“What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you?” The Gospel of John, or the Fourth Gospel, as many scholars call it, is a Gospel of Signs. In this gospel, the story of Jesus is structured around seven “signs,” miracles that are meant to clarify and concretely reveal Jesus’ identity to everyone who might hear or read this account. In this sixth chapter, which we began hearing last week, we encountered one of those miraculous signs. We watched Jesus’ enabling the feeding of the crowds who were following him. The other signs in the gospel story, most of which we hear about in our three-year lectionary, include the wedding at Cana, where Jesus’ turning water into wine is the first sign, the healing of the royal official’s son in Capernaum, the healing of a paralytic at the pool of Bethzatha, Jesus’ walking on water, which we also heard about last week, the healing of the man born blind, and the raising of Lazarus.
In the gospel, these seven signs reveal Jesus’ power over disease, sickness, and death. They show that Jesus brings wholeness to what is broken, that he is master of the created world, and that he rules over a realm that is greater than any earthly realm. What is more important, these miracles are powerful symbols. They show us something about God through elements of our lives with which we are already familiar, through healing, and through water, food, and wine. For those with eyes to see, these signs reveal God’s glory and deepen trust in the Word made flesh, God’s self-revelation in Jesus.
Is it surprising then that the miracles in the Fourth Gospel did not often lead the people who witnessed them to deeper faith in Jesus? More often than not, the signs caused confusion, division, and even hostility among those who witnessed them, including Jesus’ very own disciples. Lest we become judgmental or think ourselves superior to the people who interacted with Jesus in the flesh, remember that the people who misunderstood Jesus’ signs were not stupid, hard-hearted, or evil. Rather, those who witnessed Jesus’ signs missed their meaning, because what they were seeing in Jesus was completely beyond anything they had encountered before. Scripture and the traditions that ordered their lives were also no help in explaining what they were seeing.
The community for whom John was writing in the late 90’s AD may also have been confused as to Jesus’ true identity. We believe that the people for whom this gospel was written were mostly Jewish followers of Jesus who now found themselves in conflict with the wider Jewish community and its leaders. They were struggling to understand the Jesus to whom they had committed themselves and to define themselves as a community. The miraculous signs of this gospel were meant to fill out their understanding of Jesus, bolster their faith in him, and reassure them that they had made the right choice in responding to Jesus’ call. At the end of chapter 20, the writer reminds the hearers that, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”
Are we also confused by the signs in the Fourth Gospel? If we’re honest, we might admit that we too find it hard to comprehend Jesus’ true identity. Week by week, we say, in the words of the Nicene Creed, “[T]rue God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father…. By the power of the Holy Spirit, he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary and was made man.” What are we saying when we say that? More to the point, is our faith only in a past event? Do we also seek signs? Can we see signs of God at work in the world around us now? Where might we look for signs that will clarify Jesus’ identity and reveal God’s glory for us? Ultimately, we must learn from our own experience Who Jesus is. Even so, I’d like to suggest that the experiences of two people might help open our eyes to see the signs of God at work more clearly.
The first person is Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, who lived from 1491 to 1556. Born into a Basque family, Iñigo, as he was known, began his adult life as a soldier. However, he was seriously wounded in the Battle of Pamplona in 1521. While he was recovering, he underwent a spiritual conversion and resolved to join a Benedictine order. In 1534, in the wake of the stirring of the Protestant Reformation, he resolved to found his own order, the Jesuits, which would be dedicated to evangelism, education, and prayer. During his earlier convalescence, Ignatius had read De Vita Christi, by Ludolph of Saxony, a commentary on the life of Jesus that encourages us to place ourselves in the scene of the Gospel story. From this method of “simple contemplation,” Ignatius developed his Spiritual Exercises, a set of meditations, prayers, and other mental exercises on the life of Jesus, designed to be carried out over a period of 28–30 days.
Among the most influential prayer practices in the history of the church, the Spiritual Exercises are regularly used by those who wish to deepen their relationship with Jesus. Right here in Ohio, at the Jesuit Spiritual Center in Milford, you can undertake weekend, week long, or even thirty day Ignatian retreats. What is more important, as those of you who have experienced even brief Ignatian prayer can testify, immersing yourself into a gospel scene, experiencing the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touches of the scene, seeing Jesus at work, looking into his eyes, and conversing with him, enable us to open our hearts to him, to know him in our hearts, and not just in our heads, and to experience him as friend and brother. Dare I say that we may even come to love Jesus more deeply and to discern the love he has for us? If nothing else, when the “eyes of our hearts” are opened, we may also be able to begin sharing with others the love that we experience in Jesus’ presence.
Jeanne Bishop also came to see more clearly the signs of Jesus’ presence in her life. In time, she even was moved to act on what she saw. The day before Palm Sunday in 1990, Bishop’s twenty-five year old sister, Nancy, Nancy’s husband Richard, and their unborn child were shot to death by sixteen-year old David Biro, who had broken into their home in a Chicago suburb. David was convicted and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Bishop later said, “When he got that sentence, I was glad. It meant I never had to think about the murderer again. I could leave him behind, go forward in my life thinking only of Nancy and Richard and how to honor their lives with my own.” Bishop forgave her sister’s murderer, but, for more than a decade, refused to have any contact with him. Even though she was a lawyer and a public defender, she argued vigorously for life sentences without the possibility of parole even for juveniles.
But God would not let Bishop alone. “God changed my heart,” she said, “made me turn and look back, go back to reach out to the killer, to tell him that God loved him, that I forgave him, that he is not alone.” In her moving book, Change of Heart, Bishop describes how she came to the point of being able to visit Biro. She wrote to him and received a surprisingly penitent letter in return. She began visiting him, and little by little, she was able to accept him as a human being in need of and deserving of God’s love. She has since also become an outspoken opponent of the death penalty. Although her family does not agree with her, she also now opposes mandatory life sentences without parole for juveniles. Where are the signs of Jesus’ presence? In the healing and reconciliation that Jeanne Bishop has both experienced and helped to bring about.
Signs of Jesus’ presence, signs that signal who Jesus is, are all around us, if we could but open our eyes to see them. Whenever we turn to God in prayer, and especially when we bring ourselves more directly into Jesus’ presence through practices like Ignatian prayer, we see Jesus more clearly. We experience his love more deeply. More important, when we do the works of mercy, when we become instruments of God’s grace for others, then not only do we ourselves see Jesus, but we also enable others to perceive his presence and to understand his work.
Gracious God, open our eyes to see you and the signs of your presence everywhere we look. Let us be instruments of your peace, and of your grace and mercy.
Showing posts with label Pentecost 10. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pentecost 10. Show all posts
Sunday, August 2, 2015
Monday, August 13, 2012
Manna
“He was gobbling mincemeat, meatbone, bread, cheese, and pork pie, all at once: staring distrustfully while he did so at the mist all round us ….” In the opening sequence of Dickens’s Great Expectations, Pip has brought food to the escaped convict whom he had met by the churchyard. The famished convict wolfed down Pip’s food so quickly that he scarcely knew what he was eating, only stopping to take a hurried swig of the brandy Pip had brought. Have you ever known such hunger? Have you ever been so famished, have you ever gone without food so long that you could eat everything in sight? We see such hunger frequently in nineteenth century novels, especially those of Dickens. Today, many of those who go to the Outreach Center, come to the Lutheran Social Services food giveaway, or join us at Loaves and Fishes know real hunger. And in some parts of the world, hunger is still a daily fact of life. Most of us have never experienced that kind of hunger. We may diet, we miss a meal, we may even fast intentionally, but we can be pretty sure the next meal is out there when we’re ready for it. How about spiritual hunger? Have you ever felt spiritually hungry? Have you ever felt such a deep yearning for God’s presence that you’re ready to try anything? Have you seen that yearning in anyone else? Some may disagree with me, but I think that spiritual hunger, a desire for closeness with God, runs deep within our culture, among those who are separated from family, among those who face crises in their lives, even among those who have been abused by the church, and perhaps especially among those who claim to be “spiritual but not religious.”
So, here’s the good news right up front: God is ready to meet all our hungers, both physical and spiritual! The message that God pays attention to our needs and feeds us generously couldn’t be clearer in the Scripture lessons you’ve just been fed with. Far from the cooking pots of Egypt, the Israelites were hungry and restless. Although God had already demonstrated God’s care for them by providing abundant water in the Sinai desert, the people complained again to Moses. “I have heard the complaining of the Israelites,” God responded, raining down quail in the evening and causing manna to form in the morning. Were the quail and the manna natural phenomena, as some have suggested? So what? The message is still clear: God provides. God meets our needs. And what should be our response? Accept God’s gifts gratefully. If the Exodus lesson doesn’t convince you the psalm reiterates the message: “So they ate and were well filled, for he gave them what they craved.”
Fast forward to the Gospel of John. The scene picks up where last week’s action left off. Remember that the central question in John is always, “Who is Jesus?” The answer is always the same, the Word made flesh, but the gospel writer uses many different images, including images from Scripture, to help the hearers of the gospel grasp the reality of Jesus’ identity. “I am like manna,” Jesus proclaims. “Just as God fed the Israelites spiritual food in the wilderness, so the Father has sent me. I can give you physical food – I just did – but that’s not who I am. I’m not a political messiah, and I’m not someone whose purpose is to fill your stomachs. The primary reason I am here is to give you spiritual food, to satisfy your spiritual hunger, just as God gave the Israelites manna, and I gave you bread. Now I give you spiritual bread, which you need even more than physical bread.”
And here’s the real miracle: we continue to receive that spiritual bread. We too receive the manna that God provided the Israelites and that Jesus provided to the crowd. As individuals, we receive that manna Sunday by Sunday, every time we come to the holy table and receive Jesus’ Body and Blood. And what a miraculous gift this is! For Christ’s Body and Blood become part of our bodies uniting us more closely with Jesus and continuing the process of transformation into his likeness. As Martin Luther reminded us, “When we eat Christ’s flesh physically and spiritually the food is so powerful that it transforms us into itself.” “When we eat him,” spiritual writer Lisa Dahill explains, “his body transforms us, via this process of divine metabolism, into his own life in, with, and under ours. Deep in the flesh, we taste and receive and experience the indwelling divine life of Jesus Christ himself….”1 As a parish too we receive God’s manna: as we come together and share the many gifts that God has given each of us. Just as God continues to care for us and feed us spiritually, God continues to endow us with gift upon gift. Perhaps, as we share our Common Ministry exercise, we will be able to see more clearly all the manna that God has lavished upon us as a parish!
Are there strings attached to all these gifts from God? You bet there are! At the very least, God expected the Israelites to understand the source of the quail and the manna: “You shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.” Later on, as the Israelites circled the Sinai desert and received the law, God stated God’s expectations clearly: they were to keep God’s covenant with them by following God’s law. In John’s gospel, Jesus’ gift of himself is not limited to the Jews. Indeed, Jesus reminds his hearers, “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” But, whoever receives the bread from heaven still has a charge: to “work” for the food that endures for eternal life” and, more important, to “believe in him whom [God] has sent.”
If we are truly Jesus’ disciples, then the same obligations fall on us: to know that God is the source of all our gifts, physical and spiritual, personal and corporate, and to continue to deepen our relationship with Jesus and our reliance on him in all aspects of our lives. But there is more. In allowing ourselves to be baptized, we have become part of the Body of Christ, the continuing presence of Christ on earth. If we have read Scripture carefully, then we know that, as Christ’s Body, we also must share God’s gifts with others. The manna that God has given us, the skills and competencies we own, the resources that we possess, even the spiritual gifts that we can point to, have all been given to us for a purpose. Our spiritual needs are met, we are given gifts, the writer of the letter to the Ephesians reminds us, “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God….”
What does this mean in real life? To begin with, using God’s gifts for the sake of others means helping to meet people’s physical hunger. You’ve already heard about the need of the Outreach Center for non-perishable food, and I hope you have contributed and will contribute to meeting that need. You know about Loaves and Fishes: we always need volunteers and contributions to that meal. But I think we can go a step further. Right now, one person from this parish has largely taken responsibility for running Loaves and Fishes. I’d like to see it be a team effort on the part of this parish, one in which many of us together offer our hospitality. And what about meeting the need for sustainable food sources in another part of the world? Could we have a mission team to mobilize our gifts and plan for all these efforts?
What’s more important, Jesus charged us with helping to meet the spiritual hunger of the world around us. I believe this means intentionally committing ourselves to helping St. Peter’s become a more vital, more active parish. One important way of addressing spiritual hunger is supporting adult formation, i.e., continuing to grow in our own understanding of the faith. Another way is having vital, attractive worship. Another way is to pray for two additional families to join us this year. And yet another way is to take seriously our responsibility for the growing children that God has already given us.
How to begin doing all this? I’d like to suggest some other teams that can help revitalize St. Peter’s. We can build on our Common Ministry effort, which will continue this year. I’d like to see us add two more people to the Common Ministry team. In addition, I also suggest that we create teams committed to working on youth ministry, worship, and financial solvency. With a team for mission, that’s four teams in all. Among other things, this coming week during my retreat I will be praying about who among you might be able and willing to serve on such teams. And I also ask your prayers this week, that God will enlighten all of us as to how we might better share the richness of God’s gifts with others.
God hears our complaints and our cries for food. If we let him, Jesus continues to be manna for us, continues to make God’s love manifest to us. As his Body, can we follow in his footsteps and nourish the world around us? Please join me in this prayer, and please continue to pray it all this week, “O God, eternal goodness, immeasurable love, you place your gifts before us; we eat and are satisfied. Fill us and this world in all its need with the life that comes only from you, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.”2
1. Lisa E. Dahill, Truly Present (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 2005), 86.
2. Sundays and Seasons (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 2011), 245.
So, here’s the good news right up front: God is ready to meet all our hungers, both physical and spiritual! The message that God pays attention to our needs and feeds us generously couldn’t be clearer in the Scripture lessons you’ve just been fed with. Far from the cooking pots of Egypt, the Israelites were hungry and restless. Although God had already demonstrated God’s care for them by providing abundant water in the Sinai desert, the people complained again to Moses. “I have heard the complaining of the Israelites,” God responded, raining down quail in the evening and causing manna to form in the morning. Were the quail and the manna natural phenomena, as some have suggested? So what? The message is still clear: God provides. God meets our needs. And what should be our response? Accept God’s gifts gratefully. If the Exodus lesson doesn’t convince you the psalm reiterates the message: “So they ate and were well filled, for he gave them what they craved.”
Fast forward to the Gospel of John. The scene picks up where last week’s action left off. Remember that the central question in John is always, “Who is Jesus?” The answer is always the same, the Word made flesh, but the gospel writer uses many different images, including images from Scripture, to help the hearers of the gospel grasp the reality of Jesus’ identity. “I am like manna,” Jesus proclaims. “Just as God fed the Israelites spiritual food in the wilderness, so the Father has sent me. I can give you physical food – I just did – but that’s not who I am. I’m not a political messiah, and I’m not someone whose purpose is to fill your stomachs. The primary reason I am here is to give you spiritual food, to satisfy your spiritual hunger, just as God gave the Israelites manna, and I gave you bread. Now I give you spiritual bread, which you need even more than physical bread.”
And here’s the real miracle: we continue to receive that spiritual bread. We too receive the manna that God provided the Israelites and that Jesus provided to the crowd. As individuals, we receive that manna Sunday by Sunday, every time we come to the holy table and receive Jesus’ Body and Blood. And what a miraculous gift this is! For Christ’s Body and Blood become part of our bodies uniting us more closely with Jesus and continuing the process of transformation into his likeness. As Martin Luther reminded us, “When we eat Christ’s flesh physically and spiritually the food is so powerful that it transforms us into itself.” “When we eat him,” spiritual writer Lisa Dahill explains, “his body transforms us, via this process of divine metabolism, into his own life in, with, and under ours. Deep in the flesh, we taste and receive and experience the indwelling divine life of Jesus Christ himself….”1 As a parish too we receive God’s manna: as we come together and share the many gifts that God has given each of us. Just as God continues to care for us and feed us spiritually, God continues to endow us with gift upon gift. Perhaps, as we share our Common Ministry exercise, we will be able to see more clearly all the manna that God has lavished upon us as a parish!
Are there strings attached to all these gifts from God? You bet there are! At the very least, God expected the Israelites to understand the source of the quail and the manna: “You shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.” Later on, as the Israelites circled the Sinai desert and received the law, God stated God’s expectations clearly: they were to keep God’s covenant with them by following God’s law. In John’s gospel, Jesus’ gift of himself is not limited to the Jews. Indeed, Jesus reminds his hearers, “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” But, whoever receives the bread from heaven still has a charge: to “work” for the food that endures for eternal life” and, more important, to “believe in him whom [God] has sent.”
If we are truly Jesus’ disciples, then the same obligations fall on us: to know that God is the source of all our gifts, physical and spiritual, personal and corporate, and to continue to deepen our relationship with Jesus and our reliance on him in all aspects of our lives. But there is more. In allowing ourselves to be baptized, we have become part of the Body of Christ, the continuing presence of Christ on earth. If we have read Scripture carefully, then we know that, as Christ’s Body, we also must share God’s gifts with others. The manna that God has given us, the skills and competencies we own, the resources that we possess, even the spiritual gifts that we can point to, have all been given to us for a purpose. Our spiritual needs are met, we are given gifts, the writer of the letter to the Ephesians reminds us, “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God….”
What does this mean in real life? To begin with, using God’s gifts for the sake of others means helping to meet people’s physical hunger. You’ve already heard about the need of the Outreach Center for non-perishable food, and I hope you have contributed and will contribute to meeting that need. You know about Loaves and Fishes: we always need volunteers and contributions to that meal. But I think we can go a step further. Right now, one person from this parish has largely taken responsibility for running Loaves and Fishes. I’d like to see it be a team effort on the part of this parish, one in which many of us together offer our hospitality. And what about meeting the need for sustainable food sources in another part of the world? Could we have a mission team to mobilize our gifts and plan for all these efforts?
What’s more important, Jesus charged us with helping to meet the spiritual hunger of the world around us. I believe this means intentionally committing ourselves to helping St. Peter’s become a more vital, more active parish. One important way of addressing spiritual hunger is supporting adult formation, i.e., continuing to grow in our own understanding of the faith. Another way is having vital, attractive worship. Another way is to pray for two additional families to join us this year. And yet another way is to take seriously our responsibility for the growing children that God has already given us.
How to begin doing all this? I’d like to suggest some other teams that can help revitalize St. Peter’s. We can build on our Common Ministry effort, which will continue this year. I’d like to see us add two more people to the Common Ministry team. In addition, I also suggest that we create teams committed to working on youth ministry, worship, and financial solvency. With a team for mission, that’s four teams in all. Among other things, this coming week during my retreat I will be praying about who among you might be able and willing to serve on such teams. And I also ask your prayers this week, that God will enlighten all of us as to how we might better share the richness of God’s gifts with others.
God hears our complaints and our cries for food. If we let him, Jesus continues to be manna for us, continues to make God’s love manifest to us. As his Body, can we follow in his footsteps and nourish the world around us? Please join me in this prayer, and please continue to pray it all this week, “O God, eternal goodness, immeasurable love, you place your gifts before us; we eat and are satisfied. Fill us and this world in all its need with the life that comes only from you, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.”2
1. Lisa E. Dahill, Truly Present (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 2005), 86.
2. Sundays and Seasons (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 2011), 245.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
You Are the Messiah
How did he know? When Jesus asked his friends, “But who do you say that I am,” how did Peter come up with the right answer, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God?” Even if Peter was speaking for all the disciples, how did he know? Like other Jews of their day, Peter and the other disciples knew their Scriptures. They knew that the prophets, beginning with Isaiah and running right through Malachi, had been promising for centuries that God would deliver the Jews and would inaugurate a reign of peace and justice. Perhaps they also used their reason: they could see, in the way that Jesus healed people, in the way he argued with the religious leaders, and in the way that he taught, that there was something special about him. And too they had had some personal experiences of their own of Jesus’ power. Hadn’t they taken part in Jesus’ feeding of the great crowd? Hadn’t some of them gone out in a boat with Jesus and seen him walk on water? When Peter tried to do the same thing and began to sink, hadn’t they seen Jesus reach out and save him? And when he got back into the boat, hadn’t they said then, “Truly, you are the Son of God?” So when Jesus finally put the question to them, “But who do you say that I am,” perhaps it wasn’t so surprising that impulsive and quick-witted Peter could put Scripture, reason, and experience together and come up with the right answer.
But I still have a question. When Peter blurted out the right answer, did he really understand what he was saying? Did he really know what it meant to say that Jesus was the mashiach, the christos, God’s Anointed one? And did he really understand what kind of a messiah Jesus really was? Most likely not. Almost immediately, he tried to distance himself from Jesus’ warning that he would die on the Cross. As we know so well, on the eve of Jesus’ crucifixion, Peter denied three times that he even knew Jesus. Only after Jesus’ return to life at Easter and Peter’s acceptance of the Holy Spirit did Peter begin to understand what he had said in his confession, and only then could he begin to witness to others of Jesus’ true identity. No wonder Jesus told the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. Clearly, the disciples had to learn and grow in their understanding a great deal more before they could adequately proclaim that Jesus was the one for whom Israel had been waiting for so long.
Over the centuries since Matthew’s Gospel was written, Christian communities have pondered the meaning and importance of Peter’s confession of faith, and especially of Jesus’ response to it. Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians continue to disagree on their interpretation of Matthew’s rendering of Jesus’ words. Even so, almost all Christian communities agree that Jesus’ initial question, “But who do you say that I am?”, is a question that all of us must answer. “How do you understand who Jesus is?” is the defining question of Christian faith. In the service of Baptism, after the candidates have renounced Satan, the evil powers of this world, and all sinful desires, the very next question is “Do you turn to Jesus and accept him as your Savior?” Even so, the question of Jesus’ identity is one many of us adults shy away from answering – perhaps it’s fortunate that many of you were baptized as infants! For starters, some of us are unsure exactly what a messiah is. Or we may say, “Every Sunday we say the Nicene Creed, and in the daily offices and the Baptismal service we say the Apostles’ Creed.1 It took the creed writers several centuries to work out the creedal statements. Isn’t the question of Jesus’ identity settled for now?” Perhaps so, but do the creedal statements have personal meaning for us? Or perhaps you might think that St. Augustine, or Martin Luther, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, have said all there is to say about who Jesus is. Or you might think that the pictures you’ve had of Jesus most of your life, the cute baby in the “ethereally lighted antiseptic manger,” the gentle teacher with his flowing white robes, the brilliant debater, or the dignified martyr, are sufficient. Really, I learned it all in Sunday School. What more do I need? Or you just might not want any more challenges in your life. Between family and work, personal and health issues, there’s enough challenge in your life. Let Jesus’ identity as the messiah at least be something that doesn’t challenge me! Finally, perhaps we’re afraid that, if we look too closely at Jesus, if we really think about who he was and what kind of a messiah he really was, we might need to change some things in our lives. If Jesus asked you, “But who do you say that I am?”, would you answer “I’m not sure,” because you’d be afraid that Jesus would call you to follow him more closely, perhaps even to follow him all the way to your own Cross?
My friends, the truth is that, just like Peter, we can’t duck the question of Jesus’ identity. If we are serious adult followers of our Lord, if we persist in calling ourselves Christians, i.e., followers of the Christos, God’s Messiah, God’s Anointed One, and if we hope to draw others into the Body of Christ, we must be able to give an answer to Jesus’ question that is more than formulaic words. We cannot hold on to our Sunday school images of Jesus, nor can we deny Jesus’ power to change our lives if we let him. And, like, Peter, we must be willing to let our understanding of who Jesus is change and grow as we continue to follow behind him.
As we continue to confront the question of who Jesus is for us, we acknowledge that any deeper understanding of Jesus’ identity, any greater faith in Jesus is a ultimately a gift of God. Nevertheless, we also know that God uses multiple ways to help us grow and mature in our faith. First, we too can study Scripture more closely. We Episcopalians are not Biblical literalists: we do not believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, we understand that not every Bible story is literally, factually true, and we accept that much of Scripture was written in particular social situations for particular communities. We realize that the church’s and our own interpretations of Scripture may change over the years. Even so, as part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, we continue to acknowledge that Scripture is the Word of God, and that God continues to teach us through serious study of Scripture. Secondly, we can also use our God-given powers of reason. We can study history and theology and learn how others have thought and are thinking about who Jesus is, and how we can most sincerely and effectively follow him. This does not mean that we believe because of what Paul, or Augustine, or Aquinas, or Julian, or Moltmann, or Marcus Borg, or Rowan Williams have said. We believe because God gives us the freedom and the ability to think through questions of faith and identity with our own minds. And third we can learn from the experiences of the saints and from our own experience of Jesus in daily prayer and contemplation. We can continue to let Jesus nourish us with his Body and Blood. While deeper faith is always a gift of God, for us as for Peter, God uses all three means, Scripture, reason, and experience, to show us who Jesus is, to help us grow in our understanding of Jesus and his work, and to empower us to witness to others that God was in Christ, thereby reconciling the world.
What does this mean for our lives here in this Christian community? If faith and knowledge are both necessary aspects of our life as disciples, if we can deepen our understanding of Jesus through study of Scripture, history, and theology, then we too must commit ourselves to continued study, to continued formation as Christians. We are concerned, and rightly so, to provide Christian formation for the children in our midst. But we must also take seriously our own formation as adults. This year, I challenge this community to commit itself to an adult Christian education program. Use the next two weeks to let me or Carolyn Cogar know the ways in which you would especially hope to deepen your faith this year. Then join us after Labor Day as we inaugurate a new phase in our growth together as Christians.
As we leave this place, we will sing, in the words of that grand hymn, that “the Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord.” As you sing those words, pray about how you can know Jesus better. Commit yourself to letting your knowledge of Jesus continue to deepen and mature.
1. I depend on David Leininger, “Who do You Say That I Am?”, Tales for the Pulpit, (Lima, OH: CSS Publishing, 2007), 141-3, for much of this section.
But I still have a question. When Peter blurted out the right answer, did he really understand what he was saying? Did he really know what it meant to say that Jesus was the mashiach, the christos, God’s Anointed one? And did he really understand what kind of a messiah Jesus really was? Most likely not. Almost immediately, he tried to distance himself from Jesus’ warning that he would die on the Cross. As we know so well, on the eve of Jesus’ crucifixion, Peter denied three times that he even knew Jesus. Only after Jesus’ return to life at Easter and Peter’s acceptance of the Holy Spirit did Peter begin to understand what he had said in his confession, and only then could he begin to witness to others of Jesus’ true identity. No wonder Jesus told the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. Clearly, the disciples had to learn and grow in their understanding a great deal more before they could adequately proclaim that Jesus was the one for whom Israel had been waiting for so long.
Over the centuries since Matthew’s Gospel was written, Christian communities have pondered the meaning and importance of Peter’s confession of faith, and especially of Jesus’ response to it. Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians continue to disagree on their interpretation of Matthew’s rendering of Jesus’ words. Even so, almost all Christian communities agree that Jesus’ initial question, “But who do you say that I am?”, is a question that all of us must answer. “How do you understand who Jesus is?” is the defining question of Christian faith. In the service of Baptism, after the candidates have renounced Satan, the evil powers of this world, and all sinful desires, the very next question is “Do you turn to Jesus and accept him as your Savior?” Even so, the question of Jesus’ identity is one many of us adults shy away from answering – perhaps it’s fortunate that many of you were baptized as infants! For starters, some of us are unsure exactly what a messiah is. Or we may say, “Every Sunday we say the Nicene Creed, and in the daily offices and the Baptismal service we say the Apostles’ Creed.1 It took the creed writers several centuries to work out the creedal statements. Isn’t the question of Jesus’ identity settled for now?” Perhaps so, but do the creedal statements have personal meaning for us? Or perhaps you might think that St. Augustine, or Martin Luther, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, have said all there is to say about who Jesus is. Or you might think that the pictures you’ve had of Jesus most of your life, the cute baby in the “ethereally lighted antiseptic manger,” the gentle teacher with his flowing white robes, the brilliant debater, or the dignified martyr, are sufficient. Really, I learned it all in Sunday School. What more do I need? Or you just might not want any more challenges in your life. Between family and work, personal and health issues, there’s enough challenge in your life. Let Jesus’ identity as the messiah at least be something that doesn’t challenge me! Finally, perhaps we’re afraid that, if we look too closely at Jesus, if we really think about who he was and what kind of a messiah he really was, we might need to change some things in our lives. If Jesus asked you, “But who do you say that I am?”, would you answer “I’m not sure,” because you’d be afraid that Jesus would call you to follow him more closely, perhaps even to follow him all the way to your own Cross?
My friends, the truth is that, just like Peter, we can’t duck the question of Jesus’ identity. If we are serious adult followers of our Lord, if we persist in calling ourselves Christians, i.e., followers of the Christos, God’s Messiah, God’s Anointed One, and if we hope to draw others into the Body of Christ, we must be able to give an answer to Jesus’ question that is more than formulaic words. We cannot hold on to our Sunday school images of Jesus, nor can we deny Jesus’ power to change our lives if we let him. And, like, Peter, we must be willing to let our understanding of who Jesus is change and grow as we continue to follow behind him.
As we continue to confront the question of who Jesus is for us, we acknowledge that any deeper understanding of Jesus’ identity, any greater faith in Jesus is a ultimately a gift of God. Nevertheless, we also know that God uses multiple ways to help us grow and mature in our faith. First, we too can study Scripture more closely. We Episcopalians are not Biblical literalists: we do not believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, we understand that not every Bible story is literally, factually true, and we accept that much of Scripture was written in particular social situations for particular communities. We realize that the church’s and our own interpretations of Scripture may change over the years. Even so, as part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, we continue to acknowledge that Scripture is the Word of God, and that God continues to teach us through serious study of Scripture. Secondly, we can also use our God-given powers of reason. We can study history and theology and learn how others have thought and are thinking about who Jesus is, and how we can most sincerely and effectively follow him. This does not mean that we believe because of what Paul, or Augustine, or Aquinas, or Julian, or Moltmann, or Marcus Borg, or Rowan Williams have said. We believe because God gives us the freedom and the ability to think through questions of faith and identity with our own minds. And third we can learn from the experiences of the saints and from our own experience of Jesus in daily prayer and contemplation. We can continue to let Jesus nourish us with his Body and Blood. While deeper faith is always a gift of God, for us as for Peter, God uses all three means, Scripture, reason, and experience, to show us who Jesus is, to help us grow in our understanding of Jesus and his work, and to empower us to witness to others that God was in Christ, thereby reconciling the world.
What does this mean for our lives here in this Christian community? If faith and knowledge are both necessary aspects of our life as disciples, if we can deepen our understanding of Jesus through study of Scripture, history, and theology, then we too must commit ourselves to continued study, to continued formation as Christians. We are concerned, and rightly so, to provide Christian formation for the children in our midst. But we must also take seriously our own formation as adults. This year, I challenge this community to commit itself to an adult Christian education program. Use the next two weeks to let me or Carolyn Cogar know the ways in which you would especially hope to deepen your faith this year. Then join us after Labor Day as we inaugurate a new phase in our growth together as Christians.
As we leave this place, we will sing, in the words of that grand hymn, that “the Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord.” As you sing those words, pray about how you can know Jesus better. Commit yourself to letting your knowledge of Jesus continue to deepen and mature.
1. I depend on David Leininger, “Who do You Say That I Am?”, Tales for the Pulpit, (Lima, OH: CSS Publishing, 2007), 141-3, for much of this section.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Transformed in Christ
How many of you can remember your baptism? You “cradle” Episcopalians were most likely baptized as infants. You’ve probably seen family photos – “See, there you are in your white baptismal gown!” – but you probably don’t have any direct memories of the event. Some of you were baptized as children old enough to speak for yourselves. You most likely do remember what it felt like to say “yes” to God at that moment. And those of us who were baptized as adults can clearly remember what it felt like to have “the holiest head in town.” A little damp, perhaps, but holy nonetheless. For many adults, even today, consenting to baptism involves a difficult and scary decision. Sara Miles, for example, who described the beginning of her spiritual journey in Take this Bread, led the food distribution ministry of St. Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco before she was able to commit herself to Christ and put her head under St. Gregory’s fountain-font. Whatever your age, whether you were baptized as an infant, as we will soon baptize little Jackson Boone, whether you were a school-age child, or whether you were an adult, whether consenting to baptism was an easy decision or a difficult one, your baptism was a transformative event. Baptism changed your life. Baptism changed your life more than anything else that has happened to you: more than graduation, marriage, or the birth of your own children, or even the deaths of your loved ones.
The writer of the letter to the fledgling Christian community at Colossae wanted to make sure that these new Christians remembered how decisively their own lives had been changed through baptism. We don’t know who wrote the letter, although scholars are now reasonably certain that it was not Paul himself. Nor do we know exactly when it was written. We do know that Colossae was a Roman city in the eastern part of the empire, the part now in Turkey. It is likely that both Jewish and Greek communities were presen in Colossae, and that the Colossian Christian community included members of different ethnic groups and social classes. From the letter itself we can surmise that, like many other early Christian communities, tensions existed among those attracted to Jewish or Greek philosophies and also within the community among different ethnicities and classes.
In addressing these various tensions, our letter writer had two aims: one was to give these new Christians a lesson in theology that would strengthen their resistance to other religious perspectives, and the other was to remind them of the kind of life to which Christ called them. We’ve had a chance to hear much of the theology in our Epistle readings for the last three weeks. Now in this lection – our last in this cycle from this letter – we hear again a summary of the writer’s theological perspective. The writer assures the Colossians that through the resurrection of Christ, which Christians now share through baptism and through continuing faith and trust, they have a source of their power to live a Christian life. In baptism we have experienced for ourselves, he tells them, the death and resurrection of Christ, and in that experience we too have been completely transformed. In the ancient church, people were baptized naked in big tanks or pools. As they came out of the water they were clothed in a set of new white clothes, symbolizing their new life in Christ. Our writer draws on that image, of the new clothes, to suggest how deep the transformation is that the Colossians have experienced in baptism: “you have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed according to the image of its creator.”
How does the transformation that Christians experience in baptism translate to a new and different life? Our letter writer answers that question in four different ways: maintain, reject, adopt, and place. First, the Colossian Christians are reminded to maintain a heavenly perspective. Realize that a transformation has occurred in your life. Realize that your allegiance therefore is no longer to this world, with its standards and values, but to Christ and his standards and values. Second, the Colossian Christians are reminded to reject the sins of a previous life, or of a life that conforms to the values of this world. Christians are to reject the sins of selfishness and greed, the sins that make my pleasure, my possessions, the sole focus of my life. They are also to reject all those emotions, speech habits, and ways of relating to each other that are hurtful and dishonest: anger, wrath, slander and abusive language. Third, the Colossian Christians are to adopt the virtues of the new life to which they have been called. They are to recognize that they are all one in the church, that ethnic and social differences no longer define them. They are to focus on others, forgiving others, and treating all with sacrificial love. They are to study Scripture, continuing to grow in their formation as Christians, and they are to be faithful in worship, so that Christ can continue to nurture them from week to week. Finally, as Christians they are to place Christ at the very center of their lives. They are to see Christ as the beginning and the end of their spiritual and temporal lives, and they are to express their continuing gratitude for what Christ has accomplished for them and for the world.
Maintain, reject, adopt, and place. Whoa! That’s a tall order, isn’t it? Jackson, are you sure you want to be baptized? Yes, as a community of those committed to Christ, as a community of those baptized into Christ’s Body, we too are called, just as surely as those Colossians were, to maintaining, rejecting, adopting, and placing – as individuals and as a parish. As individuals – and as a parish community – we are called to pursue lives focused not on our own self-aggrandizement, not on how many barns we can build, possessions we can own, or honors we can garner, but on our obligations to others. We are called to forgo all those destructive behaviors that tear a community apart. And we are called to find ways to minister to those around us, to welcome all into our midst, and to aspire to help our parish community begin to mirror the socio-ethnic diversity of the community around us. Most importantly, we are called to keep Christ at the center of our lives. As individuals we are called to nurture our relationship with him, finding those times in our day, week, month, and year when we may fully pay attention to him and his word for us. As a parish, we are to keep our relationship with Christ at the center of our planning and deliberation as a community. We will try to do just that at our parish visioning event on August 20th and 21st. I had a vision for St. Peter’s while I was at my Shalem residency: let St. Peter’s soar. By keeping Christ at the center of our visioning, and by listening to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, God willing we can share that vision! I invite all of you to come to our visioning event! And to the other opportunities we will have this fall to continue discerning the shape of our life together in Christ.
Some of you may have heard of Coventry Cathedral in England.1 It was completed in 1962 to replace the Gothic cathedral that was bombed in World War II. It’s a magnificent building. I have now seen it twice, first in 1964 when it was still very controversial because it was so contemporary, and again in 2005 when it was, if anything, even more magnificent. Towering over the altar of the present cathedral is a wonderful tapestry of the Risen Christ that draws our eyes ever upward, and that reminds us again and again into whose Body we have been graciously incorporated. When the cathedral was first built it was a parish church for the predominantly Christian community that surrounded it. Now its neighborhood includes people of all ethnic groups and faith communities, many of whom are not Christian. Nevertheless, as members of the Body of the Risen One, Coventry parishioners engage in a ministry of hospitality, reconciliation, and service to all. This is the mission to which all of us at St. Peter’s are called, as the rest of the world longs to meet the Risen One in us.
In a few minutes we will welcome Jackson Alexander Boone into that blessed company of all faithful people. Christ will call him, as he calls his parents, sponsors, and us, to accept the transformation wrought in us in baptism. We have all raised with Christ and changed by the waters of Baptism. Let yourself continue to be renewed and transformed into Christ. The old life in you has died, and you have been born again. You have been clothed with a new self. Embrace God’s call with joy.
___________________________
1. Thanks to John Shearman, who in his commentary on these lections, reminded me of my own visits to Coventry Cathedral.
The writer of the letter to the fledgling Christian community at Colossae wanted to make sure that these new Christians remembered how decisively their own lives had been changed through baptism. We don’t know who wrote the letter, although scholars are now reasonably certain that it was not Paul himself. Nor do we know exactly when it was written. We do know that Colossae was a Roman city in the eastern part of the empire, the part now in Turkey. It is likely that both Jewish and Greek communities were presen in Colossae, and that the Colossian Christian community included members of different ethnic groups and social classes. From the letter itself we can surmise that, like many other early Christian communities, tensions existed among those attracted to Jewish or Greek philosophies and also within the community among different ethnicities and classes.
In addressing these various tensions, our letter writer had two aims: one was to give these new Christians a lesson in theology that would strengthen their resistance to other religious perspectives, and the other was to remind them of the kind of life to which Christ called them. We’ve had a chance to hear much of the theology in our Epistle readings for the last three weeks. Now in this lection – our last in this cycle from this letter – we hear again a summary of the writer’s theological perspective. The writer assures the Colossians that through the resurrection of Christ, which Christians now share through baptism and through continuing faith and trust, they have a source of their power to live a Christian life. In baptism we have experienced for ourselves, he tells them, the death and resurrection of Christ, and in that experience we too have been completely transformed. In the ancient church, people were baptized naked in big tanks or pools. As they came out of the water they were clothed in a set of new white clothes, symbolizing their new life in Christ. Our writer draws on that image, of the new clothes, to suggest how deep the transformation is that the Colossians have experienced in baptism: “you have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed according to the image of its creator.”
How does the transformation that Christians experience in baptism translate to a new and different life? Our letter writer answers that question in four different ways: maintain, reject, adopt, and place. First, the Colossian Christians are reminded to maintain a heavenly perspective. Realize that a transformation has occurred in your life. Realize that your allegiance therefore is no longer to this world, with its standards and values, but to Christ and his standards and values. Second, the Colossian Christians are reminded to reject the sins of a previous life, or of a life that conforms to the values of this world. Christians are to reject the sins of selfishness and greed, the sins that make my pleasure, my possessions, the sole focus of my life. They are also to reject all those emotions, speech habits, and ways of relating to each other that are hurtful and dishonest: anger, wrath, slander and abusive language. Third, the Colossian Christians are to adopt the virtues of the new life to which they have been called. They are to recognize that they are all one in the church, that ethnic and social differences no longer define them. They are to focus on others, forgiving others, and treating all with sacrificial love. They are to study Scripture, continuing to grow in their formation as Christians, and they are to be faithful in worship, so that Christ can continue to nurture them from week to week. Finally, as Christians they are to place Christ at the very center of their lives. They are to see Christ as the beginning and the end of their spiritual and temporal lives, and they are to express their continuing gratitude for what Christ has accomplished for them and for the world.
Maintain, reject, adopt, and place. Whoa! That’s a tall order, isn’t it? Jackson, are you sure you want to be baptized? Yes, as a community of those committed to Christ, as a community of those baptized into Christ’s Body, we too are called, just as surely as those Colossians were, to maintaining, rejecting, adopting, and placing – as individuals and as a parish. As individuals – and as a parish community – we are called to pursue lives focused not on our own self-aggrandizement, not on how many barns we can build, possessions we can own, or honors we can garner, but on our obligations to others. We are called to forgo all those destructive behaviors that tear a community apart. And we are called to find ways to minister to those around us, to welcome all into our midst, and to aspire to help our parish community begin to mirror the socio-ethnic diversity of the community around us. Most importantly, we are called to keep Christ at the center of our lives. As individuals we are called to nurture our relationship with him, finding those times in our day, week, month, and year when we may fully pay attention to him and his word for us. As a parish, we are to keep our relationship with Christ at the center of our planning and deliberation as a community. We will try to do just that at our parish visioning event on August 20th and 21st. I had a vision for St. Peter’s while I was at my Shalem residency: let St. Peter’s soar. By keeping Christ at the center of our visioning, and by listening to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, God willing we can share that vision! I invite all of you to come to our visioning event! And to the other opportunities we will have this fall to continue discerning the shape of our life together in Christ.
Some of you may have heard of Coventry Cathedral in England.1 It was completed in 1962 to replace the Gothic cathedral that was bombed in World War II. It’s a magnificent building. I have now seen it twice, first in 1964 when it was still very controversial because it was so contemporary, and again in 2005 when it was, if anything, even more magnificent. Towering over the altar of the present cathedral is a wonderful tapestry of the Risen Christ that draws our eyes ever upward, and that reminds us again and again into whose Body we have been graciously incorporated. When the cathedral was first built it was a parish church for the predominantly Christian community that surrounded it. Now its neighborhood includes people of all ethnic groups and faith communities, many of whom are not Christian. Nevertheless, as members of the Body of the Risen One, Coventry parishioners engage in a ministry of hospitality, reconciliation, and service to all. This is the mission to which all of us at St. Peter’s are called, as the rest of the world longs to meet the Risen One in us.
In a few minutes we will welcome Jackson Alexander Boone into that blessed company of all faithful people. Christ will call him, as he calls his parents, sponsors, and us, to accept the transformation wrought in us in baptism. We have all raised with Christ and changed by the waters of Baptism. Let yourself continue to be renewed and transformed into Christ. The old life in you has died, and you have been born again. You have been clothed with a new self. Embrace God’s call with joy.
___________________________
1. Thanks to John Shearman, who in his commentary on these lections, reminded me of my own visits to Coventry Cathedral.
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