Cage match: Pilate vs. Jesus

What has power over you?

This week, I’m back from a weeklong clergy renewal retreat in Arizona called CREDO. Although I had joked with our interns and staff that I was going to “Clergy Spa” (my fantasy), in reality it was more like a cross between that, and Clergy Boot Camp. A chance to look at one’s well being, via a drill-down look at one’s health, spiritual life, finances, and vocation. Well worth it. For me, the best part was just a general time to reflect on life, and what God’s up to in it.

But enough about that: to the sermon this Sunday. And the scriptures.

This Sunday is Christ the King Sunday. I’ll be honest: not one of my faves. A tough Sunday for preachers, at least this one. So easy to trot out abstractions about King Jesus.

The text is John 18:33-37. Actually, this is one of my favorite little scenes in the gospels. Jesus vs. Pilate. The classic Johannine cage match between “world” (Kosmos) and “spirit” (Paracletos). (OK, Cage Match - not John's word here...). Between the power of earthly rule, whose ultimate authority derives from the point of a sword; and the power of spiritual rule, whose ultimate authority derives from a crucified God, the power of one pierced.

The text involves the question: who’s really in charge? I think Jesus is “playing” Pilate. Not with swords, with words. Just listen:

“My kingdom is not of this world.”

“So you are a King?”

Jesus riposte: “You yourself have said.” King is an inadequate locution for the kind of power that the divine wields in human life; a power that is a much slipperier, subtler, harder-to-detect kind.

Our Buddhist brothers and sisters refer to water as the most powerful substance on earth. It’s so because water, headed to its source, cannot be stopped; it will always get past anything in its path, even rocks – and eventually, will take them with it. Anyone who’s been to the Grand Canyon can testify to the power of H20.

That’s the kind of power that Christ wields. Power that eventually conquered the Empire that paid Pilate’s salary. Power that was seen through martyrs dying for the truth, folk unafraid to be cowed by Pilate's (or Caesar's) sword.

So, here’s where I’m going on this one. What kicks around in my head for Sunday, which may make things a bit less abstract. A question:

Who has power over you? What has power over you? Pilate is under the illusion that he has power over the person who faces him, Jesus of Nazareth, whose fate (to live or to die) he must decide. But we all know that there’s another power at work, to which we owe our highest allegiance, and which has ultimate authority. Pilate may think he owns us. We know better.

But what else pretends in our life to that kind of ownership? That kind of power?

I realize there are those out there who feel this quite deeply – folk who have had experience with the power of addiction, of alcoholism, or drug addiction. Many of us have had our date with depression, and its soul-deadening power.

On my motorcycle trip this summer, for example, there was this sign posted outside a drug rehab place: “He who angers you, controls you.” Interesting.

But, the question is: do we believe in a power that claims us, to which we “belong” – a power that exists quite separately from us and our choices, but if we allow it can renovate our entire lives?

Thoughts and reflections welcome.

See you Sunday.

Jeff

Teach us to pray...

An early entry this week - for those tuning in. I am off this week, starting Monday, at a CREDO retreat in Arizona. From what I can tell, it's sort of "clergy spa" - a week-long makeover dealing with financial, spiritual, emotional and physical well-being. What grace! It is a program for which clergy age 40-55 get selected by lottery, and it's provided by the Board of Pensions. Thanks guys! And gratitude to Jill Cifelli for covering for me.

Taking the pulpit this week is our Pastoral Care Intern, Kellen Smith. He will be preaching about The Lord's Prayer, as it is found in Matthew 6:9-13 (part of the Sermon on the Mount).

I have worked with Kellen on the sermon (Title is: "The Way of Prayer"), and I know that he is interested in how that prayer has functioned in peoples' spiritual life. Here are some questions that perhaps might be helpful to him - if there are folk out there willing to chime in.

How often do you use the Lord's Prayer?

How has the Lord's Prayer shaped the way you pray?

Whether you respond here or not - good questions to consider in preparation for the sermon on Sunday.

Blessings!

Jeff

The Myth of Sisyphus

This week, we explore the world of Ruth – one of the most refreshing, astonishing and pleasant books found in the scriptures, in my humble opinion. I suggest you read the whole book – just 4 chapters, and by any standard, a delightful, engaging story. (If you clicked that last link - keep clicking ahead to the end).

It’s odd that after all the ugly, xenophobic and internecine warfare of Joshua and Judges (especially the incredible brutality that immediately precedes Ruth - go ahead…read it) – comes this book, almost a pastoral idyll, a most pleasant happily-ending “comedy”.

Interesting that in Joshua and Judges, the Israelites often seem to hear the voice of God inciting them to ethnic cleansing: to purify the towns they conquer of any foreign man, woman, child – even animal. But in this story, we encounter a story whose heroine (Ruth) is both a woman, and a foreigner – who turns out to be the ancestor of David, the prototypical King of Israel. Such a fact would have been a shock to the ethnic purists we see in Joshua-Judges!

Moreover – it seems to be saying that one is a Jew – a child of the covenant – not just by birth; but through the choices one makes. Righteousness is not a genetic trait unique to Jews; it’s a quality of God bestowed by human choice-making, no matter your tribe.

Ruth is the archetype of faithfulness: believing in a concept of familial love and trust that goes beyond her own race, and even self-interest. Yet it is this very faithfulness – her choices – by which she, and Naomi, and the future King David, secure the blessing of God.

Here’s what is rattling around my head in preparation for the sermon. Ruth does not take her world as a given – when her husband dies, and it looks bleak. You might say that Ruth “constructs a world” for herself, out of the choices she makes. She could have gone off on her own to fend for herself – but she chooses to be faithful to her mother-in-law Naomi and, like Abraham, to follow her toward an unknown destiny: “whither thou goest, I will go.”

The other story that churns in my mind…bear with me here. Sisyphus. He of rock-rolling fame. There’s an essay I read years ago, by Camus, called “The Myth of Sisyphus”. The essay – check it out – has to do with the question: does Sisyphus have a choice? Sure, the gods have fated him with an absurd (Camus' word) existence. But…does he have a choice about his relationship to that task, to that rock, to that fate?

And…most important. How does this story (these stories) hit us in the gut and heart, as we encounter the often-seeming absurd destiny that is our life? To what degree do we have choices in relation to what seems “fated”? Like Ruth and Sisyphus?

I myself have seen people…people who made choices that landed them in horrible circumstances; and people who through no fault of their own, found themselves in circumstances that are awful...but people who through their own faithfulness and trust in God’s grace and power, found a way to “make a heaven of hell,” to quote Milton’s great poem.

What do you think of the invitation to do that? Not just “always look on the bright side of life” (the song of Jesus and his compatriots at the end of Life of Brian), but to realize that God calls us to trust that, through the power of grace, good can come even from the cursed rock that we're given...when we realize that in "each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world."

Comments?

Bonhoeffer at the Gallows

This Sunday’s lectionary text, John 11:32-44 is about one of the two certainties of which Ben Franklin spoke: death (The other being...taxes of course).

It fits well with the liturgical order of the day, which is All Saints’ Day – a day that is also related to a much celebrated observance in Latin America called El Dia de los Muertos (The Day of the Dead, or All Souls day).

Although that festival has never been part of our family’s tradition, I know something about it from my Latino/a friends. It is a day, similar in some ways to our Halloween, when folk honor the dead, while at the same time engaging Death itself. Bending it. Making light of it. Poking fun at it, and the seriousness with which we take it.

Picture then, maybe, Lazarus in his mummy costume, sipping margaritas with Martha and Mary as they join the skeleton parade.

El Dia de los Muertes is a cultural means to affirm something about life: that there is a thin, fuzzy line that separates what we call this life with breath, from what happens after we shuffle off this mortal coil. A day to say (and this sounds really crazy): let’s not take death quite so dang seriously.

What I’ve found fascinating about this odd story from John – odd because Jesus intentionally lets his friend Lazarus die, to prove a point – is the way Jesus behaves in the midst of grieving people. He is “troubled” by it. The word in Greek doesn’t imply that he’s in sync with their grief – it implies that he is upset with it. It is related to the word for “snorting anger” and “scolding.” (I was so surprised to discover).

And yet, Jesus also rejects easy, pat answers - those bromides we're so tempted to offer in the awkward silence when in the presence of a grieving person.

But , is it possible Jesus weeps with the folks, while at the same time he’s angry that they don’t “get” what death is all about? How the enfleshed God in their midst came to completely transform their understanding of life and death – in giving them access to “resurrection life”? His response to grieving people is both to lament death's sting - but remind people of its true nature...remind people of their ultimate hope.

Here's an invitation, if anyone wants to weigh in and help the preacher this week: if and when you have experienced grief--what has been your experience of others' comfort...what has been helpful? Hurtful?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer will also make an appearance in the sermon on Sunday – a courageous saint of the church who stood up to Hitler, and was hanged by him. The same Bonhoeffer who wrote, “When Jesus calls us, he bids us come and die.”

At the gallows, his last words to his fellow prisoners were these: “This is the end. For me, the beginning of life.” What would it take to live a life like that?

Love to hear your thoughts. And see you Sunday. I see I’ve gotten quite a break from the pulpit!

Jeff

The Ungenerous Life?

This is a very very quick entry - appropriate, inasmuch as I am not the one preaching on Sunday. My colleague Dana Fearon is taking the pulpit - and I am left anticipating - looking very much forward to - what he has to say. (What a treat, by the way, when one has a "bye" for the week. I have two in a row, in fact).

Perhaps his text (and the title of this entry) will spell well enough the direction he is headed: the story of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31.

As I know I've mentioned in a sermon or two: how I envy my good friend Dante, inasmuch as he lived in an age of consequence...an age when personal faith hinged around the belief that one's actions in this life had eternal consequences for the next. Not to say that we have abandoned such a framework, but it is an interesting question to pose here: do you consider your actions now in light of what might be called "eternal consequences", whatever one might mean by that phrase?

And, whatever one's belief about what happens to us after this life in the flesh, we could also ask the questions: what does it do to us, here and now, when we fail to be generous? When we fail to live up to the high calling toward self-donation to which we are called by the one whose cross reveals the very limit of divine generosity (the offering of divine life itself for our benefit)?

While I'm riffing on this...should we as Christians call one another to account for our lack of generosity? And if so, how should we in our particular context? Should we really challenge ourselves to see the consequences involved with our addiction to getting and having?

Lazarus in this light is Jose from Honduras, working in a sweat shop making our Polo shirts. Lazarus is Joel from Manila, growing our sugarcane and growing cancer tumors from the insecticide that's legal there, but not here; or Gabriel from Argentina, working for subsistence wages to raise beef for our Quarter Pounders. Will there be hell to pay someday for our blindness to such injustice? (And if the Bible is true, we can't say it's not happening - just read the passage).

Should we challenge each other to be generous - to pay attention to the consequences of our ungenerosity?

Good stuff to ponder as we await Dr. Fearon's words on Sunday.

I know there are posts that people have made, and I confess - I've been guilty of the sin of busy-ness myself this week (Physician, heal thyself). I look forward to reading and commenting.

Peace,

Jeff

Your Money or Your Life

This week's scripture texts really represent a tee-shot for stewardship season, the text from Mark especially - the story of the Rich Young Ruler, who is asked by Jesus to give it all away.

Most out there will of course know that we usually equate stewardship with that time of year when we talk about money, the church budget, YOUR gift. And of course, good church leaders are quick to point out that stewardship is about so much more: it's really a lifestyle, an attitude, a spiritual practice. We don't just want your money (the community does indeed need it); but rather, we want (0r more aptly, Jesus wants) your life.

Stewardship is not fundamentally about money. It's about life. And what else is life, if not time - that requisite commodity we convert to money, with which to provide for our life, our family; to spread our influence, to supplement our enjoyment of life. All our wealth really originates - whether it's been earned or inherited - from time.

This Sunday's sermon - knowing the two after that will focus on money (Dr. Dana Fearon and Dr. Dennis Olson will preach October 18 and 25) - is about time. Perhaps the most precious commodity in our modern era.

Here's the question that is rattling around in my mind - much of which is the result of an extensive conversation at our last Staff Meeting: what is spiritual life worth? What is it worth in light of soccer, and baseball, and ballet, and the drama club and scouts?

Is church just another activity we do for enrichment and benefit, another commodity that aims to please the customer? In that light, it's so tempting to see it as just one more competing activity to fit in, one that can further drain the juice out of individuals and families, one that caves into the tempter's voice cooing in the modern ear, the more you do, the better you'll be....

When does all the activity end, and we say to ourselves: what's the point of it all?

Can our use of time be about acquisition too, in the same way we use our money? Acquisition of skills, bullet points on a college app, keeping up with the Joneses?

When I was a kid - we had no activities after school. The main activity seemed to be marauding around the neighborhood, hanging out, creating real friendships that came naturally. Church was a cornerstone to that culture - a part of our lives that enabled us to make sense of the rest of it. Not that all was great with that culture - but there was...space. And there was an attempt to hold it all together via symbols that imparted value and meaning to the rest of it. I'm not saying this is not the case now (I sure hope not!) But I feel the subtle corrosion of those values. Church can seem no longer the foundation; it's an add-on.

So - the question for Sunday that I'm curious about: what does Jesus words from Mark teach us about that? What if we substituted "time" in place of money in this story? ("And he went away sad, for he had many activities.")? For this rich young ruler, his money is getting in the way of his spiritual life. For us, could it also be our use of time?

Are there folks out there yearning for a simpler life? One more connected to the fundamental purposes for which we've been created? One more connected to community life, self-giving and self-sustaining activities? How do we approach that? And perhaps there are some out there who are already there. How did you do it?

For more study options, see the following study materials on Hebrews (another text I may bring in) or on Mark.

Love to hear your thoughts. And see you Sunday.

What did Jesus really say about divorce?

There are times when I want to say to the lectionary committee: thanks a lot.

(Note: The lectionary, in case you're not up with the church lingo, is the set of Bible passages that are prescribed to be read in a given church on a given Sunday. If a congregation follows the 3-year cycle of the lectionary, the people will hear a pretty balanced representation of the whole Bible during that time).

So - my beef with the lectionary committee this week has to do with three very difficult scripture readings assigned for this World Communion Sunday: one from Job (dealing with the why of human suffering), and two readings that have to deal with the topic of marriage and divorce (from Genesis and from Mark).

I chose the one about divorce as my sermon text this week. (Mark 10:2-6)

I only have about 8-10 minutes, since this is a communion Sunday.

I like a challenge....

Like to know which direction I'm going with it? (Like to suggest a direction?)

Hint: the sermon title is: "Disposable People".

You will get a great head start if you read about why divorce was such a big deal for Jesus by doing a bit of advanced study. (And if you click in there, DO indeed read down to the fine print.)

How did the practice of divorce differ in Jesus time and culture? How is it similar? Could Jesus' teaching on this subject be characterized as "feminist"? Why is the teaching about children follow on immediately afterward?

Study, pray, let me know if you have any insights - but danger, they may be added to the soup!

Have a great week - and see you Sunday.

Jeff