We are wanders—all of us. Most of us did not grew up here in North Carolina. Even if we did, our ancestors didn’t. We live in a foreign land. I’ve been here for seven years, and I’m still not quite sure if I am at home. How do we know when to go and when to stay? When will we ever feel at home in one place? Should we ever feel at home where we are?

Israel is a wandering people. In our passage from Numbers, Israel wanders as God leads the people through the desert. “Whenever the cloud lifted above the Tent, the Israelites set out; wherever the cloud settled, the Israelites encamped” (Num 9:17). They live by the word of God. The fire of God’s presence leads them. There’s a rhythm to their wandering–and we can hear the rhythm in the repetition of the passage: they set up camp, then they pick up and follow God’s presence, and after wandering around for a while they set up camp again only to pick up camp and start wandering again. Also, notice that their house of worship is a tent—a wandering site of God’s presence for a wandering people.

Even when they finally set up more permanent camps in the Promised Land, neighboring powers invade Israel and displace them, just as Israel displaced the previous inhabitants of the land. Israel is still a wandering people, even after a phase of settling in the Promised Land.

When the Babylonian forces come and take them into exile, the prophet Jeremiah tells the people of Israel to be at home wherever they find themselves. They can be God’s people among whichever nation holds them captive. Jeremiah gives us the words of God to the people in exile: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Mary and have sons and daughters…. seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile” (Jer 29:5-7).

Their life as God’s chosen people, as Israel, must go on even while in exile. They aren’t supposed to take up arms and fight their way back to the Promised Land. Babylon is now their home. Exile doesn’t change God’s plan for their lives. They can be at home even in a foreign land—building houses, planting gardens, seeking peace. Israel can go on without a homeland.

Now I want to be careful here. God makes commitments to Israel that involve the Promised Land. I don’t doubt God’s ability to make that happen somehow at some point in history. But I also believe that Israel’s return to the Promised Land will not involve armies and wars and security checkpoints and bulldozing Palestinian homes and burning Palestinian gardens.

Israel will be a presence of peace, a people of peace—Jerusalem literally means, “the abode of peace.” The people of Israel will be a blessing to the nations, to their neighbors, not a curse to the other inhabitants of the land. The nation-state called Israel in the Middle East is not same body as the chosen people God calls to be a blessing to the nations.

It’s important to notice that in the biblical story, Israel comes into existence without a land. While land is very much important to the people of God, Israel is not born in the Promised Land. They become Israel as they are called out of places—like Abraham being called out from Ur, the land of his ancestors, and Moses calling Israel out from Egypt, the land of slavery. God gives birth to his people while they live elsewhere, while they are homeless. They become Israel without setting foot on any land of their own.

This is a remarkable fact, especially if we consider the way nations are usually formed. It usually has to do with land. You are an American because of the land of America. But Israel becomes Israel while living among other people, in someone else’s land, while wandering in the deserts, while living as slaves in Egypt.

And Israel can go on and be Israel while living without a land, while living in exile. That’s what God says through the prophet Jeremiah: “Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile.” They are a homeless people who can make their home anywhere—because God goes with them. The God of Israel is not bound by geography. God lives in a wandering tent, a moveable house of worship, as a renter in a land that ultimately belongs to God.

That’s what I experienced on my recent visit to the Mennonite church in San Francisco. They rent space for worship from a Jewish Synagogue, Israel in exile among the Gentiles of California. The people of Israel can be God’s people anywhere, even in San Francisco, even in a building that used to be a Lutheran church—and before that, it was a funeral parlor, a house for the dead.

At first the Jews of that synagogue did not like the idea of letting Christians meet for worship in their building. And that’s quite understandable. In the name of Christ, people have persecuted and killed Jews throughout history. There are good reasons why Jewish communities would want to keep their distance.

But the Mennonites and Jews continued to talk and think about the possibility. After they developed some healthy relationships, the Jews allowed the Mennonites to use their space for worship. Now there are several Jews from the synagogue who come back for worship with the Mennonites on Sunday morning. And a few months ago, the pastor of the Mennonite church was invited to preach at the synagogue.

Their distinct lives as separate peoples are blurring together as they worship in the same building on different days: Gentiles living as renters among the Jews who are living in exile. Together, they are learning how to be a blessing for the world, for their city, for their neighbors.

Gentile Christians have a lot to learn about how to live as exiles. It only makes sense for us to turn to the Jews for help. Israel knows how to live in exile. But our reason for turning to Israel involves more than simply asking advice from people who are knowledgeable. For us as Gentile Christians, we can’t help but be linked to the Jews because we build our lives around Jesus, who was born of a Jewish mother, and was circumcised on the eight day. Our savior was and is a Jew, a child of Israel.

We have heard the call of the God of Israel, through Jesus Christ, the Word of God. And now we follow Jesus into the house of Israel, even though we are not Jews. We are in a strange position of being outsiders to God’s promises to Israel, yet also claiming to worship Israel’s God. Israel wasn’t supposed to be our home, yet we have built our home within this chosen people, as renters who have found that we can’t help but belong to God and with God’s chosen people.

This is what’s at stake in our passage from 1 Peter. The author writes to the churches and tells them about their strange identity: “Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy” (I Pet 2:10).

For 1 Peter, through Jesus Christ, Gentiles have become part of the chosen people of God—we have received mercy, we have received our peoplehood, our identity. “You are a chosen people,” he says, “a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God” (v. 9). We belong. We are at home in God’s presence.

But being at home with God does not mean we live as people who possess the land, who own the world, who wield power, who control other people. As it says in 1 Peter: “Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles in the world to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul” (v. 11).

We are exiles, aliens, foreigners, strangers. We don’t belong, we don’t possess, we are not a people in control. Yet we build houses and plant gardens wherever we go. We seek the peace of the people all around us. We live as God’s blessing for the world, in whichever corner of it we may find ourselves.

The month of July is a tough one for us as a church, as God’s people who have set us tents of worship here in Durham and Chapel Hill. Just as we have wandered here from all over, people will wander from us over the next week weeks. This will be the last week Emily and Lee will be with us, and over the next weeks five other people will also leave: Emily Wilson and Matt Hauger, Jen Coon and Matt Thiessen, and Jessamine Hyatt.

It will be sad to watch them go, but we know that God wanders the earth with us. God can make homes for us anywhere, as we build houses and plant gardens, as we work and pray for peace wherever we find ourselves.

God’s communion can happen to us anywhere. This meal we will soon enjoy together is the way God dwells with us, within us, even. As the one loaf of bread is broken and passed along, we also see how we are broken and scattered throughout the earth—the body of Christ wandering the earth, making homes for God’s presence everywhere we go.

We come together and we depart always in faith, knowing that we

Our story tonight comes from 2 Kings and it is about a man named Naaman.

Naaman is a “great man.” Hebrew narrators are usually sparse, even terse with their descriptions. But here the narrator goes on and on, falling all over himself to tell us how great a man Naaman is. He is the commander of the army of Aram, a decorated general in “high favor” with the king. The king has noticed him, has literally “lifted his face.” He is a mighty warrior, a “man of substance” who, through Yahweh, has won a great victory (2 Kings 5:1). The narrator tells us all that. And then, after this tumbling of descriptive words, great words, we reach one word, the last word of the verse. It is a word that stops us, stops its original hearers even more, stops us all cold. The great man is: a leper.

Leprosy. A dreaded skin disease which causes it to flake and deteriorate painfully with large open sores.

The physical contrast in this picture of Naaman is striking. He is a successful warrior, in a time before smart bombs and droid strikers. This is a man who kills people with his hands and simple weapons. He is strong. Yet, this “great,” strong man: the skin covering his muscles and brawn is marred by open sores, flaking flesh.

And the torment of leprosy in that time is not only, or even primarily, physical. Leprosy is a disease of extreme social stigma. The leper is, in a word, a terrible, excluding word: unclean.

“Leper” redefines Naaman. It, in effect, negates all the positive, lofty description that comes before. His leprosy socially confines him. This is a man used to access in lively places, red carpets and military dress (Walter Brueggemann, Testimony to the Otherwise, 47). Leprosy brings a drastic change to his life. With one word the narrator rewrites Naaman’s place in society.

And with this striking opening description, the story moves on into a dizzying sequence of exchanges and a meandering plot. Naaman’s wife has a slave girl, taken captive from her home in Israel during an Aramean raid. She takes note of Naaman’s suffering and tells her mistress of a prophet in Israel who could, who would cure his leprosy. Naaman acts quickly, tells his king, who acts quickly and sends him to the king of Israel.

Now remember who Naaman is: the commander of the army of Aram. Aram is nothing less than the sworn enemy of Israel. They’ve been doing battle for a long while in the book Kings, and will again in just a few chapters. There is great irony here. It’s like a Pakistani general rushing across the border, with permission, to find a prophet in India. An Israeli commander seeking out a radical imam in Palestine. Naaman the “great man” is so desperate that he would follow the whim of a slave and run to the prophet of some foreign deity of his enemy.

He goes with a great load of riches and gifts (or perhaps bribes?, we’re not told…). A letter from Aram’s king asks Israel’s king to cure Naaman, which, of course, Israel’s king cannot do. The king of Israel tears his clothes in outrage and despair, certain that the king of Aram is stirring the waters, trying to create an international incident.

Oh the kings of the Bible! Here, as is many places, they are powerless and inept. Both kings are impotent in the face of disease. The king of Aram gets the message wrong (whether by accident or on purpose we do not know); he asks the king of Israel to cure Naaman, but doesn’t he remember it is the prophet he should be asking for? The king of Israel flies off the handle and, perhaps, is on the verge of starting a war in response. No great and majestic monarchies here.

But, never to worry, enter the prophet. Elisha, whom we’ve been anticipating all along, finally appears center stage. This story comes after a string of accounts of Elisha’s great deeds: among other things he divides the Jordan, heals contaminated water, foretells an Israeli victory, provides oil for a widow, bestows a son on a barren woman and later brings him back to life, and feeds a hundred men from a few loaves. He has been acting, speaking, bringing hope, holding center amidst scenes of culture and creation itself gone awry in sickness, death, poverty, and war. If we have been reading along in Kings, if we know anything about Elisha, we have been waiting since the slave girl spoke of him. We have been waiting for Elisha to appear.

And appear he does. The story pauses, regroups. “And it was so, when Elisha the man of God…” (2 Kings 5:8).

Elisha is, after all, the center of the story. The prophet is the bearer of Yahweh’s transformative power (Brueggemann, 50). Calm and cool, he knows what has happened and he knows what to do. “Calm down,” he says. “Send the man to me. And he will know that there is a prophet in Israel” (2Kings 5:8, alt trans). By the story’s end, Naaman, and the king, and all of us—we too will know there is a prophet in Israel.

Naaman goes to Elisha’s house and stands outside with all his regalia: horses, chariots, gifts, and servants. And the prophet…

(pause)

…sends out a messenger. He doesn’t even make an appearance. Doesn’t offer his guest hospitality, doesn’t show his face. Just sends a message. A secretary. Texts him. “Go wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed” (2 Kings 5:9).

That’s it. That is our big prophetic utterance. And Elisha doesn’t even utter it, doesn’t speak it directly. It’s just a message. Naaman is bewildered, and I am too. I mean, that’s not what I expected of the prophet! Nor what Naaman expected. He is furious. Surely the “great man” is insulted. He’s not used to be being received as such, or rather not received. He is a general who keeps company with kings.

And he had it all worked out in his head, how the interaction with the great prophet would go. He says, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy” (2 King 5:11). He had imagined his moment, anticipated it, hoped and longed for and believed in it. But this? Go take a bath? In the Jordan? (It’s large in our imaginations, but in actuality the Jordan river wasn’t very big…) The puny little Jordan river? Are you kidding? And Naaman goes off in a huff.

Fortunately for him there are servants. It is the servants, the nameless, status-less servants, who save Naaman. First a slave girl who tells him of the prophet. Now his servants who talk him into taking the prophet’s advice. “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, you would have. How much more when he tells you something easy?” (2 Kings 5:13, alt trans). So he goes down to the Jordan and dips himself in the water seven times.

The “great man” had to “go down” (2 Kings 5:14). He had to physically lower his strong warrior’s body down into the water. Into a small river. Seven times, over and over again. Maybe he was taller than it was deep? Maybe he had to sort of awkwardly kneel or lie down to let the water cover him completely?

Whatever the scene, though, the ending is clear. “His flesh [is] restored and [becomes] like that of a young boy” (2 Kings 5:14). And Naaman is healed. Just as Elisha said he would be.

(pause)

Prophets speak. They often act too, but even their actions are forms of speech, enacted ways of speaking to God’s people. So it makes sense to pay attention to speech in this story of the prophet Elisha. And speech unfolds here in unexpected ways.

The most unexpected of which is that Elisha the great prophet, the one who delivers the word and healing of Yahweh himself, Elisha never speaks. Never. Only two verses in the whole story even render his words, and neither is direct speech; they are messages sent by others, one to the king, the other to Naaman. Elisha in this story is a mute prophet.

The “great men” of the story, the kings and Naaman the general, they speak. But the speech of the great men, not unexpectedly, accomplishes nothing. Their speech transfers responsibility; the kings declare their inability to heal and ask others to do so. Their speech causes confusion; the kings almost start a war. Their speech misunderstands; the king of Aram misunderstands who can heal, the king of Israel misunderstands the other king’s intentions, and Naaman misunderstands Elisha’s command. The speech of great men fail to bring healing, fail to bring change, fail to bring hope.

But it is the servants whose speech is effectual. Servants deliver all the good news. The speech of slaves brings healing into reality. Elisha’s messenger delivers healing instructions to Naaman. Naaman’s servants get him into the water, they command the resounding double imperative, “Wash and be cleansed” (2 Kings 5:13). And the slave girl, her speech is the most striking, and important, of all.
She who is captive in a foreign land has mercy on her captor. She remembers the faithfulness of Yahweh and has faith in his prophet to bring healing. She who is nameless and marginalized, the least powerful person the narrative, she is the one who remembers and speaks hope into reality.

“Oh that, would that, if only…,” she says (2 Kings 5:2). The Hebrew is subjunctive, a funny little tense of speech that speaks “contrary to fact.” According not to what is, but what could be, maybe… “Oh that, would that, if only my master would see the prophet!” (v.2). Her simple remembering, her simple wistful utterance is what sets the whole story in motion. The hopeful speech of a slave girl saves Naaman.

(pause)

My job here today, our job as we speak to each other as brothers and sisters, is not to deliver great truths or solutions. That is the job of the prophet speaking the word of Yahweh, the Father; it’s the job of the Holy Spirit enlivening Scripture; it’s the job of Christ within and among us sharing himself: the Word of life. Our job is more like that of the slave girl:

“Oh that, would that, if only!”

It is wistfulness. It is speaking the unlikely thing. It is foolishness. It is contrary to fact. It is hope despite all the evidence. It is defiant prayer.

If only! peace would come in Afghanistan. In east Africa. In the slums of Asia and the neighborhoods of North America.

If only! the cancer would disappear.

If only! the addiction would release its grip.

If only! I could love, really love the Lord my God with all my heart and my neighbor as myself.

Oh that, would that, if only!

We speak. To remind ourselves and each other that the world we see is a shadow side, that there is another reality, another kingdom at work in the world, breaking in around us. We speak to call it into being. We speak to hope. We speak to create that which is not yet. Jesus’ reign is “contrary to fact.”

And our other job is: to listen. To listen for the word of God. To listen to the word of God. To listen to the word of the prophet, to the word of the servants who are delivering the word of God to us.

Who are those servants in our lives? Are they, like those in the story, the marginalized, the poor, the unnamed, the ones whom we fail to notice, fail to care for, fail to remember? Who are our servants, bearing the word of God to us? Dare we listen to them?
(pause)

But back to Naaman the “great man.” Because he is important, I think, for us.

You see, we are, if you will, “great men” too. We make our home in a region with one of the highest levels of education in the country. I get letters every so often from the people selling the fancy condos down the street encouraging me to move in, where I can mingle with the up-and-coming, best and brightest, the now and future doctors and lawyers and professors, the movers and shakers of American society, right here in Chapel Hill. We are citizens of the most powerful, richest nation in the world. Our daily security rests on the might of the American military and the bloated influence (if not concrete value) of the American economy. We might not be decorated warriors, but we are over-educated, protected, and wealthy. We are “great people,” and we have a lot in common with Naaman.

And great people have a lot to lose.

I have long been fascinated by, drawn to, and, quite frankly, terrified by the Mary song sings in Luke’s gospel after she learns that she will give birth to Jesus. It is a song of reversal. She speaks of God “lifting up the humble” and “fill[ing]the hungry with good things.” But she also tells of God “scatter[ing] the proud,” “[bringing] down rulers from their throne,” and “[sending] the rich away empty” (Luke 1:51-53). It terrifies me because, when I’m honest, I have few illusions about where I stand in that list. I fear that Mary foretells my downfall. And no one wants to fall.

Naaman didn’t want to fall. He wanted to be healed, but he had a pretty clear idea of what that would look like. Elisha, the great prophet, knew both what healing word Naaman needed and how he needed to hear it. Yahweh’s healing word involved a literal stripping of Naaman, of all his prestige and honor and privilege. No great ceremony, not even simple hospitality. Just stripping down and placing his needy body in the water.

But here it is: the really good news. Naaman’s downfall, difficult as it was for him to accept and participate in, humbling and circuitous and unexpected—it’s so easy! So absurdly… gracious. He just takes a dip in the river. “Wash and be cleansed” (2 Kings 5:13). That’s all. It must have felt good, after all that riding and negotiating and tension, to strip down the layers of impressive clothes and armor, to float in the Jordan. The swirl of water around his body, the touch of cool of water on skin, on open sores.

It’s all so strikingly, amazingly—gentle. Thrillingly gentle. A great man scourged by a disease of deep physical, psychological, and social significance—and all he has to do is go for a swim.

The process of getting there is hardly simple and straightforward. It is a rambling little story. But in the end, Naaman receives a gracious, lovely, even easy word from God. Naaman was a great man prepared to do great things to be free, but all he had to do was receive.

(pause)
Here is a warning as we approach the word of God—we should be prepared. We should probably be ready for a cross. The kingdom of God is marked by nothing if not reversal. The hungry are satisfied. The weeping laugh. The poor inherit the kingdom and all its riches (Luke 6:20-23). But there is a flip side to the reversal and God’s way of being in the world involves bringing things down. We should remember that there will be death involved before new life comes. We are “great ones” in the world by anyone’s measure, and we, likely, will be brought low. God’s word involves divesting. We will, like the great man Naaman, have to “go down” (2 Kings 5:14).

But don’t be too nervous. The good news of Naaman’s story is not only—as if it weren’t enough—that he receives healing. The good news lies too in how he is healed. Gently. Easily. “Wash and be cleansed.”

For God’s ways with his children are full of kindness and great love. And in the end, they may be just as gracious, just as gentle, as going down for a swim.

I think there’s a new theme developing in my sermons over the past year or so. I really think the gospel is about our whole bodies. The good news is about our material lives, our flesh and blood, about what we do with our lives. Our spirituality is material, bodily—it has to do with the way we assemble our bodies together for worship, how we serve in our neighborhoods with our hands, how we eat together and fellowship, how we care for one another. The church is a community of people who let Jesus become flesh in our lives.

So, what does this liveliness, this physicalness, of the gospel mean for our bodies when they die? What does it mean for our bodies to be gospel, to be transformed into God’s presence for each other, and then for these bodies to die? Now, I’m not wondering about eternal salvation or heaven or anything like that.

Today I’m more interested in how we think about the dead, about dead bodies that populate the earth beneath our feet. And, if we think a little further about the dead, it’s not just that they stay under our feet, in the ground—but they also continue to live with us and in us. The essayist and poet, Walt Whitman, memorably described the ongoing life of the dead as “leaves of grass.” “O grass,” he writes. “What is grass?”—“it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.” “O grass of graves” (see Lewis Hyde, The Gift, p. 232f). Grass: the uncut hair of graves.

Whitman is making an obvious, though maybe uncomfortable, observation about bodies and decomposition and the growth of vegetable life. The bodies of the dead come back to live with us through the earth. We can’t control the ongoing life of the dead—they sneak into us, without so much as a whisper. The beauty around us is “the beautiful uncut hair of graves,” as Whitman put it.

But this is more than a point about biology, about decomposition and new life. Our homes, our work, our language, the concepts with which we think, the building blocks of thought and reason, and even our faith, our religion—all of this comes from the dead. We are living out the labor and dreams of the dead, those who have gone before us. In a profound sense, our lives are the leaves of grass sprouting up from the graves.

Our passage from Hebrews 11 is a meditation on the life of the dead as they continue to live with us. Hebrews wants to make sure that we keep the dead alive in our memories, in our lives. “Some suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword… the world was not worthy of them” (Heb 11:36-37). The world was not worthy of them, but the question is: Are we worthy of them? Do we continue to live out their lives? Are we healthy leaves from their graves?

“Therefore,” the author goes on, “since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us” (12:1). The life of the dead enable our own. They make space for us to run with freedom, and with perseverance.

We need the dead, but the dead also need us. That’s what so interesting to me about this passage from Hebrews. This is from verse 39: “Yet all of these…did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect” (11:39). They would not, apart from us, be made perfect. I don’t know if the word “perfect” is the best translation of the Greek word there. The root of the word, in Greek, is telos—and it means something like “to bring to an end, to complete, to finish.” Basically, the point is that the dead have not been brought to an end. They continue on. Their lives have not been completed. They are not finished. The dead have been waiting for us, that we may complete each other, that we may finish the work together.

The way the dead continue to live through us is central to the way Jacob must be buried in Canaan, the future home of his people—this is the passage we read from Genesis 49 and 50.

What’s important about the story is that Jacob has to be buried in the land of Canaan, the future land of his people. His body must rest in the place where his descendants will live.

I thought a lot about graves on my recent trip to Boonsboro, Maryland, where I spent a week with the Mennonite church there—Mt. Zion Mennonite Church. Mennonites settled in the area in the mid-1700s. And they have been burying their dead in a cemetery that runs alongside the church. It’s a beautiful cemetery, with a section of old graves with headstones so old that you can’t read them anymore. The rain has cut jagged edges into the stone.

But I think something happens to a people who get together near the graves of those who have gone before them. For one thing, cemeteries help us remember our frailty: that we too will soon die. In a culture that is afraid of growing old and dying, gravestones keep us honest—they help us live without delusions. But graves do more than keep us humble. They also remind us of the people who came before us, who carved out a place in the world for us to live on and thrive and help bring to completion their dreams and the work they started. In a very real sense, Mt. Zion Mennonite is planted in the cemetery; the church is a leaf of grass growing from those graves. They can’t help but be grateful to the dead.

At this point all sorts of things come to mind and I don’t know how to play them all out for us. I thought I could simply mention a couple things for us to think about together.

The early Christians had an interesting relationship with the dead. They would have church services around the graves of people from their community. Everyone would go out to the graves and celebrate communion together, and even offer the dead bread and wine. Let me read a passage from an ancient Christian text, the Didascalia, which was most likely written in the 3rd century. It records some of the earliest descriptions of the church’s worship practices. Here’s the passage:

according to the power of the Holy Spirit, come together even in the cemeteries, and read the holy Scriptures, and without demur perform your ministry and your supplication to God; and offer an acceptable Eucharist, the likeness of the royal body of Christ, both in your congregations and in your cemeteries and on the departures of them that sleep—pure bread that is made with fire and sanctified with invocations—and without doubting pray and offer for/to them that are fallen asleep. (Didascalia Apostolorum, ch. 26, vi 22).

Here we find Christians holding worship services and having meals in graveyards and, in some sense, eating and drinking with the dead. There was a real sense that communion was eating at the table of Jesus Christ, whose resurrection broke through the boundary between the living and the dead, which meant that the dead were not fully dead, but lived on mysteriously through Jesus Christ, and could eat and drink at the same table. There were compartments in the graves where the worshipers placed bread and poured wine for the dead to eat and drink. The worshipers also invited the poor who lived in or near the cemeteries to eat and drink with them.

If you think this is a bit weird, you should take some comfort in knowing that other Christians during those early years thought it was weird, too—Augustine of Hippo led the way against this practice. He thought it was a better idea to give all the food and drink to the poor. As he put it, the Eucharist was for the living, not the dead. I leave it up to you to think it’s a good idea to agree with Augustine.

Okay, here’s the second thing that comes to mind about the life of the dead. Anthropologists have made some interesting observations about the Paleolithic humans from the early part of the Stone Age. Apparently that’s the era when houses emerge. That’s when the nomadic humans start building houses, permanent structures. But they built these houses not for themselves, but instead to house the bodies of the dead. They remained nomads, wandering across the earth looking for food. But they built semi-permanent houses for the dead, and returned to those houses to honor the dead. Soon, the nomads actually ceased to wander and added on to those houses rooms that served as their homes. So, basically, houses were for the dead, but the living soon moved in with the dead. And the first cities were basically cemeteries that living people decided to move into. As Lewis Mumford writes in his classic study called The City in History, “the city of the dead antedates the city of the living… [it’s] the forerunner…of every city of the living” (p. 7).

I think the people who came before us had ways of living with the dead that we no longer practice, and I’m not sure what that means for us. What does it mean that we do not acknowledge the ways that the dead in some sense continue to live among us?

For Hebrews, living with the dead enables our way of faithfulness. “We are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses,” therefore “let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” Somehow, acknowledging the dead who surround us, enables us to run the race with perseverance.

The ministry of the prophet Elijah only takes up five and a half chapters of 1^st and 2^nd Kings.  Six and a half in the entire Bible, if you include the nasty letter that he writes to king Jehoram in 2 Chronicles 21.  That’s it.  Six and a half chapters.  If the people who appear in the Bible were ranked in level of importance by the length of the narratives about their lives, Elijah would only register as a fairly minor figure.  And in much of Christian history, he has registered as a fairly minor figure.  In my own upbringing, Elijah was one of those characters that we learned cool stories about in Sunday school, but never really came away with a good understanding of why he might be of any significance beyond the entertainment value of those stories.  In Jewish history, however, these six and a half short chapters have really captured the Jewish imagination.

The thing about Elijah that seems to have really grabbed the Rabbis’ imagination is not the fact that he raised a widow’s son, or that Elijah encountered the voice of God in a whisper at Horeb, or the fact that he could call down fire from heaven hot enough to consume sacrifices and evaporate moats instantaneously.  What really seems to have enamored the Rabbis about Elijah is the fact that Elijah’s career as prophet never ended.  Remember, Elijah is distinct among figures mentioned in the Bible in that he never died: instead he rode the fiery whirlwind straight up into heaven.  This led to the conception that Elijah is still out there somewhere, roaming the earth and dispensing his collective wisdom do all who have ears to hear.  This is why, at a traditional Passover Seder, you leave a chair empty at the table, just in case Elijah shows up and wants to eat with you.  In the Talmud, the Rabbis consult Elijah for advice all the time, and the fact that they are speaking to the prophet is often treated by the Talmud as though such a meeting is really no big deal—it seems as common as having a casual conversation with a friend over lunch.  But they consult Elijah because he knows the answers to all the tough questions.  He can tell you where to find the Messiah.  He can tell you how God felt when the Rabbis told him that he couldn’t weigh in on debates about the Law anymore.  And he can tell you what to do about that troublesome hermit who lives in a cave on the edge of town and has started shooting lightning bolts out of his eyes and melting people at random.

This fascination with the prophet Elijah seems to have been in full force in Jesus’ day, too.  He is mentioned by name in all four Gospels, Romans and James.  In the Gospel of Luke, upon finding that being near their teacher has given them the power to wield all sorts of miracles, it isn’t long before James and John want to imitate one of Elijah’s more famous miracles by calling fire down on Samaria.  It is quite possible that people in Jesus’ day also believed that Elijah was still wandering the earth somewhere, as Jesus is told by his disciples “some say you are Elijah.”  Certainly, Jesus denies that he is Elijah, but he goes on to claim that John the Baptist is Elijah, and that his own ministry is in continuity with this Elijah.  When Jesus is hung on a cross, and cries out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” bystanders assume that he is calling Elijah for assistance.

Why is everyone waiting for Elijah?  When your entire career is almost summed up in the OT part of the lexionary for the month of June (we read four out of those six and a half chapters this month), what could possibly have been so eventful about it that it would merit this much expectation?  Is it simply because he didn’t die, and everyone expected him to have acquired quite a bit of knowledge wandering the earth?  Or was there something more to it?

Further, what might it mean that Jesus reminds everyone of Elijah?  I took a class last semester that was about various images of Jesus in the Church through the centuries.  We covered everything from monastic conceptions of Jesus as “the monk who rules the world,” to the “manly, scrappy Jesus” of Christian men’s movements (a Jesus even hyper-masculine pastor Mark Driscoll would love), from the “Jesus the CEO” of 1980s corporate America to the “Jesus the Black Moses” of 1960s black liberation movements.  At times, the class was quite disturbing.  Looking at some of the quite terrible images of Jesus that the Church has produced throughout its history is enough to wonder if we should add one more.  Worse yet, the image of Jesus has been especially co-opted by many American ideologies.  Stephen Prothero has even called him a “national icon.”  You simply cannot be American and not have to deal with Jesus—even American Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists have had to find some way of dealing with him, of molding him into an image that fits their beliefs.  This results in Jesus the bodhisattva, Jesus the avatar of Vishnu, and Jesus the enlightened humanist.  While one suspects that distortion has occurred within these conceptions, these are often less heinous than the images produced by some Christian sub-groups.  I mentioned Jesus the CEO before—that Jesus is actually worshipped as God by men and women who carry out cutthroat corporate takeovers and give themselves large bonuses in a faltering economy.  Is it wise to consider adding Elijah into this mix, or would more distortion result?  Would Elijah make for a good image of Jesus?

I can’t help but think that our passage for today helps us to understand Elijah’s significance, and why he has captivated the imaginations of so many Jews over the centuries, despite receiving short mention in the Bible.  In our passage for today, the evil king Ahab (whom the book of Kings credits with doing more evil in Israel than all the kings that came before him) wants to make a simple business transaction.  He wishes to acquire Naboth’s vineyard, but Naboth resists all of Ahab’s offers to buy or trade for the land.  Naboth does this because the land is his ancestral home—his family has worked that land for generations.  Like a sullen child who finds his desire to acquire a new toy thwarted, Ahab returns home, lies on his bed, and pouts.  His wife Jezebel then decides to take action on his behalf, and makes plans to acquire the vineyard by force.  She gets two witnesses (the same number required to apply a death sentence in Jewish trial law) to falsely testify against Naboth.  His crime?  He’s accused of being a blasphemer and a political traitor.  He curses God and curses the king.  He lacks the necessary piety and patriotism.  So he is put to death.  Jezebel then tells Ahab to go and take possession of the vineyard.  Into this situation, God calls Elijah.  The message Elijah is to deliver?  That Ahab’s fate will be like Naboth’s.  That Ahab and Jezebel’s violence will only beget more violence.

I believe Elijah became so significant to many Jews because of the circumstances of his term as prophet.  Elijah was the prophet who opposed what was perhaps Israel’s most evil king.  Under Ahab’s watch, not only did the king lead people astray by officially instituting Baal worship, but Jezebel even initiated a full-scale purge against the prophets of YHWH.  YHWH worshipers were persecuted by their fellow Israelites.  Ahab led Israel to sin, and made life difficult to the faithful.  Into this situation, when Israel was at its lowest, God called Elijah.  Elijah came not only bringing grandiose miracles such as droughts and fire from heaven, announcing God’s judgment against the nation, but also to announce to Ahab that his days are numbered.  Elijah is a reminder that all bad regimes come to an end, and that no government, no nation, and no governmental office are above accountability.  Elijah also does not remain above the fray of the regime’s oppression of the poor and the faithful.  Elijah lives as a homeless wanderer, taking up residency with widows, and being fed by ravens.  Elijah is quite a natural person for the hungry, the homeless, the refugee and the exile to wait expectantly for.  And so an empty chair can become a sign of hope.  In exchange for a small act of hospitality, the prophet might come and announce the immanent end to the regime that causes your suffering.  Since the Jews have been wanderers throughout their history, Elijah is a very natural figure to choose as their symbol of hope.

My friend Christina recently returned from a trip from Israel.  Christina was a Mennonite at one point in her life, and she has seen quite a number of MCC presentations on what it is like to live in the conditions beyond the checkpoints in the Palestinian territories.  She was quite far from being a supporter of the policies of the Israeli military.  In speaking to her this week about her experience there, she said that seeing the conditions that many Palestinians face on a day to day basis did not do much to change her opinion of the Israeli government.  But she did say that she became a little more sympathetic to the Zionists when she walked through the Holocaust museum there.  To see such detailed documentation of Jewish persecution, much of which coming from the anti-Semitism of Christian thinkers such as Martin Luther, and to see the reactions of 18-year-old Israeli military cadets as they were ushered through the museum as a part of their training, she could understand why these young men would go to such lengths to assure that such things never again happened to their people.  This did not make her think that it was any less ridiculous when the military raided aid flotillas during her stay in Israel, but it did leave an impression on her.  “It’s such a complicated situation,” she finally concluded.

Rereading the text for today after talking with Christina, I couldn’t help but think that Christina is looking for an Elijah.  Our story for today seems oddly similar the situation she observed.  It includes a land dispute where one party claims ancestral inheritance, and the other claims the divine right of the one who sits enthroned as the enforcer of God’s Law.  The owner is finally executed when his piety and his nationalism are questioned, as many courageous Jews who publicly oppose Israeli policies toward Palestinians find their own faith and their own loyalty to their country questioned.  Into this situation, Elijah, a faithful Jew, announces that violence only begets more violence.  He reminds us that no government that uses the courts to kill and defraud people of their land can ever build a lasting legacy.  The alternative response to this cycle of violence that Elijah invites us into as he enters the scene is one of repentance and hospitality—one that leaves a chair open so that wanderers might sit at your table.  Such hospitality may require some sacrifice and courage.  In our reading for last week, the widow of Zarephath was not well off, and taking in boarders is an act of faith, but she extended her hospitality to the homeless prophet nonetheless.

Elijah is also the perfect person to wait for when we find that the villain is “one of us.”  Christina mentioned that she felt constantly aware in the Holocaust museum that Christians had contributed to the current situation by building anti-Semitic regimes, and that the American government had contributed to the current situation by blindly supporting all Israeli military policies.  As an American Christian traveling in this land, she felt doubly condemned.  Elijah helps us to see that even when the greatest contributors to a conflict are found among our ranks—Ahab was, after all, was an Israelite—they still need to be called to account, and sacrifice and hospitality is still the required response.  Elijah shows us that even the political offices and institutions that we hold dear are not above correction when they avoid that call.

All that, of course, is to oversimplify a situation that Christina rightly called “complex.”  What hospitality looks like in that situation is hard to grasp.  But it does help to show us why Elijah would have been so compelling a person to wait for among a people that find themselves perpetually homeless.  Elijah may not be a very compelling figure to wait for to an 18-year-old military cadet who looks upon the history of his people and swears “never again” between clenched teeth, and he may not be a compelling figure to wait for to the American senator who looks upon that same history and wishes to erase the guilt of their own complicity by writing blank checks for military support.  And that might be the reason why I think Elijah does make a good image of Jesus: because he appeals to the right contingency.  More than this, however, Jesus confirms that Elijah is a good image for him when he tells the disciples that he is not Elijah, but John the Baptist is, and John’s work is a preparation for Jesus’ own ministry.  Jesus is about the same sort of things that Elijah was.  He appeals to the same constituency.

This realization may help us to approach the sometimes perplexing story that we encounter in the Gospel lesson for today—the story of the woman who anoints Jesus and washes his feet with her tears.  Several months back, Matt preached on one of the parallel accounts of this incident in one of the other Gospels (whether that Gospel was Matthew or Mark, I can’t remember).  He expressed some frustration at this passage, and mentioned that he often finds himself empathizing with the disciple who complains about the other uses the money could have been put to—such as feeding the poor.  I shared Matt’s frustrations, and upon finding that this passage fell on a Sunday that I was going to preach, I groaned and vowed to avoid it.  But upon closer inspection, I realized that this passage from Luke is quite different from its parallels.  Here, the thing that evokes the disgust of Simon the Pharisee is not the extravagance and wastefulness of the gift, but rather, the person who is giving it.  “If this man were a prophet,” he says to himself, “he would have known what kind of woman this is who is touching him—that she is a sinner.”  If Jesus is really a prophet, then he is the wrong sort of person for this woman to be touching, and she is the wrong sort of person for him to allow in his presence.  Jesus responds to Simon’s objection by giving a message that complements Elijah’s.  Just as violence begets violence, so forgiveness begets forgiveness, and not only forgiveness, but also gratitude.  The answer to the cycle of violence is the cycle of forgiveness.  Jesus informs us that the way that people will know that we are his is that we will live out of forgiveness, and because we are forgiven, we will shower others with extravagant hospitality.  We will shower it upon others embarrassingly.  We will shower it upon others wastefully.  We will shower it upon others foolishly.  We will shower it upon those who are entirely the wrong sort of people—the people that we are told we shouldn’t be able to forgive.

This is exactly the sort of hospitality that it is difficult for the vengeful Israeli soldier and the guilty American politician to exercise.  This is because they are blocking off such generosity at its source (namely, forgiveness), albeit in different ways.  If we are to be the sort of people who are able to wait for the Prophet (and Simon the Pharisee reminds us that Jesus is a prophet), and to shower him with the requisite hospitality when he comes, then we must live out of the forgiveness we have received.  We must realize the gravity the debt that has been cancelled for us.

The image of Elijah the wandering prophet is just the sort of thing we need to combat the image of Jesus the manly scrapper, Jesus the Crusader, and Jesus the CEO, because those images undermine the politics of forgiveness that Jesus came preaching.  Those images try to co-opt Jesus in order to justify the jealous protection of something that we perceive others are trying to take from us—whether it be masculinity, the truth of our beliefs, or the right to consume.  The image of Elijah the wandering prophet combats these images by calling for us to give even when we are poor.  But even this poverty is illusory, once we consider the great riches that we have in the forgiveness we have been given through Jesus Christ.  So I have left an empty chair here as a symbol of hope, and a symbol of peace.  To remind us that no evil regime will last forever.  To remind us of the hospitality that our forgiveness calls for.  And so that we might wait expectantly for the Prophet until he comes again.

Eight years ago I took up a new hobby: I gamble. I have never purchased even one lottery ticket, and I don’t sneak off to Las Vegas or Atlantic City or the nearest Native American casino during the week. However, I gamble with the editors of the lectionary, and this time they have dealt me a most difficult hand.

If we were to require  a preacher to show a substantial understanding of the assigned Gospel passage before preaching on it, I might have been found unfit to prepare today’s sermon. Jesus and his party are walking in a Gentile village, where they encounter the village maniac, a man possessed by many devils. Jesus commands the devils to leave the poor man, and they in turn beg to be installed elsewhere.  Without explanation, Jesus obliges, by sending them into a nearby herd of pigs. The pigs at once run into a lake and drown, at great loss to their herdsmen. But the man’s sanity is instantly restored, and he asks to follow Jesus.

For me, this account of the demon-possessed man in Luke chapter 8 raises many questions and presents few answers. Almost every result of the man’s healing is negative. Because no suitably happy ending can be squeezed out of the story, it will never occupy the Disney movie makers. The loss of the demon-possessed pigs infuriates their herders, who spread the story. The village crowd, unmoved at the sight of the healthy man now free of demons, asks Jesus to get out of town, and Jesus tells the adoring man whom he has saved that he is not to follow him, but to return home and tell everyone what Jesus did for him. Never mind that the villagers already know the story. Every possible happy ending is denied. I think of the cynical line that says “No good deed goes unpunished.”

Even the most astute New Testament scholars, who build their reputations by finding truths that escape ordinary laymen, are troubled by this story. Remembering that Mark’s gospel is generally recognized as the first to be written, one scholar grumbles that “The conclusion of the episode … remains in Luke (8:34-39) as convoluted, clumsy, and opaque as it is in Mark” (Bovon, Luke, p. 323). “The story is not without its negative fallout” (Craddock, Luke, p. 117).

I consulted at least half a dozen lengthy commentaries; the writers analyze the story in considerable detail, but are able to draw from it few positive lessons, if any. One troubling aspect is that the accounts of this story in the gospels have different spellings for the name of the village, and neither village was close to a lake. It is hard to imagine a herd of pigs, even demon-driven pigs, sprinting very far to drown themselves.

The story, especially what is said about pigs, has clear political and cultural significance. Observant Jews throughout history have considered pigs unclean, and do not eat pork. The Jews who followed Jesus would have thought it perfectly acceptable for him to destroy the herd of pigs; never mind the total loss to the Gentile swineherders. (NIB p 187, paraphrased)

Because of the herd of pigs, we know that the story took place in Gentile territory. As Ben Dillon pointed out in his sermon on May 2, Jesus took his message beyond the boundaries of Judaism.

A commentator writes: “For both contemporary Judaism as well as for the early Jewish Christians, the pig was the signboard of the Gentiles … the Gentile power with which the Jews were then most in conflict, the Romans, were given the title of pig” (Bovon, p. 329).

Luke 8:30 reads as follows: Jesus asked (the demon), “What is your name?”

“Legion,” he replied, because many demons had gone into the man.” Legion of course means many or it refers to the Roman legions, i.e., the demonic oppressors. (Tannehill, Luke, p. 146).

We may well ask what scornful name is applied to our soldiers by Iraqi families who have suffered the loss of civilian family members in what the Pentagon euphemistically calls “collateral damage.”

The entire story can be read as Jesus’ action to release a person tormented by depression, fear, anxiety, etc. All that was left of the man’s mind was a boiling cauldron of conflicting forces. Though it is an old story, modern versions can be found.

The healing of the demon-possessed man went terribly awry to produce a triumph of the law of unintended consequences.  However, we might be able to learn something from it, for it appears that a human life is infinitely worth saving, even at the cost of disturbing the lives of others. More generally, we see that Jesus did not back away from a difficult situation, as we may be prone to do, and that the Bible, as is often the case, reports a tough episode with surprising candor. The gospel writers surely wanted to cast Jesus in a positive light, but they did not back away from the story as told to them.

I am far more drawn to Elijah’s tribulations as reported in today’s passage from 1 Kings. Elijah was a larger-than-life man of God, who has been called the quintessential prophet. Before I take up the story of Elijah in today’s passage, please note that our understanding of the word “prophet” has sometimes been inaccurate. A prophet is mainly a person who proclaims a message from God, especially to the Israelites during times when they strayed from the covenant they and God had made together. If, like me, you were first taught to think of a prophet as one who foretells the future, set that notion aside. The prophets sometimes dreamed of a coming Messiah. At other times they suggested what would happen to God’s people if they failed to turn back to God, but that’s little more than a parent telling a child where persistent bad behavior might lead. Prophecy as a career would seem to be unpopular, and so it has been, though today we have nearly 100 senators and 435 representatives ready at any moment to predict catastrophe if the policies of the other party prevail. Much of what they say is unworthy of the term “prophecy” no matter how it is defined.

Felix Mendelssohn’s dramatic oratorio Elijah is familiar to me, and I strongly associate some of the lines in today’s reading with specific arias and choruses. Listening to Mendelssohn for two hours is by far the best way to appreciate Elijah as a courageous man of God. It’s an inspired musical setting of a powerful story.

Elijah has been furiously defending the God of Israel against heathen gods at a time when the people had turned away from God. Elijah killed the false prophets with the sword. He alone is given credit for this, but it is safe to assume that he had at least a small force of men under his command. Queen Jezebel tells Elijah in a convoluted sentence that God should kill her if she fails to have Elijah killed within 24 hours.

Jezebel, wife of King Ahab, was such a consistent scoundrel that her name has entered our own language to denote a wicked, shameless woman. To call someone a Jezebel is the worst kind of insult. Her profoundly evil nature was already well documented by Chris Gooding in last week’s sermon.

Elijah, sensibly enough, responds to the death threat by escaping into the wilderness. He eventually makes his way to Mt. Horeb, another name for Mt. Sinai, so we have Elijah following in the footsteps of Moses, who received the Ten Commandments there.

Deeply discouraged, Elijah tells God “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” Older translations read “Take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers,” a jarring line that is no way to celebrate Fathers Day. Surely it was not aimed at Fathers Day. At first God does not respond, but in time God says “What are you doing here, Elijah?” The prophet answers “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.” Elijah shows us that a prophet’s life is a lonely and most unrewarding career.

It’s time for Divine action; Elijah is told in verses 11-15 to “‘Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’ Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; ¹²and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. ¹³When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’ ¹⁴He answers by repeating his mantra: ‘I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.’ ¹⁵Then the Lord said to him, ‘Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus;

In the passages following this one, Elijah proves himself a great prophet as he puts to shame the prophets of the false gods. Let Mendelssohn tell you about it. Like Jesus in our gospel story, Elijah tackled a difficult situation. His courage brings to mind Martin Luther, early Anabaptist martyrs, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Elijah finally heard the voice of God in “a sound of sheer silence” or as a commentator suggests, in “a sound of fine silence.” Mennonites have not generally had a great leader or prophet who can speak for all, or tell us what to do. Instead, we try to hear the Holy Spirit locally by listening carefully to each other when we are discussing our shared future.

This very favored congregation has not been blown around by a great wind, nor shaken asunder by an earthquake, nor consumed by fire. Such tragedies have struck elsewhere. As far as I know, no one has even been directly touched by the great global recession. We are among the most fortunate people on earth. However, God can still ask what we are doing here. Lacking any dramatic, 100-decibel message, our duty, like that of the prophet Elijah, is to listen closely to see what a persistent God whispers to us, and to set out to do it. Is our future open? If so, may the quiet word of the Lord move us to action.

I have a friend who makes icons. Well…she doesn’t really make icons, but kind of. I’m not talking about the symbols on your computer that show a little picture of your file. I mean religious icons, pictures of Jesus or Mary or a scene from Scripture which are used in worship. Particularly in Orthodox churches, icons are used for contemplation. The figures often have large, exaggerated eyes, and include various types of symbolic images.

My friend is an artist and a printmaker. The two prints [on the walls] are hers, blown up so the quality is a bit off. They don’t come from our passages from today, but they were a kind of inspiration for this sermon and they offer two different pictures of Christ which may (or may not) help to stretch our ideas of who he is. And if you get tired of listening to me—or of just listening in general—perhaps you can look at them and hopefully still go home edified.

Icons point to God. They are meant to engage us in ways that lead us into the worship of God. At their best, when we interact with them at our best, by the grace of God—they direct our gaze toward understandings of faith that we wouldn’t see simply by hearing. They have the ability, goes the Orthodox and sacramental tradition, to come at our spirit and consciousness from behind, below, inside out and round about. My hunch is that there might be something to it, even if it is all hard to grasp, and, undeniably, easy to abuse.

Tonight I want to talk about the story in Luke 7. Now if any of you remember, last time I preached it was on the story of a widow being raised from the dead in Acts. And when I pulled up the lectionary readings for this week, what did I find? In 1 Kings and in Luke: more dead people! More raising! More widows!

Maybe that’s what got me thinking of icons—it gave me a different way in. I wondered if I, if we, could read this story as an icon of Jesus? I wonder if this idea of a still-frame, a visualized capture of a moment could be a way to read stories—especially familiar ones—so that they are free with the guidance of God’s Spirit to point us to something good and true about God.

It was this arresting detail that grabbed me the first time I read this story, and it had stayed with me as I’ve studied it. The point of Jesus’ miracle stated clearly in these simple words: Jesus gave him, [the dead man, gave him] back to his mother” (Luke 7: 15).

This is a story in which Jesus displays a profound public act of power—he brings the dead back to life. For the first time. In front of not one, but two crowds, the crowd following Jesus and the crowd with the widow. At the town gate, the most public of spaces in an ancient city. Luke shows Jesus healing someone who is gravely ill in the preceding story and now he raises the dead. He is one upping himself in the power and authority of his actions. All through these early episodes of Jesus’ ministry Luke’s keynote is power. He presents Jesus as “the Spirit-empowered conqueror of evil,” resisting the devil, casting out demons, defying sickness and even death (see Talbert, Reading Luke-Acts in its Mediterranean Milieu). John the Baptist’s disciples come and ask Jesus, “John wants to know—are you really the one?” Jesus’ answer is a long list of what he has been up to: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor hear good news (7:22). Acts of miraculous power which provide evidence of Jesus’ status as God’s agent of salvation (see Roth, The Blind, the Lame, and the Poor).

So Jesus is powerful. But it is not only, or even mainly in my view, about power. It is also about compassion and the way that God’s salvation comes.

All of Jesus’ healings, and much of his teaching so far, have been in response to people coming to him. Flocking to him. Begging him for mercy, for help, for healing. And he responds. But this story is different. Jesus goes to her.

To her? Wait, doesn’t he raise a dead man, you ask? Well, yes. But Luke focuses on his mother. The structure of the text describes the dead man at length, but all in terms of his mother. The phrases tumble out shifting the focus onto her, the only son of his mother…a widow…surrounded by a large crowd (7: 12).

A widow who has lost her only son has also, likely, lost her only means of support. As we talked about a few weeks ago, widows in Jesus’ time occupied a precarious position in a patriarchal society. She’s not necessarily destitute (she is surrounded by a crowd and may well have a supportive community, a fact often overlooked in assumptions about “poor widows”). But she is vulnerable. She is part of a funeral procession. She is going to bury her son. And she is weeping.

The scene is set such that the two crowds, the mother’s and Jesus’, cross paths at the town gate. In the midst of all those people, Jesus sees her. He “has compassion on her.” He says to her, “don’t cry.” He finds her, moves towards her, speaks to her. She is the focus of his attention.

This word for Jesus’ compassion, splagxveuo, has to do with innards and organs. Not just hearts, but lungs and livers and kidneys and stomachs—our guts. It is compassion and mercy that rises from the depths of our beings. “Compassion” sounds so sterile. This isn’t a moral or sentimental response we muster because we know we are supposed to. This is mercy and love welling up from inside, like vomit, like weeping.

And in this compassion, Jesus acts. He touches the bier, the pallbearers stop, and Jesus commands the young man to “Get up!” The dead man sits up and says something. And here we reach my iconic line: “Jesus gave him back to his mother.”

I have known a number of people, of women, who have lost their children. But the one I think of most when I read this story is my friend Rita. She lost her six month old to SIDS—he and my son Ian were same age. I haven’t lost a child, though maybe some of you have? I don’t know what that’s like and can’t fathom—don’t want to fathom—the depths of that pain. But I know that I love my children. A good portion of my days they drive me completely crazy. But there moments (and this is no discredit to the rest of you, I imagine God feels this way about each of us) when I recognize them as the absolute pinnacles of God’s creation. Many of you love my children too, but I have to tell you, as a mother I know things about them that you don’t know. The way that Joe holds a cup these days when he is thirsty and a little distracted, with a slight tilt but a surprisingly firm grasp—there’s something in the carefree extension of his arm that shows me how he’s growing. The lines around Ian’s eyes (they are like his father’s) and the slight protrusion of his front teeth when he smiles, the difference when the corners of his mouth turn down between a frown and concentration. I think about Rita, how she never got to see Jim’s grasp of a cup and the ways it changes, or guess at the intricacies of his two year old emotions. I know she sees shadows of them in her other sons, in my sons, probably especially in Ian. I know she would do anything to get him back. She’s an honest woman. When well-meaning people have tried to console her with the words, “at least he is with God now,” she shoots back, “Well, he seemed pretty happy with us.” She just wants her son back.

That’s what Jesus gave this widow. In the rawness of her loss, before she had time to begin to come to terms with the death of her child in a healthy way, before she learned to live with, or even to mask, her pain, Jesus gave her son back to her.

“Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh” (6:21).

Jesus spoke those words to his disciples in the Beatitudes just one chapter earlier. They must have wondered what he meant. Now they have an idea.

“Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh” (6:21).

And the crowds don’t miss the significance of this whole event. They are filled with fear. I suppose if a corpse in a funeral procession got up and started talking I would be afraid too. They are filled with awe. They herald Jesus as a “great prophet” (Luke 7:16). Earlier in the gospel he compared himself to Elijah and now he is acting like him; this miracle virtually mirrors Elijah’s raising of another widow’s son (1 Kings 17: 17-24). They claim that “God has come to visit his people” (Luke 7:16). That word “visit” indicates the visitation of God’s historical intervention (Luke 1:68, 78; Acts 15:14). You know, Creation, Exodus, the “big events” in Israel’s story. As one scholar wrote, “God’s compassionate and gracious visitation of his people is seen in the manifestation of his miraculous power” (Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke, 660)

And certainly in his power. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to give you a sentimental picture of Jesus here. Luke all through his gospel seeks to answer the question, “who is Jesus?” And his answer most often identifies him as the one who fulfills God’s divine plan for redemption. Jesus is God’s hoped for fulfillment. His powerful displays of ordering and control over sickness and death are powerful signs of nothing less than God’s long awaited salvation.

But the story doesn’t point only, or even primarily, to an exercise of power. The story centers on Jesus’ compassion and the restoration of a grieving widow’s dead son. That is the part that is iconic to me, the part that, and this sounds cheesy, but it’s true: that takes me deeper into the heart of God and tells me how he saves. Jesus’ eternal, human, divine eyes as he sees a woman who is crying. It’s the picture that Luke paints for us, the print Scripture seeks to stamp on us. And it too must be the evidence that the crowds recognize as the visitation of God.

The Psalms were ancient Israel’s prayers. Most, if not all, of the people in those crowds were Jews who knew the Psalms. Psalm 146 tells of the Lord who “upholds the cause of the oppressed…gives food to the hungry…sets prisoners free…gives sight to the blind…watches over the foreigner, and sustains the fatherless and the widow” (vv. 7-9). It is a Psalm naming the reality of who God is.

Even, maybe especially, when it doesn’t seem that way. Psalm 146 also declares God to be the “Maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them” (v. 6). The sea in Scripture is often a metaphor for chaos and disorder. It is symbol of all that is in turmoil and out of control. The sea was dangerous, unknown: this is before we crossed oceans, proved the world was round, and plumbed the deep waters with our fancy scientific gear. The sea was mysterious and terrifying. Yet God made it too.

Psalm 146 is also a prayer of hope, because when we look around us, we see lots of oppression and hunger and blindness that have yet to be relieved. The sea rages. Yet we keep praying the Psalm as a statement of hope toward the reality of fulfillment. Israel had been praying this prayer for centuries, waiting. Waiting for God to fulfill his promises.

The lectionary gives us two gifts this week to carry into our lives. In one hand, Psalm 146 is a prayer of hope for what God is in the midst of doing and of what he will do. Upholding the oppressed, feeding the hungry, sustaining the widow. Walter Bruggemann calls it the “hymn of true help” (Psalms and the Life of Faith, 128). In the other hand we have a story of fulfillment, the story of a widow on whom Jesus unleashes his compassion, for whom he brings the world to rights again.

We need both. We need this back and forth exchange of prayers of hope and stories of fulfillment. We can’t rest only on one or the other, lest we lose our grounding and place all our hope in some celestial, disembodied by-and-by in the future, or become muddled and weighed down by the seeming infrequency and overall inefficiency of the moments of fulfillment. The sea may rage around us, but we hold steady in our hands our prayers of hope, our stories of fulfillment.

What are places in our lives where we need that prayer for hope, where we see pain and turmoil, where we long to see peace, where it doesn’t look like God is in control or cares?

And what are the places where we see evidence of God’s fulfillment, where we see the kingdom of God here on earth, working itself out (if slowly and quietly)?

I’m not sure where I end up in this story. I started out grieving with the widow, thinking of my friend Rita, overwhelmed by the compassion this Lord of mine shows to another mother. And I moved to crowds filled with fear and awe and mouths overflowing with praise at the tangible hope right before them, God fulfilling his promises. “God has come to visit us!”

But in the end, I end up back in the middle of the story—one of those pallbearers. After he tells the widow not to cry, Jesus walks up to the bier on which the dead man is lying and, as Luke so blithely puts is, “the pallbearers stood still” (7: 14). They stopped. I mean, what would you do? Some guy walks up into the middle of a funeral procession and grabs the casket. Were they appalled and shocked? Touching the bier of a dead man would render a Jewish man like Jesus unclean. Were they confused? Afraid he was crazy? Or did they see the compassion in his eyes? Did anyone recognize him? He had a reputation at this point you know. Did they guess or dare to hope what he might do next?

Many days it feels like I am a pallbearer. Holding the coffin of Creation, as I long to dive down to the bottom of the sea and press my hands against that pipe bleeding oil into the Gulf, to hold it back, to make it stop. Holding the coffin of nations, as I long to press my hands over the muzzles of guns and bleeding wounds and shield the eyes and ears of children (and adults) from the terrors of war. Holding the coffins of my own children? as I long to shield their eyes and ears from the terror and injustice and wrongness of the world in which I raise them.

But then I remember Psalm 146:

Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord, my soul. I will praise the Lord all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live. Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save…Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is the Lord their God. He is the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea (pause) and everything in them—he remains faithful forever (Psalm 146:1-3, 6).

We may be holding the coffin of Creation, but Jesus is its creator. We may be holding the coffin of nations, but Jesus is their king. We may even hold the coffins of our children, figuratively and literally, but Jesus loves them, and us, too, loves them deeply, compassionately, gut-wrenchingly. He made the sea too—and remains faithful. Forever.
Maybe the job of a pallbearer is to do just what those in the story did—to stop. Stop—and hope—and see what this crazy, suspicious, wildly powerful and compassionate Jesus will do next.

Absolute in flame beyond us
Seed and source of Dark and Day
Maker whom we beg to be
Our mother father comrade mate…
Be here
Be now

~ James Taylor & Reynolds Price

Does not wisdom call,
and does not understanding raise her voice?

~ Proverbs 8:1

These are the opening words of Proverbs 8. It is Trinity Sunday, and Wisdom is crying out to us, inviting us, in this universal call, into relationship with the God who creates us out of nothing, who brings order where there is chaos. Our human lives, incomplete apart from our Maker, are contingent upon God taking hold of the raw material of the world and our lives, and bringing stability in this relationship. Not merely stability, but joy, and freedom.

When Issac was making the worship schedule, and asked me if this Sunday worked for me, and I said yes, his response felt a bit like a word of warning. Something along the lines of: “Trinity Sunday, are you sure? The Trinity. That’s hard!”

Yes. Yes it is. Anyone who has spent four summers working at a camp, trying to explain God to 5th graders knows that there is no simple, easy to understand analogy for the Trinity – every time you try to explain it to children, you risk sounding a little bit crazy, not to mention vaguely heretical. A popular approach among the staff I worked with was to compare God to the different states of water – solid, liquid, gas. Of course, how many times have you seen one water molecule be all three at once?

And the score is heresy one, camp counselors zero.

In the last few weeks I’ve thought a lot about early church history, and the intense debates about God and language that took place in the second and third centuries – in the last few years I’ve written papers on these topics; I have strong opinions about them.

But in Proverbs, Wisdom pushes me to think about things a little bit differently. I resonate with the folks in the early church who were trying to find language to express the inexpressible – they cared about getting their words right, and drew on the best philosophy of the day in their attempts to do so. As I read Ancient commentaries on Proverbs 8 this week, I was reminded that this was one of the most highly contested passages during these controversies. And, as much as I know that earthly power struggles played a role in these debates – they were about getting the doctrine right, yes, but not just about getting the doctrine right – on good days I still cling to a belief that it wasn’t merely a conflict over which group of men would run the church.

I was a philosophy major in college, and I still remember how when I changed my major my junior year I started having trouble sleeping because my mind was racing with all of these big ideas all of the time. I had to begin a ritual of forcing myself to sit with a cup of herbal tea for half an hour or so before bed every night, doing nothing or journaling about my day, so that my mind would have a chance to shut down properly.

It probably sounds a bit ridiculous; but I have a feeling that the church fathers lost more than a little sleep over the Trinitarian controversies. At some point during that year, I pulled a cap off of a bottled beverage and found the words “Don’t think about it so much” printed inside. For years I kept it on my desk, a playful reminder that yes, it is possible to think too much. I tell you this story because, on a day whose texts tempt me to try to preach an intense, careful, philosophical sermon about the Three-in-One, what I really want to say is that the harder I try to understand the Trinity, the less sense it makes to me.

One of my Divinity School professors says that too often we imagine the Trinity as “a single parent family with a pet bird.” This playful description makes me laugh – the Holy Spirit as a pet bird? – but it makes me question myself, too, because I think it’s fairly accurate with respect to where we usually end up when trying to understand the Triune God. Maybe we put too much weight on our ability to explain the mystery of God in one single linguistic metaphor – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I really believe this puts too much pressure on our words and imaginations. When we talk about the Trinity, maybe we always flirting with one heresy or another, and while quite frankly I for one am pretty comfortable with that, I’d also like it if Wisdom would provide us with some guidance, a little understanding.

And she does.

In the second part of our passage, verses 22-31, we find ourselves in the midst of a creation poem, and what the poet-sage of Proverbs gives us is not a philosophical treatise, but an image of Wisdom in a playful relationship with our Creator. Listen to verses 30 and 31 again, as translated by Ellen Davis in her commentary on Proverbs:

…And I was delights daily, playing before him continually,
playing in his inhabited world,
and my delights were with human beings.

She experiences delight; she is the occasion for God’s delight. This is not the stoic Wisdom many of us may have been taught to imagine – it is not the old man in the sky with a white beard who looks kind of like a professor, or maybe a mythical “father time” type character. She brings something different to the table, and it is these new elements that I think help broaden our understanding of our Creator, and of ourselves as creatures – she reminds us of creativity, playfulness, delight.

Wisdom, the “master worker,” is with God in the beginning, participating in the act of creation. If we were to consider Wisdom Christology in depth, we would discuss Christ as the embodiment of this same Divine Wisdom – remember those Trinitarian controversies I’m trying to avoid.

In these verses, she is present as God establishes the heavens, draws a circle on the face of the deep, makes firm the skies above, establishes the fountains of the deep, assigns the sea its limit, marks out the very foundations of the earth. In this moment, God looks more like a sculptor shaping mountains from clay, a gardener digging in fertile soil, or an artist dotting stars on a painting of a night sky, than a bearded man looking down on us from heaven.

What are we to make of this delight? And what does God’s creativity reveal to us?

In pondering Proverbs 8 as a creation narrative, I am struck by the simple, beautiful reality of existence. We did not have to be, but we are. We are created in freedom, because we are created out of the freedom of God – that is, God didn’t have to create, but God did; and it was not only God’s freedom, but also God’s delight to do so. I don’t think God just woke up one morning and said, “I think I’ll create a world!” Creating the world and all that is in it is a deliberate act. And so, in being invited into relationship with God, we are invited not merely to think, but to play.

God’s delight and creativity direct us towards, first, engagement with the created world, and second, the ability to be creative ourselves. The God we find in Proverbs 8 is not a God we can know merely with our minds; rather, we know God with our minds and all of our senses, as well. Taste, sight, smell, sound, touch – all of these are ways in which we know the creation that surrounds us.

We might know God in the taste of fresh vegetables from the farmer’s market, or hear God in the giddy, delighted laugh of a child at play, and in our many voices joined together in one hymn. We might smell God in a loaf of freshly baked banana bread, or feel God in the sand between our toes, the sunlight on our skin, our burning muscles doing physical labor. We can see God in the sunrise, or maybe in a thunderstorm. Each of these are ways we intimately experience God’s creativity.

Play, understood in terms of creativity, does not equal frivolousness. There is nothing frivolous about the careful work of the sculptor, gardener, or artist I mentioned before. There is nothing frivolous about God’s work of creation as described in Proverbs 8. Creative work is also careful work. Even the play of a child can be very intentional – I remember watching my younger brother building elaborate cities with his legos as a child, his capacity for concentration astounding. Personally, I would spend hours constructing things with my erector set, or making mud pies for imaginary guests in the sandbox in my family’s backyard.

Then there is the more mature version of this, the hours upon hours of practice my musician sister puts in when preparing for a performance; the yards of cloth in the zig-zag quilt I helped Jill lay out last weekend; the hundreds of stitches in each piece that Judy knits; and countless other creative acts each of us does throughout the week.

The resource center where I am interning recently produced a short film about a local environmental artist, Bryant Holsenbeck, and in that film my friend Courtney, who works at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke, talks about the common misconception that art is something “extra” – like the whipped cream on your dessert. She is memorably quoted as stating that, “Art is not whipped cream!” What I love about Bryant’s art is the way it draws on and and cares for the created world, the “stuff” all around us. Art – and subsequently, creativity – is not just about what you see on the walls of galleries.

Courtney is right, art is not just whipped cream. As human beings, creatures created in the image of God, we are creative. This doesn’t mean we are all artists in the professional sense like my friend Bryant is – but there is something of God that we come to know through creative acts, just as there are things we come to know through intellectual efforts. Growing a garden, painting, cooking, building, knitting, writing, photographing, filming – just as we are shaped by God’s hands, we learn something of God in the creative work of our own hands.

It’s good to be back here at church with you. As most of you already know, these past two Sundays I was in Dallas, Texas, visiting a Mennonite congregation—Iglesia Menonita Luz del Evangelio, trans. Light of the Gospel Mennonite Church.

Part of what I want to do in my sermon today is share with you what I experienced at that church. But this isn’t just a report about my travels. It’s a message about the gospel, it’s a sermon about the good news expressed through that Hispanic Mennonite congregation on the outskirts of south Dallas. Every church is a place where the gospel is communicated—that’s obvious. But I want us to think about how the gospel is spoken through the body language of the church—through the movements of the body of Christ, the way people get together and worship God and offer their lives as a blessing for the world. The gospel is a bodily reality; it’s a way of life. And the church is the body language of God. We share the Holy Spirit with the world through worship and fellowship, through sharing our lives.

We heard a couple passages from the Bible that are concerned about the form of the people of God, the organization, the assembly, how the people are to be structured. Our passage from Exodus tells us about how Moses organized the people of Israel after they left Egypt. Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro, suggested a way to divide up the people—groups of thousands, and within those thousands, groups of hundreds, and within those hundreds, groups of fifties and tens (Exod 18:21, 25). Each of these groups was empowered to discern God’s will for themselves—and the cases that could not be resolved at that level were presented to Moses. The shape of the community mattered for their journey to the Promised Land. Life together in the wilderness needed a form, a shape, a way to embody the freedom God gave them. Freedom to worship God came with a form, a way of life.

The passage we heard from Acts follows in the same trajectory. Judas Iscariot abandoned the movement, so they needed another leader to replace him. There was something important about continuing with the structure Jesus established—that there would be twelve apostles to give shape to the rest of the people. So they selected Matthias by casting lots. And a few chapters later, after the Jesus movement picked up speed with the events at Pentecost, we find another structural move for the people of God—we read about this in Acts chapter 6. Seven people were appointed to care for the needs of the community—including Stephen, the early church martyr.

Here’s my point in talking about these two moments in the story of the people of God—the story of the Exodus and the story of Acts. As soon as God sets the people of Israel free from Egypt, they take on a form of life, a way of organizing their common life, a way of living out the good news of God’s redemption. Their freedom is a structured freedom, a way of being together in groups of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens. Freedom takes on a form. And the same goes for the people of God in Acts. The movement of Jesus takes on a shape. The freedom of the Spirit becomes a form of life. God creates a way of life, organized in such a way as to care for the people who join the movement of the kingdom. Freedom and form are not opposites. For the people of God, the freedom of Christ takes on a concrete form, with leaders, with strategies for organization, with ways of relating to one another and dealing with conflict and discerning God’s will. And all of this is the flow of the gospel in the world. The flow of the Spirit has a form.

So, now, each congregation, every church drawn together through the Holy Spirit, speaks the good news through its body language—the way its organized, the way it moves in the world, the way people live together as disciples of Jesus. And the same word, Jesus Christ, is spoken through the life of each congregation, although with different accents.

Like I said earlier, I spent some time with a Mennonite church in Dallas—part of the Western District Conference. And they definitely speak the gospel with a different accent, a Spanish one. The congregation is made up of immigrants from mostly Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Mexico. They meet together for worship three days a week—Wednesday, Friday, and twice on Sunday. Much of what they do together as a church isn’t that different from most worship services. They sing songs, pray, read passages from the bible, and have sermons.

The most striking part of their worship services, at least for me, was the way they ate together. At their Friday and Sunday church services, worship spilled over into a communal meal—or, I should say, a fiesta. A banquet of tacos and tamales, and juice made from crushed watermelons. We sat and stood outside, eating and talking, sharing our lives together. Around my table I heard conversations about the week at work, about family life, about discerning God’s will in this or that situation. Everyone seemed to linger around, receiving spiritual and physical nourishment from the food and fellowship. These gatherings for worship seemed like the high point of their week—a time for resting in God’s presence with one another. And nobody was in a rush to leave.

I was reminded of the church described in Acts: the early church met together multiple times during the week, and they shared a meal every time they met. Worship and food were tied together, worship and fellowship, praising God and eating and talking. That was also the vision that shaped the early Anabaptists. They met together for food, for communion, for common meals and fellowship, and they met frequently. The gospel took a tangible form; the gospel became a way of life; the gospel created a people, a people who spoke good news through the way they shared their lives together.

The Mennonites at the church in Dallas talk about being “the pueblo of God”; that’s how they describe their way of life, the way the gospel reorganizes their lives into the body of Christ. In the Southwest part of the United States, the Native tribes developed a form of life that the Spanish conquistadors called a “pueblo.” The tribes in that part of the county became known as the pueblo people. A pueblo was a group of dwellings—of pit-houses, of adobe structures—that had an open, common area in the middle. The pueblo was how they organized their lives a band of people, a tribe, living in the desert.

I can see how the church in Dallas is a pueblo. They come together and eat and worship and support one another. Their lives depend on each other. They don’t have very much in terms of property or possessions or job security. So the good news of being a church is that they are a pueblo, a people who Christ has called together to share life, to share the life-giving flow of the Holy Spirit.

I can also see how we are a pueblo. We come together to worship God and let the Holy Spirit flow through our lives, drawing us together into the body of Christ. God’s presence comes to us through the ways we share with one another, the ways we care for each other, the ways we let go of our defenses and become vulnerable—which is what it means to be people of peace, to be people of Christ’s nonviolence.

Through Christ, our lives have become good news for the world. That’s what church is all about. We gather so that we can be transformed by the good news and bear witness to the good news. And that’s why we need members—like Jason and Lisa, who we will welcome as new members in a few minutes. Members are people who commit to sustaining our common lives, people who make sure that church continues to happen. This means sharing the responsibility of logistics—like worship planning, reading scripture, praying, and picking up hymnals after our service. But it also means becoming vulnerable to one another: it means opening up your life to someone else, to someone’s word of concern or gratitude or request for prayer. We call it mutual admonition—the way we care for each other, the way we give and receive Christ’s love. In the church, we become vessels of God’s grace.

All of this draws us back to the One who has shown us grace and love—God’s love for the world, made flesh through Jesus Christ, and made present in the Holy Spirit through our lives, all of us who gather together, through this way of organizing our lives called church, the pueblo of God, as our sisters and brothers in Dallas put it.

Church is the way we spend our lives resting into God’s loving presence for the world. We are a people who take time to let God fill us with his love, which frees us from our sins and transforms us into vessels of God’s love and grace for everyone.

Well, I sort of laughed to myself last week at Isaac’s sermon. He preached about the story of Jesus eating breakfast after his resurrection with his disciples, on how ordinary it all was, and on what it means for us to live our ordinary lives in light of the resurrection. It was a sermon all about the “ordinary.”

So this week, we’ll talk about miracles. We’re going to read a miracle story from Acts. It’s no “ordinary” miracle story either. No, this is nothing short of Peter raising someone from the dead. It’s the fourth Sunday of Easter and we are talking about signs and wonders, the power of the resurrected Christ unleashed on his people. Peter the naked fisherman isn’t going about his daily business tonight, he’s raising Tabitha from the dead.

Now, my own reaction to miracle stories is often a bit confused, because my life looks a lot more like the disciples counting their 153 fish at breakfast than a resurrection. My life is far more ordinary.

When it comes to miracle stories, there are a few reactions I may have given my mood. See if any of these resonate with you:

1. I am amazed. “Wow! Really? Wow!” And then, (usually a short time) later, that wears off.
2. I’m sort of taken with power of the miracle worker. I wonder if we should be working miracles too? I mean, the power of the resurrected Christ dwells in us, right? Shouldn’t we be raising people from the dead? Healing the sick? Praying for the miraculous release of captives and God’s hand in the most unlikely of difficult situations? Surely we should go and do likewise? And then, I start to think about times when that power seems to fail, times when people abuse their claims to that power. Unanswered prayers. Faith healers who trick people out of their money. People whom I love who have died tragically and are just…gone. And I start to doubt that power. And I distrust those who talk about it too easily.
3. (And, this is probably the one I tend towards most often…) A miracle? I just write it off. “Well, that’s nice for them. But that’s not what my life looks like.” And I wonder, “what do any of these miracles have to do with anything in my life?”

So the thing I want to get to tonight is, what does this miraculous story have to do with us and our “ordinary” lives?

The story is simple enough: there is a devout woman named Tabitha, renowned for “always doing good and helping the poor” (9:36). She gets sick and dies. Members of her community carefully wash her body and place it in an upper room, presumably for mourning. Some other disciples hear that Peter is in the neighbourhood and send for him to come. When he arrives, he attends to the mourners, including a group of widows who weep as they show him the robes Tabitha made during her life. Peter sends everyone else out of the room. He kneels, prays, and then commands the dead woman, “Tabitha, get up.” She opens her eyes, looks at Peter. He gives her his hand, raises her up, and presents her alive to the rest of the believers.

One of the things that is interesting about this story, astounding really, is its location. It is a story about women. Women at the time of the early church, I’m sure many of you know, generally had little in the way of culturally sanctioned power. For the most part, they were subservient to the men around them. They were not “important” people. Not the people about whom you write important stories.

And these are women doing rather mundane things. Tabitha, and likely the women around her, make clothing. They work with their hands, which was considered a common, even demeaning set of tasks. It’s hard work—no sewing machines, no fabric shops. Spinning, weaving, sewing, all meticulously done by hand. This is textile labour, work traditionally, and still today, left to those in society who don’t have other options, anything “more important” to do.

And the story goes further—we’re not just talking about women, women making clothes, but widows. In a society built around male heads of household, unattached, older (even if not that old) and less desirable for marriage women were, if nothing else, yet another rung lower on the ladder of cultural influence. Though not necessarily destitute, widows were vulnerable and lived at a great risk of falling into poverty. Such a group may have included former prostitutes who, as converts, were now both unmarriable and unemployed, with no place in society.

The setting of this story is not a site of power. It’s not a strategic place. If you were a church growth specialist, this would not be your target group, nor the one about whom you told stories. This is a small room filled with a bunch of women. Clothing makers. Widows.

And this is God’s unlikely choice for the setting of miracle and restoration. Tabitha is his choice as Jesus’ “successor.”

For all the unusual amount of detail in Luke’s narrative, we don’t know a lot about Tabitha. Some speculate that she too was a widow, and/or a wealthy almsgiver. Perhaps she provided the widows around her with clothing, or maybe she organized them to work together to make garments. But the text doesn’t actually tell us any of that. It only says that she was a woman who did good and helped the poor, that she died, that she made clothes, and that she had a devoted group of widows who were her friends and community.

What we do know is how Luke characterizes Tabitha. He calls her a disciple, the only time in the New Testament that word is used for a woman. Her Greek name, which means gazelle, is the same as the metaphor used for the beloved in Song of Songs. We know she is compassionate, we know that she is loved. Her friends wash her body, lay it out for viewing and mourning, and weep over her life and death. And we know Luke intentionally sets her up to look like Jesus. For one she, like Christ, rises from the dead. And Luke’s choice of words, “Peter presented her to them alive” are nearly identical to the words he chooses in Acts 1:3 when the resurrected Jesus “presents himself alive.”

Tabitha is not a stock character. She is not just a “woman.” She is not an anonymous marginalized person who is merely acted upon. This is who Luke tells us is raised from the dead: a real person, a particular, loved member of a particular community. She may well be unimportant and marginal in her culture at large, but Tabitha is God’s beloved. She is Christ’s successor to resurrection. She looks like Jesus.

And then there’s Peter. In this story Peter—our same rough-edged, fishing-naked-in-the-boat, Christ-denying Peter—is walking around acting like Jesus. Really acting like Jesus. Luke’s Peter here does the same things Jesus does when he raises Jairus’s daughter from the dead. He sends people out of the room, he commands her to “get up,” he takes her hand, he presents her alive to the others. Luke is clearly riffing on the other story, retelling it with the same sounds and a few tweaks. Peter commands the power of the resurrected Christ, and has the audacity to act like him too.

So here’s our miracle—the miracle of miracles: a dead woman brought back to life. Just like Jesus. The first post-resurrection resurrection.

Now, what do we do with it?

Miracle stories can be lots of things: an example to follow, an “inspiration” for faith and belief, a reminder of times when God is clearly at work, when He does answer prayers. But those reasons, though they are valid, leave me wanting. To me, they fade to easily and just don’t quite do justice to, well, the miraculousness of it all.

A miracle is mysterious, not utilitarian. We can’t explain it. It is more than a reminder, because we’re not just remembering the event itself. The meaning, the application, the memory, it all eludes us.

William Beardslee writes about the power of radical elements lying in their deconstructed states. He takes Jesus’ statement, “Blessed are the poor.” It’s a radical statement. It is strange, hard to pin down, virtually impossible to “apply.” Christians have been trying, and arguing, for centuries about what to do with these words, “blessed are the poor.” From one perspective the words are useless: we don’t really know what they mean and we don’t know what to do in response.

But, as Beardslee says, “the positive effect is that [the saying] unleashes [an] untamable power … in order to challenge the reader at the deepest level and undermine any interpretation that might domesticate it.”

Listen to that again, “the positive effect is that [the saying] unleashes [an] untamable power … in order to challenge the reader at the deepest level and undermine any interpretation that might domesticate it.”

Now hang with me here for just a minute: can we apply the same principle to a miracle story? Can we read a miracle story for that deconstructive moment, that moment that changes our reality? As a radical element that refuses to be domesticated? Not just as a unit within an overall structure of plot and theology. Not just as a suggestion for emulation, a moral example, or a charismatic instruction booklet. These interpretations have value, certainly. But especially in the face of cynicism and the failures of history—the unanswered prayers and the swindling faith healers, in the face of the difficulties of living out our Christianity on the ground…

Maybe a miracle story can break in on us, throw us off, defy our attempts at interpretation and understanding and application.

Last week we sang the hymn, “Holy Spirit come with power,” and this is the refrain: “Burst upon your congregation.” That’s how I want us to read this story—to allow it to burst upon us, upon our minds and hearts, upon our imaginations and lives.

A miracle just is! It is a sign and sacrament of Hope. Freedom. Mourning comforted. Joy. Restoration. The power of the risen Christ unleashed on earth. The kingdom of God breaks in, on them, on us, for a moment—and we receive. And when the moment has passed, the story remains lodged in our hearts, un-understandable perhaps, but present through our daily grind and weariness.

So what glimpse does Tabitha’s story give us into the kingdom of God? How does her story break in on ours?

If we go back to Acts we see that Luke sandwiches Tabitha’s story between two “big” episodes in Acts. Paul’s conversion comes just before it in chapter 9 (that’s important—Paul later spreads Christianity throughout the known world and writes a good chunk of the New Testament). Then in chapter 10, just after Tabitha’s story, we have Peter’s encounter with a Gentile named Cornelius (that’s pretty huge to the history of Christianity too—it opens the boundaries of the new Israel to include non-Jews…including most of us in this room…). A lot of commentators read Tabitha’s story and are a bit puzzled as to why it is here. It seems fairly insignificant. They call it a “narrative transition” used to reintroduce Peter in the story line. They call it a “dip in the action.” Pardon my crude visual aid here, but if they charted the plot of Acts, it might look something like this:

(show picture: a line with a “v” in the middle jutting downward—diapgrams a “dip” in the action)

But I don’t buy it. I don’t think this story is some sort of low point, a break, a “dip.” I think this story is a high point. I think chapters 9 and 10 of Acts look more like this:

(flip picture upside down: now it is a line with a peak in the middle)

Why do I think this? Not because the setting and the people are powerful and important. Not because it tells of a major shift in Christian history. Here’s the thing: it’s a picture of heaven—right in the middle of everything.

Our passage for today from Revelation is a vision of the saints gathered around the throne of Christ, clothed in white robes, worshipping. Listen:

They are before the throne of God…[and] never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat down on them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd. He will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe every tear from their eyes (Rev 7:16-17).

“He will wipe every tear from their eyes.” Do you see it? There’s no more crying. Do you see the picture of Tabitha’s community? The mourners have been comforted, there is joy and thanksgiving and wonder and praise. Death has been overcome and the community is restored. Heck, I can practically imagine those white robes that the saints in Revelation are wearing as the robes that Tabitha made herself. This is no “dip in the action” in Acts. In the story of Tabitha, Luke offers us nothing short of a picture of heaven, a glimpse into the kingdom of God, breaking in right here on earth.

And that makes sense of the way I read the rest of the Bible too: God always seems to be turning things upside down. The kingdom tends to break-in in the most unlikely places. Among fishermen and widows, in inconspicuous, unexpected places. Even to a little community of his children…even to his daughters…even to us.

We can read the book of Acts as a history, as a string of theological speeches, as the establishment of the early church. Or we could read it, and all of Scripture, as a host of stories that are surprising, astonishing, inspiring jewels laid out one after another in the crown of the most unlikely king of the universe.

Jesus’ kingdom is coming. Jesus’ kingdom is here. Here in a little upper room where a fisherman raises some woman from the dead, and restores her to her loving community.

(pause)

I’m going to pray for us, and while I pray I ask that you just hold out your hands.

Jesus we pray, we ask—burst upon your congregation.

As Peter received your power, as Tabitha received your healing and her own life back, as the widows received their friend, have mercy on us and help us to receive.

To receive your grace
To receive the outpouring of your Spirit.
To receive the hand of our neighbor.
To receive the power of the resurrected Christ.
To receive the comfort of God, who wipes away every tear.
To receive hope.
To receive the in-breaking of the kingdom of God.
Amen.

I love this story about Jesus, this story in John’s Gospel about his appearance to the disciples. I love it for the details, the strange details; the care John shows in getting the story right.

Usually, the Gospel of John is blamed for making Jesus out to be so heavenly minded that he is no earthly good. But here we find a story about breakfast. For John’s Gospel, resurrection means that Jesus can come back to eat breakfast and lounge around with his friends. Jesus turns out to be very earthly minded, hungry—focused on breakfast with friends around a charcoal fire by the lake.

This story also breaks through another stereotype about John’s Gospel—that John, the writer, doesn’t really care about recording history accurately; he is usually blamed for playing fast and loose with his story-telling—he doesn’t care about the details of history because he’s writing theology, and we all know that theologians don’t care about history. Or so go the stereotypes.

But in this story, John spends a lot of time with the details, with details that seem unnecessary for any profound theological point. It almost feels like John is so wrapped up in this event that he can’t help but record everything, because it’s just such a great story. For example, we find out an interesting fact about Peter’s style of fishing: “When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the sea” (John 21:8). Apparently John thinks it’s important for us to know what Peter was wearing, or wasn’t wearing, when he saw Jesus.

But my favorite detail of John’s story comes a few verses later, when they pull their nets ashore to be with Jesus: “So Simon Peter…hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, one hundred fifty-three of them” (v. 11). 153. Not “about a hundred,” or even—if he wanted to be more exact—“around 150 fish.” 153. The exact count mattered. Every last fish. The best reading of this detail in the story doesn’t come from the commentaries out there. As far as I’m concerned, David James Duncan has the best reading of this story. It’s in this novel here, The River Why—it’s a book about fishing. Let me read the part where he talks about the 153 fish in John’s Gospel:

This is, it seems to me, one of the most remarkable statistics ever computed. Consider the circumstances: this is after the Crucifixion and the Resurrection; Jesus is standing on the beach newly risen from the dead, and it is only the third time the disciples have seen him since the nightmare of Calvary. And yet we learn that [the fish numbered precisely 153]…. How was this digit discovered? Mustn’t it have happened thus: upon hauling the net to shore, the disciples squatted down by that immense, writhing fish pile and started tossing them into a second pile, painstakingly counting ‘one, two, three, four, five, six, seven…’ all the way up to a hundred and fifty and three, while the newly risen Lord of Creation, the Sustainer of their beings, He who died for them and for Whom they would gladly die, stood waiting, ignored, till the heap of fish was quantified. Such is the fisherman’s compulsion toward rudimentary mathematics! (14-15)

I love that passage from Duncan’s book—and I don’t even fish. But what he does, what Duncan does, is that he helps us picture the scene—which has to be one of the reasons that John’s Gospel records so much detail, so that we can get a picture of it in our heads. You see the disciples on their boat, rushing back to shore to be reunited with Jesus, who is back from the dead—he already appeared to them in Jerusalem and invited Thomas to touch his wounded side and hands, and now here he is again, appearing on the shore. They get to shore, rejoicing, ecstatic, full of wonder. And somehow, in the confusion of encountering the resurrected Jesus, the fish are counted, the fish are important. Exactly 153.

I imagine one of the reasons why the fish are so important is that these guys fish for a living—they are fishermen. Every fish caught is money in the pocket. Of course every last fish would be important; it’s their livelihood, after all. But that’s what so strange about this whole story. Jesus returns from the dead and appears before the disciples in Jerusalem—we heard that story last week; Celia preached about it. Now this should change everything, right? The resurrection should change the world. That Jesus returns from the dead must mean the beginning of a whole new world, a revolution, the end of the old and the beginning of the new. Everything must change, everything has changed.

So, after the beginning of God’s kingdom-revolution, after the resurrection appearance of Jesus in Jerusalem, what do the disciples do? We find them back at work. They return to the work site—the same old boat in the same old lake doing the same old thing, fishing. What’s so strange about this Easter appearance of the resurrected Jesus is that it is not strange at all; it’s so ordinary—other than Peter fishing in the nude. But other than that, this Easter story is so ordinary, everyday, mundane: the disciples are at work, Jesus shows us, they bring their catch to the shore, count the fish, and eat some breakfast with Jesus. After the resurrection, life seems to go on like it did before. What kind of story is this?

Lots of Christians over the ages have talked about Jesus’ death and resurrection as a story of victory—Christus victor, Christ the victor. It’s not a bad way to think about the atonement, the death and resurrection of Jesus. But stories like this one in John make me wonder about the kind of victory Jesus secures with his resurrection. What kind of victory is going on here, with Jesus eating breakfast on the shore, lounging around with his friends who are at work, counting fish, 153 of them? Usually victories make a real difference; victories have obvious effects. Your army invades, you conquer your enemy, and then you set up a new reign, a new kingdom. The day after your victory, you wake up and the world is different. You are in charge. The enemies are vanquished and your forces are busy building a new kingdom. But that’s not how it goes for the victory Jesus shows us in his resurrection. Life goes on the way it did before. The disciples wake up, they go to work, hang out with Jesus, and count fish. Where’s the revolution? Where’s the victory? Where’s the kingdom of God?

If we want to call Christ a victor, his victory over his enemies looks like Saul in our passage from Acts, slain to the ground by the word of Christ, knocked down and blinded by the light of Christ. Saul is an enemy of Jesus. He’s in the business of killing off Christians, one by one. If there’s anyone the resurrected Jesus should come back and destroy, it’s definitely Saul. And Jesus does come back to vanquish this enemy, Saul, but he does so in a completely surprising way. He doesn’t knock him dead. Instead, Jesus converts him—victory through conversion. Christus victor, Christ the victor, is Christ the missionary, Christ the evangelist. It’s one thing to scare Saul enough to convince him to go and sin no more. Jesus could have done that. He could have scared Saul so severely, that Saul would have never messed with Jesus’ people ever again. That would have been completely understandable. But that’s not what he does. Instead, Jesus invites Saul to switch sides, to join his forces—victory through conversion.

If we follow the story of Saul’s conversion, we soon discover that the Christians didn’t think it was a good idea for Saul to be converted. He is a notorious enemy, after all. After this episode on the road to Damascus, Jesus appears to Ananias, a Christian, and tells him to go meet up with Saul and welcome him into Jesus’ movement. Listen to what Ananias says to Jesus in response—this is from Acts 9, verse 11:

“Lord,” Ananias answered, “I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your saints in Jerusalem. And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name.”

As you can see, the man is worried about Saul, and for very good reasons. Saul has a reputation. He’s a villain. He’s on the wrong side, the unjust side, but through the power of grace Jesus welcomes him among his people.

What does this mean for us? For one thing, it means that we believe in the power of God’s grace to convert even the most murderous of our enemies. Jesus proves victorious over Saul, enemy number 1, through evangelism, through the offer of grace and forgiveness and a new life with his other followers. No one is outside the possibility of changing their ways; no enemy is beyond conversion, beyond grace; Saul becomes a member of the family of God. We don’t kill our enemies; we convert them through the power of the resurrected Jesus.

That part of the good news of Easter is not too hard for me to accept. The harder part is that Jesus comes back from the dead, and everything seems to go on just like it did before. The disciples go back to fishing; they go back to work—“the same as it ever was,” as the Talking Heads song puts it, “the same as it ever was.” Easter, resurrection, Jesus back from the dead… then the same as it ever was. 153 fish and breakfast on the shore. But maybe that’s just it. Jesus conquers death so he can come back and be with his disciples, to enjoy another meal, to fellowship around the fire… simply to be present with them. Easter means the permanence of Christ’s presence, always available, changing us, and changing the world from the inside, through his people, through us. We have become Christ’s presence for the world, working out Christ’s resurrection wherever we go—like at work, just as those first disciples returned to fishing.

Christ shows up in an ordinary gathering of disciples—like with us, here, nothing very special and much of life feels the same as it did last week. And we’ll go back to work tomorrow, but we go knowing the good news of Easter: that Jesus returned from the dead to be with us, because he loved us, because he wanted another meal with his disciples, nothing special, just fish around a charcoal fire:

“When they had gone ashore, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish on it, and bread… Jesus said to them, ‘Come and have breakfast’… Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish” (Jn. 21:9-13).

The good news looks like that ordinary Easter experience; Jesus, coming back from the dead to be with us, a gentle presence, nothing flashy, just there, always there.