The 4th Sunday of Pentecost - Transcendence v. Immanence

The book of Job in the Hebrew Scriptures addresses the question of why inexplicable and bad things happen to good people.  Job's friends call his righteousness into question because, in their view of God's justice, you reap what you sow.  In a series of natural disasters and raids by neighboring tribes Job's prosperity evaporated, and his sons and daughters were killed.  His friends call on Job to confess his sins, but Job claims he has not sinned and challenges God to justify these disasters.  The author of this story frames Job’s troubles as the test of a righteous person by the heavenly court, including satan (the accuser):  In the face of all this disaster will Job, a righteous man, curse God?

In the 38^th chapter of Job, which we heard this morning, God speaks to Job and tells him to back off.  God who created the heavens and the earth, who brought order to the chaos of the primeval world, reminds Job that he was not present at creation.  God's transcendence trumps Job's expectation for a world in which righteous obedience—following the laws of God—brings prosperity.

The poetry of creation should lead not to a legalistic view of fairness, but to awe.  In beautiful poetry God gives Job reasons to be in awe of the Creator: “. . . who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb?—when I made the clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band, and prescribed bounds for it and set bars and doors, and said, 'Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped?'”

The fearsome imagery of chaos as a sea bursting from its bounds and “proud waves” not yet contained in creation makes a point to Job and to the reader: God, whose transcendent power brought order from chaos in creation, isn't bound by human standards of fairness.  Not a comfortable view for Job nor for the writer of this story who ends the story in the final chapter with all Job's prosperity being restored to him.  Awe was required of Job, but not faith, in the end.

Nadia Bolz-Weber, a Lutheran pastor, wrote about a conversation she had with a colleague, “Recently I was talking with a colleague about the nature of God and how sometimes we lean too exclusively toward the transcendence of God—God is mighty and distant and all powerful . . . Then at times we lean a bit too much on the immanence of God, believing that God is present in a personal way—God is your buddy and life coach and hooks you up with sweet parking spaces . . . We have perhaps made God so personal that we no longer touch the mystery and mastery of God's holiness, instead making God an eccentric, benevolent, wealthy uncle of some sort.”

This, of course, is the exact problem for Jesus' disciples on the boat in the midst of the great windstorm on the Sea of Galilee.  Jesus as their teacher, their rabbi, had gained their respect. Jesus as a healer had impressed them and many others who were traveling in the other boats.  So why wasn't he more concerned about the danger the windswept waves posed, for the boat was almost sinking as the waves broke over it and water rose inside it.  How could he be sleeping with all this life-threatening danger?

The disciples looked to Jesus as one who had power that they respected.  Their question was not, “Why has this storm arisen when we have been such good disciples and look to you with such deep respect?”  With their question about whether Jesus cared about their well-being, they were demanding that action be taken to remedy this particular situation.  In their fear they asked for the power of God to be applied right now to end the storm that was threatening them.  They were insisting on the immanence of God to act now.  The petitionary prayer contained in their question was the one the author Anne Lamott calls, “Help, help, help.”

Jesus responded in two ways. As God incarnate, who had revealed his creative power in containing all the waters of the seas, Jesus contained the waves and stilled the storm with the words, “Peace!  Be still.”  As their rabbi, he asked them two questions, “Why are you afraid?  Have you still no faith?”  Now, more than awe of God and God's creative power was required.  Faith was as well.

“Faith in what?” we may ask.  Jesus began to teach the disciples (and us) with his first question, “Why are you afraid?”  I don't believe this is an existential question—we have brain chemicals as part of our human nature that help us identify dangerous situations and develop appropriate responses (sometime called “fight or flight”).  I think it is a spiritual question—“Are you afraid that you are alone in this difficulty, that you no longer matter, that no one cares about you any more?”

Next Jesus asks about the disciples' faith in God–and as followers of Jesus that question is ours as well.  Not faith that God will find us that sweet parking spot or protect us from a hurricane when we choose not to evacuate or save us from the pandemic that scientists fear will one day sweep the globe or even protect us from the daily frustration and sadness that often fill our lives.  Not faith that God  . . . , but rather faith in God.  Faith in God means we believe God is with us, never leaving us alone, never abandoning us when trouble comes.  Your faith is strong when you trust God will be with you.

Pastor Bolz-Weber described how she understands what faith in God means: “So here's the thing: I have a goal.  You know how you'll be in a personal storm and you think, 'I'm perishing here, God.' but when you look back on it six months later you are still alive and the world didn't end?  One day I want to get to the point where I can trust God in the moment and not just in retrospect months or even years later.”

So what will be our answer when we encounter the next storm in our lives and Jesus asks, “Why are you afraid?  Have you still no faith?”   Perhaps we will be able to answer, “I'm working on it.  I am doing my very best to trust.”

Nadis Bolz-Weber, “Reflections on the lectionary: Sunday, June 24 – Mark 4:35-41,” Christian Century, June 13, 2012, p. 21.

The 3rd Sunday after Pentecost -Walking by Faith? Walking by Sight?

The hymn writer Henry Alford took the phrase from St. Paul's second letter the the Corinthians—“We walk by faith and not by sight”—and tied it to the experience of St. Thomas and of all Christians since Jesus returned to the Godhead.  We know the story of Thomas refusing to believe that Jesus had risen until he touched Jesus' wounds.  Jesus satisfies Thomas's request, then adds, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.

(Hymnal 1982 - # 209)

We walk by faith, and not by sight;
no gracious words we hear from him
who spoke as none e'er spoke;
but we believe him near.

We may not touch his hands and side,
nor follow where he trod;
but in his promise we rejoice;
and cry, "My Lord and God!"

Help then, O Lord, our unbelief;
and may our faith abound,
to call on you when you are near,
and seek where you are found:

that, when our life of faith is done,
in realms of clearer light
we may behold you as you are,
with full and endless sight.

Alford, as St. Paul did, contrasts the uncertainty—our not knowing for sure—with our expectation that in our life after death we will see Jesus clearly.  Then there will be no need for faith as we understand it during our earthly life.  In fact, our sight—our comprehension of Jesus—will be complete, wonderful, without end.

Paul adds other, sombre notes in his contrast of faith and sight as well.  Our earthly life, during which we must walk by faith, feels like a burden.  “Being at home in the body and away from the Lord,” would not be our choice—yet it is not really a choice.  We are by birth at home on the earth, thus our aim should be to please the Lord for we all will face judgment.  In this passage Paul speaks about life as a preparation:  walk by faith and aim to please God in order to be prepared for God's judgment in our life after death.

Both the psalm (portions of Psalm 92) and the gospel reading address our earthly life from a quite different point of view than Paul's.  I would call it: walking by sight, enlightened by faith. Both the psalm and the gospel use images from our earthly experiences that if viewed in the light of faith help us to know God right now—to understand God's reign as already present.  Now is not primarily preparation for the future after our life is over.  Now is the moment of God's revelation through things we can see, touch, and experience.

Yes, there is mystery around how God's revelation happens—but we clearly can see the result.

In Psalm 92 there are flourishing palm trees and cedars of Lebanon.  These images show us how we, if righteous, will flourish, nurtured by God: “Those who are planted in the house of the Lord * shall flourish in the courts of our God.  They shall still bear fruit in old age, * they shall be green and succulent.”  Righteousness leads to a positive earthly outcome—fruitfulness!

Our gospel reading from Mark addresses the revelation of God's kingdom here and now.  Using parables Jesus offered images of growth.  In the first one in our mind's eye we notice seed being scattered, then germinating and growing until it is ready for harvest.  How this happens is under God's invisible guidance, full of mystery.  But we see it happen; we experience it.  Then with our eyes enlightened by our faith, we can trust this process to God—not only in nature, but also in ourselves.

The richest image of all is the mustard seed's growth from the tiniest of all seeds to an improbably large shrub with lush branches where birds can constructed shaded nests—a peaceful and protected image of God's loving care for God's creatures. Jesus' revelation of God's reign through this mustard bush does not have to be taken by faith; it can be seen.

Celtic Christians saw God as revealing God's self through “a wee book”—scripture and  “a big book”—the natural world.  Both must be interpreted, of course.  And most assuredly, our faith should enlighten our interpretation.  To see God's creative power in the growth and fruitfulness of the natural world has to be “walking by sight,”

So where do you most comfortably come down?  On the side of walking by faith or the side of walking by sight?  Truth be told, I believe a good answer would be, “I come down on both sides.”  We must concern ourselves with how well our deeds reflect on the faith we profess.  We walk in faith, because there are times when pain and doubt may nearly overwhelm our Christian hope.  Yet all around us God whispers to us, sometimes shouts to us, about God 's reign through the trees, the flowers, the clouds, the sea and so many other amazing natural phenomena.  To quote the psalmist: “For you have made me glad by your acts, O Lord, and I shout for joy because of the works of your hand.”  The reign of God has begun.  O Lord, open our eyes—fill our hearts—so we may experience—we may see—your gracious love and your creative power—right here—right now!

The 2nd Sunday after Pentecost - Preaching the Collect?

In my Bible study group this week one of the clergy said he had three baptisms this Sunday, and he couldn’t image any more difficult readings than today's for such an occasion.  Then with a smile he suggested, “Guess I’ll preach on the Collect.”  Although he was cracking wise, the collect for this Sunday could be preached on.  It ties the lessons together well and could certainly be preached at a baptism.  AND because the long “green” season of Pentecost should be a time when we consider scriptures that teach us how to live, our Collect for the day would be a great place to begin.

The Collect opens with: “O God, from whom all good proceeds  . . .”  In searching scripture for a way to think about God’s goodness and something called “original goodness” (as opposed to “original sin”) we need look no further than the creation story in Genesis—“In the beginning . . .”  In this account, drawn from the imagination of divinely inspired humans—or as Professor Luke Timothy Johnson calls them, “God-intoxicated”—since no humans were around during these eons of creation—we can hear the narrator’s pronouncement on God’s work:  (from the Common English Bible translation)“God saw how good it was.”

Even human beings embodied the goodness of God: (again from the Common English Bible) “God created humanity in God’s own image, in the divine image God created them, male and female God created them.

But as we have been taught, something went wrong, and all that goodness became broken, sullied, and separated from the original intention of God.  How did it happen?  In the 3^rd chapter of Genesis, a narrator continues with the story of the crafty, talking serpent and tree in the center of the Garden of Eden.  According to the serpent, eating the fruit of this tree will give one the knowledge of good and evil—just like God has.  Once we humans ate, our innocence was lost and our original goodness, severely stained.  Theologians claim this sullied original goodness came from the exercise of humanity’s free will—a gift from the Creator that allows us to make choices—and which allow us to act against God.

The collect continues with the first half of a prayer petition: “Grant that by your inspiration we may think those things that are right . . .” When we pray these words, we are asking God to guide our free will.  St. Paul, in his second letter to the Corinthians, puts it this way: “Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.”  In Paul’s view the stain of sin damages our outer nature.  Exercising our free will, we made poor choices and fell into sin.  Yet God's grace continues to work within us—working to restore us—not to innocence (which can never be regained)--but to a renewed relationship with God.  In this we are being prepared, according to Paul, to “an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure.”  We will make right choices as Jesus heals us—God will raise us as God raised Jesus.

And then the last part of the petition follows:  “ . . . and by your merciful guiding may do them [the things that are right].”  Faith that God will inspire us know what is right gets us only partly there. The words of the collect insist that we take action under God's “merciful guiding.” In our reading from Mark's gospel this morning, we hear Jesus defending his decision to heal on the Sabbath (at the beginning of chapter 3) and to continue healing despite the uproar this caused among the crowds, following the Sabbath healing.

Jesus' family believes he has gone mad and the religious authorities call him possessed by the Devil.  Do Jesus' actions—which occurred before the passage we heard this morning—spring from his free will rightly exercised?  We see the fall-out as Jesus takes on the religious scribes and even his own family. Jesus confronts them in the strongest possible terms:  “. . . but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness.”  From Jesus' viewpoint his healings fought against the power of sin and the forces of evil.  He was following God's will! For God wants renewal for all people to wellness of body and soundness of mind.  Jesus teaches (and provides) a new way of acting that responds to God's goodness: “. . . whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

When Jesus' walked among us to, following him wasn't easy, but Jesus was there to ask for clarity.  Now a couple of thousand years later, following Jesus is still difficult, and how to follow him is not so clear either. The promises made for us--or by us—at baptism spell out what the church believes we must do—with God’s help.  Yet when putting these promises into specific actions in our lives, we frequently founder on the shoals of our sinfulness.

Is there no way out?  God's grace and God's loving-kindness—we must trust these aspects of God to inspire us and guide us.  First, to help us discern what is right and, then, mercifully to guide us to do it, “So [as Paul explains] we do not lose heart.”  The innocence of original goodness can never belong the humanity again, but we can live confidently that, beginning with baptism, God will work within each one of us to heal us and to adopt us as Christ’s sisters and brothers.  God’s healing us will not be instantaneous—although there can be moments when we will experience a feeling of God’s overflowing love.  But our healing will take an eternal lifetime, which is exactly what each of us is given.

And, so you see, these lessons can be preached at a baptism!

Trinity Sunday - Sympathizing with Nicodemus?

Do you think about the Trinity very often—I mean sometime other than when you are singing the Gloria or reciting one of the historic creeds used in worship—either the Apostle's Creed or the Nicene Creed?  I don’t very often. But I imagine you and I sometimes offer a prayer to God, the Father. . . and sometimes you and I ask Jesus for help. . .and sometimes you and I believe the Holy Spirit is giving you strength for whatever you are facing.  Unifying them into Trinity seems a bit abstract—not an everyday, practical task!

We have to sympathize with Nicodemus.  He has been attracted to Jesus, despite the fact that most of his peers, the religious leaders of Judaism, saw Jesus' teaching as a threat to their authority.  He “asks” Jesus one of those statement-type questions—something we do when we're not sure what to think.  “We know that you . . .”  “Everyone says that you . . .”  “No one can do what you are doing unless . . .”  Then we wait for a response, hoping that the person will reveal more about who he or she really is, so then we can make up our minds about the person. 

I fairly sure Nicodemus wasn't looking for a challenge from Jesus.  But Jesus' response was a challenge—something has to change in you Nicodemus, before you can have any idea who I really am.  We really do have to sympathize with Nicodemus.  Jesus confronts him by saying he can never understand what God is doing without being transformed first.

This past Lent we had an adult education series with two other churches.  The topic concerned how our Bible came together. Those of you who attended may remember one evening when the three clergy present had three different opinions about something.  One of the folks offered the thought that it was fun hearing clergy disagree!  Now take this up a notch—in your imagination:  I'm preaching on a Sunday morning and in walks Jesus (of course, he would choose to come to St. Nicholas').  Trying to keep my cool and trying to determine if it really is Jesus, I say one of those statement kind of questions: “All of us believe you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who loves us and came to save us from sin.”  He looks patiently at me and replies, “Elizabeth, you really must change in certain ways if you are to fully understand what you are saying and be part of the new thing I am about to do .”  I answer, “How can this be, for I have studied at the General Seminary?”  I hope at that moment you might have a bit of sympathy for me.

As the leaders of the Christian movement in second, third and early fourth centuries tried to decide who Jesus really was by defining his relationship with God—and really defining their understanding of who God is as well—they had the testimony of the scriptural writing accepted in the canon of New Testament and the testimony of those who had taught and preached about Jesus' beginning with St. Paul and St. Peter.  What sort of Messiah was he—was he co-eternal with God whom he had called “Father” or was there a time, however brief, when Jesus was not?

Although this issue has been settled for over 1500 years, early Christian leaders seriously fought about it.  A bishop might be overturned by one group in his diocese, who disagreed with him on this issue and who would then send him into exile.  The winning party declared those who opposed them heretics.  I have a bit of sympathy for those who struggled trying to understand who God really is and who Jesus really is—winner-take-all church politics notwithstanding.

We can look for evidence of the Trinity in our scriptures—Jesus' spoke eloquently about his relationship with God and called him Father.  But another passage he said, “I and the Father are one . . .”  But, no, we really won't find the doctrine of the Trinity in the New Testament. Jesus did speak about  God, about the Spirit of God, and about himself in ways that link all three—but how are they linked?  And what difference does it make for us, today, here at St. Nicholas?

They are linked in divine relationship—being all made of the same stuff or substance, yet in three persons—The Trinity describes the “communal inner life of God,” according to Professor Judith McDaniel.  She states that the “essence of God is to be in relationship.” We Christians are unique among monotheistic religions, such as Judaism and Islam, to believe that God is one in an unusual way. God is one as a unity that contains diversity.

Is there any way to know whether this way of looking at God is the correct way? Of course not—in this life!  But looking at God in this way gives us two sources of hope.  First, if God's nature is to be in relationship and Jesus came from God to live as one of us, then God strongly desires to draw us into a relationship as well.  In his letter to the Romans, St. Paul calls this the “spirit of adoption.”  Paul said, “When we cry, 'Abba, Father!' it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”  Through Jesus, God has sought us out in a way we can understand.  So now we can—in faith and trust—receive God into our hearts.

Then we may also use the doctrine of the Trinity as a model for human relationships. We can celebrate each other’s special characteristics, while honoring our need to seek and maintain relationships—living in unity, if you will, while celebrating our diversity.  We can connect with others; we can include others; we can practice radical hospitality—staying in relationship even when a brother or sister in Christ tests the limits of our tolerance or our patience or even our values.

Modeling our common life after the Trinity is not easy. We can sympathize with how difficult this will be to accomplish.  Nicodemus hasn't been the last person asking God, “How can these things be?” We can sympathize with his astonishment at Jesus' telling him he needed to be transformed in a way he did not easily comprehend: “Very truly I tell you, I tell you no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.” Yet we can take comfort in Jesus' words that follow his challenge of Nicodemus, as Nicodemus himself may have done: “For God so loved the world . . .”  Our hope cannot spring from completely understanding God.  It cannot spring from our own worthiness in living as God in Jesus taught us. Rather it must spring from our trust in God's love for us.  “For God so loved the world . . .”  For me that is enough!