Ramblings

"Thanksgiving in Suffering" - 9/20/20

A synthesized Sermon shared at Odawara Lutheran Church, Odawara, Kanagawa, Japan and Nagoya All Saints International Congregation, from two different but similar sermons I preached.  Based on Philippians 1:21-30

Is the Apostle Paul writing from the clarity that ending can bring? According to The Atlantic, a US magazine, a study was done of more than 3,000 professional soccer games.[1]   It revealed that 23 percent of goals came in the final 15 minutes of the 90-minute match. The end of the game has a focusing effect, motivating players to summon their strength for a final push.  Another study looked at hospice workers and other end-of-life professionals. For these people, exposure to death causes them to “live in the present, cultivate a spiritual life and reflect deeply on the continuity of life.” Endings are important.

In his letter to the Philippians, the Apostle Paul offers a perspective on the end of life. “For to me,” he says, “living is Christ and dying is gain” (1:21). He knows that his ongoing life on earth means “fruitful labor” for the Philippians and for him, but at the same time he admits of his “desire is to depart and be with Christ” (vv. 22-24).

Are those words, are they written close to his death, a prisoner on death row, using remarkably positive language to describe his situation? “I want you to know,” he writes earlier in this chapter, “that what has happened to me has actually helped to spread the gospel, so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to everyone else that my imprisonment is for Christ” (vv. 12-13).  It seems that at least part of him wants his life on earth to end, so that he can be with Christ and share his resurrection life.  Are these words written with the clarity that impeding death may bring or is there a deeper theological meaning that Paul is trying to teach?

As you may or may not know, there is some lively Biblical scholarship regarding Apostle Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi, this letter to the Philippians. Scholars consider Philippians without a doubt to be an authentic work of the apostle Paul; that does not mean, however, that all the debate about the circumstances of its writing have ceased. The reason I bring it to your attention is that there is an ongoing debate over our portion today.

Tradition has it that the letter was written close to his death.  However recent scholarship around the literary integrity of the book, challenges the traditional location and date of its composition.  A close reading of the book suggests that Philippians is not one letter but two.  In that view, chapters 3 and 4 were sent first, followed by chapters 1 and 2, then compiled into one later.  That would mean given the usual chronology of Paul’s life and ministry, that would place these letters of Philippians sometime around 54-55 AD rather than about a decade later during his imprisonment in Rome and subsequent death.

I will not get into all the details about this scholarship, whether Philippians is a single letter or a composite of two letter, other than to direct you to the most obvious question. There is a sudden shift in tone found in 3:1, where Paul goes from “finally” encouraging the Philippians to “rejoice in the Lord” to telling them how it was not “irksome” to keep writing to them about the same things. The first two chapters had been filled with thanksgiving, and much of the next two chapters detail problems of divisions within the church.

I suspect we will never know, if it was one letter or two, but how does that scholarly debate impact us?  Let me return to my original question; should we interpret Paul through the clarity that impending death can bring?  Or were those words written a decade earlier without his impending death in mind?  And if it is the second, what did Paul have in mind?

I am wondering then if the second question is true that Paul’s words should be seen through something else found in the first two chapters --- through the sufferings. “Paul’s own afflictions,” writes Professor Morna Hooker, are not described in a negative way.  Instead, they “are seen as an opportunity for the gospel: People talk about his case; therefore, they learn about the Christian faith, and other Christians are encouraged to make a similar stand.”[2]

Remember, Saul later Paul of Tarsus went from holding the cloaks of those stoning St. Stephens, to blindness on the road and then new sight.  He experienced the cold shoulder of the first disciples who only knew Paul as a persecutor of the early church.  Paul experienced shipwrecks and imprisonment and hostile communities plus all the things we could summarize if we had his daily diary, the cold nights and inclement weather on the road. Professor Hooker continues, “The amazing fact that oppression leads to growth reflects the paradox that lies at the heart of the gospel — namely, that God’s power is revealed through the weakness of the cross and that victory comes through apparent defeat.”[3]

Paul wants us to live in a manner worthy of the gospel, aware of the defeat it can bring, reflective of the grace and love of Jesus Christ.  By doing so, for Paul we become stronger and more focused, standing firm in one spirit, and striving side by side with one mind. Such strength and unity do not often happen in good times. In fact, it usually happens in challenging times. Live your life “in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ,” Paul writes, “so that, whether I come and see you or am absent and hear about you, I will know that you are standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel” (v. 27).

Paul reminds the Philippians that God “has graciously granted you the privilege not only of believing in Christ, but of suffering for him as well — since you are having the same struggle that you saw I had” (vv. 29-30). For most of us, the privilege of believing in Christ is easy to accept, and we are happy to receive the gift of forgiveness and new life. But “suffering for him as well”? That is a bit tougher to swallow.

For Paul, however, believing and suffering go together. Perhaps not surprisingly, we tend to be prejudiced, narrow regarding suffering without realizing it placing it solely in either thinking “no one knows the trouble I have seen” or thankful suffering has passed us by.   Yet, just think of the vast definitions of suffering illustrated in the Bible.

1. Creation suffers (Genesis 1-3)
2. Suffering can be mysterious. (Job)
3. Grief can cause suffering. (The death of Lazarus)
4. Suffering can come from being a victim. (Exodus)
5. We can experience empathic suffering, as we walk with others who suffer. (Old Testament prophets)

Those are just a few.  There is no one kind of suffering, one better than another.  There is no one form of suffering that is truer to the meaning of suffering.  Rather, while it is true that Christ died for us, the Apostle Paul is reminding us in today’s passage --- and perhaps to himself --- that it is also true that Christians die into this fullness of Christ. “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” Paul asks the Romans (6:3). “We suffer with him,” he says, “so that we may also be glorified with him” (8:17).

Did Paul write these words in his cell as he waited death?  Or a decade earlier?  Regardless Paul is describing the challenge for us all as we live out our faith as the hands and feet of Jesus in the world.  The apostle Paul while happy to serve the Christ in this life, understood that with faith comes the clearness that suffering can bring.  An understanding that we will depart and be with Christ which provides strength and clarity --- and comfort --- throughout this life.  At the same time, we live in, with and through not only the joys of life in Christ in thanksgiving but within the variety of “sufferings” that this life can bring.  Amen.

 

[1] Healy, Ben. “The Science of Getting Over It.” The Atlantic, November 2019, www.theatlantic.com.

[2] Hooker, Morna D. “The Letter to the Philippians.” The New Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 2000), 492.

[3] Ibid.

A Ministry of Reconciliation - 8/16/2020

Sermon shared online with All Saints Nagoya International Church, Link on Sunday, August 16, 2020 based on the assigned Gospel for the day, Matthew 15: 10-28.

Today Jesus talks toilets.

In today’s lesson from the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus makes an astonishing analogy between a toilet and a wicked heart and then gives us a real-life example.

First, Jesus starts with the toilet: “Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?" (v. 17). This is the first part of the metaphor. The word that can be translated as “sewer” is the biblical Greek word aphedron. It refers to a place where human waste is dumped, that is, a privy or a toilet.

But the astonishing part about this is not that Jesus is talking toilets here, that should not surprise us because Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. What is amazing is Jesus is suggesting that the human heart --- the inner consciousness and sentient part of our nature --- can also be like a toilet. It is from this cesspool --- as he describes the parable to the disciples --- from where “evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander” can be defecated, if you will, through the mouth.

The implication is clear, just like our hearts can be a place where love is found, our hearts can pollute everything around us. “These,” he says to his startled audience and the prim Pharisees, “are what defile a person,” not the outward fact that the hands have been washed or not washed (vv. 18-20).

For Jesus, hypocrisy stinks and we need more than air fresheners or incense for our homes and lives to cover it up. Jesus is teaching in this recorded text and elsewhere in the gospels that our words and actions are a product of who we are, of what is inside of us, in our hearts. That's what he means when Jesus says in his “Sermon on the Mount” that a person who thinks like an adulterer is an adulterer even though there's been no actual liaison and that the person who hates another person is a murderer, even though a literal murder has not been committed (Matthew 5:21-30).

So how do we get rid of the stink of hypocrisy? We need more than air freshener. We need more than a cosmetic approach. A toilet with warm seats and lids that goes up and down with the touch of a button and supplies a princess cover sound is still--a toilet.

The good news is that God through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ has reconciled us to God and has installed a new system, something so radical and effective that the results are authentic, pure, sweet-smelling, wholesome and of benefit to everyone.

As Paul puts it in today’s letters to the Romans, “are we rejected?” sewage to be swept out of God’s creation. Absolutely not! By grace, through faith, we are loved, forgiven, and baptized into God’s family, called to a life that calls us to a new heart, or a new nature. We are new creations in Christ, as the apostle Paul makes clear: “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Because this is true, because we are reconciled to God, we have been given the “ministry of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18).

What is this ministry of reconciliation? This does not mean that we become burdened like community workers of old who go from home to home picking up that day’s sewage to spread on the fields. Rather, activated by faith, we speak and act as though we have met the living Christ. We walk in faith, walk in the Spirit, and recognize that we have been given a new life, a new heart, a new nature. Living as though we are in the family of God is an intentional choice of faith. We choose God. We say yes, every moment of our days to God. And the more we do this, the stronger we become.

We can--- based on Colossians 3 for just one example,

+ Live authentic lives.

+ Chose not to lie to one another.

+ Bear each other's burdens

+ Practice love and forgive one another.

+ Live gratefully, in peace, before God and one another.

That being said it does not mean that we do not struggle with all that may pour sewage back into our lives by our actions, those around us or by life circumstances some of which we have no control. The recent image in my mind is the pictures I saw from the flooding in Kumamoto and all the mud in people’s homes. Many were living their lives and then suddenly a flood had overwhelmed them and their neighbors. We can metaphorically feel the same way.  As if to underscore what Jesus has just said, the Gospel of Matthew at once supplies an illustration of hypocrisy and this ministry of reconciliation.

Jesus is in modern-day Lebanon and there meets a woman. Matthew names this person as a “Canaanite” woman -- emphasizing her heritage as among the earliest inhabitants of this region. “Canaanite” is cultural code for a long-hardened pagan and a longtime enemy of the Jewish monotheistic faith and commitment.

From the perspective of Jesus and the disciples the encounter with a Canaanite is daring, but with a Canaanite woman, it is doubly defiling. The strict codes of decency in Near Eastern culture sternly frowned on unrelated women and men socializing. The brazen, loud yet faithful approach of this lone woman to Jesus and his disciples makes her character especially questionable.

So, not only is this stranger an unescorted Canaanite woman (is she a single parent?) but she has a daughter who is owned by a demon. In an age in which it was a commonly held conviction that all diseases and afflictions resulted from past life choices, this woman's character rating slips even further. What has she done in her life to have earned such a curse on her and her daughter?

Yet, this faithful woman challenges the old mindset, the tables are turned and Jesus shows his disciples what it means to live as someone in touch with a heart that is higher than the laws, traditions, and conventions of human society --- this ministry of reconciliation.  Jesus, at first models the expected behavior and culture of that time, that no self-respecting and self-righteous man would have had anything to do with this woman, but then Jesus lives out this changed heart leading to a ministry of reconciliation. Out of this woman’s faithful response pointing out the hypocrisy, Jesus gives us a living example, that with a new “system” in place, a new nature, a new perspective, old barriers can be overcome and we are now open for daily opportunities to reconcile and live out the good news.  In turn to be gracious and generous, to be kind and compassionate.

Interestingly, that kind of a life is one that is like --- to God --- a sweet-smelling sacrifice of praise! “For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing" (2 Corinthians 2:15). As we live like Christ, and “walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us” we are “as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 2:15).

May we be a sweet-smelling family of God. May those who live around us see us not as people with one face, whose actions betray us to be nothing more than sewage, but as people who can live out this ministry of reconciliation as fragrant examples of God’s love.  Furthermore, may our faith be like the woman’s, demanding a clean heart, not be satisfied with hypocrisy and open to the faith of others as we grow in faith.  Amen.

Prayer: This is a portion from a Prayer called “For Deliverance from False Desires and Fears.”[1]

“And, dear Jesus, grant me the grace to desire that others might be more loved than I, that others might be more esteemed than I, that in the opinion of the world, others may increase and I decrease, that others may be chosen and I may be set aside, that others may be preferred to me in everything, that others may become holier than I, provided that I, too, become as holy as I can.  Amen.”

 

[1] Shane Claiborne & Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, Common Prayer: Pocket Edition, Zondervan, 2012 p. 73.

"Good to be Wheat" - July 19, 2020

Shared with Nagoya All Saints International Church Link based on the Gospel Matthew 13: 24-30, 36-43

I remember early in my ministry, after a pastor’s meeting, a friend of mine came up to me and said that they had not seen my name on the list for a Young Pastor’s Group.  I said that I did not know anything about it and asked for more information.  Well come to find out that the invitation had been sent out to all those who were 30 years and under.  I was over 30.

After mutual chuckles when we realized what happed, I thanked her for thinking I was younger than 30!  Yet, after that experience, I left that meeting wondering about our general perceptions of others.  How do others perceive us?  But more than just age, how do we see ourselves and is it accurately reflected in the broader world?  And how about the people we meet, how do we see them?  Is everything as Doi Takeo suggested in Anatomy of Self, Link hone and tatemae --- our feelings and public display.  And how is that all lived out as Christians?  I would hope that the world would see me as a caring, compassionate, thoughtful Christian, but do they?  Of course, it takes interactions and relationship building that ultimately gives us the tools to understand each other more fully.

Over the years that event early in my pastoral career has reappeared in other ways as I have led my life as pastor, husband, and father.  Sometimes in less than humorous ways.  Either I have erroneously perceived a person or situation inaccurately or the other way around.  Meaning, not only may we not be perceived accurately but we may not accurately see others. 

That event from my past and those experiences since came to mind as I spent time thinking about today’s lesson from Matthew.  What is central to the parable of the wheat and the weeds is the preciousness of the wheat.  Meaning do we perceive ourselves as that precious wheat?  Or are we more like weeds?  And how about others?  Can we truly even judge or for that matter even fight against evil sprouting in and around us?  And if not, is this all to be left for the sweet by and by or a Dante style purgatory.

First let us review today’s lesson.  It begins with Jesus saying that the kingdom of heaven was like a person who sowed wheat seed in a field, but “while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat.”  The enemy sowed zizania in Biblical Greek --- otherwise known as tares, darnel, or cockle.  It is a weed that, especially in its early stages, looks like wheat, but at maturity, the weight of the grain of the wheat bends the heads down.  Since there is not much of anything in the heads of darnel, the plant continues to stand straight.  Darnel is, thusly, a plant of “air heads.”  It looks good, in other words, but there is nothing there and what is there is inedible.

Jesus adds in the parable that the slaves of the landowner, after identifying that a problem existed in the fields and make the issue known are the first to consider acting against the weeds after being told how they came about.  “Then do you want us to go and gather them” ask the slaves.  Do you want us to respond to this initiative from the hostile enemy?  Are we to fight back?

Interesting that it is the slaves who are volunteering for more work, perhaps it could be because they do not want to get blamed.  Either way, in the parable the response of the landowner is: Do nothing!  “No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them.”  In your zeal to root out the enemy, you are quite likely to tear up the whole field.  It will be “at harvest time,” when the landowner will instruct the reapers to gather the weeds first place in bundles to be burned.  The word translated as “time” in the parable is Kairos, which means “opportune time” not chronological time. 

Notice again that the parable says, “Let both grow….”  The word “let” in our translation is apheta in biblical Greek.  It may also be translated as “allow” besides “let” but another common translation of aphete is “forgive.”  “Forgive both grow…” which I think adds a different nuance.  The parable concludes that the weeds will be dealt with ultimately through fire.  The fire may not be the most pleasant of Biblical images, but it is certainly a dramatic one. 

We are then told that Jesus left the crowds and went “into the house,” which, incidentally, may have been his own residence in Capernaum.  In the house, the disciples want an explanation for this “parable of the weeds,” which shows, right there, that they did not get it.  You may also notice if you were following along in the Bible that the other parables are ignored by the disciples in this series.  Insightful for us that the disciples in Matthew’s version considered this one the most challenging!   And how does Jesus explain the parable.  Well, crucially the enemy is now, finally, identified as diabolos -- the devil.  And “The reapers” are identified as “angels” and the fire is now a furnace where there will be “weeping and gnashing of teeth” all eschatological references. 

So, what do you think?  Well for me it is helpful to put this parable in context for in Matthew the parable of the sower precedes this one.[1]  And what happens in that parable?  There is a sower, who sows everywhere, and some of the seed takes root in good soil, whereas in other places it is eaten or takes root within thorns.  At a another landing the seeds grows quickly but then wither in the heat.

However, in this parable, we have the Kingdom of Heaven with Christ as the sower sowing “wheat.”  This wheat seed are the children of the kingdom, Jesus says.[2]   In this parable, Christ refuses to lose any wheat, with the assumption that where it is planted is good.  Moreover, nothing is said on how it grows other than it will.

Another aspect of this parable and Jesus’ explanation to notice is that the wheat not getting destroyed with the weeds suggests a familiar theme, the same one that informs other parables like the one about the lost sheep or the lost coin --- and I would suggest even the gathering up of those 12 baskets of leftover fragments after the feeding of the 5,000.  In God's economy nothing is counted as expendable, whether lost sheep, lost pennies, wheat growing among weeds, or leftover fragments after a miracle.  We had just heard earlier in Matthew that we are not to fear for “you are of more value than many sparrows.”[3]  Furthermore, in this parable there is also an echo of a question posed by the two disciples James and John as recorded in Luke when Jesus is not received well.[4]  “Do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” similar to today’s slaves at the presence of the weeds.  Jesus' reply to the Sons of Thunder is also pertinent: “He rebuked them.”

For God, apparently, all is precious in God’s economy.  Since God loves goodness more than God hates evil, and is not willing to lose the good … what about evil?  This parable does not excuse it or our Christian responsibilities, rather in this parable Jesus reminds us that in God’s “time of harvest,” there will be a reckoning.  Evil will be checked, but by God's work and not ours.  Not that excuses us from the present evils but the inspiration to do act is not in today’s parable.

Again, the implication of this parable is that God is a different kind of farmer than we can ever imagine.  God is like a teacher who care less about who cheats as who learns.  She bides her time with a classful of known smug stinkers just so one struggling underachiever can pass his test.  And it is not up to the stinkers in the class, or the fellow teachers or the administration, to decide.

In summary all these observations have comprehensive implications not only for us but for others.  We can grow impatient with God when our prayers to uproot some personal weeds seem to go unanswered.  God will not uproot the wheat of our survival to get at the weed of our fury.  And perhaps the weed itself is merely another strain of wheat that we do not recognize.  We are not always particularly good at identifying wheat from weed.  For example, up until their crucifixion, the two thieves who died beside Jesus probably appeared as no more than two bad peas in the same bad pod.  Time told another story.

Jesus knows evil will be dealt with ultimately through the purifying furnace.  Again, this purifying furnace is not the most pleasant of Biblical images, but we all have our “weed side” --- that part of us which may look good but does not produce fruit.  This part will be refined away, leaving only that which is built on Christ.  In God's time of harvest, this will be seen and experienced as a good thing.  After all, the one who sends the purifying refinement --- is really the one who loves us so much and is the same one who hesitant to risk one single grain of wheat at the mere appearance of evil.

Notice again that the “wheat” is never threatened in the parable, not while growing or at harvest.  No matter how many weeds are planted in the field, in fact, it was the very produce of the “wheat” that illuminated the failure of the weeds in the first place.

All this I find hopeful and perhaps even joyful in these times of pandemic.  Again, and again, amid this thorny and rocky and good world, God is not only sowing a life-giving Word but building a harvest, including the found lost sheep, discovered lost coin, or returned prodigal child.  Meaning that however we perceive others and others perceive us, we have a God who came incarnate in Jesus Christ to bring good news to the poor, and comfort to those who mourn. To heal the brokenhearted.  To open prison.  Turning upside down what we may consider weeds in the first place.

I was reminded of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s, the German pastor and theologian who was martyred in 1945, on his comment regarding the two trees in The Garden: the tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  And how the original human sin was choosing knowledge of good and evil over the tree of life.  Bonhoeffer indicted that at that moment we could choose to know God and have life, or we could choose to try and be like God to raise up good and exterminate evil.[5]  It seems we prefer to be like God over over life.

All in all, this parable is a good reminder to ground ourselves as wheat in God’s good soil and that is how we are to perceive ourselves and other people around us.  That it is important to bear that in mind when we grow impatient with God's role.  How long must this creation groan in its labor?  Often in these moods our attention is fixed more intently on the stubborn persistence of evil than on the slow emergence of a harvest of wheat and God’s role.  Amen.

 

[1] 13: 1-23

[2] 13:38

[3] Matthew 10: 31

[4] Luke 9: 54

[5] For more thought on this see:  https://sojo.net/articles/tree-life-politics-abundance

"When Images collide with Jesus" - June 21, 2020

This sermon was presented via the Zoom video conference platform to Nagoya All Saints International Church.  It is based on the Gospel lesson for that Sunday, Matthew 10: 24-39

A facilitator at a congregational workshop began her presentation by showing two images of a Jesus figure from contemporary US Christian artists.  The first was a painting by Stephen Sawyer, titled “Undefeated.”  See Here  This painting depicts a Jesus figure as a boxer standing inside a boxing ring.  In the corner, we find the word savior” printed on the protective padding of the corner post and hanging from the ropes are the boxing gloves with the word “mercy” written upon them.[1]

After a few minutes for the image to sink in, the speaker then followed with another image --- this one by Nathan Greene, titled “The Good Shepherd.” See Here  This image shows a Jesus figure holding a black lamb in a pastoral scene.

The speaker then asked the attendees, when looking at these images side by side, “What is your image of Jesus?”  The presupposition is and one I think is true, we all have images of Jesus.  While we may not always be clear as to what those images may be, we also may not realize how much these images may say about ourselves, how we grew up, our backgrounds, and our faith journey.  For example, whatever our image of Jesus maybe, we have no real physical description of him so whatever image we do have, has come via a cocktail of scripture, artist renderings and our own imaginations.

In my years as a pastor I have found that in general we aren’t always aware of our conceptions until something challenges our faith, like found in today’s gospel, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.”[2]  Or the passage before: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”[3]

How do we integrate these words with our images or more importantly with our faith now?  Would it make any difference if we understood that the sword Jesus brings to us is not made of steel, but wood --- the wood of a cross?  Or that our worth before God is not economic or hierarchical?

I invite you to review with me today’s portion of the Gospel of Matthew more fully.

Scholarship suggests that the author of Matthew wrote around 85 CE.  Meaning this is composed in the context of a post-war period.  It follows the devastation of the Roman-Jewish War of 66-70 CE when blood ran in the streets of Jerusalem, the Second Temple was destroyed, and many are refugees.

The gospel of Matthew is a few years removed from the gospel of Mark, an earlier gospel seemingly transcribed from an oral presentation during or just after the devastation.  While Matthew's over-all “mood” practically speaking is not as dark as Mark's, Matthew was writing to an audience who were fragile, vulnerable, and under threat.  If Jesus himself has been accused of being a demon --- “they have called the master of the house Beelzebub” --- then even this charge is likely to be levelled also at Jesus' followers.

Why is it helpful to remind ourselves that the situation was quite serious for this early Christian community?  That the person you may have just shared communion with is being hauled before magistrates, or that one's own life may be in danger?

In verses 26-31, the disciples of Jesus are encouraged not to fear three times in five verses.  This is a message of hope and promise for people who feel under siege.  Despite the difficulties, this movement cannot be stopped, Jesus tells them.  Even if you go to prison, even if you are oppressed, the message will be revealed and “become known,” or as expressed in the biblical Greek “known” in the most intimate way, into one’s very core.

When Jesus says today --- “what I say to you” --- it is recorded in the present tense --- even if “in the dark.”  Now we need to be careful, particularly in this time of “Black Lives Matter,” for the English language is racialized, meaning that dark or black as evil can be construed in contrast to the light or white.  In this instance, “in the dark” indicates a community that must speak in whispers to each other from those who can “kill the body.”  Nevertheless, Jesus is saying, speak in the open --- “tell in the light.”  Yes, they were enduring political and social oppression.  Yes, they were under the boot of the Roman empire.  Nevertheless, do not be afraid to speak openly; what hard truths go unsaid among you?

Then encouragingly Jesus uses an image of sparrows.  Sparrows at the time of Jesus were one of the cheapest edible foods.  Two of them could be bought for one-tenth of a drachma, or one-sixteenth of a denarius.  Yet, “not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.”  Again, the exhortation from Jesus is not to be afraid because Matthew notes --- God cares for the sparrow so God cares for us.

Then the lesson moves to the opposing pole as a warning, and we return to the more challenging parts for many of us.  I will not delve into all the aspects of the verses rather to suggest a couple of things.

Jesus in quoting from Micah 7:6 --- “for the son treats the father with contempt, the daughter rises up against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;  your enemies are members of your own household” --- is not advocating violence.  Jesus is a bringer of peace, and his disciples are to be “peacemakers.”[4]  Instead notice the generational pattern of the division.  In each case of comparison, it is the younger generation which is at odds with the older generation.  Jesus is suggesting that faith can sever the ties between a man and his father, and a woman and her mother.

Is Jesus somehow laying the groundwork of lyrics for the rock group the “Who” and the anthem “My Generation?”  The message of Jesus is about being formed by the future.  The kingdom of heaven is coming, a kingdom in which all relationships will be equal, not hierarchical, as they may occur even in a human family.  Jesus is telling the community that traditional power relationships will be upended, including that even within the family.  Jesus will go on to say, in chapter 12, that one's true family is the new community of Jesus. 

Earlier in Chapter 8, Jesus makes a comment to someone who wants to bury his father before he could follow.  Jesus says, “Let the dead bury their own dead.”[5]  Harsh but a reminder that we are to step out from our limited sense of neighbor and live toward this new community.  These are “old wineskins” Jesus says later in chapter 9, and not able to hold the “new wine.”[6]  To love one's family “more than me” is to be in love with a table that excludes rather than a community that is alive.

This leads then into a further warning by Jesus in our gospel, “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”  I do not know about you but when I think of a sword, I think of long blade of steel, that has been forged and hammered into one wielded by a samurai directed by Akira Kurosawa.  And yes, throughout the Bible, we discover various references to swords as an instrument of a violent death as, for example, in Numbers: “And you will fall by the sword” (14:43).

And it must be said, following Jesus is not for the faint of heart, either before or after Pentecost.[7]  For example, later in 9:35–11:1, Jesus instructs what it means to follow him and alerts them to the many threats they will face, along with life-and-death choices.

Again, nowhere does Jesus support the use of a sword.  Instead these words to this beleaguered under threat community is that as they live into this new community, teach peace, and heal the outcasts of society, they will likely meet resistance and ridicule.  Doing the right thing produces division, putting us at odds with those who are close to us.  Furthermore, following Christ may even have an internal cost.  Perhaps we could use the sword metaphor further in that living out faith cuts in all different directions.

Jesus does not say “pick up the sword” but rather, “Whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”  “Worthy” in biblical Greek means having sufficient weight to balance the scales.  Worth is less about moral judgment --- “I’m not worthy” --- as more in terms of the lyrics of the hymn “tried and found wanting.”  And what is the standard?  The audience like ourselves know where this is going.  Later in Jerusalem, Jesus will set an example of suffering, as a recent US church sign put it “man of color who claims God as Father, crucified by law and order.”  And as the followers are not greater than their master, such a fate may come to any follower. 

So on one hand, Jesus desires to fortify followers feeling the brunt of a hostile community and family and on the other, warns followers who are like those on the road to Emmaus.[8]  Do you remember those two disciples?  They were leaving the past behind, after the stormy days after Jesus had died in Jerusalem --- until they meet a stranger.  Who of us has not had the same feeling or desire?  This is the way of the world.  No matter how much we try, the cycle of suffering will just go on.  Let us leave Jerusalem.  Or perhaps cynicism holds us back especially when the going can get rough.

Jesus response is to both to empower and warn, resurrection does not come without death.  Scars do not come without suffering.  Truth does not come without vulnerability.

Whenever I come to these kinds of verses, I find myself thinking they should include a warning label, “Use as prescribed and keep outreach of children.”  They are a form of medicine, costly, to our images, visions, and faith.  Or as Paul puts in today’s second lesson, our lives in the present are marked and shaped by his crucifixion, just as our lives in the future will be marked and shaped by his resurrection.  Meaning, how will our lives be marked and shaped by the crucifixion this coming week?  How will our lives be marked and shaped by the resurrection this coming week?  Amen.

 

[1] Illustration is from www.HomileticsOnline.com

[2] v. 37

[3] v. 34

[4] Matthew 5:9

[5] 22

[6] 9:17

[7] Acts 5:41-42

[8]  Luke 24

The Expat Apostle Paul - May 17, 2020

Sermon presented to Nagoya All Saints International Congregation on May 17, 2020 based on Acts 17: 22-31 meeting in virtual community.

Are there blessings to being an expat?  An expat is simply the word used to describe someone who lives outside of their native country.  I came across a saying many years ago that I have found to be true: “The shortest way to yourself is living around the world.”  I believe we grow as persons and develop new parts of our identity and character as we experience new and different people and cultures.  The expat life lets us learn things about ourselves we would have never found out otherwise and opens our mind and broadens our perspective like no other experience. 

Of course it is double edged sword in that there are some painful aspects of expat life.  For me, the most tender is not being able to be physically present for my loved ones.  Although technology has made it so much better than many years ago when snail mail was the highlight of my day, and I had a stack of aerograms, I have noticed the pain of separation more acutely particularly with adult children who are now half around the world. 

For these and other reasons, we who are sensitive to the expat life may not realize that those life experiences do make a difference in faith.  As we are reminded in today’s gospel, the Holy Spirit is constantly refining but along with that, our life experiences open us to new perspectives on all aspects of faith.  For example, we can see how an expat life experience relates to one person in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul.

Paul born a Jew and a Roman citizen lived at time of Roman imperial power, yet he lived and worked in one foreign context after another as an expat.  Saul or Paul lived and studied in Jerusalem at the school of Gamaliel, a famous Jewish rabbinic “international boarding school.”  After his conversion, Paul went to Arabia for a length of time and engaged in several missionary journeys including, present day Cyprus, Turkey, Greece and Italy and perhaps even as far as present day Spain.  Paul did not travel with the intent of being a tourist but to share the faith while living and working as a tentmaker.  We tend to think that the people with whom Paul interacted where all the same, but that is not the case.  Although when traveling he would more often than not find a synagogue and fellow Jews, it is not that community alone with whom he interacted.

I lift all this for your consideration because it is with that experience as an expat that I believe drove part of Paul’s encounter in Athens.  In a cosmopolitan city known for its many gods, pursuits, ideas and pleasures, all drawn from the world around the Mediterranean, Paul will point out the religious impulse in people and redirect them to the “unknown God” who supersedes all the others.  Driven by the Holy Spirit and his life experiences, what is remarkable is Paul’s sensitivity to the people with whom he is living and working, a sensitivity that suggests that he takes their spiritual journey seriously.  That sensitivity comes with exposure to a variety of people and cultures.

Today’s first lesson begins when Paul is waiting for his companions Silas and Timothy to join him in Athens, where we are told that he was “deeply distressed to see that the city was full of idols.”[1]  The pantheon Paul saw of gods and goddesses was well-known to him and the ancient world, for many of the same gods had been adopted and rebranded by imperial Romans as way to hold their varied and diverse empire together.  So it wasn’t what he saw, but their number and how the culture around him continued to appropriate new idols and gods.

Most of those gods of the past were linked with some aspect of life, be it romance (Aphrodite/Venus), reason (Athena/Minerva), war (Ares/Mars) or even messaging (Hermes/Mercury), but there were numerous others.  In addition to the stone visages of these various gods, philosophers were also present on the streets touting their ideas.  For example, the Epicureans were deists who believed the gods weren’t that involved in human life and, if they were, they wanted people to be happy.  Life for the Epicureans involved the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain.

The connections between our own experience living as expats in Japan and that of Paul and Athens aren’t exact parallels, but there are somethings we can glean from his distress to guide us.  Although Paul acknowledges what his audience’s spiritual and intellectual journey has found, he also believes that what he has found is worth sharing.

Translate that into our time and place.  As we know many in Japan are nominally and culturally Shinto and Buddhist, but like people around the world people have other quasi-religious leanings around a variety of aspects of life beyond those traditional faiths.

One idol I have noticed is busyness.  It is attractive because it does double duty, allowing us to feel like we are on the path of life while distracting us from other, less pleasant realities, like fear, doubt, uncertainty and death.  What is unique in this culture is how that busyness has been associated to the careful, planning and consensus-oriented decision-making process.  In this cult you are depending on how busy you are.

The other idol I have noticed is food.  Food can express the symbolic values of a people as it clearly does in this nation (i.e. rice).  Yet, when I see the camera focused on a TV personality eating something new, the hope is for a reaction to be near religious ecstasy.  What we are taking to work as our obento has become invested with the deeper meaning of life.  In this cult, you are what you eat!

Returning to our story in Acts, what is helpful for us to see is that Paul’s preaching about Jesus and the resurrection caused some of his listeners some level of discomfort, mostly because the truth he was proclaiming seemed to be about something “foreign.”[2]  The good news about Jesus will always seem foreign.  It did then, and it does now!

Like Socrates before him who was accused of a similar kind of religious disruption, Paul was led to the Areopagus --- the “hill of Mars” --- near the Acropolis where the Athenian court was located.  “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting?” they asked.  “It sounds rather strange to us, so we would like to know what it means.”[3]  In response, Paul was about to tell them the truth that emerged out of a very old story.

Paul’s address to the Athenians is both courageous and courteous.  As I mentioned before Paul begins by acknowledging their religiosity.  “I see how extremely religious you are in every way,” says Paul.[4]  Paul doesn’t see the Athenians as far from God but as on the way to God; then he acknowledges his own faith journey and shares what his own search has found.  Paul respects his audience’s intelligence, convinces them that they themselves are within God’s story, and trusts that his vocation is simply to tell the truth as honestly and earnestly as he can, knowing that those who have ears to hear will hear.

That is helpful reminder for us that when people have a religious impulse, no matter where it’s directed, we are to acknowledge that they are moving in the right direction.  They’re seeking something and, like Paul, we can point out the real object of their search.  Paul directed the Athenians to the statue they had erected to “an unknown god” and then proceeded to fill in the blank.[5]

In other words, Paul doesn’t begin by saying, “You idolaters! You’ve got it all wrong!”  He begins with meeting people where they were, like a seasoned expat with a new job in a new city, while encouraging them to keep looking.  “What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you,” Paul continues.[6]  He proceeds to talk about the one God, the Creator God, and the Lord of heaven and earth, who doesn’t dwell in temples or stones.[7]  This God is not served by human hands like the gods in the temples --- and the gods in our kitchens or offices --- who require constant maintenance.  God is the One who “give to all mortals’ life and breathe in all things.”[8]  This is the God who created humanity and the nations and God did it “so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him — though he is indeed not far from each one of us.”[9]

Paul even quotes from a local poet in order to show his listeners the truth about the God they don’t yet know.[10]  “For we too are his offspring” and since God is a living God, God is not the kind of god that can be characterized by materials crafted by human hands, no matter how artistic.[11]  This God, Paul says, sees all the intellectual capital of culture as “ignorance.”  Ignorance not from stupidity however; rather it is an unawareness that God has been working from the beginning --- a plan that doesn’t culminate in humans creating gods but in God becoming human.  “And of this he has given assurance to all,” Paul says, “by raising him from the dead.”[12]

What Paul does here is increasingly narrow the focus from creation to global humanity to Jesus.  Paul speaks about essential aspects of belief in Christ without embellishing through rose-tinted glasses, or as you may have noticed particular cultural lenses and without using scare tactics.

Rather, when we encounter the story of what God of creation has done for all humanity in Jesus Christ, it puts our gods into perspective.  We recognize how they fail us and how they are really a mask for covering our fear.  So, it’s little wonder that the listeners remained with Paul until Paul’s mention of resurrection which then prompted some to scoff and others to want to hear more.[13]  Then as today, it is the trust in the resurrection that is a stumbling block for many.

Being blessed as an expat, coming from different perspectives on life gave Paul the language of humility, respect and awareness for the people he met.  We are all blessed to live at this place, in this nation, at this time in history.  And this nation like any other has a pantheon of idols, old and news, with a people like us ready to hear a powerful story that can ring true to their human experience.  As expats, or with a global perspective, walking in the guidance of the Holy Spirit we are uniquely placed to speak with knowledge, humility and respect.  Paul felt compelled to tell his story as honestly and earnestly he could, with sensitivity similar to our own, knowing that those who have ears to hear will hear.  It is a blessing to be an expat.  Amen.

 

[1] v. 16

[2] v. 18

[3] vv. 19-20

[4] v. 23

[5] v. 23

[6] v. 23 

[7] v. 24 

[8] v. 25

[9] vv. 26-27

[10] Epimenides

[11] v. 28-29

[12] vv. 30-31

[13] v. 32