Sermon: Calendar

As we continue on our summer sermon series, 20 questions in 10 weeks, today’s questions both touch on the topic of calendar.

          The first is:

          “What Season was Jesus born? Fall, Winter, Spring, or Summer?”

          And the second is:

          “Why do people go to church on the Sabbath?

          Let us pray.

          On the face of it, the question “What season was Jesus born?” seems a little odd. When I asked a colleague about it, his response was, “This is like asking what color Christ’s hair was… the actual answer can only matter if we’ve prioritized something that doesn’t matter as though it does.”

          But, I looked around a little, just to see where people go with this question, and found out there is a lot of arguments against celebrating Christmas that start with the question “What season was Jesus born in?”

         

          So here’s how the logic of these arguments go: “Oh, of course Jesus was born in the Winter.”

          “That’s impossible, the shepherds had sheep outside, and it is too cold in the winter to have sheep outside.

          For that matter, no Emperor would hold a census in winter, because he wouldn’t want to be cruel to his subjects!

          And it would be so cold that the Virgin Mary would have frozen to death and Jesus would never be born.

          And so clearly Christmas is actual the Pagan practice of worshipping the Sun’s birth on “Sol Invictus.”

          So, a few things to consider about this argument:

          Firstly, every person who makes this argument cites Adam Clarke, an Irish academic from the 1800’s. Now the little village Clarke lived in was kinda cold in December, between 45 and 36 degrees. But, Bethlehem averages between 57 and 45 degrees in December, not swimming weather, but it’s not going to kill you either.

          Secondly, Roman Emperors were cruel from time to time.

          Thirdly, there was no formal recognition of this type of worship of the sun until 274CE, 72 years after the death of Irenaeus, the first recorded Church Father to suggest December 25^th as Christ’s birth.

 

          But I agree with my friend, arguing about this type of thing is majoring in the minors, and not really the Lutheran way of doing faith, but I’d imagine that would help the questioner think about the date of Christmas a little more.

          The more interesting of the two questions, at least to me, is: “Why do people go to church on the Sabbath?” And spreading the question out a bit: what’s the Sabbath for?

         

          Reading in exodus we see a very severe accounting of Sabbath—it’s about rest and holiness… and if you don’t do it you are to be put to death.

          In Genesis and Deuteronomy we get two sources of this command.

          From Genesis we see the Sabbath is holy on account of being associated with God’s holy act of creation, and Sabbath is about rest because on the 7^th day God rested.

           From Deuteronomy we read that the Sabbath is holy because of God’s liberation of his people from Slavery into Freedom, and it requires rest because a people who were once slaves should not let anyone in their society live in the slave-like condition of constant labor.

         

          And when Jesus argues with Pharisees about healing on the Sabbath, he draws from that 2^nd tradition, the liberation tradition—saying:

“What better day is there than the Sabbath for making straight the crooked path,

lightening the load of the heavy burdened,

and liberating the lives of the loveless and luckless.”

          And as we read today, when push comes to shove, he shoves the severe restrictions of Sabbath rest out of the way for the sake of that tradition of Sabbath liberation, declaring “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.”

          And with all that background in place, the question again, “Why do people go to church on the Sabbath?”

          In a sense we don’t, Sabbath traditionally is from Friday at dusk to Saturday at dusk.

The majority of Christians, however, go to church on Sunday, in order to worship on the day Jesus was raised from the dead.

          But, there is a touch of Sabbath on Sunday in worship. We keep it, (and just so you know I’m now parroting Luther’s explanation of how Sabbath and worship go together…)

          We keep it, to break up the routine of work work work, or work play work play work play—so that we can find an opportunity to inject the Holy into these weekly cycles by participating in public worship. And this public worship we do, is holy because we hear God’s Holy Word and we praise God through song and prayer.

          And of course, I’m preaching to the choir here, you all showed up, you honor the holiness of time by being here. And I do want to say to you all by being here you are doing something good and holy.

          Yet, in a sense, it is not enough to just show up—Luther points to a peasant, who over-indulged the night before, waking up in pig trough, cuddling with a sow, so hung over he couldn’t make it to church to hear the Word of God—and says “and yet those who come to worship and neither learn nor retain the promises of Christ are no better off.” They too have broken the Sabbath.

         

          Still, for Luther, Sabbath does retains a sense of rest as well. We keep Sabbath for the sake of our bodily needs—we carve out as a society a time when everyone has a chance to stop from slaving away at work, because without rest we grow weary, crazy, and less human.

          So, in addition to reflecting on God’s good promises as found in scripture, Sunday ought to be a time that is “good… for nothing.” Just good to be, and to rest, and to reside in the goodness of God’s world.

          In short, Sabbath is about rest, liberation, and holiness.

          It’s about rest, a time that is “good… for nothing.”

          It is also about liberation, acts of kindness and justice are part of living into the holiness of God’s time.

          It, finally, is holy in and of itself, dragging us into the reality of God through our worship together in which we receive and cherish the promises of God.

A+A.

Sermon: Angels & Demons

         Just to remind everyone, as a summer sermon series I’ll be preaching topically. Specifically, I’ll be preaching on questions that you all have submitted over the last month.

         Today, both questions are questions involving spiritual beings. They are:

1.   What’s the deal with Angels? Do humans become angels when we die?
2.   Is there a particular significance to Jesus casting the Legion of Evil Spirits from the Gerasene Demoniac into a herd of swine?

Let us pray:

         To start off with, when we talk about Angels it’s important to admit right off the bat that they are mysterious.
         For example, in the book of Genesis various patriarchs run into what appears to be a human messenger, then they describe it as an Angel, then sometimes it becomes the Angel of the LORD, then finally it is described at God!

Clearly something odd is happening.
         Likewise, if you read the book of Ezekiel you’ll find Angels who are things, for example pieces of God’s throne, and elsewhere angels described simply as “flaming things.”
         All that to say, they’re strange things and I’m clearly not going to nail down what they are, but we can at least take a few swings at it.

         Tackling the second half of the question before the first, there is nothing in scripture that indicates humans become angels when we die.
         The closest we come to an actual example of a human becoming an angel is one non-canonical

—meaning from writings which are not considered scripture
—one non-canonical instance in which Enoch,
remember Enoch, the guy who walked with God and then was not—Noah’s great-grandfather…
well, there is a tradition in which Enoch is translated into an angel named Metatron.

         That said, there is a larger Pastoral concern behind the question, there is a bigger question being asked, which is:
“Is there still a connection between me and my dead loved one?”
         And to that I respond yes.

         We are held fast by the One Who Was, Who Is, and Who Will Be, the one who transcends time and has conquered death.
         Each Sunday we eat together before the altar, at a meal that anticipates the destruction of death and the wiping away of all tears,

anticipates this great culmination, (here’s the kicker) which has already happened through Jesus Christ.
         So, when we kneel before this half-circle altar rail… half-square actually… we can be confident that the invisible other half of the railing around the altar is filled with our sisters and

brothers who were and who will be.

         As to the other half of the first question, what are angels?
         There are a lot of different ways to think about the nature of angels, I’m just going to briefly give you two I think can be helpful.

         The first comes from Augustine’s City of God. He reads the creation of light on the first day in Genesis chapter 1 as the creation of angels as “partakers of the eternal Light which we call
the only-begotten Son of God.”
         As for the darkness, Augustine writes, “If an angel turns away from God, he becomes impure,” an unclean spirit.
Essentially angels are like the moon, they are beings who reflect the light of Jesus Christ, and when that light is eclipsed they become evil.
         Now, the interesting thing that comes out of this meditation upon Angels and Demons is that he affirms, “Evil has no nature of its own. Rather, it is the absence of good, which has received the name evil.”
         This is probably one of the most powerful realizations in all of Augustine’s works—evil isn’t a thing, it is simply the absence of
good! The dark side of the moon isn’t defective, it simply needs to
reflect the light of the sun!
Imagine what this means for our redemption!

         For the second way to think about angels we need to fast forward 1600 years or so from Augustine to a guy with the funny name Walter Wink.
         Dr. Wink wrestled for years and 100’s of pages with the question “what are these spiritual beings?”—Angels, Powers, Heights, Depths—all those things which Paul writes can not separate us from the Love of God in Christ Jesus.
         And it was in reading Daniel that Dr. Wink hit upon an in to understanding the Spiritual Powers. The angel who comes to Daniel was slowed down by the Prince, the Angel, of Persia. Dr. Wink thought through the meaning of particular nations having Angels assigned to them, and concluded these Spiritual Powers are (dis?)embodiments of those things which no one person controls.
         So, for him, Spiritual Powers are almost like the ethos of corporations, nations, places, etc.
         And, he goes on to point out, like all created things, they are fallen and in need of redemption… in fact this is one of the tasks of the Christian faith.
         His main example is the end of Apartheid in South Africa. By seeking a non-violent solution to the transition of power in that country, through Truth and Reconciliation, the Spiritual Ethos of South Africa was redeemed—an exorcism of Apartheid was done to that country.



         Let’s take this way of looking at Angels and other Spiritual Powers and bring it a little closer to home:
         About two weeks ago some of us got together and began to explore what hunger looks like in the US, and we were overwhelmed with how many moving parts there were, and that some things being done to alleviate hunger actually weren’t doing much good.

         The systems in place in this country to feed people well, are out of whack—Walter Wink would say this is actually a Spiritual problem, these systems which are bigger than any one person are in fact tied to a Spiritual Power and that Power is sick, if not demonic, and therefore it is our duty as Christians to try to, through non-violent self-giving acts, redeem that system so it once again functions as God intended it to.

         And finally, in a very round about way, that gets us to the question about Legion. Notice the demons are named Legion—the same name as Roman Legions, the army, who occupies Israel.
         If an army, a thing bigger than any one person, had an Angelic sense to it, it would be one which focused on defending the weak and needy (this is why Luther recommend that we ask for God’s Angels to Defend us), yet Roman Legions occupied Israel making it’s population weak and needy—this is a perversion of God’s intentions, it is Demonic.

         This person, whose home is occupied by Roman Legions (or alternatively is himself a cast-away member of a Roman Legion), is occupied by unclean spirits named Legion. The physical reality is being manifest in a spiritual way.

         And so Jesus decolonizes this man’s Spirit, and the colonizing power, Legion, doesn’t want to be kicked out of the land currently being occupied by the Roman Legions (see verse 10). So Jesus sends an unclean spirit into an unclean animal, a swine.

         In summary:
1. Jesus finds an unclean place for an unclean thing.
2. Reflecting upon the nature of Angels help us
a) think about redemption as a passive reflection of the good light of
Christ, and that
b) redemption can involve the spirit of whole systems.
3. Finally, we don’t become angels when we die, but we can trust that
all the Saints of God—both living and dead—are one in Christ Jesus.
A+A

Sermon: Cross and Communion

Worship

          This summer I’m going to be preaching a little differently—I’m going to be preaching topically, specifically on topics related to questions the congregation submitted to me during the last month. This sermon series began last week when Pastor Jim answered questions about the Lord’s Prayer and Discerning God’s Will.

          Today I will be preaching on two questions:

1. What is the significance and meaning of the procession of the cross at the beginning and end of the service?

2. Do we as Lutherans believe the bread and wine literally change into Jesus’ body and blood? I assume different Protestant sects believe different things in this regard. I believe Roman Catholics do believe it changes.

          I will tackle these questions bit by bit. First I will deal with the procession of the cross into church and then we will process the cross into the worship space here today

          Next, during the typical time of the Sermon I will tackle the communion question.

          Then, finally, before the recession of the cross, I’ll cover the significance of recessing the cross.

Procession

          We process in with the cross in order to acknowledge the symbol of our redemption—the Cross of Christ. We remember the life giving act of God’s son for our sake, his death on the cross.

          By beginning the service in such a way, we remind ourselves what kind of community is gathered here. It is a cross shaped community, a community immersed in Christ’s death, and made alive with Christ in his resurrection.

          Entering with the cross reminds us that we are a community defined by our Baptism into that death and resurrection of Jesus.

          That in fact, is why the next thing we do in worship, after processing with the cross, is that we return to the font, where we were Baptized, either through confession and forgiveness like we will do today, or in a more literal sense with Thanksgiving for Baptism.

          We process the cross to remind ourselves we are a cross people. A+A

Communion

          The official Lutheran answer to the question asked today about communion can be found in the Smalcald Articles as well as in Luther’s Large and Small Catechism.

          In the Smalcald Articles it is written:

“Concerning transubstantiation, we have absolutely no regard for the subtle sophistry of those who teach that the bread and wine surrender or lose their natural substance and that only the form and color of the bread remain, but it is no longer real bread. For it is in closest agreement with scripture to say that bread is and remains there as St. Paul himself indicates “The bread that we break” and “Eat of the bread.”

          And yet, we also affirm the words of Luther’s Large Catechism:

“It is the true body and blood of the Lord Christ, in and under the bread and wine, which we Christians are commanded by Christ’s words to eat and drink… the sacrament is bread and wine, but not mere bread and wine such as is served at the table. Rather, it is bread and wine set within God’s Word and bound to it.”

“It is true, indeed, that if you take the Word away from the elements or view them apart from the Word, you have nothing but ordinary bread and wine. But if the Words remain, as is right and necessary, then by virtue of them the elements are truly the body and blood of Christ. For as Christ’s lips speak and say, so it is; he cannot lie or deceive.”

          So, what’s going on here? Luther is threading the needle between two different understandings of the Lord’s Supper which rely on Logic instead of Faith.

          In the first case, Luther is standing against Medieval Roman Catholic understandings of the Lord’s Supper, which rely on the science of the time, Aristotelian Logic, in order to explain what happens during communion.

          This way of looking at communion makes the claim that we are assured that Jesus is present with us in communion, because all things in the universe have accidents and substance. The accident of the thing is that which can be seen, touched, felt, etc, and the substance of the thing is what the thing actually is.

          So, for example, a fun joke you can play on your friends when you are in the hospital, is to get a Urine Sample Cup, fill it with apple juice, and drink it in front of them.

          In that case the accident is Urine, but the substance is Apple Juice.

          Just so, Medieval reliance on Aristotilian Logic insists we know Jesus is in communion because bread and wine are the accident and flesh and blood are the substance.

          Luther hears this argument and says, “That’s all math to me… we should believe Jesus is truly present in communion because he truly promises to show up, and Jesus doesn’t lie.”

          In the second case, Luther is standing against other protestant reformers like the French John Calvin and Swiss Huldrich Zwingli. They too, he felt, clung to logic instead of faith.

          When they debated with Luther about the Lord’s Supper they clung to a literal understanding of scripture—specifically that Jesus is at the Right Hand of the Father… which to them meant Jesus clearly couldn’t show up in bread and wine here on earth, because he was up in heaven.

          Luther countered that The Right Hand is a Hebrew way of saying strength or power, and so the Traditional understanding of that power involves the ubiquity of Christ—at essence, Jesus isn’t bound to any one place.

          For example, if you read the end of several of the Gospels, Jesus walks through walls, shows up on the road to Emmaus, and so on. So clearly he’s not stuck on a cloud somewhere, clearly he can show up in bread and wine if he promises he is going to.

          So convinced was Luther of the real presence that he met with Zwingli in Malburg and they went round after round for days and days about the real presence and Luther began to etch into the table they sat at “Est ist est.” That is “Is means Is.”

          As I read in the gospel today Jesus says, “this IS my body” and “this IS my blood.”

          So the question quickly becomes, why isn’t this common knowledge among Lutherans?

          To paraphrase the eminent theologian Mel Brooks: “I blame the Irish.”

         

          During the American Civil War tons of Protestants were dying left and right, just as Immigration from Catholic Ireland was picking up.

          And Samuel Schmucker, a Princeton Grad and one of the founders of The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, saw this and lost his head. He believed the only way to keep Roman Catholicism from taking over America was to join Lutheran Protestants with Calvinist Protestants by chucking our understanding of Holy Communion.

          In response to this move away from traditional Lutheranism, a cadre of Faculty left Gettysburg and started up a new seminary in 1864, the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia.

          Similarly, Lutherans in parts of the country in which everyone is either Lutheran or Catholic—especially in the Midwest—tend to downplay or even misrepresent our understanding of Communion in order to make a greater distinction between us and our Roman neighbors.

          But that’s all a lot of history and maybe a little dry. The important thing to know is this, Jesus shows up in the meal, he is really present. We know this to be true because he promises to show up, and Jesus doesn’t lie!

          If your beloved promised to meet you at the train station, would you sit at home wondering if mathematics can prove her arrival? Would you spend your time fretting over how she made it to the train station?  No, you would run stop lights to get there and see her!

          So too with Jesus, he promises to meet us in the meal! Rejoice, he will be there! Rejoice! His words point us to the reality of his forgiveness—in the meal Jesus promises us forgiveness, life, and salvation. A+A

Recession

          When we recess with the Cross, we find ourselves between the rich meal of Communion and the cross of Christ.

Fed and now following, bringing with us that promise we received in the Body and Blood of our Lord, to be shared with a hurting, crucified, world.

          We are led out into the world to find God in unexpected places, God on the cross, following Christ wherever he may lead.

A+A

Luther's Greatest hits from his commentary on Ecclesiastes

Luther’s Greatest Hits:

“The subject or matter of this book is simply the human race, which is so foolish that it seeks and strives for many things by its efforts which it cannot attain or which, even if it does attain them, it does not enjoy but possesses to its sorrow and harm, as the fault not of the things themselves, but of its own foolish affections.”

“Incompetent legislators are a curse from God.”

“When the heart is empty of cares and yet something happens to it that is pleasant or some interesting sight comes alone, this is very delightful.”

“Humans are like a dog who attacks his reflection in a pond and in so doing drops his bone.”

“Since, we shall not take anything with us, let us share it with others.”

It is better to bear with and to endure a moderate amount of rebellion than to let the entire state perish."

The Book of Ecclesiastes in a nutshell:

I'm finishing up my Bible Study about the book of Ecclesiastes and this is my summary:

Both constructive and destructive things will happen in life.

We can’t easily tell if they relate to our moral or immoral acts.

Life is better and safer when lived wisely and in community.

Life is fragile, especially so if you are foolish or if fools are in power.

Possessions can be helpful in life, but they can also possess us.

Taking all this into consideration:

We should find equilibrium in the enjoyment of our work and our play.

Twenty Questions in Ten Weeks

I asked my parishioners to write down their theological questions and I would answer them for the 10 weeks of summer. Here are the subjects they want me to touch on: God’s Will, Worship, Angels and Demons, Calendar, Gay Marriage, Sin and Forgiveness, Messiah, Heavenly Reward and Equality, Affliction and Death, and The Law.

They want to know how to discern God’s will, without being presumptuous.

They want to know precisely what Lutheran believe about the Sacrament of Holy Communion and our use of the Cross in worship.

They want to know about Angels and the Gerasene Demoniac.

A Teenage Boy (because who else asks questions like this) from the Seventh Day Adventist Church who worship in our building on Saturday has very particular questions about our use of calendar.

With the legality of Gay Marriage, and our church being the only one in town who could perform such a thing, they want to know what our Denomination’s relationship to marriage and Gay-folk.

They have questions about degrees of sin and where the root of sin is, as well as “the office of the keys.”

They want to know about our Jewish Brother’s and Sisters and how they see Jesus (I may bring in a Rabbi to help out on this one).

Jesus has this annoying tendency of talking about Heavenly Rewards and there is language of being the greater and lesser in the Kingdom of God, which rubs against both American egalitarianism as well as some of Paul’s egalitarian language… so they want me to square that circle.

They also were curious about the Pauline language about Death Dying and about “Completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.”

Finally, there was a question about how much of Moses’ Laws we Christians need to keep.

Pentecost and Confirmation

            The disciples, on Pentecost, are struck by the breath of God, 

a wind,

the Spirit.

            Upon them landed tongues of fire, and they were able to tell the plethora of peoples, from all over the place, Parthians, Medes, Elamites, etc. present at Pentecost,

tell them about what God had done through Jesus Christ.

         And to this powerful movement of God—this new thing God was doing which we celebrate today—Pentecost, some respond, “What does this mean?”

            Let us Pray

            What does this mean?

The ultimate Lutheran question… the one Luther comes back to time and time again in his Small Catechism.

            A question supposedly inspired by his son, Hans, who asked it time and time again

—Luther was the first theologian in the West for 700 years who had a kid in wedlock, and therefore was consistently in Hans’ life,

and therefore when he would try to theologize out there in the clouds

Hans would drag him down to earth by asking that simple question, “Pappa, Was Ist Das?”

What does this mean?

            What does this mean? They ask the disciples.

What does it mean that the Gospel is being proclaimed in a multitude of languages?

What is the meaning of these fisher men come Fishers of Men preaching like this.

            And Peter has an answer—he knows his bible and responds to their question by quoting the book of Joel, explaining that the great and horrible Day of the Lord,

when justice shall come and shall be meted out,

when all will be made right,

the day when salvation shall come,

is at hand.

He answers that their words in many languages is an expansion of the prophetic ministry of the days of old.

That signs like those in Egypt during the time of Moses, when God passed over his people and brought them from slavery into freedom, have fallen afresh through the life death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ.

Haley, Matthew, and Jared—in these last two years of confirmation class you’ve ran into that question “What does this mean?” a time or two.

         I hope, that these last two years have been a sort of associate’s degree in Jesus.

         I hope that you have a broad foundation in the gospel of Jesus Christ. That together we’ve deepened our commitment to Jesus’ body in the world, the Church.

         In these last two years I hope you’ve developed a sort of tool box of the Faith.

         That I’ve given you tools to engage with the questions that will come to you throughout your life.

         I hope that when someone asks you “What does this mean?”

Like Peter,

you will have a broad overview of scripture from which you can quote.

         When they ask you about Christian history,

you can take them from Paul to Augustine from Luther to Bonhoeffer.

         When they ask what this daily bread thing means,

you can expand out the meaning of that prayer to encompass friends and family, food and shoes—everything that is life giving and nourishing.

         When they engage you about the sacraments and ask, “can bread do that?”

you know to respond, “No, it’s the promise ‘given for you’ and ‘shed for you’ that bring about forgiveness.

         When someone snidely asks you if you’re part of a creedal church,

you can drill down on all three articles of the Apostle’s Creed.

         When arguments break out about where the 10 commandments should be placed in public and private places,

you will already know the commandments and their meaning whether or not they’re present with you.

         When you pray

you can draw on Francis of Assisi and Julian of Norwich with equal admiration.

         When your grandma asks about the heavy red book in the pews,

you can take her from Calendar to Communion through the Psalms and Songs all the way to the Small Catechism at the end where it asks that o’ so Lutheran question: “What Does This Mean?”

         And ultimately the answer to that question, “What does this mean?” Goes beyond confirmation. Ultimately it is about more than an Associate’s Degree in Jesus, a well-stocked toolbox, and answers to questions, no matter how deep.

Ultimately it is about Confirming your Baptism—about what Water, Word, and Spirit did to you on that day long ago.

         That the Holy Spirit called you through the Gospel, enlightens you with Her gifts, made you holy and keeps you in the true faith, just as She does the whole Church, the Body of Christ.

         Daily the Holy Spirit forgives us all our sins—both yours and mine—and will raise you up and give you eternal life.

         Today we’re confirming the Spirit’s work, confirming that you are part of that one Body—that you drink of that one Spirit.

         That you are one of those who Peter spoke of—one of those enlivened by the Spirit. You are young men who see visions, you are daughters who Prophecy.

         Today is your confirmation that you, like Peter, empowered by the Spirit, will point to what God is doing through his Son Jesus Christ.

A+A

Sermon: “Why Y’all lookin’ up?”

           I remember one of my first days at the University of Oregon. We all crowded into Mac Court, home of the Duck’s Basketball Team—but we weren’t there to play or watch basketball, we were there to hear Poet Maya Angelou speak at our Commencement Address.

            I don’t remember much of what she said, though I do remember the deep feeling that her words caused to welled up in my heart, a feeling of possibility, a feeling of fully leaving Wyoming behind and entering into a different world.

            And I remember later reading a poem of hers written to an anonymous preacher.

            And, in memory of her and as a way to think about today’s reading from the book of Acts, I would like to read that poem to you all:

Preacher, Don't Send Me



Preacher, don't send me


when I die


to some big ghetto


in the sky


where rats eat cats


of the leopard type


and Sunday brunch


is grits and tripe.


I've known those rats


I've seen them kill


and grits I've had


would make a hill,


or maybe a mountain,

so what I need


from you on Sunday


is a different creed.



Preacher, please don't


promise me


streets of gold


and milk for free.


I stopped all milk


at four years old


and once I'm dead


I won't need gold.



I'd call a place


pure paradise


where families are loyal


and strangers are nice,


where the music is jazz


and the season is fall.


Promise me that


or nothing at all.


            Such words…

she lifts up the false heavens that come so easy from the lips of preachers—of streets of gold and milk for free, images that, when overused or misused, are, to quote Johnny Cash, “so Heavenly Minded They’re No Earthly Good.”

            Such words…

She points us to the hell we sometimes find ourselves in, malnourished monotony and the grim and grimy reality of giant ghetto rats.

            Such words…

she anchors us in the heaven of small decent things—loyal family, the kindness of strangers, good music, and a favorite season.

         What I want to talk to you about briefly today is witnessing to the world—witnessing to the world.

         And to get at what I mean by witness and what I mean by world we’ll have to look at their opposites in today’s reading, a worldly kingdom and a heaven fixation.

         Or to break it down a little more by borrowing from Maya Angelou,

I want to talk to you about the glitter of heaven and power,

and how the small things that give life meaning can speak and save in this gruff world.

             Let us pray.

“Is it the time when you will restore the kingdom?”

         How often we’ve heard such words.

In the wilderness Jesus is tempted by Satan, “just bow down to me and I’ll give you all the Kingdoms of this world.”

         The crowd at one point seizes Jesus to crown him and make him king, and it is all he can do to escape from them.

         Counterwise, he rides into Jerusalem on a decidedly non-regal Donkey and when asked by Pilate if he is a king, Jesus responded mysteriously, “It is you who say I am.”

         In short, Jesus’ Kingdom is of a different type than all expect…

        

         Yet here we are, with the disciples again grasping at a political kingdom,

and not laying hold of one.

         Instead Jesus responds, “It’s not for you to know…” instead of a kingdom in this world Jesus offers them an opportunity—to witness to the ends of the earth about Jesus.

         To tell the whole world that Jesus lived, died, and rose.

         To tell them as well, of the strange enthronement, the strange kind of king, that Jesus is. He’s a king acquainted with sorrow—more than that, acquainted with our sorrow, yes, each and every one of ours.

         Witness has nothing to do with the glitter of kingship and power.

         Witness is a small thing, a weak thing, held together by no army or castle wall, instead an open hand, a simple story shared by word of mouth.         

A weak small thing, but pure paradise,

like a loyal family or jazz, or anticipating fall—dying leaves and cool air—small weak things,

yet powerful, just in a different way.

So too telling that old old story of Jesus and his love.

         And then almost immediately after Jesus tells the disciples to witness, to tell people of their experience of him—to go out to Jerusalem, and Judea, and Samaria, and to all the ends of the earth in the power of the Spirit and the strange weakness of witnessing…

         Immediately after that comes one of my all-time favorite bible verses—Acts Chapter 1 verse 11.

         These men in white, presumably the same ones we first meet at the tomb announcing Christ’s resurrection on Easter Sunday, wander up to these disciples all agape at the Ascension of Jesus, and ask, “Why y’all lookin’ up?”

         These heavenly beings find the disciples’ heavenly-minded-ness to be out of place.

         It’s like they’re following Maya Angelou’s lead, “gold and milk shimmer, but aren’t something to hold onto.”

Don’t look up, but instead look around you—look out—you’ve been empowered to preach to the ends of the earth… You have good news, look around you and see all those who need it.

         Look to the crowded ghettos of Jerusalem,

To the squalor the Hellenist Widows will wallow in.

Look the giant prison rats in Philippi and Caesarea with Paul right in their eyes,

know clearly the hunger of all those people in Asia Minor yearning for the good news you know so well,

yes go even to Rome and to the end of the earth, eyes open to the conditions and situations of the people who Jesus’ Gospel has come to free.

         Word and witness—clear eyed about the world around us, but empowered by the Spirit to act in small, sacred, and significant ways so that Christ may be known.

…         That’s pure paradise.

Amen and Alleluia.