Third Sunday in the Midst of Lent

TEXTS: Isaiah 55:1-9, Luke 13:1-9

Journeying further along the pilgrim path of Lent, we stumble upon today’s story from the gospel of Luke, and we find it … Well, it’s a bit disconcerting, isn’t it?

“Unless you repent, you will all perish” (Luke 13:3, 5). Isn’t that a hopeful message for today? But there it is, a statement, an admonition, an exhortation straight from the lips of Jesus.

“Unless you repent, you will all perish.” So Jesus exhorts us all—not just once, but twice in this relatively short passage.  “Repent!”  The word hits us right between the eyes!  Whatever happened to “gentle Jesus, meek and mild”? Whatever happened to “Come unto me, all you that are weary … and I will give you rest”? What about “Take my yoke upon you … For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light”? (Matt. 11:28-30)

But no. “Repent or perish.” That’s how our gospel passage starts out. Then Luke shifts gears, and has Jesus tell a story about a fig tree and judgment and manure.  I would wager that this parable of the fig tree (or is it a parable about manure?) is less familiar to us than most of Jesus’ other teaching stories.

Sure, there are lots of parables scattered through the gospels that are about seeds and plants and trees and other things that grow and die. However, there are things that appear to set this story apart. The parable’s meaning does not seem obvious. It does not jump out at us in a clear way that makes us nod our heads in understanding. And, unfortunately, there’s no convenient part where the disciples ask Jesus to explain what it all means.

In the opening lines of our passage, somebody tells Jesus about a group of unfortunate Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.¹ Most people in Jesus’ day believed that this sort of death—where life is cut short, where death is painful and shocking—was a sign of God’s judgment.

That wasn’t an unreasonable conclusion to draw from a study of the scriptures. Let’s face it: much of what we call the “Old Testament” promotes the idea that people with happy lives must be especially blessed by God. Consider Job, for example. Job was a faithful servant of God. Prior to his emergence as a cosmic bargaining chip, Job was blessed with family, land, home, livestock, and possessions of all sorts. These were supposed to be signs demonstrating his favour with God.

Perhaps we view God and God’s blessings somewhat differently today. Perhaps.

But perhaps not. When we are struggling financially, we wonder why God doesn’t bail us out. When a loved one dies tragically, we ask why God has forsaken us. And when things are going well for us, we thank God (if we remember). We see our good fortune as a sign of God’s blessings, and wonder what we’ve done wrong when things aren’t going our way.

Jesus steps up to challenge this presumption.

“Do you think,” he asks, “that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.”

Jesus continues with another example from a well-known engineering disaster,² but his point is the same: The tragic death these Galileans suffered was not due to their supposed sinfulness or faithlessness. It was neither about God’s curse nor God’s blessing. Ultimately, what is called for, Jesus says, is our repentance. Unless we turn our lives around—unless we direct ourselves to God and God’s purposes for us—we are certain to perish, not in death, which finds us all, but in separation from God who loves us.

The second half of our passage seems to jump onto an entirely different track—as if we’re missing the middle chunk of the conversation. Jesus tells a parable about a man who planted a fig tree. The fig tree is a dud. It is not growing the fruit it is supposed to bear. This is annoying, because figs grow easily, under most conditions. For a fig tree to not bear fruit is a bad sign indeed. So the man is not being unreasonable when he orders his gardener to cut it down. The gardener, however, pleads for one more year. During this year, the gardener says he will pay special attention to the errant tree. After a year, if the plant still will not grow fruit, then, he will cut it down.

These passages ooze fear and dread, don’t they? In the first part, we get the idea that chaos and catastrophe can visit us at any moment, no matter what kind of lives we lead. We’re told to repent or perish. As simple as that.

As for the parable section … Well, if you’re familiar with Jesus’ parables, you’ve likely noticed that our human lives are often represented by the plants and trees in the stories he tells. In this case, we are the fig trees.

We are the fig trees? EEK! Does the Lord of the garden want to chop us down, because we’re not bearing fruit? I can hear the clock ticking, can’t you? Maybe some compassionate gardener will throw some manure on us, and buy us some extra time, but … we’ve still got to hurry and get to work bearing fruit. Or else.

Our reading from Isaiah, on the other hand, brings welcome relief from the impending doom of our gospel lesson. We read:

Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.  (Isaiah 55:1-2)

These beautiful words conjure images of oasis in the midst of desert, refreshment in the midst of toil. And it’s all free! Now, this is a message we can get behind! What the prophet offers here is without cost to us. So, given the choice, we’d probably rather stick with this passage from Isaiah than ponder those unsettling words from Luke. But, as always, things aren’t so easy or straightforward as they seem.

We humans seem to rally behind either/or things in life. Know what I mean? We want it to be simple. We want things to be either right or wrong, true or false, good or bad, black or white. We want our choices clear and uncluttered. We want to know that if we do this or that, we are going to heaven or to hell. It’s a sin or else it’s not a sin.

Unfortunately, ours is not an either/or reality. We’re a complicated species, in a world full of all the shades of colour you can imagine—a world full of half-truths, lesser and greater evils, both/ands. The good news, though, is that living in a both/and world doesn’t have to be as bad or as confusing and uncomfortable as we might fear.

Somewhere along the path of Christian discipleship, we got it stuck in our heads that God is an either/or God. Either (1) we must keep our noses to the grindstone and earn our spot in heaven; or (2) our path is easy and God hands over grace and we don’t have to lift a finger. This second attitude is what the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer referred to as “cheap grace”:

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the Cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. ³

God calls us to something more incredible: the joy of both/and. God’s grace is both totally free, and something that demands of us the hard and life-changing work of discipleship.

Turning back to the lesson from Luke, we hear Jesus calling us to repent, and reminding us that we are planted to bear fruit. But by God’s grace, Christ also bargains for us to have one more year. He promises to fertilize our lives with tender care, encouragement, and even some pruning. By God’s grace, we are called to come to the waters that Isaiah describes, and to drink deeply and freely. For, as Isaiah reminds us, God abundantly pardons us.

Here’s something to consider, though: free and easy are not the same things. Someone once said that the Christian life is like falling in love. And there’s a lot of truth in that statement. Love is something we know to be free. True love cannot be bought or sold. It is given and received as a gift. It is, indeed, free.

But easy? No one ever said love was easy, or that love did not require hard work, or care, or discipline. Love demands all these things. So it is with God’s grace. Grace is totally free. We cannot possibly earn it; if we tried, we would fail miserably. God gives grace freely. But easily? Not really.

A pastor I know—who had been present as a prayer counselor at an evangelistic rally—told me about one man who, after coming forward to receive Christ, said: “So, I’m good now, right? There’s nothing else I have to do?”

Taken aback for a moment, my friend replied, “No. You don’t have to do anything else. But you will want to!”

“You will want to.” As the Holy Spirit begins to work in your heart, you will want to do something else, something more. This is the truth about Christianity as presented in the New Testament.

We are called to repent, to be disciples, to choose the satisfying life of living water. Come to the waters, you who thirst. And drink deep of God’s free, challenging, difficult, and loving grace. Amen.

________________________

¹ “Some who were present” reported to Jesus that the cruel governor Pontius Pilate had caused some Galileans to be murdered in the Temple. Their example was particularly gruesome, since at the moment the Galileans were killed, they were worshiping God by offering sacrifices according to their Jewish religious law. Those making the report were likely hoping Jesus would offer some explanation of why bad things happen to ordinary people—in this case, even in God’s house. The “sin and calamity” issue involves a presumption that an extraordinary tragedy in some way must signify extraordinary guilt. It assumes that a victim must have done something terrible for God to allow such tragedy to befall them.

² The Tower of Siloam was a structure which fell upon 18 people, killing them. Siloam is a neighbourhood south of Jerusalem’s Old City.

³ Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. The Cost of Discipleship. New York: Touchstone, 1995 (pp. 44-45).

Second Sunday in the Midst of Lent

TEXT: Luke 13:31-35

Guard me as the apple of your eye. Hide me under the shadow of your wings … (Psalm 17:8)

Here’s a question for the hikers amongst you—especially those who love the mountains. And maybe it’s not going to be a real concern until a bit later on in spring, but … If you’re out hiking in the wilderness, and you come across a bear cub … or two or three bear cubs … What does that tell you?

It tells you that you need bear spray!  Because wherever the cubs are, you can be certain that their mother is nearby. And momma bear will not be happy to see you.

Female black bears give birth to two or three blind, helpless cubs in mid-winter and nurse them in the den until spring, when they all come out in search of food. The cubs will stay with their very protective mother for about two years.

Two years! That’s kind of a long time for young animals to stay with their mothers, isn’t it? It points to the fact that bear cubs take quite a while to … Well, to learn how to be bears! To learn how to be independent.

But that doesn’t mean they’re stupid. Far from it. They’re smart enough to know a good thing when they see it—that good thing being a 400-pound, fierce-looking creature who seems to always provide them with just exactly what they need. Why should they stray?

In some respects, bears, cats—and just about any other animal you’d care to mention—are brighter than people. The young, at least, have sense enough to stay close to momma—close to food, protection, warmth, and nurture.

You won’t find kittens turning away from the warm fur they know so well. Chicks do not wander from the protection of the hen’s wings. Such behaviour would run counter to their nature. It would go against the natural order God created.

Even the least intelligent animal offspring stay close to the one who gave them life. They cling to the one who nurtures and protects them.

But people? That’s another story. Human beings stray. All too often, we children of God exhibit the unnatural behaviour of turning away from the love and protection of the One who made us.

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!  How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (Luke 13:34)

In those words of Jesus, we hear the voice of God lamenting. We hear the sound of God’s heart breaking.

God loves his children with the tender, fierce love of a mother bear. And yet, says Jesus, the children have strayed: they have killed the prophets and cast stones at the Lord’s messengers. As a mother hen spreads her wings over her brood, so would God—in times of trouble—spread protective wings over his people. But—unaccountably, unnaturally, unrepentantly—his people are not willing to let him.

What chicks and kittens and bear cubs would not do—could not do—the children of God have done: they have counted the love and protection of God as nothing, choosing instead to go their own way.

How could this be? How could the children of Israel have been so foolish—so unnaturally rebellious—as to turn away from the warm, protecting wings of the Lord? Especially when those wings had brought them safe through so many difficulties. Especially when, time and time again, God had delivered them from their enemies, and blessed them so richly.

These are hard questions. But harder still is this question: How could we do such a thing? How can we be so foolish—or behave so unnaturally—as to stray from the sheltering love of God?

Yes, these hard questions turn back upon us. Because times of trouble do come. Sometimes even the strongest among us can feel desperately insecure. Perhaps most of our days are filled with anxiety. Looking up, we do not see protective wings spread over us—just a vast expanse of empty sky.

We know what that feels like, don’t we?

Who among us has never tossed and turned through a sleepless night, or felt the dread of death or of old age as it draws nearer? Who among us has not felt the fear of loneliness? Or worried about our children’s future? Or agonized over finances?

Who among us has not been ashamed to look in the mirror because of something we’ve said, or done? Who among us has never hated, or envied, or lusted, or lied? Who among us has not wandered? Wandered far, far away from God’s protective wings?

“How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”

God’s lamenting cry rings sharply in our ears because we, too, have not been willing. We have not been willing to hear the voice of comfort. We have stopped our ears against the call of invitation. We are unwilling to bring our worries, our pain—and especially, our sin—to the One who loves us.

Instead, we scratch around through life, pecking the ground, hoping to stumble upon some crumb that will fill our stomachs, numb our minds, and make us forget how far we have wandered from God’s parental care.

The story is told about a man whose marriage was in trouble. In desperation, he sought help from his pastor.

His pastor told him, “You must learn to listen to your wife.”

The man took this advice to heart.

A month later, he returned, saying that he had indeed learned to listen to every word his wife was saying.

“Good,” said the pastor. “Now, go home and listen to every word she isn’t saying.”

We do not need to feel anxious because of our daily troubles—the irritations, hassles, and problems of work and school.

We do not need to come home and anesthetize our minds with food and drink, household chores and television—anything and everything to keep from thinking about the damning distance—the strange silence—of God in our daily lives.

We do not need to do this because God is speaking to us. He is speaking to us in the words he does not say, as much as he speaks to us in the words that he does say.

Listen. Hear. The words of invitation are being spoken: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28).

Even now, the Mother Hen would gather us in the shadow of her outstretched wings—warm and secure, next to the beating heart of God. Even now, God bids us to come—to trust, to rely on his protection and nurture and guidance.

And you know, this is not the first time God has called us.

When we have prospered, he has called to us—reminding us from whence all prosperity arises; to return to him and give thanks; to share with our brothers and sisters in holiness and righteousness.

In times of joy and certainty, God has called us to acknowledge his part in it—and to share with others the gift of hope.

When we have sinned, God has urged us to repentance—calling us to return to him in the confidence that we will be forgiven.

God has called to us many times:  through the water of baptism; through the blood of Jesus; from the empty tomb. When we joined the church, we were made part of Christ’s body—and God welcomed us into his family, his flock, his holy brood. And he pledges to us the fierce devotion, love, and protection that we only see dimly mirrored in nature.

However—whereas animals can and will protect and care for their young only for a limited time—God pledges his love and his nurture for all eternity. This is true security we are being offered, my friends. This is solid protection.

Rather than some empty promise that nothing bad will ever happen to us, God’s promise assures us that—whatever happens, whatever problems may plague us, whatever fear may confront us, whatever sin may assail us—we will never find ourselves defenceless or forgotten; for we stand under the protection of God’s wings. We are shielded by God’s mercy, forgiven by God’s grace, and strengthened by the divine power with which we are fed.

Years ago, I heard a story about a woman who grew up in a farming community. On the day that the hen house burned down on her grandpa’s place, she arrived just in time to help put out the last of the fire. As she and her grandfather sorted through the wreckage, they came upon one hen lying dead. Her top feathers were singed by the fire’s heat. Her neck was limp.

The granddaughter bent down to pick up the dead hen. But as she did so, she felt movement. The hen’s four chicks came scurrying out from beneath her burnt body.

They had survived because they were insulated by the shelter of their mother’s wings—protected and saved, even as she died to protect them and save them.

“How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings …”

This very day, Jesus Christ is calling—to you, and to me.

He calls us to the shelter of his protecting wings.

He calls us to the safety of his arms stretched out for us upon the cross.

He calls us to trust him—no matter what our fears, or hurts, or troubles.

He calls us to trust that his outstretched arms are strong enough—his wings broad enough—to keep us forever safe.

In the shadow of those wings, let us find our refuge. Amen.

 

First Sunday in the Midst of Lent

TEXT: Luke 4:1-13

“If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.”

Those are the first words out of the devil’s mouth, in today’s gospel lesson. And all the temptations that Luke tells us about were like that—during his 40 days in the wilderness, Jesus had to face some tough questions about himself.

What was he supposed to do with the powers he possessed? Was he to prove himself? Should he conjure up bread—like manna in the wilderness? Should he test God to look after him? Why not? The devil asks him that, quoting Psalm 91’s promise to the Messiah:

“For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways.
On their hands they will bear you up,
   so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.” (Psalm 91:11-12)

But of course, Jesus knew that it was part of the Mosaic law not to test God (Deut. 6:16). That was something the people of Israel had learned in the desert (Psalm 95:8-11).

In a brilliant reflection on this text, Barbara Brown Taylor—who is one of the best preachers around today—writes about Jesus’ ordeal in the desert, and how he passed his test with flying colours:

“Since you’ve already heard about a million sermons on what Jesus and the devil said to each other, I thought I’d skip that part today, especially since neither of us is likely to be put to the exact same test. When it’s our turn, none of us is going to get the Son of God test. We’re going to get the regular old Adam and Eve test, which means that the devil won’t need much more than an all-you-can-eat buffet and a tax refund to turn our heads.” *

Barbara Brown Taylor is quite correct: you and I are not going to get the “Son of God test.” And thank heaven for that! But you know, we are going to get a test, if we say we’re serious about this discipleship thing. Maybe we’ll get it during Lent this year. Maybe not. Maybe it won’t happen like that. Maybe it won’t last 40 days. Maybe it’ll be less … maybe it’ll be more!

Our wilderness probably won’t look like the Judean desert. Maybe it’ll look like a hospital room. Or the face of someone we’ve hurt, with eyes that ask us, “Why?”

As Barbara Brown Taylor also said, “Wildernesses come in so many shapes and sizes that the only way you can really tell you are in one is to look around for what you normally count on to save your life and come up empty.”

But whatever your “wilderness test” is going to look like—and whenever you’re going to find yourself taking it—Lent is a great opportunity to cram for the examination!

The Lenten season, traditionally, is not just about starving yourself or temporarily giving up chocolate. It is a time when those who are serious about Christian discipleship are invited to undertake some kind of serious spiritual discipline—the sort of thing that will make us ask hard questions … Like: What are we going to do with the powers—the gifts, the talents, the blessings—that we have been given? Or: How can I become the kind of person God wants me to be? How can I discover God’s purpose for my life?

If you care about questions like that, I have a suggestion for you. Once upon a time, someone asked me what kind of “spiritual discipline” I would recommend for Lent. That kind of surprised me—because people almost never ask me questions like that. Usually, the questions I get asked are more like: “Why do I have to fill out a pledge card?” Or: “What’s the bare minimum I can get away with doing, in order to satisfy God that I’m a good person?”

But, what kind of spiritual discipline would I recommend? Wow. The person who asked that question had obviously noticed that “discipline” is the root word of “discipleship.” The person who asks a question like that is ready to move up in the school of Christ—up beyond kindergarten! And that’s something—because very, very few of us seem ever to want to do that.

So, today—just in case some others of you are eyeing the first grade, and wondering whether you’ve got the right stuff—I’m going to give you my recommendation. I’m going to describe to you a very simple spiritual exercise. This is something any one of you can do at home, and it will cost you almost nothing (in terms of money, anyway). It’s called a “spiritual inventory”—and all you need is a piece of paper and a pen or pencil. Or a crayon.

I recommend doing this at the end of the day—and then reviewing it in the morning. You begin by drawing a cross on your piece of paper—so you have two columns on the page. Label one column, “positive.” Label the other one, “negative.” (Or “good” and “bad,” if you like.)

Then look back over the previous 24 hours.

In the “positive” column, list all the things you can think of that have been good about the day: things that went right; temptations you resisted; problems you overcame—stuff that makes you smile when you think about it.

In the “negative” column, list all the stuff that does not make you smile: problems and temptations that overcame you; untruths you told—or truths you should have told, but didn’t; people you hurt, or treated unfairly … you get the picture!

And then, underneath the columns—beneath the cross—make a space to write “actions.” Here, you need to explain what you’re going to do about the stuff at the top of the page.

Are there blessings you need to celebrate somehow? Bow your head right away, and say “thank you” to God. And make sure you tell somebody about how good the Lord has been to you. Write down some musings about how you might go about “paying forward” the blessing you’ve received, by doing good for someone else.

And then, there’s the tough stuff …

Do you have amends to make? A lie to own up to? Someone to whom you owe an apology? Is there a debt it is now time to repay? Is there something that’s been eating away at your conscience—not just over the past 24 hours, but for days and weeks and months and years? Maybe now is the time to finally decide to face the problem, and resolve it.

Remember how I said this was a simple exercise? I never said it was easy—I just said it was simple. It’s funny, isn’t it, how many things in life are like that—especially the stuff that’s really worth doing. So if you decide to undertake this Lenten exercise—this “spiritual challenge”—I would counsel you to begin, always, with prayer. Ask God to help you face your demons—to guide you and keep you honest as you examine your heart and prepare your inventory. Do that every night, before you set pen to paper.

Then, in the morning, before you sit down to read what you’ve written the previous evening, pray again. Ask God to give you the diligence and the courage to carry out your “to do” list—both the “celebrating” part and the “making amends” part.

Do I really recommend you undertake this spiritual exercise? Yes! Yes, I absolutely do. I don’t recommend that you show your list to anybody else—because it’s a lot easier to be completely honest if you keep it private. But yes, I commend this little bit of wilderness-type reflection to you through Lent. I recommend you start right away—tonight, or tomorrow night. And I recommend you keep it up every day from now until at least the end of the Lenten season.

Why? Because if you make this inventory once or twice … well, it’ll open your eyes to some things. But if you make your inventory every day for the next month—and especially if you then act upon what you learn about yourself—I promise you: it will change your life!

And that’s what Lent is supposed to be about, isn’t it?

Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.
(Psalm 139:23-24)

 

Gracious God, as I review my day, I come before you in prayer. Grant me the willingness to see what you would have me see, in the light you would have me see it. Liberate me from morbid reflection, fear, obsessive guilt and dishonesty. I am in the dark, blind to my own selfishness and greed. I do not see my pride and defensiveness. I am anxious, but I deny even my anxiety. Reveal to me the error of my ways. Show me where I need to change. Show me where you would correct me and heal me. Help me to take inventory, leading me in the way of Jesus. Amen.

________________________

 

* https://day1.org/weekly-broadcast/5d9b820ef71918cdf2002924/the_wilderness_exam

 

Transfiguration Sunday

TEXTS: Exodus 34:29-35 and Luke 9:28-36

Moses came down from Mount Sinai. As he came down from the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in his hand, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face was shining, and they were afraid to come near him. (Exodus 34:29-30)

“And while [Jesus] was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.” And then Moses and Elijah—both of them dead (or at least, gone from this earth) for hundreds of years—appeared on the mountain to have a conversation with him.

Moses, you’ll remember, was the one who heard God speaking from a burning bush; who turned the Nile River into blood; who parted the Red Sea and got water out of a rock.

Elijah—you may also remember—raised the dead, called fire down from the sky, and ascended to heaven in a blazing chariot. The Bible says Elijah never died; he just rode up into the sky in a UFO (or something like that).

There are tons and tons of miracle stories in the Bible—mysterious, awe-inspiring, wondrous accounts. They’re hard to believe—because they’re impossible to explain.

We live in an age of science. Astronomy, biology, physics and the other natural sciences have been able to answer questions that were unanswerable just a few decades ago. After the James Webb Space Telescope was launched, astronomers announced that—once the project was completed—they hoped to see far enough out in space (and thus, far enough back in time) to witness the echo of the big bang and the beginning of the universe.

Just over 20 years ago, Francis Collins* and his associates produced a map of the entire human genome sequence. As a result, medical scientists have been able to discover the causes of certain diseases, and—more importantly—to predict a time in the not-too-distant future when cures will be brought about, not by drugs or by surgery, but by repairing or replacing malformed or damaged genes.

We live in an age of science. We look to science to answer our questions, to solve our problems, to explain our world. And I, for one, am glad that we have come to look to science—and not to magic or speculation—to answer our questions about the natural world. We have all benefited from advances in science—such as the COVID vaccines which have helped ameliorate the worst effects of our ongoing pandemic (at least in the developed world). Some of us wouldn’t be here at all if it weren’t for medical marvels like antibiotics, insulin, transplant surgery, and cardiac pacemakers (to name just a few).

Now, if you’ve ever taken any kind of science course, you’ll know something about the scientific method. Science is based on empirical evidence. It is skeptical of all hypotheses and claims of proof. Scientists want to see all the facts, and they caution us against drawing unjustified conclusions from insufficient evidence. That’s good advice. If you follow it, you’ll be much less likely to be taken in by charlatans and snake oil salesmen.

The scientist’s job is to be skeptical of any theory until all the facts are in. Science measures things, and quantifies things, and shows us how they work. A rainbow, for instance, is not the result of gods painting the sky. It is the result of light being prismatically reflected through water droplets. Science can tell us that.

Unfortunately, our dependence on science comes with a cost. To paraphrase Mark Twain: “We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that [our ancestors had], because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter.”

How sad it is (at least, I think it’s sad) that, in our day, religion and science seem to be at war. Like genome scientist Francis Collins, I lament this. I think it’s tragic. Science is the best method humanity has ever devised with regard to knowing things about the physical world. Still, it is important to remember both what science does and what science cannot do.

In a sense, the job of science is to remove the magic and the mystery from the world, to come to know what can be known about things through observation and testing and measurement. But as any good scientist will tell you, that’s about all science can do. It can tell us how, but not—in the ultimate sense—why.

For example, science can explain to a great degree how the world came to be and how you and I came to be part of it. It can uncover the early aftermath of the big bang and piece together eons of human evolutionary development until we get to you and me today. But science cannot tell us why the world came to be, or why you and I are here, or why there should be something instead of nothing.

Here’s another example (though, of course, it doesn’t apply to everyone). Science can explain why most men are attracted to women and vice versa. It’s an evolutionary, biological, hard-wired need to preserve the species. It’s hormonally-based; and/or it’s a psychological predisposition; and/or it’s a result of social or cultural training.

Science can explain sexual attraction. It can explain why a handsome young man and an attractive, healthy woman of reproductive age seek each other out. Science can explain attraction—but science cannot explain love.

Science cannot explain why, 40 years later—not as healthy, not as good-looking and far beyond reproductive age—that same man sits by the hospital bed of that same woman night after night holding her hand, praying that she survives cancer. Science cannot explain why he would be willing—in the blink of an eye—to change places with her, to die himself if that would mean that she could live.

Science can measure and study and explain the need of a species to reproduce itself and survive. But science cannot explain love. Yet love is as real as reproduction. It is as real as it is unexplainable. Down through the centuries, human love has remained a mystery—a holy mystery—that lies beneath what we can evaluate and measure and see.

What happened on the Mount of Transfiguration in today’s Gospel reading was something like that, I think. Peter and James and John all knew Jesus very well. And since they had been willing to leave their livelihoods and follow Jesus, they obviously thought highly of him, and of his teaching. They considered him to be an extraordinary rabbi. They had even come to see Jesus as the promised Messiah—the one God had chosen to liberate Israel.

Even so, to Peter and James and John, Jesus was just a man. To be sure, he was a singularly inspiring teacher. He was a charismatic leader, healer, and exorcist. But still, to them, he was nothing more than a remarkable human being. Then—suddenly, on the mountain, for just a moment—they were able see beneath Jesus’ ordinary humanity. Suddenly—in this Jesus they thought they knew so well—they saw the very presence, the very holiness, the very glory of God.

This, my friends, is revelation. It is mystery. It can be neither explained nor debunked. Like true love, it is a reality that’s too deep to measure.

Again and again in the Bible—if we read it carefully—we encounter this truth: in ordinary things and ordinary people, there is a “hidden holiness.”  It exists in ordinary things like water in the baptismal font or bread and wine upon the Communion table. God has chosen to make these ordinary things holy for us. Holiness is also hidden in ordinary people like us. As we gather together to sing and pray, to speak and listen, we become—through the grace of God—the very body of Christ.

The job of science is to remove the mystery from the world. The job of faith is to show us the holy mystery which is present everywhere.

How many of you have seen the movie, The Wizard of Oz? Remember the scene where Dorothy and her companions puled back the curtain to reveal the “Magnificent Oz”? He was revealed to be a very ordinary human being—not at all a powerful and terrible wizard, but just an old man with a lot of technology at his disposal. What you see at work in that scene is science, debunking the hoax of the “great wizard.”

And yet, you’ll also remember that this pretender was in fact able to give each of the seekers exactly what he or she needed—courage for one, a heart for another, a brain for another, a return home for Dorothy. That, my friends, is faith. Faith sees the possibilities that lie beneath what looks so ordinary.

As I’m sure you know, Lent begins a few days from now, on Ash Wednesday. Someone once said that prayer is about paying attention. Perhaps that’s the work that’s cut out for us during Lent this year: to learn to pay attention! Perhaps we are being called to a particular work of prayer: to pray that our eyes might be opened to the holiness that lies behind the ordinary things around us—that, indeed, lies within each of us, ordinary though we may be.

Perhaps this is the time for us to ask the Holy Spirit to show us—as he showed Peter and James and John—just who Jesus really is, and what he means to each one of us.

If we pay attention, we might come to see that our communities are holy. We might come to know that our world is holy, that God permeates every atom of it. We might come to realize that we are holy—that God dwells not in a tabernacle or a temple or a church, but in us. That really would be transfiguring knowledge, wouldn’t it?

__________

* Francis Sellers Collins (1950-), M.D., Ph.D., is an American physician and geneticist, noted for his landmark discoveries of disease genes and his leadership of the Human Genome Project (HGP) and described by the Endocrine Society as “one of the most accomplished scientists of our time.” He currently serves as Director of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Openly Christian, Collins wrote a book about his faith (The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, 2006) which spent many weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. For a fascinating look at this man who is both scientist and believer, see his biography in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Collins

 

TEXTS: Job 38:1-11; Luke 8:22-39

One day [Jesus] and his disciples got in a boat. “Let’s cross the lake,” he said. And off they went. It was smooth sailing, and he fell asleep. A terrific storm came up suddenly on the lake. Water poured in, and they were about to capsize. They woke Jesus: “Master, Master, we’re going to drown!”

Getting to his feet, he told the wind, “Silence!” and the waves, “Quiet down!” They did it. The lake became smooth as glass.

Then he said to his disciples, “Why can’t you trust me?”

They were in absolute awe, staggered and stammering, “Who is this, anyway? He calls out to the winds and sea, and they do what he tells them!”

—Luke 8:22-25, The Message *

 

Not long ago, I was sitting with a friend discussing this passage from Luke, and she said to me, “The other Jesus is much easier to take than this one.”

That puzzled me. I didn’t know what she meant. There is only one Jesus, after all.

So, she explained. “I can wrap my head around a human Jesus,” she said. “You know, the sweet, ‘let the little children come to me’ Jesus. The ‘Sermon on the Mount Jesus.’ The guy you could have a beer with, and share a few laughs.”

Then I began to understand what she meant: a down-to-earth Jesus. A rabbi Jesus with good sermons. That makes sense—but this Jesus does not!

As I thought about what she said—and read the gospel lesson once again—it struck me that my friend is a lot like those first disciples.

I mean, let’s face it—not all miracles are the same.

Maybe up to this point Peter and the others thought that Jesus was doing magic tricks!

Now, I don’t think they were unimpressed. I’m sure they realized that Jesus was working miracles when he cured someone’s leprosy or made a paralytic stand up and walk. Those are miracles, for sure! But we can imagine a doctor doing those same kinds of things.

The Jesus they had known up to this point was a guy who helped people and told great stories. So maybe, in the back of their minds, they viewed his healing miracles as being something like really cool magic tricks. But then they set out in the boat, and a storm came up, and … Well, we know the story. Jesus calmed the violent waves. He made the wind run out of breath!

How on earth do you wrap your head around this? Verse 25 captures their amazement: “Who then is this, that he commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him?”

The key word in the text is “even”—even the wind, even the waves. This Messiah is too much. He’s scary. His power is absolutely terrifying. It is easier—and way more comfortable—to keep the image of God locked up inside the temple, back in the Holy of Holies, behind a thick veil. It’s easier to offer sacrifices. It’s easier to be ceremonial.

But what do you do when God is standing right in front of you?

Now he’s in the boat with us. Now he’s telling all of Creation what to do, and it listens! It’s one thing to preach to a thousand people, but it’s quite another to command the sea and have it obey.

Our Old Testament reading—the one from the Book of Job—sets the context of Jesus’ miracle.

As chapter 38 of Job opens, the Lord has been pretty quiet—up until now. Job’s suffering has included disease, and undeserved misfortune, and even the loss of his children. His own wife is urging him to curse God so that he can just die and get this over with.

Meanwhile, Job’s friends are trying to figure it all out. Perhaps Job sinned in some unknown way. Perhaps God has abandoned him. Nobody understands the suffering that’s going on, and so they just point the finger—at Job, at circumstances, at God himself.

Just like in chapter eight of Luke, the question being asked is: “Don’t you care, God? Don’t you care that I’m about to die?”

“Master, Master, we are perishing!” We’re going to drown.

For Job, the storm is not upon the ocean, but within his own body and soul. It’s an emotional and physical storm, and it’s shaking Job to his core, undermining his faith and wrecking his life.

For 37 chapters, God takes all this finger-pointing from Job and his friends. Then, finally, in chapter 38, God speaks: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? … Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? … Who determined its measurements … who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk … who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy? … who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb?” (Job 38:2, 4-8)

“Who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb?” Now, there is the point! In Genesis and in Job, the sea is God’s child. He created it and he tells it what to do.

When Jesus demonstrates his power over the sea and the waves, he is making a statement about who he is. The disciples ask the question: “Who is this?”—but is it not obvious? He is the same one who measured out all of Creation and gave birth to the sea. Of course the sea listens to him; it’s his baby!

In the end, the Lord shows Job that he does care—just like Jesus cares for his disciples. God heals Job, and rebuilds his life, and even gives him new children. Sin, and death, and Satan himself brought a terrible storm—and profound suffering—upon poor old Job, but the second half of Job’s life was twice as good as the first (Job 42:12). And he lived another 140 years, spending his life with his children and their children to the fourth generation.

Does God care? Of course he cares! Job testifies that the grace and love of God are so immense that they swallow up even the worst of his suffering. They swallow up the sin, and the death, and even the Satanic curse that tried to destroy him. God cares.

Another story about God and the sea is found in Psalm 107. His people were crying out, looking for help, and God stilled the waters and delivered them: “the stormy wind … lifted up the waves of the sea. They mounted up to heaven, they went down to the depths; their courage melted away in their calamity … Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he brought them out from their distress; he made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed.” (Psalm 107:25-29)

Yet another Scripture I could point to is Second Corinthians chapter six, verse two, where God says: “At an acceptable time I have listened to you,
and on a day of salvation I have helped you.” And then Paul adds: “See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!”

Here’s the point the disciples in the boat were missing. The day of salvation is here! And it’s here with us, today! The Messiah has come not only to heal, but also to rescue, to redeem, to forgive! Salvation is here. Jesus is in control.

When the storm became violent, and the disciples were afraid, it was easy for them to point the finger at God and ask, “Don’t you care?” But you know, they didn’t understand the reason for them being in the boat. How could they? It hadn’t happened yet. However, as soon as they landed on the other shore, they discovered God’s purpose.

As Luke goes on to explain, on the other side of the lake, “they arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. As [Jesus] stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him” (Luke 8:26-27).

Look at what’s on the other side of the water! The disciples didn’t know it, but they were heading to the region of the Gerasenes to meet a man so demon-possessed that he broke chains with his bare hands and was living in a cemetery. His suffering, his possession, was so profound that thousands of demons were living inside of him—a legion of unclean spirits, as the Bible says.

But of course, even a billion demons are no match for Jesus! He casts all of them out of the man, and restores him to “his right mind.”

That storm at sea merely foreshadowed the real battle they were about to face. They were going to step onto a spiritual combat zone. There’s nothing easy about fighting the powers of evil.

As that small boat was being tossed on the waves, Satan was making a last-ditch attempt to block what Jesus was coming to do. But the disciples didn’t know that. They could not comprehend the forces which were at work.

Perhaps that’s our problem, also. Every day, we come up against forces which are beyond our comprehension. Sin and death find a thousand ways to complicate our lives. They take people from families and destroy them with alcohol and drugs. They rip Adam from Eve and overwhelm them with guilt and shame. They turn Cain against Abel. They manufacture golden calves of false worship. They cause poverty and injustice and prejudice. They create diseases like leprosy and cancer and COVID-19.

The suffering of humanity is impossible for us to comprehend, and—when we are caught up in it—we feel like we’re on the edge of a hurricane.

Jesus cares about his disciples—but he’s not about to sail away from the storm. He wants to sail directly into it, because that’s the only way he can rescue humankind from sin, and death, and evil. As his followers, that’s our calling, as well. And it is not going to be easy, or comfortable, or neat.

It’s ugly, getting knee-deep in the mire of this world’s suffering. Helping those in need is messy. Walking with people through abuse, addiction, cancer, betrayal and divorce … that’s hard! But it’s what Jesus asks us to do.

We are called to bring the forgiveness and redemptive work of the cross to every person we meet—to love them, to remind them of God’s forgiveness, and to draw them into Christian community. The day of salvation is here.

Maybe it seems insensitive for Jesus to take a nap. Maybe it seems harsh for him to ask why the disciples are afraid and why they have so little faith. But he’s trying to make them grasp something far greater than this life. He’s trying to show them that the Kingdom of Heaven is entering into our world to crush the head of evil.

To be sure, if we answer Jesus’ call, sometimes we will feel like Job. We will be afraid in the boat, just like the disciples were. We will lose those we love. We will watch people we care about being eaten by disease and despair.

But—and this is an important “but”—Jesus says there is a difference with us.

The difference with us is that when we experience something terrible, we will fight to get rid of it—to free our world from whatever it is. The difference with us is that we never give up hope. When we are touched by Christ, he gives us the energy—and the courage—to sail straight into the storm.

What more does God need to say to us? Jesus got up, rebuked the wind and the waves, and then … the wind died down and it was completely calm.

Jesus’ love is more powerful than any storm we will encounter in this life.

“Peace! Be still, and know that I am God.”

Surely, that’s all he needs to say to us. And surely, that is enough!

_____________________________________

* The Message Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson

 

Sixth Sunday After Epiphany

The Sermon on the Plain

TEXT: Luke 6:17-26

In the classic Monty Python movie, “Life of Brian,” Jesus goes up on the mountain side to teach the people. There’s a huge crowd gathered around him—so vast that some of the people who are on the outer edge of the crowd cannot hear his words and must ask others what the master has said.

As Jesus pronounces what have become known as the Beatitudes, one of the characters in the movie—desperate to know what Jesus is saying—asks a man who is ahead of him in the crowd, “What is he saying? What is he saying?”

The man checks with a person in front of him, who in turn checks with someone else, who checks with someone else … and then the message is relayed back. The Master says, “Blessed are the cheese makers!”

I thought that would make a good sermon title: “Blessed Are the Cheese Makers”.  It reminds us how often we confuse what Jesus has said, and it makes us think about who is blessed and who is not.

Who are the blessed ones anyway? Who is it that God favours? And who does God not favour? Who is it that God warns with troubles and woes?

The author of the third gospel—the Physician we know as Luke—clearly thought a fair bit about that. His account of Jesus’ sermon—which we like to call the “Sermon on the Mount”—is different than Matthew’s version. Now, Luke does not contradict what Matthew had to say—but he does give us an alternate view of Jesus’ sermon. And in some ways, Luke’s version is clearer—and perhaps more useful.

In Luke, the sermon is not preached from a hillside, where Jesus can look over the top of the crowd and hand down the Word from on high to those who are beneath him. No. Luke’s account is set on a plain—on a level place where a large crowd has gathered and pressed in upon Jesus; where he has been walking amongst them, healing their diseases and curing their afflictions.

Also, in Luke, Jesus not only announces who is blessed by God—but also who is not! As Luke recounts the story, Jesus enunciates a series of curses or woes to match the blessings:

• “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God … Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.”
• “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled … Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.”
• “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh … Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.”
• “Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on the account of the Son of Man … Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.”

Think about it. What does this list say about our aspirations? About our dreams? About our rushing out to buy lottery tickets in hopes of winning a jackpot? What does it say about our attempts to fill our days with mindless diversions and endless entertainments? And what does it say about the value of our sorrow, our pain, and our hunger? What does this list of blessings and woes say about what God is about? About where God is? About who God is for?

God reverses all our expectations—the expectations that we learn from the world—and I, for one, am glad of it! You see, I need to know that God understands my pain, my poverty, my despair, my sin, my fear. I need to know that God is with me the way that I really am. I need to know that the image of joy and success and happiness and prosperity that is portrayed 24 hours a day on television—that image that I cannot make real for myself no matter how hard I work—is a false image! It is a false image of blessedness.

I need to know that God is beside me where I live: on the plain, on the level; where I am sick and in need; where I struggle to do what is right; where I fight to keep hold of my faith. I need to know that I can touch Jesus—and be touched by him—right here and right now; that I don’t have to have all the answers—or understand all the mysteries, or be perpetually, joyfully confident—in order for him to care about me.

The promise of Christ—in both the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel and in the Sermon on the Plain in Luke’s—is that there is joy on the other side of grief, laughter on the other side of tears, fulfillment on the other side of hunger, and joyful reward on the other side of the abuse and the ridicule we receive because we cling to him.

Don’t get me wrong. I love a good time. I like a good joke. I’m happy when I can forget my problems. I feel good when I can shut out the troubles of the world around me and just relax. But I feel God’s presence and God’s power most intensely not in the good times—the easy times, the times when I am blind to the pain within me and the pain around me—but in times of need, and challenge, and hurt. As someone once put it, “God can work with us in our best worst moments.” God can accomplish something for us—and in us, and through us—when we are open to him in our need. In those “best worst moments,” we realize that God understands; that Jesus was where we are; that he had doubts and uncertainties and fears; that he had no home to call his own, no friends that he could really count on when times got tough; that he wept and he cried—and he got angry, too!

And we realize that God was with him in all those times; and God strengthened him, and gave him the victory.

Happiness—blessedness—is not found in wealth, in three square meals a day, in mindless laughter, or in the good opinions that others may have of us. Blessedness is found in surrendering. Blessedness is found in knowing our need—and the need of the world around us—and in discovering that God really cares, that God is really present with us even in the worst of times, and that God will vindicate all those who cling to him in the midst of trouble. Yes Cling to him, and not to the god of material success, or the god of self-reliance, or the god of blind happiness.

Blessedness is found in trusting God and in doing the works of God—the works of loving, and caring, and healing, and sharing, and forgiving.

“Blessed are the cheese-makers—for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Perhaps there is more wisdom in this mishearing of Jesus’ words than in the popular distortions we see in the world around us:

• Blessed are the cheese-makers who do their best for one one-hundredth of what hockey players receive.
• Blessed are the factory workers who share their jobs rather than hoarding overtime.
• Blessed are the single moms who struggle to feed and clothe their children and to teach them self-respect.
• Blessed are the lonely widowers who make time to visit those who have suffered the same kind of loss as they.
• Blessed are those who are rooted in faith and who share what they have, materially and spiritually, with others.

Blessed are those who know their need, and who trust in God, and follow in God’s way; they are like trees planted by streams of water. Their leaves do not wither. In all that they do they prosper.

Thanks be to God for such as these.

 

Luke 5:1-11 (NRSV)

Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God,  he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets.  He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.  When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.”  Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.”  When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break.  So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink.  But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”  For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken;  and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”  When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.

The Fifth Sunday After Epiphany

Simon Peter fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”

Then Jesus said to him, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”

In C.S. Lewis’ novel The Great Divorce—which describes a traveler’s visit to Hell—a guide attempts to explain why it is that so many souls wind up there:

‘Milton was right,’ said my Teacher. ‘The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” There is always something they insist on keeping, even at the price of misery. There is always something they prefer to joy—that is, to reality. Ye see it easily enough in a spoiled child that would sooner miss its play and its supper than say it was sorry and be friends. Ye call it the Sulks. But in adult life it has a hundred fine names—Achilles’ wrath and Coriolanus’ grandeur, Revenge and Injured Merit and Self-Respect and Tragic Greatness and Proper Pride … But the time comes on when, though the pleasure becomes less and less and the craving fiercer and fiercer, and though he knows that joy can never come that way, yet he prefers to joy the mere fondling of unappeasable lust and would not have it taken from him. He’d fight to the death to keep it. He’d like well to be able to scratch: but even when he can scratch no more he’d rather itch than not.’ ¹

Lewis’s revolutionary idea in the The Great Divorce is that the gates of Hell are locked from the inside. 

What does that mean? I think it means that it’s possible to become so identified with a particular thing that it holds you hostage. Then you must decide whether you wish to escape. You must take the risk of giving up the thing—whatever it is—or you will never, ever be free.

A career can be like that. It becomes your passion, your joy, the thing that defines you. However, since it has become your obsession, it has also become your curse. Eating into your leisure time. Alienating your friends. Poisoning your marriage. In short, ruining your life. Still, the thought of surrendering the thing that has become so central to your existence is painful in the extreme. The very prospect of such a surrender is terrifying.

And yet, you realize that your salvation has something to do with that awful word “surrender”. It means giving up the illusion that you are actually in control of your destiny. Deep down, you know that you must relinquish control over your life, because that is the only way things will change for the better. But, trusting enough to make that leap … therein lies the challenge.

In our gospel reading, Simon Peter gets a glimpse of the kind of power and grace that was embodied in Jesus and falls down on his knees before him in a profound recognition of his own sinfulness.

Let’s back up a bit. To understand the significance of this story of the miraculous catch of fish and the call of the first disciples, we need to remember that Jesus was not a fisherman. He was a carpenter from the Nazareth hills. What could he possibly know about fishing?

Peter, on the other hand, likely came from a long line of fishermen. He had probably grown up on the shores of Lake Galilee. He knew his occupation—and he knew that body of water. When a wandering backcountry rabbi suggested a new fishing strategy to him, it must have seemed a bit like a junior league goalie giving tips to Jacob Markström. Peter is the master fisherman here. Jesus is nothing but a rank amateur.

Here, Luke is carefully setting the stage for a plot twist. He has Peter patiently humoring Jesus to show the rabbi from Nazareth that—while he might know something about preaching and teaching and storytelling—he knows absolutely nothing about catching fish.

Of course, the miraculous happens; and Peter is so awestruck by the huge catch of fish that he becomes terrified to the point of contrition.

The question is: what was it about Jesus or about this experience that so overwhelmed Peter and his companions?  While Luke is quite comfortable telling miracle stories about Jesus, we know that he also had a healthy skepticism about the place of miracles in the generation of faith (see Luke 11:19 and Acts 8:9-11). A miraculous catch of fish would have impressed anyone, including Peter and his friends. But Luke’s Jesus is not primarily a wonder worker. He doesn’t try to force people’s convictions and affections by shocking them with enormous marvels. Rather, he is a teacher, a healer and a storyteller who came to tell people that God loved them with an absolutely infinite love.

Peter surely knew that the sea was a mysterious place and that fish were miraculous creatures. He understood that the skills of a fisherman were the result of divinely inspired insight and understanding. As a God-fearing, first-century Jewish fisherman, Peter would have believed that everything in the world was a revelation of God’s power; that dazzling events happen; that help often arrives when people most need it.

It was not, in other words, the power that Jesus possessed that had such a deep impression upon him. No. It was the love revealed in Jesus’ relationship with him. When Jesus spoke to him and said, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people,” Peter came face-to-face with the creative power of God at work in his own life. This beauty, power and majesty he already knew in the miracle of creation was now reaching out to him. More than that, it was calling him.

“From now on you will be catching people.” Mark this: the word translated as “catching”² meant “to take alive” in the sense of rescuing from death. I think we can safely assume that Peter got the point. In Jesus, he had found someone who would never abandon him and never let him go. And in that moment, kneeling on the malodorous deck of a fishing boat, he was okay with being taken alive.

There are times when “being taken alive” is a bad and dangerous idea. And not just on a literal battlefield. It is self-destructive and ultimately selfish when we surrender to the immediate gratification of an affair that could fatally wound our marriage, to that drink that would set off another cycle of addiction or to that desire for revenge that would indulge our worst instincts.

Similarly, there are people who want us to surrender to them, to bow to their power over us simply so that they can gain control over us. “Going with the flow” can carry us over the waterfall. There are people and things out there that are intent on doing us harm when we surrender to cowardice and despair and helplessness and fear.

But there is another kind of surrender that is not only good for us; it is the way out of hell. I am talking about the kind of surrender we allow ourselves to experience when we learn to trust a love greater than our fears.

The variety of surrender exemplified here by Simon Peter is the kind of trust that occurs when we encounter a love far greater than ourselves. Then, being “taken alive” is sheer ecstasy and joy. Because we know that it is a love that seeks what’s best for us, we are not afraid of surrendering to it. Finally, we are not only free to be ourselves but … we have no choice but to be ourselves. We have been taken alive.

And that is why Peter and his fellows, when they had brought their boats ashore, left everything and followed Jesus.

May it be so, also, for each one of us.

_____________________

¹ C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce: A Dream (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1945), p. 66.

² zōgrōn (ζωγρῶν)

 

Fourth Sunday After Epiphany

TEXTS: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 and Luke 4:21-30

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing (1 Cor. 13:1-2).

First Corinthians, chapter 13. Kind of distressingly … every time, now, that I hear that text … it reminds me of a movie.

Yup. A movie: Wedding Crashers. Have you seen it? It’s an old one. It came out in 2005, starring Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn as John Beckwith and Jeremy Grey, divorce mediators who spend their free time crashing wedding parties as a way to pick up women. And we worry about pastors not having professional standards!

Anyway, John and Jeremy—Owen and Vince—pull off their conquests by developing elaborate cover stories to charm the crowd and become the life of the party. In one of the early scenes, the two are at a wedding ceremony; and when the priest announces that the bride’s sister will now read Scripture, John says to Jeremy, “Twenty dollars, First Corinthians.”

To which Jeremy replies, “Double or nothing, Colossians 3:12.”

The bride’s sister mounts the lectern and begins, “And now a reading from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians.”

My money would have been on First Corinthians, as well. Because of its routine appearance at weddings, almost everyone is familiar with this Bible passage. And its popularity is easy to understand. Certainly, this is one of the most beautiful love poems in all of Scripture.

Like most of you, I expect, I love it when love looks lovely.

I love it when love looks like a mother holding her newborn for the first time.

I love it when love looks like a bride and groom reciting their wedding vows.

I love it when love looks like a couple—married for over 60 years—who still hold each other’s hand as they walk into church … not to keep from tipping over … but because they are still that much in love.

I love it when love looks like the beaming faces of grandparents as they watch their children’s children perform in a Christmas pageant.

I love it when love looks lovely.

But those of you who’ve ever tried to love for a lifetime—who’ve sought to love authentically, in a Christ-like way—you know that love does not always look like that.

It does not always look like a mother with a newborn—because the newborn grows up. Then that child is two-and-a-half and has a terrible cough and can’t sleep—and it’s four in the morning and the exhausted mother, who wants desperately to sleep herself, is sitting up rubbing that child’s back because that’s the only comfort she can offer.

Or now that child is 17, and you told her to be home at 10 o’clock … and now it’s 11:35 and she’s not home yet. You’re pacing back and forth. You’re worried. You’re frightened. Where is she? And is she OK?

Sometimes love looks like waiting, doesn’t it? Sometimes love looks like patience.

Sometimes love looks like rising before dawn after too-short-a-night because you’re holding down two jobs to try to make ends meet. Because you have to buy groceries and make the rent and purchase clothing and school supplies. And it’s grinding you down. But you do it anyway.

Sometimes love looks like starting over. Or just getting through the day. Or being willing to forgive yet again.

When Jesus calls us to love one another, he is calling us to a demanding vocation. And when Paul wrote his magnificent ode to love in First Corinthians 13, he knew that we see the greatest image of love when we behold Christ Jesus upon the cross. Jesus gave everything for our sakes. That is what love really looks like.

When Paul tells us that “love never ends”—or, as some translations say, “love never fails”—he’s not talking about our feelings. Because feelings do fail. Honeymoons do come to an end.

Paul was talking about the kind of love whereby we wake up every morning … and we decide. We decide to do what is right. We decide to do what is just. We decide to do what is generous and sacrificial—not because we’re going to get anything in return, not because we’re going to receive adulation or applause, but because it is the Christ-like thing to do. And we do it even when we don’t feel like it.

Listen once again: “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor. 13:4-7).

When I hear those words from the apostle, I stand convicted—because I know that my own love rarely looks anything like Paul’s description. I suspect it’s that way for many of you, also. And that is precisely why we need to stay focused on the love of God made manifest in Christ.

In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus is in the synagogue in Nazareth. He has just finished reading from the scroll of Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour” (Luke 4:18-19).

Then he rolls up the parchment, sits down, and says: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Nazareth, of course, is Jesus’ hometown. He had grown up there. People in that synagogue knew him well. They’d witnessed him falling and scraping his knee. They’d seen him on the days when he didn’t feel so well—and on the days when he got into some trouble and Mary and Joseph had to correct him. They’d watched him learn. They’d watched him worship.

And here, in his hometown, Jesus announces that he has come to fulfill the promises God made through Isaiah. He has come to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, freedom to the oppressed. He has come to open everybody’s eyes. The year of the Lord’s favour is now!

Through his life and ministry, Jesus was answering the age-old question: “What does God’s love look like?”

As it turns out, God’s love looks like tenderness and compassion—and inclusion of society’s outcasts. It looks like patience with the habitual sinner and kindness toward the stranger. This is how divine love appears, displayed in the person of Jesus. God’s love looks like God’s Son.

But the folks in Jesus’ hometown are not so sure they want God’s love to look like that. They’re not so sure that they want God’s Messianic servant to look so much like … Like this boy who had grown up in their midst. Like this young man who looked so much like … everyone else.

So many people in our time are just like those in Jesus’ time. They want God’s love to look like our own imperfect love—limited and delineated; controlled—and rationed. Served up in reasonable portions. Given to some and not to others—because some are “in” and some are “out.” Some are excluded, and some are welcomed.

But here is Jesus, saying and showing that God’s love is for all—offered to all, and available in ways that tear down the walls we have erected to hide and to divide. And the good people of Nazareth conclude: “We don’t want God’s love to look like that. We don’t want God’s love to look like him!”

And so, here in his hometown—for the first time, but not the last—Jesus is rejected. He is condemned. Sometimes, love looks like suffering. It looks like sacrifice.

Some years ago, I got to know a woman who had been addicted to heroin; I’ll call her Susan. I’ve told her story before, on this blog site—so today I’ll give you the condensed version.

This young woman—whom I’m calling Susan—would do whatever she had to do to get money for drugs. And that usually meant doing some very ugly things. Over the years, she half-heartedly tried to quit, but (of course) without success. Susan told me that a big part of her problem was that she hated her life—and so she could see no good reason for straightening it out. That is, not until her baby girl was born.

It was obvious that the heroin had done tremendous damage to this poor infant. The baby looked normal enough, but she screamed and cried most of the time, and she was very sick all of the time. When Susan saw this, it broke her heart. She had not expected to love this little girl. And she was appalled by the damage she had done.

The infant was, of course, apprehended by social services and placed in foster care. But Susan wanted her daughter back. And so, for the first time in her life, she had a compelling reason to change.

She went into rehab once again—but this time, she worked very hard to get well. After that, she joined a support group and made some tremendous positive changes in her life.

To make a long story short, Susan’s child was eventually returned to her. That was many years ago, and Susan has remained clean and sober until this present day. That baby girl has herself grown into a fine young woman, with a bright future.

You see, Susan turned out to be a very good mother. If you were to ask her what made the difference for her—what finally made her want to turn her life around—Susan would tell you it was the sight of her newborn baby in severe distress.

In that moment, she found out not only what love feels like—but also what it looks like. Love showed her how terrible her addiction (her “sin,” if you like) truly was. And her love for her child—her own unanticipated love—was what finally brought her to repentance.

As I contemplate her story, it occurs to me that—in a very real and literal sense—Susan’s baby daughter became as Christ for her. In her own tiny body, she bore her mother’s sin, and by doing so … she removed it.

When love breaks our hearts—when love demands a sacrifice—we need to remember what we see whenever we behold our crucified Saviour. And we need also to remember that from sacrifice, new life is born—as death gives way to resurrection.

I wonder what would happen if we Christians really took Jesus—and the apostle Paul—at their word. I wonder what would happen if we began—through the grace of God—to love one another with a fierce and faithful holy love.

I wonder what would happen if we focused upon the cross, and said to ourselves: “Yes, sometimes love—even my love—is going to look like that, and feel like that. But I am willing to pay the price, so that my love will never fail.”

I wonder what love could look like—in your life, and in mine. Could it look like us feeding the hungry? Or visiting the lonely? Or giving a warm coat to someone shivering in the cold?

Could it look like us working for justice? Or extending mercy? Or forgiveness? Could it look like us letting go of grudges, and petty resentments?

Could love—in us—look like compassion, as we support those who minister to the last and the least?

Always—always—love looks like Jesus. And sometimes, friends—sometimes …

Sometimes, love looks like us.

Third Sunday After Epiphany

TEXT: 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. (1 Cor. 12:12-13)

How do you feel about your body?

Is that a strange question to ask? I’d guess that most of us would rather not think about our bodies. And if we do, we may not think very complimentary things. It’s too fat or too skinny, too short or too tall. It’s bumpy, or lumpy, or just plain unattractive. Kind of like the kid who was so ugly that his parents took him everywhere they went so they wouldn’t have to kiss him good-bye!

At least, that might be the way we think about it. So it’s kind of odd to hear Paul saying: “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Cor. 12:27).

Now all of you together are Christ’s body, and each one of you is a separate and necessary part of it. What a statement! You—yes, you—are the Body of Christ.

Take a moment and think about the members of your local congrgation. Each one of you makes up one part of the body of Christ. As Paul searched for a way to describe the church of Jesus, the metaphor he kept coming back to was this one: the similarity between the church and the human body. In Romans, First Corinthians, Ephesians and Colossians, Paul makes over 30 references to “the body of Christ.”

Even those of us who are familiar with the Bible tend to skip over things like that without really taking the time to think about it. We all know what a body is; after all, each one of us occupies one every day. But do we ever pause to contemplate these vessels in which we reside? Can we see how this flesh and blood is like the church of Jesus Christ?

The first thing we need to recognize is that the analogy of the body applies to two definitions of the church—the “church catholic” (or “universal”), and the local congregation. Certainly, “the body of Christ” refers to the “church universal”—to that great, all-encompassing group of Christians throughout the world who call themselves by so many different names.

My own denomination—the United Church of Canada—is part of the same body as the Anglican Communion, the Roman Catholic Church, all the Baptists and Lutherans, and everybody who identifies as evangelical or liberal, Reformed or non-denominational. Not to mention the Coptic Church in Egypt, the Orthodox in Ethiopia, house churches on mainland China, Presbyterians in Korea, Pentecostals in Samoa, and Methodists in Bermuda.

I’m told that, in this Year of Our Lord 2022, there are over 33,000 distinct Christian bodies worldwide. That statistic includes over 3.4 million worship centres and more than 2.5 billion Christians of all ages. Those are impressive statistics!

However, the local church needs to be viewed as the body of Christ, as well. Not just those huge mega-churches that dot the North American landscape, but also those small, struggling congregations that struggle to survive and serve day-by-day. But why? Why did the Apostle Paul choose something as frail as the material body to illustrate something as mighty as the church of Jesus Christ?

Someone has said that the personality is the thing which gives unity to the many and varied parts of the body. When it comes to my body, that’s me. “It is I.” This is a hand and this is a hand. That’s an ear and there’s another ear … and here’s an elbow … and they’re all separate. But “I” bring unity to make all of those things part of my body.

What I am to my body, Christ is to the Church. It is in him that all the diverse parts find their unity.

Do you see what I mean? Alone you are just a Marlene or a Margaret; a Dorothy or an Irene; a John or a Douglas or a Robert.

But add Jesus Christ … and you become part of his body!

Jesus is no longer in the world—at least, not in the same physical body which once he had. And so, if Jesus wants a child taught in Sunday School, then he needs someone like you or I to do the teaching. If Jesus wants someone to be touched by compassion, then he needs us to be compassionate. And when, today, Jesus wants to weep … he needs our tears.

“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ” (1 Cor. 12:12).

Each part of your body has something in common—and that something is you! Your left leg doesn’t belong to one person and your right leg to somebody else. Instead, each individual part of your body has “you” in common. You are the common denominator that ties everything together. Just so, the body of Christ has a common focal point—and that is Jesus.

At the same time, there is a diversity within the body. No two body parts are identical. Not only are your hands and feet different, but your two hands themselves are different. Each one of your fingers has a different fingerprint. We look at our bodies and we marvel at how God has created this phenomenal piece of equipment!

We have ears that hear, eyes that see, and feet that walk. And none of us object to that arrangement.

When was the last time you said, “Boy, I wish I could see with my toes?”

Or, “I wish I could smell with my ears!”

Neither do we say, “I wish I was a big foot or a very large eye.”

The diversity of the body is no accident; it’s all part of the Creator’s plan. It’s funny, isn’t it, how—even though God insists upon unity—he complicates the matter by also insisting upon diversity.

All too often, we try to make every member of the body of Christ identical. According to some people, all Christians ought to look alike, dress alike, think alike, have the same haircut, read the same translation of the Bible, enjoy the same type of music, and vote for the same political party.

In other words, those people think that all Christians ought to do things one way. And you know what way that is, don’t you? That’s right—their way! But, you know, God did not make us identical at our first birth—and I don’t think he intended to make us identical at our second birth, either. Each of us is essential to the well-being of the body. I like the way Eugene Peterson translates Paul’s words in The Message:

If Foot said, “I’m not elegant like Hand, embellished with rings; I guess I don’t belong to this body,” would that make it so? If Ear said, “I’m not beautiful like Eye, limpid and expressive; I don’t deserve a place on the head,” would you want to remove it from the body? If the body was all eye, how could it hear? If all ear, how could it smell? (1 Cor. 12:15-17) *

We smile when we hear that. But, in the church, we often do the same thing. We put ourselves down.

Someone says, “Because I can’t preach like Billy Graham, I’m not a part of the body.”

Or, “Because I can’t sing like Ray, I’m not part of the body.”

Or, “Because I can’t play piano like Marilyn, I’m not part of the body.”

But we don’t just need preachers any more then we just need soloists. Or piano players. Or people who can tell children’s stories. When you think about it, we need teachers, and we need prayer partners, and we need people with big hearts to love and with long arms to hug.

Paul is adamant that each one of us plays a vital role in the body of Christ. The thing is, we all need to be heading in a common direction. The challenge before us is how to preserve our diversity while maintaining our unity.

It would be relatively easy for us all to be different (most of us are quite different, as it is). And I’m sure that if we really wanted to—and if we tried really hard—we could become fairly united. But to be different and united at the same time … well, that isn’t easy!

But if we consider once again Paul’s analogy, we see that—with our physical bodies—this is not only possible, but is in fact essential. I can be scratching my head with my hand, walking across the floor with my feet, seeing with my eyes, hearing with my ears, and smelling with my nose—all at the same time! The secret to keeping the body of Christ on the right path is that we must be working toward a common goal. And, hopefully, that goal is to introduce people to Jesus.

If your left foot wanted to go one place, and your right foot wanted to go another place—you’d be in a real predicament, wouldn’t you? But you say, “I’m going to walk over there.” And the instructions leave your brain and travel through your central nervous system, causing each of the required body parts to work as necessary to take you on that journey.

In the same way, Christ fixes the direction that he wants the church to go. And then each of us—as a part of this particular body—moves in unison toward that goal. Or at least, that’s how it’s supposed to work. This makes for harmony among the members, so that all the members may—as Paul says—“have the same care for one another.”

“If one member suffers,” he says, “all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it” (1 Cor. 12:25-26).

Did you hear that? When one part of the body hurts, the whole body hurts.

What happens when a part of your physical body gets hurt? If you hit your thumb with a hammer, what happens?

Actually, several things happen all at once. Your mind registers pain, tears come to your eyes, you grab said thumb with your other hand, and you start jumping up and down while … words … spill out of your mouth …

What happened? Even though it was just one very small part of your body that was hurt, many other parts of your body became involved in reaction to the pain. In just the same way, when one part of the body of Christ hurts, it is up to each of us—as additional parts of the same body—to react (hopefully, to help lessen the pain).

It may be the kind of hurt that comes with the death of a loved one. Or a divorce, or a lost job, or a betrayal. It may be that someone has  given in to temptation and needs to be lovingly restored to the body. That responsibility lies not only with the pastor, or with the members of the board, or with the person sitting next to you. No. It lies with you.

So, as we contemplate the future direction of our shared body, the question I want to ask each one of you is this: what role will you play? What function will you perform? How will you help to make this body all that it can be?

The apostle Paul has reminded us that “in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body … and we were all made to drink of one Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:13).

There’s no question that God has given spiritual gifts to every single one of us. Each one of you has gifts—each one of you has talents and abilities to share, for the common good. And—right now, more than ever—this big-little-harmonious-divided church of ours needs all of them.

But the good news is: we have been baptized into one body. We have been made to drink of one Spirit. And we have been made to have the same care for one another.

Sure. We still have some personality conflicts. We have our differences. Some of us are eyes. Some of us are ears. Some of us are arms. And some of us are armpits …

But you know, we do have care for one another—and great love for Christ, who is our head. That’s why one out of every three persons on the planet gathers in Jesus’ name on a Saturday or Sunday morning. We’re here for one another, because of Jesus, who binds us together. That is our saving strength. He is our saving strength.

Thanks be to God.

_______________________

* The Message Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson.