The Second Sunday in Lent Genesis 17: 1 – 7, 15 – 16
Sunday, March 4, 2012 Romans 4: 13 – 25
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 8: 31 – 38
He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ““If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
Mark 8: 34
On September 9, 1980, a Roman Catholic priest by the name of Daniel Berrigan, illegally trespassed upon the General Electric Nuclear Facility in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. Inside the facility, Berrigan and eight others damaged nuclear warhead cones and poured vials of blood over documents and files. Berrigan was arrested and jailed. And not for the first time. Berrigan, who will turn 90 in May, was once on the F.B.I.’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list for his involvement in Viet Nam anti war protests.
Daniel Berrigan is a Catholic priest, a peace activist and a poet. Daniel Berrigan is a trouble maker, convicted that the gospel calls him to work for peace in a world besieged by war. And Berrigan knows first hand that his witness is not popular. Popularity is not what Berrigan is seeking; being faithful to his call is what Berrigan is seeking.
This morning from the gospel of Mark we hear that Jesus: “began to teach his disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” And Peter is aghast, horrified, taking Jesus aside and “rebuking” him. Peter has just confessed Jesus as the Messiah and now Jesus tells Peter Jesus must be rejected and killed.
Every Jewish hope and prayer was focused on the day when God would send a Messiah to rescue God’s people, to save God’s beloved people from all that threatened her existence and way of life. That when the Messiah came, the Messiah would die was inconceivable; indeed, the mark of yet, one more false Messiah. That Jesus “must” die, that the death of the Messiah was the will of God was incomprehensible. That God would raise up the Messiah and then lead the Messiah to his death was beyond understanding. The salvation of God’s people was going to happen in a way no good Jew like Peter expected. Peter was simply unable to understand what Jesus was saying.
And before Peter can let go of his human desire to comprehend the incomprehensible, Jesus says: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Jesus tells the crowd that those who want to follow this odd Messiah, will necessarily meet the same rejection Jesus must suffer.
Peter could not make sense of what was happening and neither can we. Saint Paul, writing before the gospel of Mark was written, will call the cross “foolishness” in his first letter to the Corinthians: “But we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block for Jews and foolishness for the Gentiles.” “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” Paul asks. The cross lies beyond the wisdom of the world, and no good law abiding Jew, like Peter, ever once entertained the idea that the Messiah would be killed. The wisdom of God is beyond our understanding.
Fifteen hundred years later, the protestant reformer Martin Luther would grasp that same truth when he would write: “Discipleship is not limited to what you can comprehend – it must transcend all comprehension… Not to know where you are going is the true knowledge…Thus Abraham went forth from his father and not knowing whither he went. He trusted himself to God’s knowledge, and cared not for his own, and thus he took the right road and came to his journey’s end.”
Discipleship begins with a willingness to go where God calls us to go, even though we have no idea how “things are going to turn out.” The first demand of faith is to set aside our desire to know where we are going before we begin the journey. Staying put will always be safer than following in faith.
“When Christ calls a man,” wrote the Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer in 1937, “he bids him come and die.” Bonhoeffer, a gifted scholar and teacher, grew up in Germany and in 1930, at the age of twenty-four, was a lecturer in theology at Berlin University. Bonhoeffer stood on the threshold of an amazing career and was engaged to be married when the winds of national socialism blowing through Germany at the time changed everything. Bonhoeffer was convinced that what was happening politically was a threat to Christian faith, that, in the words of a friend, was “a brutal attempt to make history without God and to found it on the strength of man alone.”
Bonhoeffer abhorred how easily the German Church embraced national socialism, never giving thought as to how the church was turning Hitler into an idol. In 1937, Bonhoeffer wrote a book called The Cost of Discipleship. In that book, Bonhoeffer decries what has been called “easy Christianity,” the presumption that our faith will never ask of us hard things, costly choices, nothing more than coming to church on Sunday and trying to be nice. “Cheap grace,” Bonhoeffer begins in this book, “is the deadly enemy of our church.”
When war broke out, Bonhoeffer had the means to come to the United States and continue his career in teaching. Bonhoeffer chose to remain in Germany, working with others who were resisting the Nazis. And six years after Bonhoeffer wrote The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer was arrested for his participation in a plot to assassinate Hitler. On April 9, 1945, he was hung by the Nazis, just days before the end of World War II.
Bonhoeffer was a Christian whose faith could not make peace with German national socialism. So Bonhoeffer protested and Bonhoeffer got killed. Bonhoeffer did not give up a brilliant career and a wife and family because Bonhoeffer thought that was the moral high road. Bonhoeffer lost all of those things because Bonhoeffer believed following Christ was much more important than following Hitler.
We may not agree with what Daniel Berrigan is doing and applaud what Dietrich Bonhoeffer did, but none of that excuses us from being people Christ calls “to deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” We hear our text this morning at a time when Christians are no longer being crucified. And we are wont to “spiritualize” the call “to take up our cross.” Cross bearing for us means “putting up” with whatever is difficult, irritating, or just plain annoying. “We all have our crosses to bear,” we say, as we think about parenting troubled children or living with a physical disability or caring for aging parents.
Indeed, for some, Jesus’ call to deny oneself and take up your cross, has been interpreted to mean that we should “suffer in silence,” and not seek to address injustice and oppression. Feminist theologians have alerted the church to the way this call to self denial has often been heard by women as a call to remain in abusive relationships, because that is their “cross to bear.” Passive acceptance of injustice is not, I daresay, what Jesus had in mind when he spoke these words. Remaining obedient to what God called him and will call us to do, even unto death, is I believe, what Jesus intended.
Folk like Daniel Berrigan are rabble rousers and trouble makers who do not seem to mind breaking the laws of the land to get their points across. I, for one, would prefer not to be jailed for my convictions. I like to think we can work within the system, that we can all hold hands and “play nice.” And clearly, Berrigan’s actions have neither diminished the threat of nuclear war nor made the world a more peaceful place. So what was the point?
Of course, that takes us back to Peter’s rebuke. What is the point of a Messiah who gets killed? What good can come from a crucified Savior? What was Jesus thinking?
What Jesus was doing was being obedient to his Father who called him to the cross, to give up his life. What God knew but what Peter could not fathom was that resurrection would follow crucifixion, that after death would come life. Berrigan, I trust, is doing what he feels convicted he has to do just like Bonhoeffer. What difference their witnesses make in the world in which we live, only God knows. Bonhoeffer did not bring down Hitler; Allied troops did that. Berrigan I doubt will lead the world into nuclear disarmament. But without their witness to a God who is even now at work to establish a kingdom in which no one suffers, no one is hungry or homeless or lost or threatened by war, where would we be? We would be in a world in which you and I are all that is and there is no God actively working to bring this world back round right. That is not a world in which I want to live.
Sunday, March 4, 2012 Romans 4: 13 – 25
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 8: 31 – 38
He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ““If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
Mark 8: 34
On September 9, 1980, a Roman Catholic priest by the name of Daniel Berrigan, illegally trespassed upon the General Electric Nuclear Facility in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. Inside the facility, Berrigan and eight others damaged nuclear warhead cones and poured vials of blood over documents and files. Berrigan was arrested and jailed. And not for the first time. Berrigan, who will turn 90 in May, was once on the F.B.I.’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list for his involvement in Viet Nam anti war protests.
Daniel Berrigan is a Catholic priest, a peace activist and a poet. Daniel Berrigan is a trouble maker, convicted that the gospel calls him to work for peace in a world besieged by war. And Berrigan knows first hand that his witness is not popular. Popularity is not what Berrigan is seeking; being faithful to his call is what Berrigan is seeking.
This morning from the gospel of Mark we hear that Jesus: “began to teach his disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” And Peter is aghast, horrified, taking Jesus aside and “rebuking” him. Peter has just confessed Jesus as the Messiah and now Jesus tells Peter Jesus must be rejected and killed.
Every Jewish hope and prayer was focused on the day when God would send a Messiah to rescue God’s people, to save God’s beloved people from all that threatened her existence and way of life. That when the Messiah came, the Messiah would die was inconceivable; indeed, the mark of yet, one more false Messiah. That Jesus “must” die, that the death of the Messiah was the will of God was incomprehensible. That God would raise up the Messiah and then lead the Messiah to his death was beyond understanding. The salvation of God’s people was going to happen in a way no good Jew like Peter expected. Peter was simply unable to understand what Jesus was saying.
And before Peter can let go of his human desire to comprehend the incomprehensible, Jesus says: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Jesus tells the crowd that those who want to follow this odd Messiah, will necessarily meet the same rejection Jesus must suffer.
Peter could not make sense of what was happening and neither can we. Saint Paul, writing before the gospel of Mark was written, will call the cross “foolishness” in his first letter to the Corinthians: “But we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block for Jews and foolishness for the Gentiles.” “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” Paul asks. The cross lies beyond the wisdom of the world, and no good law abiding Jew, like Peter, ever once entertained the idea that the Messiah would be killed. The wisdom of God is beyond our understanding.
Fifteen hundred years later, the protestant reformer Martin Luther would grasp that same truth when he would write: “Discipleship is not limited to what you can comprehend – it must transcend all comprehension… Not to know where you are going is the true knowledge…Thus Abraham went forth from his father and not knowing whither he went. He trusted himself to God’s knowledge, and cared not for his own, and thus he took the right road and came to his journey’s end.”
Discipleship begins with a willingness to go where God calls us to go, even though we have no idea how “things are going to turn out.” The first demand of faith is to set aside our desire to know where we are going before we begin the journey. Staying put will always be safer than following in faith.
“When Christ calls a man,” wrote the Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer in 1937, “he bids him come and die.” Bonhoeffer, a gifted scholar and teacher, grew up in Germany and in 1930, at the age of twenty-four, was a lecturer in theology at Berlin University. Bonhoeffer stood on the threshold of an amazing career and was engaged to be married when the winds of national socialism blowing through Germany at the time changed everything. Bonhoeffer was convinced that what was happening politically was a threat to Christian faith, that, in the words of a friend, was “a brutal attempt to make history without God and to found it on the strength of man alone.”
Bonhoeffer abhorred how easily the German Church embraced national socialism, never giving thought as to how the church was turning Hitler into an idol. In 1937, Bonhoeffer wrote a book called The Cost of Discipleship. In that book, Bonhoeffer decries what has been called “easy Christianity,” the presumption that our faith will never ask of us hard things, costly choices, nothing more than coming to church on Sunday and trying to be nice. “Cheap grace,” Bonhoeffer begins in this book, “is the deadly enemy of our church.”
When war broke out, Bonhoeffer had the means to come to the United States and continue his career in teaching. Bonhoeffer chose to remain in Germany, working with others who were resisting the Nazis. And six years after Bonhoeffer wrote The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer was arrested for his participation in a plot to assassinate Hitler. On April 9, 1945, he was hung by the Nazis, just days before the end of World War II.
Bonhoeffer was a Christian whose faith could not make peace with German national socialism. So Bonhoeffer protested and Bonhoeffer got killed. Bonhoeffer did not give up a brilliant career and a wife and family because Bonhoeffer thought that was the moral high road. Bonhoeffer lost all of those things because Bonhoeffer believed following Christ was much more important than following Hitler.
We may not agree with what Daniel Berrigan is doing and applaud what Dietrich Bonhoeffer did, but none of that excuses us from being people Christ calls “to deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” We hear our text this morning at a time when Christians are no longer being crucified. And we are wont to “spiritualize” the call “to take up our cross.” Cross bearing for us means “putting up” with whatever is difficult, irritating, or just plain annoying. “We all have our crosses to bear,” we say, as we think about parenting troubled children or living with a physical disability or caring for aging parents.
Indeed, for some, Jesus’ call to deny oneself and take up your cross, has been interpreted to mean that we should “suffer in silence,” and not seek to address injustice and oppression. Feminist theologians have alerted the church to the way this call to self denial has often been heard by women as a call to remain in abusive relationships, because that is their “cross to bear.” Passive acceptance of injustice is not, I daresay, what Jesus had in mind when he spoke these words. Remaining obedient to what God called him and will call us to do, even unto death, is I believe, what Jesus intended.
Folk like Daniel Berrigan are rabble rousers and trouble makers who do not seem to mind breaking the laws of the land to get their points across. I, for one, would prefer not to be jailed for my convictions. I like to think we can work within the system, that we can all hold hands and “play nice.” And clearly, Berrigan’s actions have neither diminished the threat of nuclear war nor made the world a more peaceful place. So what was the point?
Of course, that takes us back to Peter’s rebuke. What is the point of a Messiah who gets killed? What good can come from a crucified Savior? What was Jesus thinking?
What Jesus was doing was being obedient to his Father who called him to the cross, to give up his life. What God knew but what Peter could not fathom was that resurrection would follow crucifixion, that after death would come life. Berrigan, I trust, is doing what he feels convicted he has to do just like Bonhoeffer. What difference their witnesses make in the world in which we live, only God knows. Bonhoeffer did not bring down Hitler; Allied troops did that. Berrigan I doubt will lead the world into nuclear disarmament. But without their witness to a God who is even now at work to establish a kingdom in which no one suffers, no one is hungry or homeless or lost or threatened by war, where would we be? We would be in a world in which you and I are all that is and there is no God actively working to bring this world back round right. That is not a world in which I want to live.
The Third Sunday in Lent Exodus 20: 1 – 17
Sunday, March 11, 2012 I Corinthians 1: 18 – 25
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 2: 13 – 22
“After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.”
John 2: 22
The story we just heard from the gospel of John is the reason Jesus was crucified so far as the Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright is concerned. Jesus, we just heard is wrecking havoc in the temple, driving out the animals needed to make sacrifices, pouring out coins and overturning tables, calling the temple his “Father’s house,” and not a marketplace.
This story is recorded in all four gospels and with one exception is always told at the end of the gospel, just after Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. But in the gospel of John, the incident in the temple is placed at the beginning of the gospel just after Jesus has turned water into wine at the wedding in Cana. At the wedding in Cana, Jesus has astounded everyone by turning water into wine and now Jesus is shutting down the Temple.
The temple was the primary symbol of Judaism, the heart of what it meant to be Jewish. The temple was the place where Jews stood before God, the place where sacrifices were made for the forgiveness of sins and to which Jews made pilgrimages to celebrate the great feasts that remembered their long history with God who had brought them out of slavery in Egypt. And now Jesus says: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
Those are dangerous words. Those words will get Jesus killed. But for our evangelist John those are precisely the words that will set us free to become the creatures God created us to be.
For the Jews, the temple was the place where God was present on earth, a place where the Jews could celebrate their relationship with God as well as mend that relationship if it became broken by sin. The temple was both a place of praise and reconciliation and sacrifices were offered both for thanksgiving and for sin.
Sacrifices always involved the shedding of blood because blood symbolized life – the life God had given to the Jews when God brought them out of slavery in Egypt and the life God had given to the world at the beginning of creation. The shedding of blood honored the truth that life belonged to God.
And now in this place of sacrifice, in the temple, Jesus offers himself to be sacrificed.
“Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up,” Jesus says. Jesus’ body will become the new temple, the place where heaven and earth meet. Only this time, the sacrifice is being made not by human priests, but by God, because Jesus, John has told us in his prologue, is the Word of God, who “was with God and was God.”
The Old Testament notion of sacrifice often sounds a bit bizarre to our ears. The idea that folk believed killing a lamb would restore a right relationship with God sounds strange to us. Worse, perhaps, as theologian Colin Gunton has pointed out, is the implication that God would demand the shedding of blood to restore a broken relationship.
But in the gospel of John, God is not requiring a sacrifice; God is making one. Indeed, God is sacrificing Godself. Perhaps, for us, the conundrum is not so much around the idea of sacrifice – a word we continue to use if not generally in the context of blood letting - as around the question of why. Why would God do this? Or need to do this?
The sacrifice that God makes is a sacrifice made in love and out of love for God’s dearly beloved world, a world that is trapped, blinded, deluded by powers we cannot control. God makes the sacrifice that will restore the breach in our relationship, a breach we cannot mend, no matter how hard we try. God offers up Godself to heal our relationship with God which has been inalterably damaged by sin with a capital “S,” otherwise known as evil.
Today, on this Third Sunday in Lent, our evangelist John invites to remember that Lent is not only about examining ourselves and our particular sins but also about remembering that sin is like an infection for which we have no cure. The sacrifice that Jesus will make on the cross is ultimately for our evangelist John, a sacrifice that God makes, mending the breach between us and God from God’s side. Jesus’ sacrifice is the sacrifice of love that God makes for our sakes.
During Lent, we are called to acts of self-denial and to self-examination. Lent often sounds like Lent is all about us “cleaning up our act,” becoming less sinful and more holy. And while Lent is an excellent time to consider the ways “we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep,” in the words of the confession in morning prayer, rite I, Lent is much more than that. Lent, which will end in the stark liturgy of Good Friday, is also a time in which we remember that whereas we may be able to overcome particular sins, we cannot overcome sin itself. All of creation, all of us, are eradicably “stained” by sin, a part of a fallen creation and unable to mend the breach. If that be not true, there is no reason for the cross.
Unfortunately, we live in a culture in which sin is mostly trivialized into a “mistake” which we make and which we, if we choose, can “correct.” And for many in our enlightened Western world, sin with a capital “S,” otherwise known as evil, does not exist at all. We all make mistakes, we therefore say, comforting ourselves that we really knew all along what we should have done. In other words, we live in a culture that presumes to know what is good and presumes, at a result, that we also know what is wrong. And what is good is determined by us, independent, self-sufficient human beings, not creatures who must depend upon our Creator to show us what is good.
Sin, for our ancestors in the faith was a breach in a relationship, a relationship established by God out of love when God created the world. The world did not know God and through the people of Abraham, God was at work bringing the world back to the knowledge and love of God. The temple was that place where that relationship with God was honored and healed when it was broken. The passion of Christ was the sacrifice that God made to heal a relationship that no matter how hard we try we cannot mend.
Sin is not a matter of doing wrong; sin is a breach of relationship. Our sins, whatever they are, always have an impact on others. We are a people called to be in relationship with God and with one another and sin separates us from God and from one another. We say murder is a sin but what about gossip? Gossip, like murder, destroys rather than fosters relationship. Sin is at root is basically saying: “I do not care about you,” and we are a people who are called to care, as Christ cared for us, cared for us to the end that he died on a cross. Lent is the season in the church year when we think about our relationships with others, all others, and the myriad and sundry ways we have pushed others away for whatever reason.
Lent is not solely a time “to clean up our act,” but is much more about reflecting on the ways we have resisted relationship, with any one and for whatever reason. If, indeed we are all creatures of a loving God, we are supremely arrogant if we presume if we can only keep our hands clean and do the “right” thing, God will love us more than anyone else. Lent is about relationship.
Relationships in our culture are something we choose to have. We are individuals who then go out and “have” relationships. For our Jewish brothers and sisters, relationship was not an optional extra, but constitutive of who they were, the people of God. We live in a culture that has got all that backwards. We are not individuals who have relationships but we are creatures created for relationship and who discover who we are in and through relationship. Relationship is not a nice extra but the way God has ordained for us to come to know who we are. When we resist a relationship with someone, that tells us something about us, something we probably we need to attend to, something about us that has gone awry. That is the work of Lent.
Most of the time, rather than do the work, we crucify the other. Rather than “sacrifice” ourselves, we sacrifice the other.
John, in our reading this morning, is not telling us that the Jews were primitive to believe that killing a lamb would make the world a better place. And John is not telling us that the problem with the temple was that the money changers were charging more than they should. John is telling us that all is not right with the world and we cannot make it so. John is telling us that the only one who can make this world come out right is God and that God has done that very thing, offering his son for a sacrifice. God has done what you and I cannot do.
I am not sure where you are on this journey of self denial and self-examination. I trust you are remembering some things you wished you had not done. More than that I am hoping you are remembering particular persons, people who love you that you have not loved in return, people who have not loved you and that you find hard loving and people you have do not even know that you will have to reach out to. Put some names into your Lenten journey not just acts. Make Lent personal. We can objectify our acts – we should not steal or lie or cheat. More than that, though, we should not hurt one another. And we do and that, dear friends, is what Lent is all about.
As I was writing these words, I was invited into the bathroom by my two year old granddaughter to be with her as her parents gave her and her sister a bath. Watching my son and his wife bathe their two dear little girls, my granddaughters Naomi and Miriam, made me laugh a bit as I thought about what I sought to teach my son in his growing up. I wanted him to be self reliant, to get a good education and a job. Bathing a two year old never seemed to rank up there with a college degree. I saw things a little differently as I watched my son and his wife tenderly care for their children. What I saw was love and a good bit of patience and nothing one would put on a resume. And I laughed and gave thanks, a sacrifice of praise for a God of love.
Sunday, March 11, 2012 I Corinthians 1: 18 – 25
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 2: 13 – 22
“After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.”
John 2: 22
The story we just heard from the gospel of John is the reason Jesus was crucified so far as the Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright is concerned. Jesus, we just heard is wrecking havoc in the temple, driving out the animals needed to make sacrifices, pouring out coins and overturning tables, calling the temple his “Father’s house,” and not a marketplace.
This story is recorded in all four gospels and with one exception is always told at the end of the gospel, just after Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. But in the gospel of John, the incident in the temple is placed at the beginning of the gospel just after Jesus has turned water into wine at the wedding in Cana. At the wedding in Cana, Jesus has astounded everyone by turning water into wine and now Jesus is shutting down the Temple.
The temple was the primary symbol of Judaism, the heart of what it meant to be Jewish. The temple was the place where Jews stood before God, the place where sacrifices were made for the forgiveness of sins and to which Jews made pilgrimages to celebrate the great feasts that remembered their long history with God who had brought them out of slavery in Egypt. And now Jesus says: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
Those are dangerous words. Those words will get Jesus killed. But for our evangelist John those are precisely the words that will set us free to become the creatures God created us to be.
For the Jews, the temple was the place where God was present on earth, a place where the Jews could celebrate their relationship with God as well as mend that relationship if it became broken by sin. The temple was both a place of praise and reconciliation and sacrifices were offered both for thanksgiving and for sin.
Sacrifices always involved the shedding of blood because blood symbolized life – the life God had given to the Jews when God brought them out of slavery in Egypt and the life God had given to the world at the beginning of creation. The shedding of blood honored the truth that life belonged to God.
And now in this place of sacrifice, in the temple, Jesus offers himself to be sacrificed.
“Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up,” Jesus says. Jesus’ body will become the new temple, the place where heaven and earth meet. Only this time, the sacrifice is being made not by human priests, but by God, because Jesus, John has told us in his prologue, is the Word of God, who “was with God and was God.”
The Old Testament notion of sacrifice often sounds a bit bizarre to our ears. The idea that folk believed killing a lamb would restore a right relationship with God sounds strange to us. Worse, perhaps, as theologian Colin Gunton has pointed out, is the implication that God would demand the shedding of blood to restore a broken relationship.
But in the gospel of John, God is not requiring a sacrifice; God is making one. Indeed, God is sacrificing Godself. Perhaps, for us, the conundrum is not so much around the idea of sacrifice – a word we continue to use if not generally in the context of blood letting - as around the question of why. Why would God do this? Or need to do this?
The sacrifice that God makes is a sacrifice made in love and out of love for God’s dearly beloved world, a world that is trapped, blinded, deluded by powers we cannot control. God makes the sacrifice that will restore the breach in our relationship, a breach we cannot mend, no matter how hard we try. God offers up Godself to heal our relationship with God which has been inalterably damaged by sin with a capital “S,” otherwise known as evil.
Today, on this Third Sunday in Lent, our evangelist John invites to remember that Lent is not only about examining ourselves and our particular sins but also about remembering that sin is like an infection for which we have no cure. The sacrifice that Jesus will make on the cross is ultimately for our evangelist John, a sacrifice that God makes, mending the breach between us and God from God’s side. Jesus’ sacrifice is the sacrifice of love that God makes for our sakes.
During Lent, we are called to acts of self-denial and to self-examination. Lent often sounds like Lent is all about us “cleaning up our act,” becoming less sinful and more holy. And while Lent is an excellent time to consider the ways “we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep,” in the words of the confession in morning prayer, rite I, Lent is much more than that. Lent, which will end in the stark liturgy of Good Friday, is also a time in which we remember that whereas we may be able to overcome particular sins, we cannot overcome sin itself. All of creation, all of us, are eradicably “stained” by sin, a part of a fallen creation and unable to mend the breach. If that be not true, there is no reason for the cross.
Unfortunately, we live in a culture in which sin is mostly trivialized into a “mistake” which we make and which we, if we choose, can “correct.” And for many in our enlightened Western world, sin with a capital “S,” otherwise known as evil, does not exist at all. We all make mistakes, we therefore say, comforting ourselves that we really knew all along what we should have done. In other words, we live in a culture that presumes to know what is good and presumes, at a result, that we also know what is wrong. And what is good is determined by us, independent, self-sufficient human beings, not creatures who must depend upon our Creator to show us what is good.
Sin, for our ancestors in the faith was a breach in a relationship, a relationship established by God out of love when God created the world. The world did not know God and through the people of Abraham, God was at work bringing the world back to the knowledge and love of God. The temple was that place where that relationship with God was honored and healed when it was broken. The passion of Christ was the sacrifice that God made to heal a relationship that no matter how hard we try we cannot mend.
Sin is not a matter of doing wrong; sin is a breach of relationship. Our sins, whatever they are, always have an impact on others. We are a people called to be in relationship with God and with one another and sin separates us from God and from one another. We say murder is a sin but what about gossip? Gossip, like murder, destroys rather than fosters relationship. Sin is at root is basically saying: “I do not care about you,” and we are a people who are called to care, as Christ cared for us, cared for us to the end that he died on a cross. Lent is the season in the church year when we think about our relationships with others, all others, and the myriad and sundry ways we have pushed others away for whatever reason.
Lent is not solely a time “to clean up our act,” but is much more about reflecting on the ways we have resisted relationship, with any one and for whatever reason. If, indeed we are all creatures of a loving God, we are supremely arrogant if we presume if we can only keep our hands clean and do the “right” thing, God will love us more than anyone else. Lent is about relationship.
Relationships in our culture are something we choose to have. We are individuals who then go out and “have” relationships. For our Jewish brothers and sisters, relationship was not an optional extra, but constitutive of who they were, the people of God. We live in a culture that has got all that backwards. We are not individuals who have relationships but we are creatures created for relationship and who discover who we are in and through relationship. Relationship is not a nice extra but the way God has ordained for us to come to know who we are. When we resist a relationship with someone, that tells us something about us, something we probably we need to attend to, something about us that has gone awry. That is the work of Lent.
Most of the time, rather than do the work, we crucify the other. Rather than “sacrifice” ourselves, we sacrifice the other.
John, in our reading this morning, is not telling us that the Jews were primitive to believe that killing a lamb would make the world a better place. And John is not telling us that the problem with the temple was that the money changers were charging more than they should. John is telling us that all is not right with the world and we cannot make it so. John is telling us that the only one who can make this world come out right is God and that God has done that very thing, offering his son for a sacrifice. God has done what you and I cannot do.
I am not sure where you are on this journey of self denial and self-examination. I trust you are remembering some things you wished you had not done. More than that I am hoping you are remembering particular persons, people who love you that you have not loved in return, people who have not loved you and that you find hard loving and people you have do not even know that you will have to reach out to. Put some names into your Lenten journey not just acts. Make Lent personal. We can objectify our acts – we should not steal or lie or cheat. More than that, though, we should not hurt one another. And we do and that, dear friends, is what Lent is all about.
As I was writing these words, I was invited into the bathroom by my two year old granddaughter to be with her as her parents gave her and her sister a bath. Watching my son and his wife bathe their two dear little girls, my granddaughters Naomi and Miriam, made me laugh a bit as I thought about what I sought to teach my son in his growing up. I wanted him to be self reliant, to get a good education and a job. Bathing a two year old never seemed to rank up there with a college degree. I saw things a little differently as I watched my son and his wife tenderly care for their children. What I saw was love and a good bit of patience and nothing one would put on a resume. And I laughed and gave thanks, a sacrifice of praise for a God of love.
The Fifth Sunday in Lent Jeremiah 31: 31 – 34
Sunday, March 25, 2012 Hebrews 5: 5 – 10
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 12: 20 – 33
“and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, having been designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.”
Hebrews 5: 9 - 10
The great twentieth century theologian Karl Barth described the Bible as “a strange new world.” We encounter that strangeness vividly this morning in our reading from the letter to the Hebrews. In our reading, Christ is named “a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek,” an unusual title found no where else in the New Testament.
The letter to the Hebrews is an old letter, perhaps written only a generation after the death of Christ, as early as 60 A.D. The author of the letter is unknown. The letter was written to encourage a community that was “growing weary and losing heart,” “abandoning that confidence of yours,” the author writes. And the letter is written using all the imagery of Second Temple Judaism - the practices of making animal sacrifices, the role of the priest and the very architecture of the Temple, to describe the work of Christ. This letter can be daunting for those of us who have never experienced worship in the temple in Jerusalem.
The author calls Christ “a high priest.” The unique responsibility off the high priest was to enter the most sacred part of the temple, the Holy of Holies, one day a year, on the Day of Atonement and make sacrifices on behalf of the people. Only the high priest could stand in that place, the most sacred place in the whole world. In that place, in the Holy of Holies, the high priest stood in the very presence of God. In the Holy of Holies, a human being and God came face to face. The Holy of Holies was a place of fear and trembling, the one place on earth where God and man stood face to face.
The role of the high priest was two fold – on the one hand, the high priest brought the sins of the people before God, hoping for mercy; on the other hand, the high priest brought before the people the commandments of God. The role of the high priest was like that of Moses, who had come before God and Mt. Sinai to receive the ten commandments and then, later, pleaded God for mercy on behalf of the people when they made a golden calf to worship. The high priest represented the people before God and represented God for the people. The high priest was an intercessor and a mediator, someone who was both with God and with the people.
Moses’ brother Aaron was appointed to keep the ark of the covenant, the place where God’s commandments were kept. After, the Israelites settled in the land of Canaan, the ark of the covenant, understood as God’s tabernacling presence with the Israelites, was kept in the Temple, in a place called the Holy of Holies. Of the twelve tribes of Israel, the tribe descended from Aaron, the tribe of Levi, were appointed to be priests and to serve in the temple.
The author of the letter to the Hebrews, in designating Christ as a high priest, knows Jesus was not of the tribe of Levi, but rather from the tribe of Judah. And so the author bids us back to a strange and shadowy figure known as Melchizedek, who appears only twice in the Old Testament – once in Genesis and once in the psalms. Melchizedek appears on the scene in Genesis to Abraham, who has been blessed by God but who then discovers his blessing will not be without some struggle. Following one battle in which Abraham was victorious, Melchizedek shows up to bless him, with bread and wine. And then Melchizedek disappears from the scene.
Melchizedek came to represent a priest who was “forever,” a priest with no beginning and no end, an “eternal priest” appointed by God, not a priest whose priesthood was conferred by their family of birth, as were the Levitical priests. Christ is a different order of priest, “a priest according to the order of Melchizedek.” And later, in the letter to the Hebrews we read that Melchizedek was “without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God, he remains a priest forever.”
In other words, in designating Christ as a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek, the author of the letter to the Hebrews, is making a unique claim, found nowhere else in the New Testament. Like the priests who served in the temple, Christ brings the people before God and God before the people; but unlike those priests, who because they were human beings all died, Christ continues as a priest even now. Which means Christ continues even now to make intercession for us, to pray for us.
Now in all of my growing up in the church I never was told Jesus was praying for me. I knew I was supposed to pray but I never thought of Jesus praying for me. That might be a Protestant thing. Catholics could ask Mary to pray for them but we Protestants would never dare do such a thing! As a result, prayer for me always felt like a monologue as I petitioned God for this or for that, wondering, if indeed, God was really listening. In other words, I did all the talking and God did all the listening!
The author of the letter to the Hebrews invites us to think about prayer differently. Jesus, our great high priest, is actively praying for us and when we pray we are listening for Jesus’ prayer for us. Prayer is not an attempt to get God to do our will; rather prayer is the means whereby we open ourselves to God’s will for us.
In the gospels, Jesus frequently goes off by himself to pray. And when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, Jesus gave them the prayer we know as The Lord’s Prayer. In the gospel of John, we “eaves drop” on Jesus praying to his Father on the night before he dies, as Jesus prays for the protection of those he leaves behind. The author of the letter to the Hebrews, wants the community to which he is writing, which is losing heart, to remember that Jesus is continuing, in his risen life, to do what he did on earth, pray for them.
In our reading we hear that “in the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death.” We are reminded by these words of Jesus’ agony in the garden of Gethsemane as he was facing his coming death. And what we know is that Jesus was not saved from dying on the cross but was raised from the dead three days later. In the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus’ prayer, in the words of former Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey “is the prayer of one who is deeply one with the Father while he shares in the frustrations of humanity.” The one who now eternally intercedes for us is the one who suffered and died.
Ramsey continues in his wonderful essay called Be Still and Know to remind us that the Greek verb “to intercede” does not “properly mean to speak or to plead or to make petitions or entreaties, it means rather to be with someone, to meet or encounter someone, in relation to others.” When we pray, for ourselves or for others, we begin first “dwelling upon the loving kindness of God,” the very love of God that raised Jesus from the dead. “Intercession,” Ramsey writes, “thus becomes not the bombardment of God with requests so much as the bringing of our desires within the stream of God’s own compassion.”
As we stand on the brink of Holy Week, the letter to the Hebrews reminds us that our great high priest is the crucified Christ, one who suffers as we all suffer. Just before the reading we heard this morning, the author tells us: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested, as we are, yet without sin.” Our intercessor is one who knows, knows better than any of us, what it is like to be human, to be vulnerable, to suffer, to be shamed, humiliated and finally overcome by death. This is the one who intercedes for us. This is the one who prays for us.
When we pray, we open ourselves to the presence of God, asking God to be with us. Prayer is not magic and as we watch Jesus pray in the Garden of Gethsemane, we hear Jesus’ very human anguish in the face of his coming death. Jesus is not being stoic in the face of suffering but truthful when he prays, “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me.” Jesus, like all of us, wants to be spared from suffering.
And from what we know from the gospels is that Jesus could have “saved” himself, either calling down a legion of angels or simply eluding arrest. Jesus did neither. Therein lies the chill of the gospel, and the power of the one who now intercedes for us. Jesus refused to “save” himself.
For our sakes. For the sake of all of us who suffer under the burdens of being made human, subject to the decay of our bodies, the vagaries of life in this world, the angst of loving troubled children, for all of us who struggle to love spouses, partners, parents and friends who we never really know, of needing to provide for our needs in a world where there is no free lunch and for all of us who want to understand but cannot. Jesus died for all of us, for all of us who cannot save ourselves. We are up against a wall, the same wall Jesus faced when he confronted his own death. This is the one who intercedes for us.
I am brought to silence as I ponder what it means to say Jesus is praying for us. I have no words nor remedies nor good advice. I am left with a good bit of “fear and trembling” in the words of Saint Paul. I am left with an image of Jesus offering “up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death” and who then went to a horrifying death on a cross. I am left with a mystery I cannot understand but which draws me as does the beauty of the morning sky after a long dark night. I am left without words. Maybe at the end of the day that is what prayer is – the cessation of words as we simply dwell on this God, who was and is and is yet to come.
Sunday, March 25, 2012 Hebrews 5: 5 – 10
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 12: 20 – 33
“and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, having been designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.”
Hebrews 5: 9 - 10
The great twentieth century theologian Karl Barth described the Bible as “a strange new world.” We encounter that strangeness vividly this morning in our reading from the letter to the Hebrews. In our reading, Christ is named “a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek,” an unusual title found no where else in the New Testament.
The letter to the Hebrews is an old letter, perhaps written only a generation after the death of Christ, as early as 60 A.D. The author of the letter is unknown. The letter was written to encourage a community that was “growing weary and losing heart,” “abandoning that confidence of yours,” the author writes. And the letter is written using all the imagery of Second Temple Judaism - the practices of making animal sacrifices, the role of the priest and the very architecture of the Temple, to describe the work of Christ. This letter can be daunting for those of us who have never experienced worship in the temple in Jerusalem.
The author calls Christ “a high priest.” The unique responsibility off the high priest was to enter the most sacred part of the temple, the Holy of Holies, one day a year, on the Day of Atonement and make sacrifices on behalf of the people. Only the high priest could stand in that place, the most sacred place in the whole world. In that place, in the Holy of Holies, the high priest stood in the very presence of God. In the Holy of Holies, a human being and God came face to face. The Holy of Holies was a place of fear and trembling, the one place on earth where God and man stood face to face.
The role of the high priest was two fold – on the one hand, the high priest brought the sins of the people before God, hoping for mercy; on the other hand, the high priest brought before the people the commandments of God. The role of the high priest was like that of Moses, who had come before God and Mt. Sinai to receive the ten commandments and then, later, pleaded God for mercy on behalf of the people when they made a golden calf to worship. The high priest represented the people before God and represented God for the people. The high priest was an intercessor and a mediator, someone who was both with God and with the people.
Moses’ brother Aaron was appointed to keep the ark of the covenant, the place where God’s commandments were kept. After, the Israelites settled in the land of Canaan, the ark of the covenant, understood as God’s tabernacling presence with the Israelites, was kept in the Temple, in a place called the Holy of Holies. Of the twelve tribes of Israel, the tribe descended from Aaron, the tribe of Levi, were appointed to be priests and to serve in the temple.
The author of the letter to the Hebrews, in designating Christ as a high priest, knows Jesus was not of the tribe of Levi, but rather from the tribe of Judah. And so the author bids us back to a strange and shadowy figure known as Melchizedek, who appears only twice in the Old Testament – once in Genesis and once in the psalms. Melchizedek appears on the scene in Genesis to Abraham, who has been blessed by God but who then discovers his blessing will not be without some struggle. Following one battle in which Abraham was victorious, Melchizedek shows up to bless him, with bread and wine. And then Melchizedek disappears from the scene.
Melchizedek came to represent a priest who was “forever,” a priest with no beginning and no end, an “eternal priest” appointed by God, not a priest whose priesthood was conferred by their family of birth, as were the Levitical priests. Christ is a different order of priest, “a priest according to the order of Melchizedek.” And later, in the letter to the Hebrews we read that Melchizedek was “without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God, he remains a priest forever.”
In other words, in designating Christ as a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek, the author of the letter to the Hebrews, is making a unique claim, found nowhere else in the New Testament. Like the priests who served in the temple, Christ brings the people before God and God before the people; but unlike those priests, who because they were human beings all died, Christ continues as a priest even now. Which means Christ continues even now to make intercession for us, to pray for us.
Now in all of my growing up in the church I never was told Jesus was praying for me. I knew I was supposed to pray but I never thought of Jesus praying for me. That might be a Protestant thing. Catholics could ask Mary to pray for them but we Protestants would never dare do such a thing! As a result, prayer for me always felt like a monologue as I petitioned God for this or for that, wondering, if indeed, God was really listening. In other words, I did all the talking and God did all the listening!
The author of the letter to the Hebrews invites us to think about prayer differently. Jesus, our great high priest, is actively praying for us and when we pray we are listening for Jesus’ prayer for us. Prayer is not an attempt to get God to do our will; rather prayer is the means whereby we open ourselves to God’s will for us.
In the gospels, Jesus frequently goes off by himself to pray. And when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, Jesus gave them the prayer we know as The Lord’s Prayer. In the gospel of John, we “eaves drop” on Jesus praying to his Father on the night before he dies, as Jesus prays for the protection of those he leaves behind. The author of the letter to the Hebrews, wants the community to which he is writing, which is losing heart, to remember that Jesus is continuing, in his risen life, to do what he did on earth, pray for them.
In our reading we hear that “in the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death.” We are reminded by these words of Jesus’ agony in the garden of Gethsemane as he was facing his coming death. And what we know is that Jesus was not saved from dying on the cross but was raised from the dead three days later. In the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus’ prayer, in the words of former Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey “is the prayer of one who is deeply one with the Father while he shares in the frustrations of humanity.” The one who now eternally intercedes for us is the one who suffered and died.
Ramsey continues in his wonderful essay called Be Still and Know to remind us that the Greek verb “to intercede” does not “properly mean to speak or to plead or to make petitions or entreaties, it means rather to be with someone, to meet or encounter someone, in relation to others.” When we pray, for ourselves or for others, we begin first “dwelling upon the loving kindness of God,” the very love of God that raised Jesus from the dead. “Intercession,” Ramsey writes, “thus becomes not the bombardment of God with requests so much as the bringing of our desires within the stream of God’s own compassion.”
As we stand on the brink of Holy Week, the letter to the Hebrews reminds us that our great high priest is the crucified Christ, one who suffers as we all suffer. Just before the reading we heard this morning, the author tells us: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested, as we are, yet without sin.” Our intercessor is one who knows, knows better than any of us, what it is like to be human, to be vulnerable, to suffer, to be shamed, humiliated and finally overcome by death. This is the one who intercedes for us. This is the one who prays for us.
When we pray, we open ourselves to the presence of God, asking God to be with us. Prayer is not magic and as we watch Jesus pray in the Garden of Gethsemane, we hear Jesus’ very human anguish in the face of his coming death. Jesus is not being stoic in the face of suffering but truthful when he prays, “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me.” Jesus, like all of us, wants to be spared from suffering.
And from what we know from the gospels is that Jesus could have “saved” himself, either calling down a legion of angels or simply eluding arrest. Jesus did neither. Therein lies the chill of the gospel, and the power of the one who now intercedes for us. Jesus refused to “save” himself.
For our sakes. For the sake of all of us who suffer under the burdens of being made human, subject to the decay of our bodies, the vagaries of life in this world, the angst of loving troubled children, for all of us who struggle to love spouses, partners, parents and friends who we never really know, of needing to provide for our needs in a world where there is no free lunch and for all of us who want to understand but cannot. Jesus died for all of us, for all of us who cannot save ourselves. We are up against a wall, the same wall Jesus faced when he confronted his own death. This is the one who intercedes for us.
I am brought to silence as I ponder what it means to say Jesus is praying for us. I have no words nor remedies nor good advice. I am left with a good bit of “fear and trembling” in the words of Saint Paul. I am left with an image of Jesus offering “up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death” and who then went to a horrifying death on a cross. I am left with a mystery I cannot understand but which draws me as does the beauty of the morning sky after a long dark night. I am left without words. Maybe at the end of the day that is what prayer is – the cessation of words as we simply dwell on this God, who was and is and is yet to come.
