom. 

 

Each afternoon you get fidgety and make a trip to the snack machine,

not because you’re hungry, 

but because a growing sense of emptiness is blossoming within you, 

and somehow food seems to fill it. 

 

You keep meaning to go to sleep earlier, 

but find yourself browsing endlessly online, 

hours each night, 

paging around, 

as if looking for something you’ve lost. 

You're trying to fill that growing sense of lack, 

of emptiness. 

 

The truth is 

that changing our habits means addressing their roots, 

and addressing the roots is tricky, 

because there’s a lot that might get dredged up down there. 

 

 

 

The second big problem that I see with this lie, 

is that it assumes that there is no light in us. 

 

Out with the old and in with the new! 

The desire to “start fresh” with a shiny new version of ourselves 

implies that we are in fact, disposable. 

And things that are disposable are worthless. 

Out with the old and in with the new

assumes that there’s something in us 

that needs to be gotten rid of:

eradicated. 

Perhaps you feel that there are portions of yourself 

that you wish would simply disappear. 

Perhaps you’re wary of the long neglected pieces of yourself

that lie fallow in the muck at the bottom of the pond. 

Perhaps you come before God, 

hoping that she sees only the pieces you’d like to present --

the pieces that are shiny and polished

and ready for public consumption. 

As for the rest of you -- 

out with the old and in with the new. 

 

 

 

Here is the truth.

Here is the Good News. 

God came to dwell among us. 

God came to pitch a tent, 

and she pitches it 

deep down in the muck. 

In the deepest, most forgotten corners of our hearts, 

the bits that we would rather set out with the trash. 

It is those parts of us where God loves us the most:

wants most to dwell with us. 

God lives in the unwanted, weatherworn places, 

a light that shines even in the places 

we experience as dark or despairing. 

 

 

 

We can change, and do. 

Not by deciding to discard the unwanted or undesirable pieces of ourselves, 

but learning to acknowledge and recognize them. 

By allowing ourselves to gently explore the murkier depths of the pool, 

and finding with surprise 

that there is a hidden light that pulses even there,

waiting to be uncovered. 

 

John came to testify to the light. 

To witness to the light he saw in the world:

God’s light among us. 

The change we seek and desire is found by learning to be like John.

By slowly and patiently cultivating a practice:

looking around us, 

and within us, 

and pointing to the light. 

 

It is a practice we live out every week around this table. 

We come here again and again, 

to learn how to find the light. 

How to see it, 

point to it, and say, 

there it is. 

 

I see it in each of you around this table. 

Strong and clear and bright. 

I’m learning to see it in myself, 

despite my own constant, unfailing resistance.

But God is here in the midst of me. 

God is here in the midst of you. 

 

Do not believe the lie. 

Resist the urge to turn the calendar page. 

Do not start fresh. 

There is no “new you” for 2012, 

there is just the old one,

scuffed up and weather-worn 

and shining with God’s light. 

 

Shine Through the Darkness

I preached this sermon at St. Lydia's on Sunday, December 18, as a part of our exploration of the Gospel of John.  The text is John 1:5: "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it."  You can read the surrounding text here.

 

 

Last night I was invited over to a friend’s place to have some spiced cider and homemade chex mix, and to help decorate their Christmas tree.  As I was walking in the door, there was this scuffling and scrambling that was happening as one of the ladies of the house hurried to unplug the Christmas tree lights before I saw them. 

 

She was convinced that the lights needed to be turned on last, as a sort of grand finale. And so after hanging all of the ornaments and placing all of the presents, the cord was plugged in and the lights went on and the tree was complete. 

 

This season seems to beckon us to fill our lives with sparkle and shine: at home we twine twinkling lights around the Christmas tree and at church we light candles one by one.  We are not the only culture who has felt this yearning to light lights as the days grow shorter and the nights longer.  To find ways to remind ourselves that though these winter days are dark, the light will come again. 

The tradition of the Advent wreath, an evergreen wreath with four candles, grew up out of a variety of pagan traditions, all associated with the coming of winter.  Germanic peoples lit wreaths adorned with candles in the dead of winter, to remind themselves that lighter days would eventually come.  And Scandinavians placed lit candles on a wagon wheel that hung from the ceiling.  The wheel was a symbol of time.  They lit the candles and offered prayers, asking the God of light to turn the wheel of the earth back toward the sun. 

 

Behind these winter rituals is a lurking question:

What if.

What if winter never ends. 

What if the sun never returns to us. 

What if our lives are claimed, not by light, but by darkness.

 

The forced cheer of this season so often speaks of a primal, underlying fear. 

A nagging uncertainty that we may be alone in all of this. 

What if. 

What if the darkness doesn’t overcome the light?

 

 

 

 

Way back in the Fall, we read the first chapter of Genesis.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

A passage that we hear echoed in John’s prologue.

The world began in darkness and chaos – 

a formless void. 

And then God spoke, and there was light. 

A spark of something the world had never seen before:

light, and life. 

God’s very self – piercing a hole in the darkness. 

 

But though the darkness did not overcome the light…

the light also did not overcome the darkness. 

In God’s creation, the darkness is not vanquished, 

but kept at bay. 

Relegated to the night sky, 

the darkness is engaged in this cyclical dance 

with the sun and the moon. 

In God’s creation, 

the darkness still has its place. 

 

I would imagine that darkness has a place in your life. 

That in addition to the many gifts and blessings you can count, 

there are dark places. 

Places where the light does not seem to reach. 

 

I know that darkness has a place in this world. 

That in addition to the many joyful and grace-filled places 

across the face of the earth,

there are corners where the light does not seem to reach. 

 

The truth is, we are surrounded by darkness.  

The truth is that it is everywhere, 

at every turn. 

We will always have darkness to contend with. 

God did not have vanquish it at the beginning of creation, 

but instead, pierced it through.  With light. 

And where there is light, there is a path. 

 

Part of my own work lately 

has been to hear this verse not as a statement, 

but as a promise. 

A promise that God makes to me and to all of us:

 

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it.
 

I promise. 

I promise that though the darkness is thick and dense,

it will not swallow you. 

I promise. 

That though the days are short and bitter,

the earth will turn, 

and the light will come again. 

 

I promise, 

that death will not win, 

and that you will walk in the light. 

 

 

It is a promise that vanquishes our fear. 

That isolates that lurking question, 

what if,

and pierces it through. 

We are not alone. 

There is a light to guide us. 

And the darkness shall not overcome it. 

LIfe in Technicolor

I preached this sermon on Sunday, December 11 at St. Lydia's as part of our exploration of the Gospel of John.  The text is John 1:3b-4; read it here.

 

As a small child growing up in a small town, I spent a lot of time at our public library. Russell Library, it was called.  I have a vivid memory of statue that stood out in front: is was a metal arch with steps, painted like a rainbow, placed there for children to clamber up and down. 

 

The library had an extensive children’s section with a carpeted floor for story time, and colorful displays with the latest chapter books. It also had a very small viewing room,  located up a set of stairs, where, every once in a while, a film was shown. 

 

One Sunday afternoon, my mother took me to see “The Wizard of Oz.”  I must have been five or six at the time -- it would be about a year until my family purchased a VCR. So looking back on it, I don’ think I had even seen a movie in black and white. As a child of the ’80’s, I had only watched movies in the theatre and on TV, and all of them were in color. 

 

I was so surprised by the lack of color on the screen! What a drab, drear world Dorothy lived in -- all shades of sepia, as if it had been washed and hung out to dry again and again, faded from use. 

 

And then came the moment when, after being shaken and rattled by the winds of a tornado that carried her a long way from home, Dorothy opens the door of her muted gray house, and finds a world that is busting with color, vibrant and florid with a yellow road and red poppies and a blue checkered dress. 

 

She had found a land over the rainbow. 

 

 

While Dorothy moved from black-and-white to color, 

With Christ, we move from darkness to light.  

 

For the writer of the fourth gospel, our lives are as veritably altered by Christ’s advent as Dorothy’s is when she walks out her front door into a world of technicolor.

 

Jesus brings light to a world that has only known darkness. 

He brings life to a world that has only know death. 

He is poppy red and brick yellow and checkered blue 

to those who have known nothing but muted shades of sepia. 

 

As we move through John’s gospel, we’ll discover the layers that slowly accrue on these two words: “light,” and “life.” Character after character in this gospel stumble into Jesus’ technicolor world, yet are too stunned and bewildered to accept what they see. If you live your life in black and white, you have no vocabulary for colors. No word for “aquamarine” or “magenta.” And so the man born blind sees the truth of who Jesus is, while the Pharisees simply can not accept it. They have never seen the color yellow before, and so they simply go on believing that the brick road in front of them is grey. 

 

What Jesus brings to the world is something that we have never seen before. 

If we thought that we were living, we were wrong. 

Our lives were but a dim shadow of the true life that he offers,

The light we once perceived is diluted and indirect in comparison to his light. 

 

Scholar Sandra M. Schneiders writes that, for John, it is our disbelief that keeps us from accepting this new, kaleidoscopic reality that Jesus opens before us. She writes, “Belief is a fundamental openness of heart, the basic readiness to see and hear what is really there, the fidelity to one’s experience no matter how frightening or costly it appears to be, the devotion to being that refuses to tamper with reality in order to preserve the situation with which one is familiar.”

 

Unlike Dorothy, an encounter with Christ does not allow for a return to the black-and-white place we once knew to be home. Once our eyes are opened to the prism in front of us, we are never able to go back again to the limited spectrum we used to accept as reality. 

 

Everything is different now. 

 

For John, there’s no half way. 

We cannot click our heels three times 

and go back to the place where it all began.

 

The gospel is fundamentally disruptive.  

It tears our house from its foundation, 

turning us every which way 

as we careen through the sky, 

and drops us with a thud 

in a place is vibrant and new. 

 

Filled with light and life. 

 

 

Advent is a season of expectation:

The true light is coming into the the world. 

 

It is a light that blinds and disorients us, 

as we step squinting into a strange new world

in technicolor. 

Not right but true

I preached this sermon at St. Lydia's as part of our exploration of the book of John.  The text is John 1:3a-4; read it here. 

 

If you were to travel all the way to the Upper West Side, and ring my buzzer, and come into my apartment, you would learn quite a bit about me. 

 

You would learn, for instance, that I like to keep things looking nice and neat on the outside, but that the closets and drawers are a complete jumble on the inside.  A quick nose through my book shelves would tell you a great deal about me and my various interests and pursuits.  And if you asked, you might discover that a great many of the objects that I own have a history.  Almost everything in my apartment used to belong to someone else, often someone who meant a great deal to me. 

 

On my desk, there’s a pencil sharpener that used to belong to my mother.  It’s a bright shade of blue, round, and short and squat, and as a child, I remember fitting it into the palm of my hand, and delighting in screwing the top off to empty out all the shavings. 

 

The dishes I use are painted with pink raspberries.  They once stood in a wooden cabinet in my Grandmother Dorothy’s breakfast nook.  They evoke a memory of sleepy mornings at her house in Memphis.  Before the rest of the house had quite woken up, I would find a moment of solitude as I hunched over my breakfast cereal, shoveling it into my mouth, as I devoured a chapter book. 

 

I keep my jewelry in an old, wooden cigar box that belonged to my grandfather.  The inside is lined with faded, peeling paper and smells slightly of wood shavings.  Lifting the lid, I think suddenly of his basement in Memphis, which was filled with all sorts of things that were appealing yet forbidden to a curious eight-year-old.

 

In this way, the objects in my apartment are symbols. 

Symbols of the people and the time they once belonged to, 

each spring-loaded with memory and association. 

 

Perhaps there are objects like this in your life. 

Objects that mean more than their purpose. 

Objects that you’ve carried with you, 

packing them carefully each time you move. 

Their significance is much deeper than might first be apparent. 

 

 

John’s gospel is not much different.

Where the other three Gospel texts are full of stories, 

John’s gospel is full of symbols.  

Like my apartment with all the things in it,

John is filled to the brim with words that are filled with meaning:

that mean much more than might be first apparent. 

 

As we read the Gospel in the coming months, we’ll set each symbol out on this table, one by one. 

 

Light. 

Darkness.

Blindness and Sight.

Bread of life.

Living water.

 

Each one seems ordinary enough, until we begin to explore it, uncovering the depths of its meaning.  Discover our own connotations, and those of John’s audience.  Set them out and begin to see how the interact with one another, how they are juxtaposed, or in relationship. 

 

In this way, John’s gospel begins to build upon itself as the reader explores it.  One commentator writes of the prologue that you can’t begin to understand the beginning of John’s gospel until you’ve read the whole thing.  We can’t understand these first five lines until we have all our symbols lined up on the table, until we know them intimately. 

 

 

But we have to begin somewhere. 

 

 

So tonight we place one symbol on the table.

One word that is central to what John’s doing in these first five verses, 

and the key to unlocking the rest of the book. 

 

The word is logos.

In Greek, it means “word.”

In the beginning, was the word,

and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 

It was in the beginning with God. 

 

If we were Jews living in the second century, this second verse would remind us of something in our own sacred texts: a passage from Proverbs, written in the voice of Wisdom, a feminine presence who tells us she was with God at the creation of the earth. 

 

When God established the heavens, I was there,
   when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
 when he made firm the skies above,
   when he established the fountains of the deep,
 when he assigned to the sea its limit,
   so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
   then I was beside him, like a master worker;
and I was daily his delight,
   rejoicing before him always.

Proverbs 8:22-30

 

 

The writer of John is building on a preexisting Jewish understanding of the word logos.  In the Hebrew scriptures, scholar Brian Blount tells us, “‘logos,’ is the personification of God’s Wisdom, who is both God and yet other than God.  As God’s word, Wisdom, or “logos,” expressed God, just as our words express our thoughts.”

 

And this wisdom, 

this presence with God at the beginning of creation, 

this word of God, 

this voice of God, 

John tells us, 

is Christ. 

 

“This wisdom, this word, takes on flesh and engages us in the world,” Blount writes. 

It is God’s way of dwelling with us. 

 

**

 

The writer of John has a very different goal in mind than the writers of the other three Gospels.  Where they hope to create a record of Jesus’ life and ministry, John makes no such claim. His goal in writing is not to get the story “right,” but to get the story “true.”

 

He doesn’t care for details or accuracy. 

He doesn’t care about the order these stories were originally written in. 

He mixes them up and changes them around 

so that the symbols his working with 

might speak strongly and boldly. 

He writes so that we might believe. 

He sets his symbols out on the table, 

hoping that we might see them, 

ordinary things like bread and water, light and darkess,

and stop for a moment…

 

and look. 

Discover the meaning hidden in plain sight:

that God made the world with Christ at her side, 

and like thought into breath into word, 

erupted into the world to pitch her tent among us, 

to live in our midst. 

 

 We’ll learn later in the Gospel that seeing is not understanding. 

That despite God’s presence among us, 

we seem so often to look straight at God, and yet not see. 

The hope of this Gospel

is to lay the symbols on the table, 

and coax us into exploring a world of meaning and significance,

that points us not toward reality, 

but toward the truth.

 

Never Yours in the First Place

I preached this sermon at St. Lydia's on Sunday, November 20, 2011.  The text is 2 Corinthians 9:6-15; read it here.

 

I’m the sort of person who’s fairly judicious, I think, about what I repost on facebook.  I’d like to think that, somewhere in the world, there’s someone who relies on me to post only the highest quality videos of cats falling into bathtubs, or whatever the case may be.

 

There’s a really wonderful piece of writing that I lifted from someone a few days ago and posted.  It’s by an anonymous someone, writing in the voice of Cookie Monster, explaining in very clear Cookie Monster terms, exactly what the Occupy Wall Street Movement is all about.  And it's very funny.

 

I watched as this link got “shared” all over the place, and thought to myself that it really is a marvelously egalitarian world that we’re living in these days, where, if you are clever enough, or do something well enough (or maybe do something stupid enough) and put it out there, it will get spread around.

 

 

There’s a certain joy in sharing these little gems on the web.

You pass something on because it is so wonderful

that all you want to do is share it.

And when you share it,

you don’t lose a thing,

because it was never yours in the first place.

 

This is exactly the model for giving

that Paul is lifting up in his letter

to the community in Corinth.

 

First, we give joyfully,

because something is so wonderful

that we feel compelled to share.

 

Second,

we find that our giving

actually enriches us –

that in giving away, we’re not losing anything,

but gaining.

 

Third,

we can give freely,

because everything that we give,

food and possessions and money –

it never belonged to us in the first place.

It’s all a gift from God.

As easy and as delightful to share as something lovely,

or challenging

or wondrous

or silly

that we happened across on the internet.

 

 

Everyone is talking about the economy these days.

Everyone is talking about the recession.

Everyone is talking about how there’s not enough.

Not enough food to feed the world,

not enough jobs to employ those in our country.

 

I read Paul’s words in this letter,

God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance,

and think, “really?”

“Does God really provide us with every blessing in abundance?”

 

Does God provide for the family of four,

both parents unemployed for over a year now?

Does God provide for the man on the street

I passed just this morning?

Does God provide for the elderly woman,

living on only a pension?

For the millions who live in poverty around the world?

For the millions who go hungry or thirst around the world?

Does God provide for them?

 

There are many who do not have enough in this season.

But the hunger of the world

does not point to God’s inability to provide us with all that we need,

but to our own inability to share all that God has given.

 

God’s gift is vast.

Rich, nourishing earth to plant and to harvest,

trees that bear fruit,

oceans teeming with fish,

and great expanses of wilderness:

enough world

to feed the world

if we are both moderate and generous,

trusting that there is enough for everyone.

 

 

Charles Eisenstein, an author and economist who has been active

in the Occupy Wall Street movement these last few months,

speaks convincingly of the difference between a

money economy,

in which more for you is less for me,

and an economy of love,

in which more for you is more for me too,

 

God’s economy is an economy of love.

It’s the youtube video gone viral.

It’s the knowledge that it all belongs to everyone,

and that to share is not to lose,

but to gain.

 

 

One of the things we do here at St. Lydia’s

is work together.

We work together,

and we invite everyone into that work,

setting up before worship and tearing down afterward,

not just because many hands make the job go faster,

but because we know that work is a blessing.

 

Does that sound backward?

 

Work is something that we think we’re supposed to try to avoid, right?  The wealthy hire other people to do it for them, children balk at the idea of doing their chores.

But in God’s economy,

work is not a burden

but an invitation:

to use your mind and your body

to be part of a community, a body of people,

creating something together.

It is a blessing: an opportunity to be human.

A chance to live.

 

Giving is the same.

Giving is an invitation to share what we are and what we have

with the whole world.

An invitation to be part of binding what is broken together

and healing what has been wounded.

An invitation to unburden ourselves of

the illusion that any of this is ours,

and to turn away from our bank accounts and our belongings,

and toward one another;

toward God.

To give is a blessing: an opportunity to be human.

A chance to live, and find that we can feed the whole world.

What. Just. Happened?

I preached this sermon at St. Lydia's on Sunday, November 13, a week after our community's first baptism.  The text is Paul's letter to the Ephesians, chapter 4, verses 1-7.  Read it here. 

 

 

So here we are, still dripping with the waters of baptism. 

And a question hangs in the air:

What 

Just 

Happened?

 

What was that?

 

As it turns out, we are not the only ones who have asked these questions.  The folks in Ephesus were asking them too, which is why they received this letter, its writer instructing them in all the ways of this mysterious, post baptismal, “new life.”  This new body that we are now somehow incorporated into.  But what does that mean?  And how do we live into it?

 

As Rachel put it last week, 

How do we live on the other side of the door?

 

 

This passage throws out all kinds of phrases that make my ears prick up, because they are so, so lovely, and present such an enchanting vision for who we might be as Christians, and as a Church.

 

At they same time, they are daunting.  The standards seem really high, and they make me feel destined to fail.  Are we really expected to be able to live up to these lofty goals for our new life? 

No.  I don’t think we are. 

 

I think that, rather than living up to them, 

we are asked to live into them. 

 

In fact, the writer of this letter uses just slightly different language.  He instructs us to “grow into” them.   In verse 15 he writes, “we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.”

 

We must grow up into him. 

It’s a strange image – the church, the body of Christ, growing in maturity and in stature to meet the head, which is already mature. 

 

Just like a child, we’re growing into our new role, 

growing into our new lives. 

 

 

In the letter to the Galatians, Paul talks about those who have been baptized as “putting on Christ,” as if Christ is a new set of baptismal garments.  In this letter, it seems as if those baptismal garments are just a bit too big for us: clothes that we’ve been given to grow into. 

 

Still wet from the water, we put them on, and they drag a bit on the floor behind us.  But this new life is a life of growth, one that we’re constantly maturing into. 

 

How do we live on the other side of the door?

It’s not about performance and not about perfection. 

But it sure is about growth. 

 

 

It’s also about hope. 

There is one body and one Spirit,

the letter-writer inscribes,

just as you were called to the one hope of your calling.

 

It turns out that God has hopes. 

Hopes for each of us, 

that manifest themselves in a call on our lives. 

But unlike the hopes of those around us, 

this is not a hope that we can let down, 

but a hope that will only continue to blossom. 

A hope that will live and breathe and grow

just as surely as we do, 

as we continue to grow up 

into this new life. 

 

So, we’re standing here dripping. 

 

What just happened?

 

I invite you to reflect for a moment in silence on the text we read, the words I shared, and the experience of the last few weeks.  If they spark a story, share it, briefly. 

Word for the Baptized

I preached this sermon on Sunday, November 6 at St. Lydia's.  That night, we celebrated our first baptism as a community.  After hearing Rachel's testimony, congregants read fragments from the first letter of Peter, which appear in italics below.  

 

*

 

A reading from the first letter of Peter:

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,

To the exiles of the Dispersion, may grace and peace be yours in abundance. 

 

In the early days, 

they wrote letters. 

 

They wrote letters to one another 

and waited months to receive them, 

to hear word from the leaders of the other communities that were springing up,

the other communities of people who were following Christ. 

 

The letters were exhortations.

In the letters, they wrote about how everything was different now, 

and what that meant for how they should live. 

 

Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart. You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God. 

 

We can press our ears to the wall, 

listen back through the centuries 

to the things they had to say to one another. 

The letter we hear tonight, 

was written by someone 

whose name has been lost. 

He writes under the name of Peter, 

because his words are not just for those who he’s writing to, 

but for all of us. 

For his church, and for our church, in every age. 

 

Rid yourselves, therefore, of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

 

They gathered in upper rooms like this one, 

to read the letters aloud. 

To hear, once more, a story 

that confused and bewildered them, 

and at the same time, 

filled them with an wild, widening hope 

they could not begin to understand. 

 

They gathered because they had caught a glimpse, 

of something that they felt they needed. 

A light in the darkness. 

A way in the waters. 

A drink in the desert. 

A spring in the wilderness. 

 

A door that, one day, swung open.  

 

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
 Once you were no people,
   but now you are God’s people;
once you had not received mercy,
   but now you have received mercy.

 

These letters are our inheritance.

Passages that have been passed down from hand to hand, 

They were read again and again. 

They were copied by hand, 

on scraps or in books. 

 

A word. 

A phrase. 

A fragment, 

a shard, 

of a story, 

of a memory, 

of something someone said once, 

long ago.  

so that we might listen, 

so that we might hear, 

So that we might recognize the voice of God. 

 

Finally, all of you, have unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil or abuse for abuse; but, on the contrary, repay with a blessing.

Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an account of the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence.

 

And we call it holy. 

Sacred scripture. 

Read it and turn it over. 

Feel the ancient, worn words in our mouths. 

 

Startle as they chip away at our hearts of stone, 

and reveal what lies beneath:

a living, beating, heart of flesh. 

 

The word is a chisel that breaks us open. 

 

Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins. Be hospitable to one another without complaining. Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received. Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God. 

 

The word is a gift:

a gift for all of those who have walked to the edge of the water. 

For all who have been drawn down into its depths 

and emerged gasping on the shore. 

For all who stand on the banks and wait, or wonder. 

 

The word is a promise:

a promise that this wild, widening hope 

will confuse the chaos 

into an upside down order 

in which the last shall be first, and the first shall be last.  

 

Through Silvanus, whom I consider a faithful brother, I have written this short letter to encourage you, and to testify that this is the true grace of God. Stand fast in it. Your sister church in Babylon, chosen together with you, sends you greetings; and so does my son Mark. Greet one another with a kiss of love.

Peace to all of you who are in Christ.