The Last Sunday After the Epiphany
Exodus 24: 12 – 18
Sunday, March 6, 2011 2 Peter 1: 16 – 21
The Rev. Bambi Willis Matthew 17: 1 - 9
Six days after Peter had acknowledged Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves.
Matthew 17: 1
On this, the last Sunday after the Epiphany, Peter, James and John are overwhelmed by a vision of the glory of God in the story of the Transfiguration we just heard from the gospel of Matthew. Jesus appears before them transformed, radiant with the light of God, his face shining like the sun and his clothes a dazzling white. Moses and Elijah, representing the Law and the prophets are with Jesus. And out of a cloud a voice tells these three disciples to listen to Jesus.
Visions are often difficult for us to understand but ought not, on that account, be simply dismissed. In all three synoptic accounts of the Transfiguration, we have great light, witnesses, a cloud and a voice. All three accounts tell us that Peter, James and John saw Jesus in a new way as a result of the vision. In the words of one commentator,
To be sure, at one level of perception, the experience of transfiguration is not entirely beyond the ken of most sensitive people. Who has not known moments of surprised illumination when, through some outwardly ordinary act, episode or fragment of conversation, someone we thought we knew fairly well is suddenly revealed in a completely new light?
We often do have sudden revelations that change our perceptions of both people and events.
Now our lectionary reading tells us that this vision took place six days after Jesus asks Peter: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” to which Peter responds: “You are the Son of the living God.” And, as soon as Peter makes this confession of faith, Jesus tells Peter, Jesus must suffer and die, to which Peter responds: “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” Peter’s perception of the Messiah has no room for suffering and death. The Transfiguration confirms Peter’s confession of faith while at the same time suggesting Peter still is not “listening,” still not wholly able to believe that the Son of God is going to die.
We hear this story of the Transfiguration on this the last Sunday after Epiphany; this coming Wednesday is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. Lent begins as we are marked with ashes and reminded “We are dust and to dust we shall return.” During Lent we remember that we all will one day die, will one day be overcome by death over which we have no power. During Lent we are asked to remember our limits, our utter incapacity to be masters of our own fate. During Lent we “keep death daily before our eyes” in the words of Saint Benedict, so that we might become free to live.
The story of the Transfiguration foreshadows the Resurrection, anticipating the undoing of death when God raises Jesus from the dead. The glorified Christ Peter sees in the Transfiguration is the same Christ who will suffer death, who will surrender to the power of death and then be raised. On the mountaintop, Peter confronts the central mystery of faith, the paschal mystery, the mystery that out of death God brings forth life.
Lent prepares us for that paschal mystery, the mystery of Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter morning, the mystery of death and resurrection. We cannot appreciate, much less appropriate, that mystery unless we confront the reality of death in all of its certainty, irreversibility and power. In the face of death, we are powerless and during Lent we are invited to surrender ourselves to that one unyielding truth of our existence.
Over and over again in the gospels, we hear this paschal mystery expressed in paradoxical sayings which tell us “those who want to save their life will lose it,” “the last shall be first” and “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain.” Only by dying can we live.
And dying is not just what happens to us at the end of our lives. Death comes to us throughout our lives, in greater and lesser measure. We experience death as a loss and we can lose not just loved ones but our hopes and dreams. Death and our experience of loss reminds us that life is not what we make it, but rather what God gives us.
We live in a death denying culture, a culture that abhors death and which refuses to acknowledge our powerlessness over death. We are a culture that can do anything and be anything and in which weakness and powerlessness are to be resisted. Lent, these forty days in which we contemplate our mortality, may be the most counter cultural of all liturgical seasons. Who wants to think about death now when all of creation seems so full of life? With a wink and a nod toward Lent, we give up chocolate or alcohol in the hope of spiritual transformation which often only results forty days later with an attitude of self congratulation that we were indeed able to live without these pleasures.
The spiritual discipline of fasting which we associate with Lent was meant to remind us of our dependence upon God for our very life and encourage us to give up trying to control what happens to us, to free us from all of our many inordinate desires so that we might be free for the one desire for which we were created – God.
We are powerless in the face of death. But not forsaken. Which is why, during Lent, we can dare, to borrow a turn of phrase from the Trappist monk Henri Nouwen, to “befriend death.” Following the death of his mother in 1978, Nouwen wrote a letter to his father in which Nouwen speaks of our need to “befriend death.” Nouwen writes:
And isn’t death, the frightening unknown that lurks in the depths of our unconscious minds, like a great shadow that we perceive only dimly in our dreams? Befriending death seems to be the basis of all forms of befriending. I have a deep sense, hard to articulate, that if we could really befriend death we would be free people. So many of our doubts and hesitations, ambivalences and insecurities are bound up with our deep-seated fear of death that our lives would be significantly different if we could relate to death as a familiar guest instead of a threatening stranger.
Relating to death as a familiar guest is the challenge of Lent.
Peter wants to stay on the mountain this morning in the story of the Transfiguration and offers to build three dwelling places for this most holy company. Peter wants to stay because Peter loves Jesus and love always resists endings. In Nouwen’s words: “Love will always reach out toward the eternal.” And that is the deepest meaning of Easter, that love does indeed reach out toward the eternal, refusing to accept the limits of death.
“Get up,” Jesus tells his frightened disciples, “Get up and do not be afraid.” For in the words of Saint Paul: “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Sunday, March 6, 2011 2 Peter 1: 16 – 21
The Rev. Bambi Willis Matthew 17: 1 - 9
Six days after Peter had acknowledged Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves.
Matthew 17: 1
On this, the last Sunday after the Epiphany, Peter, James and John are overwhelmed by a vision of the glory of God in the story of the Transfiguration we just heard from the gospel of Matthew. Jesus appears before them transformed, radiant with the light of God, his face shining like the sun and his clothes a dazzling white. Moses and Elijah, representing the Law and the prophets are with Jesus. And out of a cloud a voice tells these three disciples to listen to Jesus.
Visions are often difficult for us to understand but ought not, on that account, be simply dismissed. In all three synoptic accounts of the Transfiguration, we have great light, witnesses, a cloud and a voice. All three accounts tell us that Peter, James and John saw Jesus in a new way as a result of the vision. In the words of one commentator,
To be sure, at one level of perception, the experience of transfiguration is not entirely beyond the ken of most sensitive people. Who has not known moments of surprised illumination when, through some outwardly ordinary act, episode or fragment of conversation, someone we thought we knew fairly well is suddenly revealed in a completely new light?
We often do have sudden revelations that change our perceptions of both people and events.
Now our lectionary reading tells us that this vision took place six days after Jesus asks Peter: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” to which Peter responds: “You are the Son of the living God.” And, as soon as Peter makes this confession of faith, Jesus tells Peter, Jesus must suffer and die, to which Peter responds: “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” Peter’s perception of the Messiah has no room for suffering and death. The Transfiguration confirms Peter’s confession of faith while at the same time suggesting Peter still is not “listening,” still not wholly able to believe that the Son of God is going to die.
We hear this story of the Transfiguration on this the last Sunday after Epiphany; this coming Wednesday is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. Lent begins as we are marked with ashes and reminded “We are dust and to dust we shall return.” During Lent we remember that we all will one day die, will one day be overcome by death over which we have no power. During Lent we are asked to remember our limits, our utter incapacity to be masters of our own fate. During Lent we “keep death daily before our eyes” in the words of Saint Benedict, so that we might become free to live.
The story of the Transfiguration foreshadows the Resurrection, anticipating the undoing of death when God raises Jesus from the dead. The glorified Christ Peter sees in the Transfiguration is the same Christ who will suffer death, who will surrender to the power of death and then be raised. On the mountaintop, Peter confronts the central mystery of faith, the paschal mystery, the mystery that out of death God brings forth life.
Lent prepares us for that paschal mystery, the mystery of Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter morning, the mystery of death and resurrection. We cannot appreciate, much less appropriate, that mystery unless we confront the reality of death in all of its certainty, irreversibility and power. In the face of death, we are powerless and during Lent we are invited to surrender ourselves to that one unyielding truth of our existence.
Over and over again in the gospels, we hear this paschal mystery expressed in paradoxical sayings which tell us “those who want to save their life will lose it,” “the last shall be first” and “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain.” Only by dying can we live.
And dying is not just what happens to us at the end of our lives. Death comes to us throughout our lives, in greater and lesser measure. We experience death as a loss and we can lose not just loved ones but our hopes and dreams. Death and our experience of loss reminds us that life is not what we make it, but rather what God gives us.
We live in a death denying culture, a culture that abhors death and which refuses to acknowledge our powerlessness over death. We are a culture that can do anything and be anything and in which weakness and powerlessness are to be resisted. Lent, these forty days in which we contemplate our mortality, may be the most counter cultural of all liturgical seasons. Who wants to think about death now when all of creation seems so full of life? With a wink and a nod toward Lent, we give up chocolate or alcohol in the hope of spiritual transformation which often only results forty days later with an attitude of self congratulation that we were indeed able to live without these pleasures.
The spiritual discipline of fasting which we associate with Lent was meant to remind us of our dependence upon God for our very life and encourage us to give up trying to control what happens to us, to free us from all of our many inordinate desires so that we might be free for the one desire for which we were created – God.
We are powerless in the face of death. But not forsaken. Which is why, during Lent, we can dare, to borrow a turn of phrase from the Trappist monk Henri Nouwen, to “befriend death.” Following the death of his mother in 1978, Nouwen wrote a letter to his father in which Nouwen speaks of our need to “befriend death.” Nouwen writes:
And isn’t death, the frightening unknown that lurks in the depths of our unconscious minds, like a great shadow that we perceive only dimly in our dreams? Befriending death seems to be the basis of all forms of befriending. I have a deep sense, hard to articulate, that if we could really befriend death we would be free people. So many of our doubts and hesitations, ambivalences and insecurities are bound up with our deep-seated fear of death that our lives would be significantly different if we could relate to death as a familiar guest instead of a threatening stranger.
Relating to death as a familiar guest is the challenge of Lent.
Peter wants to stay on the mountain this morning in the story of the Transfiguration and offers to build three dwelling places for this most holy company. Peter wants to stay because Peter loves Jesus and love always resists endings. In Nouwen’s words: “Love will always reach out toward the eternal.” And that is the deepest meaning of Easter, that love does indeed reach out toward the eternal, refusing to accept the limits of death.
“Get up,” Jesus tells his frightened disciples, “Get up and do not be afraid.” For in the words of Saint Paul: “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
The First Sunday in Lent
Genesis 2: 15 -17; 3: 1 – 7
Sunday, March 13. 2011 Romans 5: 12 – 19
The Rev. Bambi Willis Matthew 4: 1 – 11
After Jesus was baptized, he was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
Matthew 4: 1
Many years ago, I wanted to go to graduate school. And in order to gain admission, I was required to take Graduate Record Exam or GRE. The test, like the SAT, measures what you know and what you do not. The test at the time was given on computer. Only one question appeared on the screen at a time. Once you registered your answer, another question appeared and so on. Unlike taking a paper version of the exam, you could not go back and change your answers.
Moreover, before taking the exam, you were required to name the graduate institutions to which you were applying and to whom your scores would be sent. At the end of the exam, you were asked if you wanted the results of the exam to be sent to the institutions you had named. The problem was that you had to answer that question before you knew your score. You only got your score, in other words, after you agreed to have them sent off to the places you wanted to study.
I will never forget after a long and grueling exam, seeing the question pop up on the screen: “Do you want to save your score?” “Well, yes,” I thought to myself, “if the score is good; otherwise, no. How can I know if I want my scores sent off if I don’t know my score?” The question remained on the computer screen, oblivious to my plight. I would have to choose to send off my scores without knowing how I had done. I took a deep breath and hit “Yes.” With that done, another question appeared on the screen: “Are you sure?”
We hear on this first Sunday in Lent, the story of the temptation of Jesus. Jesus has just been baptized and named God’s beloved Son and now the Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. The devil, well aware of who Jesus is, invites Jesus to turn stones into bread, jump off the pinnacle of the Temple and finally, to rule the world. Jesus refuses all of the devil’s alluring invitations. And we, are we not, left with the moral to resist temptation, the temptation to choose evil rather than good?
But who among us actually seeks out evil? Who among us really wants to sell our soul to the devil? Faced with the choice between good and evil, we all would choose good over evil. Temptation confronts us not with a choice between good and evil but between faith and fear. I was O.K. about sending off my GRE scores until that awful question popped up on the screen: “Are you sure?” Suddenly I was awash with fear, fear that maybe the computer was giving me one last chance to keep a dismal score from being sent off which would result in a denial of admission.
Temptation invites us not to trust God.
We begin in our reading this morning in the wilderness. The wilderness was a place of testing and trial. The wilderness is the place the Hebrews found themselves as soon as God had parted the waters of the Red Sea. Freed from slavery in Egypt, the Hebrews were now afraid of starving to death which is not an unfounded fear in the Sinai desert. Sure, God had parted the Red Sea, but would God feed them in the wilderness?
The wilderness is exactly that place in which life is threatened and imperiled. The Hebrews wandered in that place for forty years; Jesus now is sent into that place for forty days and forty nights. The wilderness is a place of fear because in the wilderness there is nothing – no food, no water, no shelter from the scorching sun.
And the Hebrews, as we know, wanted to go back, go back to the fleshpots of Egypt, to that place where at least they had food. God had brought them out of slavery but what would, if anything, God do now? They did not know and they were not sure.
And now Jesus is in the wilderness, besieged by the devil.
The word “devil” immediately puts us back about a thousand years into the middle ages when the devil was some hideous personage dressed in red with horns and a tail. The “devil” in our translation this morning is the same “thing” for lack of a better word, as the serpent or snake in our reading from Genesis. The serpent or the devil, is what tests us or tries us, who draws forth from us who we really are and what we really believe or trust.
The book of Job in the Old Testament is the clearest portrayal of this agent. In the book of Job, Satan or the devil is an agent of God, sent by God to test Job, to test Job to see if Job, when all is taken away from Job, will curse God. In the book of Job, Satan works for God, is God’s prosecuting attorney if you will, testing the faithful, sifting the chaff from the wheat. Job does nothing wrong but Job loses everything and in the process is counseled by his friends to admit he has done something wrong and Job refuses. Surely, Job’s friends tell Job, you have done something wrong to merit such suffering and Job maintains his innocence. “Are you sure?” Job’s friends keep asking and Job keeps saying, “I am sure.”
In the Old Testament, the devil or Satan is not so much an adversary of God as a refiner. The devil puts us under stress, creates circumstances in which we must decide in whom or what we put our trust. In our Old Testament reading, the serpent confronts Eve with a question: “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The serpent raises the possibility that maybe Eve did not hear what God said or maybe Eve misunderstood what God said. Suddenly and inexplicably, Eve is challenged, challenged by the possibility that God may be wrong and may not have Eve’s and Adam’s best interests at heart. “Are you sure?” the serpent asks Eve, “that God said you may not eat from any tree in the garden?”
And now Jesus is tested, sorely tested. He has fasted for forty days and forty nights and is famished. And he could turn stones into bread. But he does not. He is God’s beloved Son and he knows God will not abandon him. Why not jump off the top of the Temple and demonstrate for all the world who he is? And he does not. And finally, Jesus refuses to become king of the world.
And hear we need to pause. Rome was systematically oppressing Israel. When news came to King Herod the king of the Jews had been born, Herod slaughtered all the children under two in Bethlehem. The Jews, Jesus’ brothers and sisters, were under persecution. And many at the time wanted to revolt, to rise up in armed resistance against Rome and against those who wanted the Jews and their strange way of life to just go away. The devil seems to know who Jesus is and what Jesus can do. Jesus could keep a lot of innocent blood from being shed. Jesus could simply “take over” and become king. Jesus could spare the world a whole lot of heartache.
And Jesus refuses. The last temptation confronts Jesus with the possibility that he could save the world, not in an abstract theological sense but in the very real sense of saving the lives of Jews who were dying at the hands of Rome. And Jesus refuses. The devil confronts Jesus with the opportunity of doing good in the world.
And Jesus refuses because Jesus refuses to worship anything or anyone but God.
Temptation bids us to worship a power that is other than God, to replace God with an idol. Temptation invites us to believe that someone or something has more power than God. Temptation ultimately puts us on trial, confronting us with the question: Who do you worship?
In this season of Lent, we are asked to examine our lives, to consider the powers that influence the choices we make. Are we free to follow God or are we serving lesser gods, according money or family or prestige or the fear of failure more power than the power of the Holy Spirit? As we prepare ourselves for Easter and the overpowering of the most fearsome power of all, the power of death, consider the powers that keep you in bondage, which promise to keep you safe but simply do not have the power to bring you to life.
Sunday, March 13. 2011 Romans 5: 12 – 19
The Rev. Bambi Willis Matthew 4: 1 – 11
After Jesus was baptized, he was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
Matthew 4: 1
Many years ago, I wanted to go to graduate school. And in order to gain admission, I was required to take Graduate Record Exam or GRE. The test, like the SAT, measures what you know and what you do not. The test at the time was given on computer. Only one question appeared on the screen at a time. Once you registered your answer, another question appeared and so on. Unlike taking a paper version of the exam, you could not go back and change your answers.
Moreover, before taking the exam, you were required to name the graduate institutions to which you were applying and to whom your scores would be sent. At the end of the exam, you were asked if you wanted the results of the exam to be sent to the institutions you had named. The problem was that you had to answer that question before you knew your score. You only got your score, in other words, after you agreed to have them sent off to the places you wanted to study.
I will never forget after a long and grueling exam, seeing the question pop up on the screen: “Do you want to save your score?” “Well, yes,” I thought to myself, “if the score is good; otherwise, no. How can I know if I want my scores sent off if I don’t know my score?” The question remained on the computer screen, oblivious to my plight. I would have to choose to send off my scores without knowing how I had done. I took a deep breath and hit “Yes.” With that done, another question appeared on the screen: “Are you sure?”
We hear on this first Sunday in Lent, the story of the temptation of Jesus. Jesus has just been baptized and named God’s beloved Son and now the Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. The devil, well aware of who Jesus is, invites Jesus to turn stones into bread, jump off the pinnacle of the Temple and finally, to rule the world. Jesus refuses all of the devil’s alluring invitations. And we, are we not, left with the moral to resist temptation, the temptation to choose evil rather than good?
But who among us actually seeks out evil? Who among us really wants to sell our soul to the devil? Faced with the choice between good and evil, we all would choose good over evil. Temptation confronts us not with a choice between good and evil but between faith and fear. I was O.K. about sending off my GRE scores until that awful question popped up on the screen: “Are you sure?” Suddenly I was awash with fear, fear that maybe the computer was giving me one last chance to keep a dismal score from being sent off which would result in a denial of admission.
Temptation invites us not to trust God.
We begin in our reading this morning in the wilderness. The wilderness was a place of testing and trial. The wilderness is the place the Hebrews found themselves as soon as God had parted the waters of the Red Sea. Freed from slavery in Egypt, the Hebrews were now afraid of starving to death which is not an unfounded fear in the Sinai desert. Sure, God had parted the Red Sea, but would God feed them in the wilderness?
The wilderness is exactly that place in which life is threatened and imperiled. The Hebrews wandered in that place for forty years; Jesus now is sent into that place for forty days and forty nights. The wilderness is a place of fear because in the wilderness there is nothing – no food, no water, no shelter from the scorching sun.
And the Hebrews, as we know, wanted to go back, go back to the fleshpots of Egypt, to that place where at least they had food. God had brought them out of slavery but what would, if anything, God do now? They did not know and they were not sure.
And now Jesus is in the wilderness, besieged by the devil.
The word “devil” immediately puts us back about a thousand years into the middle ages when the devil was some hideous personage dressed in red with horns and a tail. The “devil” in our translation this morning is the same “thing” for lack of a better word, as the serpent or snake in our reading from Genesis. The serpent or the devil, is what tests us or tries us, who draws forth from us who we really are and what we really believe or trust.
The book of Job in the Old Testament is the clearest portrayal of this agent. In the book of Job, Satan or the devil is an agent of God, sent by God to test Job, to test Job to see if Job, when all is taken away from Job, will curse God. In the book of Job, Satan works for God, is God’s prosecuting attorney if you will, testing the faithful, sifting the chaff from the wheat. Job does nothing wrong but Job loses everything and in the process is counseled by his friends to admit he has done something wrong and Job refuses. Surely, Job’s friends tell Job, you have done something wrong to merit such suffering and Job maintains his innocence. “Are you sure?” Job’s friends keep asking and Job keeps saying, “I am sure.”
In the Old Testament, the devil or Satan is not so much an adversary of God as a refiner. The devil puts us under stress, creates circumstances in which we must decide in whom or what we put our trust. In our Old Testament reading, the serpent confronts Eve with a question: “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The serpent raises the possibility that maybe Eve did not hear what God said or maybe Eve misunderstood what God said. Suddenly and inexplicably, Eve is challenged, challenged by the possibility that God may be wrong and may not have Eve’s and Adam’s best interests at heart. “Are you sure?” the serpent asks Eve, “that God said you may not eat from any tree in the garden?”
And now Jesus is tested, sorely tested. He has fasted for forty days and forty nights and is famished. And he could turn stones into bread. But he does not. He is God’s beloved Son and he knows God will not abandon him. Why not jump off the top of the Temple and demonstrate for all the world who he is? And he does not. And finally, Jesus refuses to become king of the world.
And hear we need to pause. Rome was systematically oppressing Israel. When news came to King Herod the king of the Jews had been born, Herod slaughtered all the children under two in Bethlehem. The Jews, Jesus’ brothers and sisters, were under persecution. And many at the time wanted to revolt, to rise up in armed resistance against Rome and against those who wanted the Jews and their strange way of life to just go away. The devil seems to know who Jesus is and what Jesus can do. Jesus could keep a lot of innocent blood from being shed. Jesus could simply “take over” and become king. Jesus could spare the world a whole lot of heartache.
And Jesus refuses. The last temptation confronts Jesus with the possibility that he could save the world, not in an abstract theological sense but in the very real sense of saving the lives of Jews who were dying at the hands of Rome. And Jesus refuses. The devil confronts Jesus with the opportunity of doing good in the world.
And Jesus refuses because Jesus refuses to worship anything or anyone but God.
Temptation bids us to worship a power that is other than God, to replace God with an idol. Temptation invites us to believe that someone or something has more power than God. Temptation ultimately puts us on trial, confronting us with the question: Who do you worship?
In this season of Lent, we are asked to examine our lives, to consider the powers that influence the choices we make. Are we free to follow God or are we serving lesser gods, according money or family or prestige or the fear of failure more power than the power of the Holy Spirit? As we prepare ourselves for Easter and the overpowering of the most fearsome power of all, the power of death, consider the powers that keep you in bondage, which promise to keep you safe but simply do not have the power to bring you to life.
The Second Sunday in Lent
Genesis 12: 1 – 4a
Sunday, March 20, 2011 Romans 4: 1 – 5, 13 – 17
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 3: 1 – 17
Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.”
John 3: 5
“If you don't receive Jesus Christ and become a born again Christian, then you will sadly burn in Hellfire for all eternity.” I came across that sentence this week on a website which offered to curious souls information on how exactly one becomes a “born again Christian.” I was surfing the net after reading our gospel lesson for today in which we hear Jesus tell the Pharisee Nicodemus: “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” That same sentence can also be translated: “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again.”
Not only did I learn from my search that I would burn in hell if I was not born again, I also learned that when I was born again, whatever aches and pains I might be suffering from would be “healed.” The offer to be spared from the fires of hell together with the promise never to be sick again, was I must say, attractive, to say the least.
But just as I was contemplating such earthly and heavenly bliss, I suddenly remembered that I was an Episcopalian and did not need to be born again!
Our text this morning from the gospel of John has often been used to fan the flames of hell rather than lead us into eternal life. I have seen the citation “John 3:16” on the back of commercial vehicles and wondered what, exactly, the occupants understand that verse to signify. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” are words that have often been used to frighten folk away from eternal damnation, not lead folk into eternal life. The passage we hear from the gospel of John this morning has tremendous power, and that power has not always been for the good.
Jesus speaks of the Spirit this morning, not once, but three times in our reading. Our evangelist John will say much more about the Spirit later in his gospel, but for now, Nicodemus seems flummoxed by this “Spirit” stuff. And so too are we, good Episcopalians that we are, skeptical of all this “born again” stuff.
Nicodemus knows his scriptures and knows the story in Genesis that says that God created human being out of the mud and then blew God’s spirit into that first human, bringing Adam or “mudguy” to life. And now Jesus reminds Nicodemus that the wind or Spirit blows where it chooses. Nicodemus would like the wind or the Spirit not to be so, so, uncontrollable. Nicodemus knows that God brought human being to life and then brought the people Israel, the children of Abraham to life. Nicodemus knows all of this; but now the Spirit is blowing in a new direction and Nicodemus does not understand, saying: “How can these things be?”
Jesus, for my money, does not give Nicodemus a very good answer. Jesus says: “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?” Clearly, Nicodemus does not understand. And Jesus does not unravel the mystery. What Jesus does say is that all of this blowing of the Spirit is because God loves the world.
We have grown up in the shadow of the Enlightenment and have a propensity to privilege our capacity to “figure things out.” We want to “know” the how’s and the why’s and are no longer satisfied believing spirits lurk behind trees. We know storks do not deliver babies and that cancer is not contagious. We know that the tsunami and earthquake that has wrecked such devastation upon Japan in these past days, is not because the people of Japan have not been “born again.” Indeed, we abhor any and all intimations that perhaps this tragedy has been visited upon Japan because they have not been saved. What has happened in Japan is about the movement of tectonic plates and not about what folk do or do not believe.
However, can we, as children of the Enlightenment, as people of reason, make room for the Spirit, for that which is beyond reason, beyond our capacity to understand? Must everything that happens to us and among us have an explanation? Are there realities that defy scientific analysis? We know storkes do not drop children into our laps but how do we explain love? Where does the beauty of a Bach concerto come from? What moved Michelangelo to sculpt the exquisite Pieta? How do we make sense of the power of a poem like that of Dante’s Divine Comedy to transform us? How do you explain the efforts of those who are moved to go to Japan to look for the lost at the risk of their own lives?
“How can these things be?” A whole lot about life in this world does not make sense. A lot of life in this world is simply beyond reason, over the top in good ways and bad, overwhelming us in ways we cannot understand. Life does not submit to us and our desire to know. Nicodemus wants to understand. And so do we and we cannot.
“The wind blows where it chooses,” Jesus tells Nicodemus, “and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” The Spirit of God is God at work in the world, bringing forth life wherever and however God chooses. That Spirit moved Nicodemus to come to Jesus in the first place, to seek Jesus out, to learn who this man was who was changing water into wine and overturning the tables in the Temple. That Spirit was unsettling Nicodemus’ world, and Nicodemus is suddenly not as sure and certain as he once was.
Nicodemus appears twice more in the gospel of John. When the Pharisees seek to have Jesus arrested, Nicodemus urges them to give Jesus a hearing. And later, after the crucifixion, Nicodemus comes with an extraordinary amount of spices with which to prepare Jesus’ body for burial. In The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Nicodemus is called “a partial sympathizer with Christ.” John Calvin, the sixteenth century reformer, would use Nicodemus to denounce the behavior of protestants who continued to practice Roman Catholic rites and rituals. In the annals of the church, Nicodemus is generally not seen as a model of faithfulness.
Rather, the model of faithfulness is Abraham, who, as we heard this morning in our Old Testament reading, was told by God to “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” And with nary a question, Abraham went. And as Paul tells us in our reading from Romans, that absolute trust in God’s faithfulness is what makes Abraham righteous, not “good deeds.”
God is faithful, bringing us to life and then by the power of the Holy Spirit, giving us a foretaste of God’s kingdom, that kingdom where, in the words of Revelation, “death will be no more.” The Spirit is the Lord of life, in the words of the Creed, drawing us toward God, the author of life itself. To be born again is to surrender ourselves to the power of God’s Holy Spirit and follow where the Spirit leads us. Discerning which way the wind is blowing and where the Spirit might be leading us is not a one time affair but our life’s vocation. At our baptism, just after water is poured over us, the priest asks God to “sustain” the newly baptized in the Holy Spirit, giving to the newly baptized “an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works.” With those gifts we are empowered to “live no longer for ourselves, but for him who died and rose for us,” in the words of one of our Eucharistic prayers. We are, in other words, born and born again and again and again until the day we die, the day of our last birth.
I like to think that Nicodemus wasn’t so much a closet Christian as a slow delivery. And I like to think that our “born again” brothers and sisters in Christ are invitations for us all to wrestle with our faith claims, because “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
Sunday, March 20, 2011 Romans 4: 1 – 5, 13 – 17
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 3: 1 – 17
Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.”
John 3: 5
“If you don't receive Jesus Christ and become a born again Christian, then you will sadly burn in Hellfire for all eternity.” I came across that sentence this week on a website which offered to curious souls information on how exactly one becomes a “born again Christian.” I was surfing the net after reading our gospel lesson for today in which we hear Jesus tell the Pharisee Nicodemus: “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” That same sentence can also be translated: “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again.”
Not only did I learn from my search that I would burn in hell if I was not born again, I also learned that when I was born again, whatever aches and pains I might be suffering from would be “healed.” The offer to be spared from the fires of hell together with the promise never to be sick again, was I must say, attractive, to say the least.
But just as I was contemplating such earthly and heavenly bliss, I suddenly remembered that I was an Episcopalian and did not need to be born again!
Our text this morning from the gospel of John has often been used to fan the flames of hell rather than lead us into eternal life. I have seen the citation “John 3:16” on the back of commercial vehicles and wondered what, exactly, the occupants understand that verse to signify. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” are words that have often been used to frighten folk away from eternal damnation, not lead folk into eternal life. The passage we hear from the gospel of John this morning has tremendous power, and that power has not always been for the good.
Jesus speaks of the Spirit this morning, not once, but three times in our reading. Our evangelist John will say much more about the Spirit later in his gospel, but for now, Nicodemus seems flummoxed by this “Spirit” stuff. And so too are we, good Episcopalians that we are, skeptical of all this “born again” stuff.
Nicodemus knows his scriptures and knows the story in Genesis that says that God created human being out of the mud and then blew God’s spirit into that first human, bringing Adam or “mudguy” to life. And now Jesus reminds Nicodemus that the wind or Spirit blows where it chooses. Nicodemus would like the wind or the Spirit not to be so, so, uncontrollable. Nicodemus knows that God brought human being to life and then brought the people Israel, the children of Abraham to life. Nicodemus knows all of this; but now the Spirit is blowing in a new direction and Nicodemus does not understand, saying: “How can these things be?”
Jesus, for my money, does not give Nicodemus a very good answer. Jesus says: “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?” Clearly, Nicodemus does not understand. And Jesus does not unravel the mystery. What Jesus does say is that all of this blowing of the Spirit is because God loves the world.
We have grown up in the shadow of the Enlightenment and have a propensity to privilege our capacity to “figure things out.” We want to “know” the how’s and the why’s and are no longer satisfied believing spirits lurk behind trees. We know storks do not deliver babies and that cancer is not contagious. We know that the tsunami and earthquake that has wrecked such devastation upon Japan in these past days, is not because the people of Japan have not been “born again.” Indeed, we abhor any and all intimations that perhaps this tragedy has been visited upon Japan because they have not been saved. What has happened in Japan is about the movement of tectonic plates and not about what folk do or do not believe.
However, can we, as children of the Enlightenment, as people of reason, make room for the Spirit, for that which is beyond reason, beyond our capacity to understand? Must everything that happens to us and among us have an explanation? Are there realities that defy scientific analysis? We know storkes do not drop children into our laps but how do we explain love? Where does the beauty of a Bach concerto come from? What moved Michelangelo to sculpt the exquisite Pieta? How do we make sense of the power of a poem like that of Dante’s Divine Comedy to transform us? How do you explain the efforts of those who are moved to go to Japan to look for the lost at the risk of their own lives?
“How can these things be?” A whole lot about life in this world does not make sense. A lot of life in this world is simply beyond reason, over the top in good ways and bad, overwhelming us in ways we cannot understand. Life does not submit to us and our desire to know. Nicodemus wants to understand. And so do we and we cannot.
“The wind blows where it chooses,” Jesus tells Nicodemus, “and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” The Spirit of God is God at work in the world, bringing forth life wherever and however God chooses. That Spirit moved Nicodemus to come to Jesus in the first place, to seek Jesus out, to learn who this man was who was changing water into wine and overturning the tables in the Temple. That Spirit was unsettling Nicodemus’ world, and Nicodemus is suddenly not as sure and certain as he once was.
Nicodemus appears twice more in the gospel of John. When the Pharisees seek to have Jesus arrested, Nicodemus urges them to give Jesus a hearing. And later, after the crucifixion, Nicodemus comes with an extraordinary amount of spices with which to prepare Jesus’ body for burial. In The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Nicodemus is called “a partial sympathizer with Christ.” John Calvin, the sixteenth century reformer, would use Nicodemus to denounce the behavior of protestants who continued to practice Roman Catholic rites and rituals. In the annals of the church, Nicodemus is generally not seen as a model of faithfulness.
Rather, the model of faithfulness is Abraham, who, as we heard this morning in our Old Testament reading, was told by God to “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” And with nary a question, Abraham went. And as Paul tells us in our reading from Romans, that absolute trust in God’s faithfulness is what makes Abraham righteous, not “good deeds.”
God is faithful, bringing us to life and then by the power of the Holy Spirit, giving us a foretaste of God’s kingdom, that kingdom where, in the words of Revelation, “death will be no more.” The Spirit is the Lord of life, in the words of the Creed, drawing us toward God, the author of life itself. To be born again is to surrender ourselves to the power of God’s Holy Spirit and follow where the Spirit leads us. Discerning which way the wind is blowing and where the Spirit might be leading us is not a one time affair but our life’s vocation. At our baptism, just after water is poured over us, the priest asks God to “sustain” the newly baptized in the Holy Spirit, giving to the newly baptized “an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works.” With those gifts we are empowered to “live no longer for ourselves, but for him who died and rose for us,” in the words of one of our Eucharistic prayers. We are, in other words, born and born again and again and again until the day we die, the day of our last birth.
I like to think that Nicodemus wasn’t so much a closet Christian as a slow delivery. And I like to think that our “born again” brothers and sisters in Christ are invitations for us all to wrestle with our faith claims, because “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
The Third Sunday in Lent
Exodus 17: 1 – 7
Sunday, March 27, 2011 Romans 5: 1 – 11
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 4: 5 – 42
The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
John 4: 15
In 2003, the last episode of Columbo was aired on television. Lt. Frank Columbo, played by the actor Peter Falk was, if you remember, a bumbling Los Angles homicide detective. Columbo always showed up on the scene of some crime looking like he had just gotten out of bed, asking ridiculous questions. For all the world, Columbo appeared to have not a clue about how to investigate a crime and was routinely dismissed as inept by those involved in the crime. And yet, time after time, Columbo was the one who solved the crime, always bringing the perpetrators to justice.
In the television series Columbo appearances were deceiving, and audiences delighted in the irony that such an inept and disheveled character was, in reality, a skillful and very perceptive investigator. Such dramatic irony invites us to keep in mind that what we see may not be the whole truth.
The gospel of John is filled with irony as John seeks to proclaim the greatest of ironies - the son of a Nazarene carpenter is indeed the Son of God. In our reading this morning, a Samaritan woman meets Jesus at a well, where Jesus asks her for a drink of water. Jesus is tired from a long journey and meets a woman with a bucket at a well and asks for a drink. Nothing about this initial encounter or Jesus’ request appear out of the ordinary.
But then the woman notes that Jesus is a Jew and she is a Samaritan and as we are told, “Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.” For hundreds of years, the Samaritans were seen by Jews as ritually unclean; taking a drink from a Samaritan would render Jesus unclean as well. Turning the tables, Jesus invites the woman to receive a drink of “living water” from him instead, to which the woman responds, ironically, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep.”
Still wondering no doubt how Jesus intends to get water out of a well without a bucket, the woman says: “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
And lowering the bucket, so to speak, Jesus tells her to go and get her husband.
And the woman responds truthfully, saying she has no husband. But while the woman speaks truth, she does not speak the whole truth which Jesus reveals. Indeed she has no husband but she has had five and now is living with a man who is not her husband. The well just got a bit deeper.
Throughout the history of interpretation of this text, commentators have often understood Jesus’ revelation of this woman’s past to mean that this woman is, shall we say, a lady of the evening. The woman on this take is a notorious sinner who is saved from her wanton ways by Jesus. Other commentators have painted her as a tragic woman who has lost five husbands either by death or divorce and is now forced to live with a man who will not marry her. What she needs is pity not salvation. But the text tells us nothing about why this woman has had five husbands and is now living with a man who is not her husband.
What this woman did or did not do is not the concern of our evangelist John. Our evangelist John is making a claim about Jesus, bearing witness for us that Jesus reveals the truth of God. Through this encounter with a Jewish man without a bucket, this woman comes to see that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, and then rushes off to her people bidding them “Come and see.”
You and I are truth seekers. We want to know what is true and what is not. But we also know that truth often eludes us. The idea of Truth, that there is something “out there” which we call Truth preoccupied the minds of the Greeks beginning with Plato. For Plato, whatever truth (with a small “t”) we know in this world is only a pale form of Truth (with a capital “T”) which transcends this world of space and time. So when Jesus claims in John’s gospel to be “the way, the truth and the life,” our evangelist is saying to his Greek audience, that Truth (with a capital “T”) has come into the world.
And at the end of John’s gospel, when Jesus is brought before the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, Pilate struggles to figure out what Jesus has done to merit execution. Pilate wants to know if Jesus is a king (and therefore a threat to the Roman Emperor) to which Jesus responds that he was born into the world to bear witness to the truth. Pilate, confused and confounded by this man, responds with the chilling words: “What is truth?” Pilate, who admits the truth not once but twice, that he can find no case against Jesus, ultimately and ironically, hands Jesus over to be crucified.
Now unless Greek philosophy is a particular interest of yours, most of us probably do not spend a lot of time thinking about what we mean when we speak of truth. Truth is what you want from your daughter when you ask her if she has finished her homework and what you get, although partially, when she tells you she has finished her math assignment. We, no less than our Greek forebears, continue to be concerned about knowing the truth; but we, unlike our Greek forebears, tend to discount the reality that what truth we do know is always partial and never absolute.
In order to make something true, as Gary Gravatt shared with me at the ECM meeting on Wednesday night, we need a plumb line or a level. Without a plumb line or a level, the wall paper will be crooked, the door will not shut and drinking glasses will careen off uneven tabletops. Truing something up means we must have something against which we can align the wall paper or the door or the tabletop. The world in which we live moves according to some fairly immutable laws, gravity being the chief among them.
Being human in this world is not a whole lot different. If we really want to be human in this world, we need a guide, a way that shows us how to be human in a world filled with all kinds and sorts of things that are not human. We know we are like but also very unlike daffodils and zebras. We come into this world very aware of our need for food and clothing and shelter, born with the instinct to cry when we are hungry and to suck when a breast or a bottle is presented to us. But as we grow we become aware that being in this world is not a simple matter. Life, we learn, is a good bit more complicated than when life first began. Sometimes we can cry and no one hears us.
Each year during Lent the church invites us to remember the truth about ourselves. As we remember the truth about ourselves – that we are neither gods nor animals – we remember that we neither live by instinct as do the animals nor are we able to live knowing all truth. For our evangelist John, we live in a world filled with falsehood, not truth, a world that offers many guides, all as blind as we are. We can be true to, and trued by, the expectations of family or friends, our net worth, our comfort, our security, and any number of false guides. We can also be true to, and trued by, the arrogant presumption that we by ourselves have the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. What we each have is nothing more than partial truth.
To know the truth that is Christ, we need one another, the whole body of Christ, both the living and the dead, who for generations have sought to know Christ. We are not a people who must find our way in this world alone. We have been given one another and the Holy Spirit, which, John will tell us later in his gospel, is “the Spirit of truth,” and who will guide us into all truth. This is good news indeed, because as John will also tell us, it is precisely this Spirit of truth which will make us free, free to be the creatures God created us to be.
Sunday, March 27, 2011 Romans 5: 1 – 11
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 4: 5 – 42
The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
John 4: 15
In 2003, the last episode of Columbo was aired on television. Lt. Frank Columbo, played by the actor Peter Falk was, if you remember, a bumbling Los Angles homicide detective. Columbo always showed up on the scene of some crime looking like he had just gotten out of bed, asking ridiculous questions. For all the world, Columbo appeared to have not a clue about how to investigate a crime and was routinely dismissed as inept by those involved in the crime. And yet, time after time, Columbo was the one who solved the crime, always bringing the perpetrators to justice.
In the television series Columbo appearances were deceiving, and audiences delighted in the irony that such an inept and disheveled character was, in reality, a skillful and very perceptive investigator. Such dramatic irony invites us to keep in mind that what we see may not be the whole truth.
The gospel of John is filled with irony as John seeks to proclaim the greatest of ironies - the son of a Nazarene carpenter is indeed the Son of God. In our reading this morning, a Samaritan woman meets Jesus at a well, where Jesus asks her for a drink of water. Jesus is tired from a long journey and meets a woman with a bucket at a well and asks for a drink. Nothing about this initial encounter or Jesus’ request appear out of the ordinary.
But then the woman notes that Jesus is a Jew and she is a Samaritan and as we are told, “Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.” For hundreds of years, the Samaritans were seen by Jews as ritually unclean; taking a drink from a Samaritan would render Jesus unclean as well. Turning the tables, Jesus invites the woman to receive a drink of “living water” from him instead, to which the woman responds, ironically, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep.”
Still wondering no doubt how Jesus intends to get water out of a well without a bucket, the woman says: “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
And lowering the bucket, so to speak, Jesus tells her to go and get her husband.
And the woman responds truthfully, saying she has no husband. But while the woman speaks truth, she does not speak the whole truth which Jesus reveals. Indeed she has no husband but she has had five and now is living with a man who is not her husband. The well just got a bit deeper.
Throughout the history of interpretation of this text, commentators have often understood Jesus’ revelation of this woman’s past to mean that this woman is, shall we say, a lady of the evening. The woman on this take is a notorious sinner who is saved from her wanton ways by Jesus. Other commentators have painted her as a tragic woman who has lost five husbands either by death or divorce and is now forced to live with a man who will not marry her. What she needs is pity not salvation. But the text tells us nothing about why this woman has had five husbands and is now living with a man who is not her husband.
What this woman did or did not do is not the concern of our evangelist John. Our evangelist John is making a claim about Jesus, bearing witness for us that Jesus reveals the truth of God. Through this encounter with a Jewish man without a bucket, this woman comes to see that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, and then rushes off to her people bidding them “Come and see.”
You and I are truth seekers. We want to know what is true and what is not. But we also know that truth often eludes us. The idea of Truth, that there is something “out there” which we call Truth preoccupied the minds of the Greeks beginning with Plato. For Plato, whatever truth (with a small “t”) we know in this world is only a pale form of Truth (with a capital “T”) which transcends this world of space and time. So when Jesus claims in John’s gospel to be “the way, the truth and the life,” our evangelist is saying to his Greek audience, that Truth (with a capital “T”) has come into the world.
And at the end of John’s gospel, when Jesus is brought before the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, Pilate struggles to figure out what Jesus has done to merit execution. Pilate wants to know if Jesus is a king (and therefore a threat to the Roman Emperor) to which Jesus responds that he was born into the world to bear witness to the truth. Pilate, confused and confounded by this man, responds with the chilling words: “What is truth?” Pilate, who admits the truth not once but twice, that he can find no case against Jesus, ultimately and ironically, hands Jesus over to be crucified.
Now unless Greek philosophy is a particular interest of yours, most of us probably do not spend a lot of time thinking about what we mean when we speak of truth. Truth is what you want from your daughter when you ask her if she has finished her homework and what you get, although partially, when she tells you she has finished her math assignment. We, no less than our Greek forebears, continue to be concerned about knowing the truth; but we, unlike our Greek forebears, tend to discount the reality that what truth we do know is always partial and never absolute.
In order to make something true, as Gary Gravatt shared with me at the ECM meeting on Wednesday night, we need a plumb line or a level. Without a plumb line or a level, the wall paper will be crooked, the door will not shut and drinking glasses will careen off uneven tabletops. Truing something up means we must have something against which we can align the wall paper or the door or the tabletop. The world in which we live moves according to some fairly immutable laws, gravity being the chief among them.
Being human in this world is not a whole lot different. If we really want to be human in this world, we need a guide, a way that shows us how to be human in a world filled with all kinds and sorts of things that are not human. We know we are like but also very unlike daffodils and zebras. We come into this world very aware of our need for food and clothing and shelter, born with the instinct to cry when we are hungry and to suck when a breast or a bottle is presented to us. But as we grow we become aware that being in this world is not a simple matter. Life, we learn, is a good bit more complicated than when life first began. Sometimes we can cry and no one hears us.
Each year during Lent the church invites us to remember the truth about ourselves. As we remember the truth about ourselves – that we are neither gods nor animals – we remember that we neither live by instinct as do the animals nor are we able to live knowing all truth. For our evangelist John, we live in a world filled with falsehood, not truth, a world that offers many guides, all as blind as we are. We can be true to, and trued by, the expectations of family or friends, our net worth, our comfort, our security, and any number of false guides. We can also be true to, and trued by, the arrogant presumption that we by ourselves have the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. What we each have is nothing more than partial truth.
To know the truth that is Christ, we need one another, the whole body of Christ, both the living and the dead, who for generations have sought to know Christ. We are not a people who must find our way in this world alone. We have been given one another and the Holy Spirit, which, John will tell us later in his gospel, is “the Spirit of truth,” and who will guide us into all truth. This is good news indeed, because as John will also tell us, it is precisely this Spirit of truth which will make us free, free to be the creatures God created us to be.