The passages this week got me thinking, what is it that motivates people to change? What sparks repentance? It strikes me that Jesus issues a warning to repent and Isaiah an invitation to repent. I realize that I preach repentance, in a way, every day in my job as a nurse practitioner. Now I don’t want to be flippant in comparing my efforts to get patients to give up sweet tea and start an exercise regimen with repenting of sin. But well, that’s the “repentance” I preach –with considerable hypocrisy, I must admit. There are lots of buzz-words and theories like “stages of change” and “motivational interviewing” that get tossed around in my profession.

Still, the question remains, is it more effective to focus on the positives, “You’ve lost five pounds and now your blood pressure is much better. You can do it! Just twenty more to go,” or issue the dire warnings, “If we don’t get these blood sugars under control, you could go blind, have a heart attack, end up on dialysis, and have a leg cut off. Oh, and did I mention the potential detriments to your love life?!” (That last one always gets their attention.) A colleague of mine contends, “People don’t change because they see the light. They change because they feel the heat.” Looking at my own life, my own failed attempts and small successes at following the health advice I believe to be true, I know that it’s much more complicated. In the end, what I say probably isn’t going to be the deciding factor, but it doesn’t stop me from trying.

In Luke 13, Jesus is told about the slaughter of some fellow Galileans while they were offering their sacrifices. “Do you think because they suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.” And he goes on to offer another example of sudden disaster and again warns us to repent or perish. I really didn’t like reading this. Jesus sounds too much like John the Baptist here. But then Thursday, at the end of a long day at work, I had an experience that helped me read this warning a little differently.

Despite my unfinished charts, I hung out at the lab in the center of the clinic for a few minutes. This is the informal gathering place for the nurses, medical assistants, and lab tech. When everything has quieted down for the evening, they chat for a while or tell jokes or gossip or recount the stand-out moments of the day. I like to listen. It’s nice to connect with what’s going on outside the closed doors of my exam rooms. Thursday it was our nurse, Me’Shall, recalling a patient who is drowning in alcohol and his health is rapidly deteriorating. His doctor told Me’Shall, “I’ve been telling him, but he’s not hearing it. Go in there and lay it all out for him.”

And that’s what she did. She offered a few moments of small talk and then, “I’m tellin’ you, you’ll be dead in a year, the way you’re goin’. You got a wife? She can start plannin’ your funeral. You got kids? They’re gonna grow up without a father. That’s terrible, but that’s how it is.” Me’Shall recalled how she watched his face, the beads of sweat that broke out on his forehead and the tears he was blinking back. “I guess no one ever told it to him like that before,” she said.

Me’Shall is one of several strong, black women I’m privileged to work with. All of them have this ability to offer up tough love, to go places and say things that I can’t. Me’Shall doesn’t try to soften the blow with words like “could” or “might.” She doesn’t make the warning easier to swallow. But when she delivers it, something in her voice or her body language says, “I care what happens to you.” There’s something fierce and maternal in her way that shakes you by the shoulders.

I read Jesus’ words again with Me’Shall in mind. And this time I heard them as if I were that man in the exam room—the tough, fierce love underneath. “I’m telling you this because I care what happens to you.” There’s an urgency about repentance. Stop deluding yourself. The time is now.

After issuing the warning to repent, Jesus tells a parable. Now, if there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s don’t try to explain the parables. So I won’t try to explain it, but instead invite you to puzzle over it with me. The owner of the vineyard comes looking for fruit on his fig tree. It’s borne no fruit in 3 years, so he orders the gardener to cut it down. There’s no sense having it waste the soil any longer. But the gardener doesn’t go running for the axe. Instead he argues with the owner for a stay of execution. “Give it another year. Let me nurture it a little more,” he says. “If it bears fruit, well and good! If not, you can cut it down.” Did you catch that? “You can cut it down.” Now, maybe I’m reading a little more insubordination into this than is intended, but I get the feeling the gardener would never relish destroying the tree even if it continued to be barren.

So, I wonder, is God the gardener? Is God the one who sees the potential for life, the One who isn’t willing to give up hope? Where do we read ourselves into this story? Are we the fig-less fig tree needing someone to advocate for us, to encourage us to grow into our purpose, to be who we are created to be? But what if we look at the story differently? How do we respond to people or situations that fall short of our expectations? Are we inclined to take the attitude of the owner or the gardener?

Isaiah 55 calls out a wonderful invitation to come and satisfy our hunger and thirst at a banquet. This isn’t leftovers and stale bread, it is a rich feast, freely given. I heard recently about a soup kitchen in DC where the main cook is a master chef. He works with homeless men to turn out wonderful food from the donations the center receives. It’s an example of the kind of extravagant banquet that Isaiah says is meant for us to enjoy. This banquet is real soul food.

“Listen, that your soul may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.” The poet calls for repentance in light of the reality of God’s love. “Seek the LORD while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts. Let them return to the LORD that he may have mercy on them, and to our God for he will abundantly pardon.”

Turn away from the things that are life-destroying. Stop spending your energies to maintain illusions that won’t satisfy you anyway. There’s something here for you that will fill your deepest needs. Lent is a season for examining our desires. Do we hunger and thirst for the life God offers us? Do we feel our need for it and our need for forgiveness?

When is repentance possible? What does it take to face our sins, to acknowledge who we have become? Where can we stand “with our dirty pockets turned inside out,” as Meghan described it a few weeks ago. I think we can’t repent without something else to turn to. We need to know that the final verdict on us is not the worst things we have done or become. It’s that stuff of God—love, mercy, grace, forgiveness—whatever angle we use to describe it, that gives us the courage to face up to the truth. Without that, without something else to grab on to, how could we let go of the justifications and lies we need to be acceptable in our own eyes?

A few weeks ago I went a performance of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons. I’m still mulling over the father’s suicide that marks the end of the story. (Sorry to spoil it for anyone). For years he’d clung fiercely to the belief that while his actions were wrong, his intentions were right. He didn’t really think what he’d done would result in the deaths of 21 pilots. He was sure the flawed engine parts he’d shipped out would be noticed before they were installed. His only concern was saving the business he’d spent his life building so that he could pass it on to his beloved sons. “My family, right or wrong,” seemed to be his motto. He would stand by his sons no matter what. But when he realizes that his outlook was wrong, that “they were all my sons,” he puts a gun to his head. And I wonder, is it because he can’t bear to see himself as a murderer or is it because he can’t bear the thought that his sons cannot forgive him for it?

My neighbor, Joy, is a recovering alcoholic. She once told me, “Recovering addicts are the most honest people. They have to be—their life depends on it. Other people can get by pretending or denying what’s going on. An addict can’t do that and live.” In the end, though, neither can any of the rest of us. We’re all in the same boat. It’s just easier to point out how alcohol or drugs are wreaking havoc on someone’s health and relationships. I can’t tell you exactly what it was that gave Joy the courage to face her addiction and chose the daily struggle of sobriety. I do know she stays involved in AA and she tells me she prays a lot and these things help her and have taught her so much.

Repentance and forgiveness go hand in hand. It’s not just “repent and you’ll be forgiven,” but “repent because you are forgiven.” It’s okay to admit the ugliness of our sin because God already knows it and God, in Christ, has already done everything to overcome it. In taking the fearful plunge of repentance, we can land in the deep assurance of God’s unchanging love for us. No one is out of the reach of God’s love. God is infinitely more forgiving of us than we are of ourselves. God is infinitely more inclined to offer grace to others than we are. Our passage from Isaiah ends like this, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” So the time for repentance is now. What are we waiting for?

A few years ago I started a vegetable garden in our front yard. I was thrilled to see the fruit growing from the long vines—grape tomato vines entangled with large slicing tomatoes, growing into one another, all mixed up and bound together as they reached out their leaves and branches to the sun, reds and yellows, beautiful and delicious. We couldn’t eat the fruit of the vines fast enough. Even after sharing with our neighbors, we still had tomatoes that rotted on the vines, which I ended up dumping into our compost pile.

The following spring I found tomato plants growing everywhere. The rich compost must have redistributed the seeds throughout the yard. I had more tomato plants than I could handle, growing in places that I found inconvenient—like among my herbs and sweet corn. The future of any garden lies with the seeds and the soil. When the fruit dies, the seeds are set free to produce new life. The secret to new life is in the compost, with the decomposing fruit, where the seeds of life abide. Compost shows us how fruit dies its way into the future.

Jesus, the fruit of Mary’s womb, dies his way into the future. With Christ, resurrected life is our future as well, a life that we die into. Not protected life. Not carefully planned life. Not predictable life. Not life as we know it. Not life as we want it. But resurrected life. Unexpected and surprising life. Miraculous life. A life that gives up all of our plans, all of our power plays, and waits with Jesus, on the cross, in weakness—a life that waits for resurrection. That’s our future. The church is a fruit that dies its way into the future. We don’t know what this future looks like. We can’t plan for it. We can’t make it happen on our own terms, on our schedule, within our designated spaces. Resurrection scandalizes our best plans for the church, and offers us something more wonderful than we could ask for or imagine.

To see this fruit that dies into resurrection, we have to spend time in the compost—the manure, the waste pile, the places where we’ve thrown rotten fruit, unwanted gifts. We need leaders who will not let us forget the compost, leaders who become familiar with the compost, who dig into the compost—the storehouse of gifts from the past, and discarded fruit in the present, the unwanted and forgotten and dismissed. We always seem to give our leaders the jobs we don’t want to do—they are servants, after all. That’s why we are asking you, Ervin, to spend time in our smelly and mucky compost—and to help us see the seeds of resurrection, to open our eyes to the beauty of God’s work in the places we’d rather not step into with our clean, white shoes, without spot or wrinkle. Left to ourselves, we’d rather not get our hands dirty. We’d rather live without our compost—make it go way, export it to far off places, out of sight, out of mind. Ervin, you must show us that our compost, the discarded fruit, is the rich soil that grows us into resurrected life.

Our future is not an escape from the past or from the dead weight of rotten fruit. Instead, resurrection comes to those who wait in the darkness of the tomb where there is no way out, and open themselves to the stirring of the Holy Spirit. To await the resurrection means we learn to live by miracles, like a tomato plant growing where we did not imagine possible. We live with and through our compost, our manure, the fruit from the Father’s garden that we’ve thrown away.

Through the Holy Spirit, we die our way into the future, which is the life of resurrected fruit.

(here’s a pdf: Fruit)

The Pharisees want what’s good for Jesus. They respect his ministry and want him to survive. These Pharisees may even consider Jesus a friend of their own ministry. So, according to Luke’s Gospel, “some Pharisees came and said to him, ‘Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you’” (Lk. 13:31). Jesus hears their warning, but doesn’t change his plans. He knows the path he must follow. And he refuses to let Herod’s plans mess with what God wants him to do.

Let me make an observation before we get into the thick of it. It’s interesting, at least to me, that the Pharisees know people on the inside of power. They are connected. They have ears to hear the secrets of the powerful, the rumors about Herod’s plans. They have their finger on the pulse of power. And Jesus does not. He depends on the Pharisees for news about Herod. The Pharisees pass on their information to Jesus, and then Jesus treats the Pharisees as if they were messengers of Herod: “Go,” Jesus says, “and tell that fox for me…” (v. 32). They aren’t followers of Jesus; instead they set their course by the bad news coming from Herod.

But all of that may not be too important for our reading today. What’s more important is that we see how the Pharisees continue the temptations Jesus faced in the wilderness. We heard that story last week. The Holy Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness where he is tempted by the devil for forty days. He is tempted to choose a different path to get what he wants without having to live a human life and die a human death. He is tempted to choose an easy road, instead of the path that leads to the cross.

The devil would give Jesus the power over the kingdoms of the world in an instant. Jesus would be able to establish the kingdom of heaven without having to go through the troubles of his life. The devil tempted him with a shortcut to the throne of heaven—a chance to take control of the nations, to set the world free from the devil’s dominion, and establish justice and peace… heaven on earth.

Now, in our passage for today, the Pharisees tempt Jesus again with a chance to escape, to escape Herod’s secret plot to kill him. “Get away from here,” the Pharisees say, “for Herod wants to kill you” (v. 31). But Jesus refuses to change his path. He knows the road he must take—to Jerusalem. And no temptation, no offer of security, no warning to escape, will cause him to swerve from that path, from the leading of the Holy Spirit.

We all face temptations of escape. They probably aren’t as stark as the one Jesus faced. I don’t imagine you’ve heard rumors that someone will kill you if you don’t stop doing what you are doing. Our escapes are not so drastic.

We find everyday kinds of escapes, some of which may not be so bad; some may even be good for us, like a nap or a daydream, a novel or a movie—a time to let our minds wander, to let ourselves rest, to step away from our routines, so we can return to our lives with new eyes, rejuvenated and rested.

The Sabbath may be that kind of ordinary escape from our weekly routine, from the daily grind—a needed stop so we can simply be where we are, more fully, more deeply, more present.

But there is another kind of escape that is a subtle “no” to the good news God is working through our lives. This is the temptation Jesus faces in our story: the temptation to give up on God’s plan, to run and hide from the world out of fear, to escape from the costs of his mission.

We want to escape too. We are restless, easily bored, and hungry for excitement; we are taught to desire a life that is not our own—to have a more prestigious job or to become a beautiful celebrity, I’m sure you have your favorite: Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp, Jennifer Aniston or Reese Witherspoon—probably not Tiger Woods or Lindsay Lohan.

We want to be who we are not, to inhabit a life that is not our own, to become voyeurs and avatars—to imagine our way into the life of someone else and slowly to give up on our own, or at least to give up on the goodness and possibility of the gift of our own life.

This isn’t simply about role-playing video games—like SimCity, which I used to play for countless hours in high school so I could ignore the powerlessness of my own life. In SimCity, I had the power to build cities, the power over countless virtual lives, the power to rule my virtual city, when in reality my parents wouldn’t let me stay out with my friends past 10pm. It was an escape.

We are restless—in a constant frenzy of innovation, always on the move, reaching beyond our limits, our desires are never satisfied. In their Manifesto, Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels prophesied an age of “everlasting uncertainty and agitation.” We are caught up in a whirlwind, “swept up…[and] at once driven and aimless.” We are impatient and bored, agitated yet aimless. (See Harrison, Gardens, 138, 150).

In such a world, it’s easy to let fantasies of heaven become an escape. Work hard now, slog it through life now, choose the path of suffering now, because heaven is our escape and will make everything worth it. Life is tolerable because we can hold onto our fantasies of heaven, of a future rest, a repose, stillness, a state of quiet forgetfulness—like an long weekend, an eternal weekend, one where we don’t have to be troubled with thought of work on Monday, or Tuesday, or forever.

The danger is that we may begin to live for the escapes. We grit our teeth and try to make it to the weekend, or to happy hour. I’ve had jobs like that. The trouble is that we close ourselves off to the ordinary gifts of life, the mundane pleasures, the usually unremarkable delights and goodness happening all around us and in us, sometimes even in spite of ourselves.

If we live for escapes, we slowly lose our ability to say thank you to God for the life we have, for the gifts that sustain us. We slowly dull our senses of gratitude and become unable to receive joyfully everyday graces.

I’m struck by the last few lines of Psalm 27: “I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” (Ps. 27:13-14).

The goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. God’s goodness is available. It’s not only a heavenly reality, an experience we can have after we escape from this world. The goodness of the Lord is for the living, for us. It’s always already here, predating us and anticipating us—the goodness of God makes room for us. God welcomes us with goodness. We live by grace.

The apostle Paul tells us that we are citizens of heaven (Philippians 3:20). I don’t think this means that we belong in heaven only after we die, once we’ve escaped this life and can enter into another. Our citizenship has already taken place; we have already been made citizens of heaven. We live that life now; we represent that place as we go about our days on earth. God makes heaven present on earth through us. Heaven isn’t an escape; instead, it’s the mission of God’s love working itself out through us.

We don’t have to be restless and aimless because God has put us where we are as agents of grace, as citizens of heaven, as people who welcome God’s goodness with gratitude. Instead of looking for escapes, we look for God’s grace in our lives and learn how to say thank you.

Our gratitude is how we welcome God in our midst; it’s how we welcome heaven on earth; it’s our witness to a frenzied world that God’s presence is always around us and working through us. Gratitude helps us re-imagine our world as fertile soil for God to plant the tree of life that bears the fruit of heaven.

I heard Wendell Berry read a poem this past week and there’s a line or two that says all of this better than I can:

…Heaven enough for me / would be this world as I know it, but redeemed / of our abuse of it and one another. It would be / the Heaven of knowing again… I would like to know / my children again, all my family, all my dear ones, / to see, to hear, to hold, more carefully / than before, to study them lingeringly as one / studies old verses, committing them to heart / forever…

He goes on to talk about “the Heaven of my earthly love.” Heaven isn’t an escape from the world. It’s this world redeemed and renewed—“redeemed of our abuse of [our creation] and one another.”

This season of Lent is a time for paying attention to our lives, of looking for all the ways we try to escape, of all the ways we become numb to the everyday graces of God’s goodness. As Christians, we don’t escape; instead we wait and watch and give thanks. “Wait for the Lord,” the Psalmist says, “be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!”

And, somehow, we hope that through our waiting, through our gratitude for what we receive from God, our friends and co-workers and neighbors may see heaven in our lives and say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord” (Lk. 13:35).

(here’s a pdf of the sermon: Escape (Lent 2))

Lent began four days ago on Ash Wednesday, as it always does. Lent is the least cheerful of the seasons in the Christian year. It is sometimes understood as a time to suspend earthly pleasures. Some over-zealous believers have even proposed it as a time to give up chocolate. In some traditions it imposes dietary restrictions. Isaac recently pointed out to me that the first break with established tradition by our Anabaptist ancestors was not the radical act of baptizing each other and taking communion together on January 21, 1525, but the brazen act in Zurich of eating sausage in defiance of the Catholic Church during Lent of 1522, remembered in German as the “Wurstessen” i.e. sausage-eating. Our spiritual fathers were big-time sinners.

The words “Lent” and “Lenten” refer to springtime, when the days are getting longer, i.e., lengthening. The similarity of sound in “Lenten” and “lengthen” is no coincidence.

Lent is a season of self-examination, of acknowledgment of the reality of temptation and of our personal failings, and of recommitment to follow the way of our Lord with renewed diligence.

“Glory to God in the highest” belongs to the end of Advent, and has left our thoughts well before the Lenten season. Now we do better to sing “Kyrie Eleison, Lord have mercy, Christe Eleison, Christ have mercy. We are all beneficiaries of Divine mercy, and of the mercy of persons dear to us.

As a metaphor for Lent, I nominate spring house cleaning. Except for a few compulsive people, no one wants to do it; a major effort is required to overcome the consequences of months of lethargy and the silent mischief of entropy. And yet the need to do occasional house cleaning is beyond dispute, at least for people who like to find things without having to excavate for them.

So it is with Lent. It is time to uncover those aspects of our life that need to be cleaned up, those realms too long ignored, pledges unfulfilled, matters of conscience too easily postponed or neglected.

If we clean the house we may reap an unexpected benefit: we may come upon lost items of genuine value. So with the introspection of Lent: we may find helpful inner resources, assets not previously recognized.

We are all tempted, as Jesus was. His temptation is one of the strongest indicators of his humanity. I want to give close attention to the account in Luke’s Gospel of his temptation. It has important lessons for us, but I also find some major challenges to understanding.

As Luke chapter 4 begins, we are told that Jesus lets the devil lead him around in the desert for 40 days. In the Bible the number 40 so often represents the duration of a particularly important, often difficult, experience that there’s more than a hint of numerology – the obsession with the mystical power of numbers. In the OT the rain fell around Noah’s ark for 40 days, Moses spent 40 days on Mount Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments, the Israelites, freed from bondage in Egypt, wandered around in the desert and ate manna for 40 years, two Israelite spies checked out the Promised Land for 40 days, and Elijah walked in the wilderness for 40 days to reach the mount of God (1 Kings 19:8.)

In the NT Jesus spends forty days after his resurrection before ascending into heaven. In summary, the number 40 is more an indicator of high Biblical drama than an accurate measure of elapsed time. We can learn from the temptation narrative without insisting that it lasted as long as 40 days.

In Luke’s account, the devil tempts Jesus with actions that are supposed to turn out well. The first temptation is a response to hunger after many days without food, by turning a stone into bread. In the second, it is to worship the devil in order to gain control over all the kingdoms of the world; the devil offers Jesus a Faustian bargain. Finally, it is that Jesus should jump from the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem, assuming that angels will suddenly come to save him from any harm. Here the devil is quoting verse 11 of today’s Psalm. Such a startling act might have convinced people that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, sent from God. Jesus replies by quoting Deuteronomy 6:16, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” Jesus refuses every temptation, knowing that it is never acceptable to follow the prompting of the devil, no matter how favorable the outcome might appear. The dialog between the devil and Jesus contains other references to Scripture, so that one commentator says they argue like two Jewish rabbis. [COMMENTARY ON THE GOSPEL OF LUKE (one of a series called HERMENEIA). FORTRESS PRESS 2002, BY FRANÇOIS BOVON, p 145]

The Shema is the central teaching of Jewish belief; It is stated in Deuteronomy 6:49: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.” By refusing every offer from the devil, Jesus shows himself to be a good Jew. The first commandment states the same thing: “You shall have no other gods before me.” It is a strongly uncompromising demand. In resisting each temptation, Jesus adheres to the Jewish code.

That Jesus was tempted shows him to be fully human. “Jesus’ conflict with Satan at the beginning of his ministry…enables (us) to understand the whole of Jesus’ ministry as an attack on …Satan’s work.” (NIB)

By refusing to have anything to do with these clever temptations, in spite of outcomes that could be quite beneficial, Jesus issues to all of us a powerful warning not to use compromising means to achieve an attractive end. It is easy for people to try to justify shady or even evil means to an apparently desirable end. Here Jesus shouts NO to all such temptations: the end does not justify the means. Moreover, human conduct is complicated, so that we do not generally know in advance that the means we choose will result in the end we desire. To cite a very current example, we cannot promise a good outcome to our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we obviously employ some very evil means in pursuit of ends that are supposed to justify what we are doing.

Each of us can accept the responsibilities of Lent in our own manner. However, I mention one great human failing–call it a sin if you wish–that besets all of us to some degree, and is the most widely practiced, even unrecognized national sin. It is consumerism, more powerful than any god for many Americans. We live under an unrelenting barrage of messages urging us to improve our lives by buying things. In light of the present weak economy, with 10% unemployment across the land, this might seem wise. At best it is terribly short-sighted, because we live in the most resource-hungry country in the world. With only 5% of world population, we consume 25% of its energy.

Andy Warhol stated his impressions of our culture with this hammer blow: “Buying is much more American than thinking.”

Years ago John Stoner, formerly of MCC, said it with far more beauty and sensitivity: “What the world most needs from us is that we should need less from the world.”

We have recently visited the families of our two children. Both of our wonderful granddaughters have more stuffed animals in their bedrooms than they can possibly play with. I recently experienced some of the multiple birthday parties of one granddaughter, as a result of which I can now extract a Barbie doll from its excessive packaging in as little as fifteen minutes. Incidentally, Mattell knows a good thing, with more than 50 versions of the Barbie doll on the market. How many do we need? It is rampant consumerism taught early.

Lent is an invention of the post-Biblical church. There is no prescription for it in the Bible. However, it is no surprise that the church fathers, as early as the end of the fourth century, established a 40-day period as a time of self-examination in preparation for Easter. From Ash Wednesday, Lent continues through Holy Saturday, the day before Easter. Sundays are omitted from the 40-day count because Jesus arose from the grave on the first day of the week, and that makes every Sunday a day to celebrate the Resurrection. The burden of Lent is to be temporarily lifted each Sunday. (Wikipedia: The six Sundays in Lent are not counted among the forty days because each Sunday represents a “mini-Easter, a celebration of Jesus’ victory over sin and death.”)

The lectionary often surprises me, as it does today. On the first Sunday of Advent, when our knowledge of things to come begins to stir excitement, the passages in some years remind us of the coming judgment day, a big bump in an otherwise smooth road to the joys of Christmas. Chris Huebner, in his sermon for the first Sunday of Advent in 2008, pointed to “the anger of God” as one of the themes in the assigned passages for that day.

In what seems to me clear textual symmetry, today’s passages for the first Sunday of Lent give us assurance that all who live in the shelter of the Most High, as our Psalm declares, will be spared the depression that might otherwise result from the introspection and gloom of Lent. If we have made the Lord our refuge, again quoting the Psalm, we are safe. The difficult passage through Lent to a triumphant Easter should concern us and engage us, but not harm us. In Lent we are promised the protection of the Almighty, a better deal than we get from spring house cleaning. May we dwell in the shelter of the Most High in this season and always.

March 9^th, 1522. Zurich, Switzerland. It was the middle of Lent. About twelve people got together at the house of Christopher Froschauer and had a feast of sausage. Eating sausage during Lent was strictly forbidden by the church, and back then church laws were the laws of the land. If you didn’t obey the church, then a police officer (or magistrate) would show up at your door and take you away for punishment. But they ate the sausage and defiantly broke the mandated Lenten fast. The event would be known as the “Wurstessen”—the sausage eating. It was a protest, an act of civil and ecclesial disobedience. Among this sausage-eating group were some of the same people who, three years later in 1525, performed the first re-baptisms. They became the Anabaptists, who later became the Swiss Mennonites. So, we can follow some of the roots of our church to a Lenten protest of sausage eating.[1] If that’s the case, why in the world do we care about Lent? Isn’t it strange that we’re gathered here, at a Mennonite Ash Wednesday service, to begin a season of Lent? Shouldn’t we be eating sausage?

Part of what was going on for those sausage eaters was an attempt to throw off a system of piety—a system that let people satisfy themselves with personal piety without seeking real change, true change, lasting change in the church and in society. So, this system of piety, sanctioned by the church and the state, kept the faithful preoccupied with what they should and shouldn’t eat during Lent, instead of worrying about the corruptions in the church. The Lenten fast from meat, among other church practices, gave the people something to do to feel like they were pleasing God, instead of finding ways to transform their lives and church and society into the kingdom of God. What I find most compelling about the Anabaptism of the Mennonite church, of our church, is that we believe that God is at work transforming everything—all of us, all our lives, and the whole world. And all of us are the agents of that transformation. God has empowered ordinary people to bring the kingdom of God. This also means that there are no spaces in our lives that are off limits to God’s work of renewal and reformation. Jesus is Lord of all, and his new life is flowing through all that we are, transforming us, reforming us, forming us anew.

With God, this is the way it has always been. God has always been in the business of reforming, of forming anew. That’s what we remember on Ash Wednesday. We remember that God formed us from the dust, the dirt, the earth. We mark our foreheads with ashes, the dust of the earth, and read a verse from Genesis 3:19: “you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. At some point we all started as dust from the earth, as tiny bits and pieces of matter. Our bodies come from dust. And at some point our bodies will decompose; we will return to the dust. Yet the mystery is that God is at work in all of it. God forms us and continues to reform us until we return to the dust—and then we are transformed into something wonderfully new through resurrection. In the meantime, we give our lives to the graceful movement of God’s re-formation of the world. If God can form such wonderful creatures, human beings, from the dust of the earth, then there are no limits to what God can create in our midst, with our lives. Our lives are formations of dust, molded together with the hands of God, to be gifts of good news for the world.

Lent isn’t only a time to make personal sacrifices of piety for a month and a half, and then go back to the ways things have always been. That’s why those early Anabaptists protested Lent by eating sausage. Instead, Lent is a time to come to rediscover that we are nothing but formations of earth, of dust—yet beloved nonetheless, beloved no matter how pious we try to be, and beloved no matter how much we fail. We are dust that can do nothing to make our lives more secure, other than rest into God’s love for us. Lent is a season where we reflect on the miracle of our being, the wonders of being a human being—made from dust, yet made to be loved by God. God loves dirt, mounds of dirt he formed into our bodies. We are infused with God’s love, and Lent is a time for us to consider all the ways we refuse to let that love flow through us and into our friends and neighbors and strangers and co-workers and whoever. What are the ways we restrict the flow of God’s love, the love that formed us and sustains us? Sin is simply the name we have for all those ways we refuse to love, all the ways we refuse to share the love that makes us human, the love that forms our lives from the dust, the love that is God.

Lent is a season for us to make space in our lives to listen—to listen for what God may be saying, to listen for the whispers of God’s love and to follow the movement of that love. Lent is a time to make lasting change in our lives—a time to let go of our sins, all those ways we refuse to be loved by God, and instead become transparent earthen vessels of God’s love for the world. Then, as the prophet Isaiah says, the glory of the Lord “shall break forth like the dawn” (Isa. 58:8) and we “shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.” (v. 11).

(Here’s a pdf of this sermon: Wurstessen)

“Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor 3:17)—that’s what Paul says in our passage from Second Corinthians. Freedom. What does it mean to be free? I want to give you three snapshots of freedom. The first one, you will quickly discover, is a picture of a bad sort of freedom—freedom from others.

Katie and I watch a lot of movies—probably more than we should. I can’t help myself: I’m a sucker for cheesy romantic comedies. Recently Katie and I rented Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, with Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Garner. You don’t need to watch it; it’s not very good; and you should believe me, since I’m an expert with romantic comedies! I mention the movie because I think Matthew McConaughey’s character, Connor Mead, offers a good snapshot of what I am going to call: “freedom, American-style.”

In the movie, Connor Mead is a womanizing bachelor who sleeps with whoever he wants to, but doesn’t want any commitment. He doesn’t want to be tied down. Connor doesn’t want anyone to change his life, to infringe on his freedom to do what he wants, when he wants. He will be who he will be—and that usually entails not having the same girlfriend for more than a week or so. He wants sex without intimacy. He wants company without relationship. He wants a warm body to ease his loneliness for a night, but not a friendship that lasts into the next day, and the day after that. With those friendships come the complications Connor thinks would infringe on his freedom.

Our lives are probably much different than Ghosts of Girlfriends Past—at least I hope they are! Nonetheless, I think that movie puts on screen a vision of freedom that is deeply rooted in our Western culture and maybe in our lives. For this idea of freedom, other people are threats to our way of life. So, freedom is freedom from others; it’s about keeping our distance—keeping our way of life safe from their intrusion, their invasion, their disruption. It’s about establishing a way of life that is not dependent on other people; it’s about the pursuit of your own happiness, and making laws to defend what you have. This is freedom from people. This vision of freedom runs deep within us—our politics, our culture, and our lives. This country is obsessed with freedom from others—especially from foreigners. We can see it in the increasingly militarized borders, and the massive wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. It’s there to protect our freedoms: we don’t want people from south of the border coming in here and messing with our lives—taking our jobs, bringing their drugs, and infecting our culture. Our freedom means freedom from them—freedom from sharing and from relationships. We’d rather buy their cheap products from a distance and without any strings attached—it’s the economic equivalent of Connor’s one-night-stands in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. We get what we want without any of the complications that come with relationships and with the intimacy that comes with having to share space, like neighborhoods and grocery stores and churches and so on.

We could also talk about U.S. freedom from the people of Haiti. This story started with the racist Western vision of freedom that put people on that island and used them for economic growth. And now that same vision of freedom has restricted Haitians from creating lives for themselves in the United States if they want to. We are comfortable sending money and resources for the rebuilding of Haiti, but we’re not about to change our immigration policy to allow Haitians into this country. We want to be free from them—freedom from the possible chaos of a mass of people invading our lives and messing with our happiness. Apparently, to enjoy our freedom means that we have be free from others—freedom from intimacy, freedom from the complications that come with relationships.

This vision of freedom insinuates itself into our own lives. Sometimes—maybe most of the time—we think about freedom as freedom from others. We want to be free from the commitments that come with relationships: with family, with friends, with work. We want to be free to do what we want to do, without asking someone for permission, or without worrying about offending someone. We want to be free from considering how our actions may actually hurt somebody. We want to be free from changing our ways for the sake of someone else’s feelings. We want to be free from being bothered—from chaotic relationships, from unpredictable people, from tensions, from whatever seems to get in our way. Freedom, American-style: this my first snapshot of freedom, a very selfish kind of freedom—one that is all around us, and in us. But none of this can be what it means to be truly free. At the very least, we know that the apostle Paul has a different kind of freedom in mind when he says, “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor 3:17). What is this freedom? What does it look like? What does it feel like? How do we know that we are free? Free for what? Freed for what purpose? To what end? It can’t be freedom from others; we know that much.

Let me give you second picture of freedom. I really don’t know how it may relate to our lives, but I think it’s worth talking about nonetheless. Sometimes it’s important to tell stories without knowing how they make things clearer for us—we call this practice, “bearing witness.”

On Tuesday nights some of us from church drive to the Orange County Correctional Facility. I leave my cell phone and all other contraband in my car, and walk over to the guards at the gate. After they check my ID card, the guards let me enter the prison, a world of captivity behind a chain-linked fence. We are led to the dining hall—white walls, linoleum floors, circular tables with chairs. Then a voice from a loud speaker gives permission for inmates to enter the dinning hall where the visitors have assembled. I find a few prisoners sitting at a table and ask if I can join them for a conversation. Sometimes we talk about the latest college basketball game. Sometimes they share news about their family on the outside. Sometimes they tell me what God is doing in their lives. And sometimes we just sit there with nothing much to say. When the hour is up, we form a big circle and pray. I go home, and the inmates stay behind. I return to my life of freedom, and they return to their bunkhouses where they are packed like sardines, due to overcrowding as a result of state budget shortfalls—no space for freedom. I’m free, and they are not.

But is freedom as simple as being able to do what I want when I want to—like getting in my car and driving to the Orange County Correctional Facility and then driving back home? Is that what freedom looks like? Freedom becomes more complicated for me when I hear the inmates talk about their journeys of freedom that started the day they were imprisoned. Not all of them, but a lot of them talk about how incarceration has given them freedom. Prison has, in some sense, freed them. At first, it seems like a contradiction—how can you be free while behind bars? This past week I talked with two guys I hadn’t met before. Both of them told me about how getting caught and going to prison was the beginning of their freedom. Before, on the outside, they were trapped. Now, they were free from that mess of bad choices, and ready to give life another shot when they get out next year. For them, prison means freedom from themselves, freedom from their bad choices, freedom from a tangle of dangerous lifestyles.

“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” How will freedom take shape in my two new friends’ lives? Where will freedom lead them? By their own testimony, the Spirit of God has set them free, even while in prison. Where will that same Spirit lead them with they get out?

So far I’ve given you two snapshots of freedom—first, Connor the womanizing bachelor in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past and, second, the prisoners I’ve had a chance to talk with. And now comes the last one, the last picture of freedom—this one is special for today, because it is Valentine’s Day. And if you didn’t know, Valentine’s Day was first a day of remembrance for Saint Valentine. One of the problems with remembering St. Valentine is that there are possibly three different martyrs in the 3^rd century with that same name—and we don’t know very much about any of them. But there’s one story that I think worth remembering; it is a story of freedom, although it’s a strange kind of freedom.

Valentine (or Valentinus) was a priest in Rome in the third century. Claudius II was emperor of Rome at that time, and he was persecuting the early Christians—he didn’t kill them off, he only restricted their freedoms. Apparently one of the restrictions he put on the Christians was that they could not be married. Maybe it was a way for Claudius to prevent Christians from starting families and having legitimate children—which would mean more Christians to populate his empire. Anyhow, Valentinus, the priest in Rome, had some religious freedom: he could still be a Christian priest and lead worship services, but he was not allowed to officiate any weddings. Christians did not have the right to marry. But Valentinus did not obey Emperor Claudius’ edict and went ahead and performed his calling as a priest and married some couples. When Claudius found out about Valentinus’ illegal weddings, Claudius had him imprisoned. And while in prison, Valentinus thought it was a good idea to try to convert the emperor. Claudius didn’t appreciate being evangelized and so he had Valentinus beheaded. Thus he became a martyr and a saint.

Although Valentinus ends up in prison and ultimately gets killed, he is a picture of freedom—the freedom of Christ, enabled through the power of the Holy Spirit. “Now the Lord is the Spirit,” Paul says, “and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” Valentinus shows us a freedom that looks like the life of Jesus—a life that gives up everything for the sake of creating a space for love, a space in this world where love can flow, where people can be bound together by giving and receiving love—which is the eternal life of the Holy Spirit. Like Jesus, Valentinus gives his life so that others can love one another with commitment, affection, and responsibility. That’s the freedom that comes with the Holy Spirit: we are liberated for love, for giving ourselves in love, for receiving who we are meant to be through love. We find true freedom when we give up protecting ourselves from others, when we give up trying to defend who we are from other people. Christian freedom invites us to become a reason for love in someone else—to become a reason for delight, for joy.

This freedom entails transformation. It means changing who you are so that someone else may find delight in your presence. As Paul goes on to say in our passage, “all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit” (v. 18). We are always moving from glory to glory. We are always changing our identity, changing who we think we are, changing how we relate to one another, and discovering new ways of creating space for love to happen in our midst. With unveiled faces, Paul says, we are being transformed from one degree of glory to another. What comes first is an unveiled face: truthfulness about who we are and about who we need to become. As Paul goes on to say at the end of our passage, “we commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God” (4:2). Freedom comes through our unveiling, through being exposed, through being made subject to the conscience of all the rest of us. We are not free to be whoever we want to be, regardless of how we make others feel, regardless of their conscience. We are not people like Connor in the Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Instead, we find our freedom, the freedom of Christ, the freedom of the Spirit, when we let our presence be a reason for someone to feel loved, accepted, known and welcomed. The freedom of unveiling: to be exposed, to be known. The good news of Christ’s love for us is that we are exposed, we are known, and we are loved—all of us, loved into being, welcomed into God’s life with the caress of the Holy Spirit, which is the touch of love.

The Spirit of Christ does not lead us into freedom from others, but freedom for others: freedom to let love change us, transform us; freedom to become a presence of delight in someone else, which is also how we come to discover that we are loved. We feel loved when we become a reason for someone else’s delight. We find ourselves wrapped up in love when we create joy and happiness in another.[1] The freedom of Saint Valentine is found when you give yourself away, when you use your life to create a space for someone to feel the love of Christ, when you make room in your self—in your life, in your ego, in who you think you are—for someone else to change you into a presence that brings delight. Then we may find ourselves transformed from one degree of glory to another, as Paul says. For all of this comes from the Lord, the Spirit of freedom, who tears away your silly borders of pride and independence, and invites you to let your life be mingled with mine, and mine with yours, and ours with the one seated by your side and across the room and next door—and to find in this knot of unveiled intimacy, of truthfulness, the presence of God, a presence of love that transfigures us, that makes us shine like the Son of God.

Lingering thoughts (not included in sermon):

1)   Paul talks about the character of Christ’s lordship as one that grants freedom—the freedom of the Spirit. What kind of Lord exercises power through providing freedom? What kind of power lets go of control for the sake of bestowing freedom? Paul seems to be saying something very strange about the power of the Lord that is a power of freedom through the Spirit. Maybe this is related to how Paul talks about how the power of God looks like the cross—weakness. Maybe freedom begins by living into my weaknesses—letting them be exposed and seeing what new life comes when I cease to be my own police, my own border patrol, my own judge. Herbert McCabe comes to mind: “No one can take upon herself life; nothing can bring itself into existence. Always we receive being from another or from others. To aim at riches is to aim at taking possession of things, even, perhaps, taking possession of people. To aim at poverty is to aim at the giving of life, and this comes from gratitude for receiving life ourselves. And giving life is a specially godlike activity.”[2]

(here’s a pdf of the sermon)

[2] Herbert McCabe, “Poverty and God,” in God, Christ, and Us (London, UK: Continuum, 2003), 54.

I work part time as a Wedding Assistant at Duke Chapel, so most Saturday afternoons find me alternately scurrying around the chapel in uncomfortable shoes, or sitting in the back pew and listening to as many as three sermons on 1 Corinthians 13 in one day, depending on the number of weddings on a given weekend. When I first started my job at the chapel I didn’t think too much of it; on the surface, it seems like a reasonable choice for a wedding. A beautiful meditation on love: “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” Some of you might even have chosen to have it read at your own weddings. Honestly though, eight months and roughly fifty weddings down the line, the only thing that makes me cringe more than a wedding sermon on 1 Corinthians 13 is a wedding sermon on Proverbs 31 or Ephesians 5.

The sermons generally go something like this:

We’re here to celebrate John and Susie’s love for each other. This is the biggest day of your lives, John and Susie. God has blessed you with love. But just in case you haven’t figured it out yet, love is really hard work. We’re not kidding about that whole “for better or for worse” bit. So good luck…er, I mean, amen.

Every week I hear sermons emphasizing that love is hard work, and it puzzles me. Not because I think that’s untrue – on the contrary, it’s very true. Love is not easy; it doesn’t take many attempts at loving someone to realize that. Still, the main points of most of these sermons – namely, that it’s all about these two people’s love for each other, and that love is really hard work – seem to miss a lot of what is going on in this chapter. These ornate Duke Chapel weddings emphasize the couple’s “big day,” but Paul’s words are addressed to an entire community – a community, as we have learned in recent weeks, with some serious issues. The fussy clothes and fancy flowers at these weddings are pretty far removed from Paul’s critique of the church at Corinth, yet somehow this chapter has been co-opted into the multimillion dollar wedding industry as the passage of choice for “your perfect day.”

The problem is, the audience of the passage is far from perfect.

Working at the chapel, alongside the Wedding Director, I am often the last one to see the bride before she walks down the isle, and the last one to see the groom before he makes his entrance, because I am responsible for cuing him to process out at the right time – one of many perfectly choreographed moments in the ceremony. In those final minutes, I’ve seen a lot of different emotions displayed on the faces of complete strangers – excitement, fear, joy, fatigue. Groomsmen make jokes about this being the guy’s “last chance to run.” The mother and father of the bride tear up, and carefully hug their daughter around the layers of silk and lace, as if she were a china doll that might break. One of those most memorable to me was a bride in an especially puffy and ladylike dress who I was actually afraid was going to pass out, right there in the narthex of Duke Chapel while the opening notes of Pachabel’s Canon in D filled the sanctuary.

Amidst all of the careful crafting of this event, I’m allowed in on a moment of truth – the bride is exhausted, maybe even terrified. After months of preparation and thousands of dollars, the “big moment” has arrived – everything is supposed to look perfect. Bridesmaids are holding up the bride’s veil, fanning her sweaty brow, touching up her lipstick, reassuring her of her beauty. She has been carefully kept from the view of the groom, so that his first sight of her will be picture perfect, everything he has imagined. The photographer, too, is poised and ready, and if something does happen to look a bit off she will be sure to touch it up later on. The memories of this day will be preserved, perfectly.

In verse 12, Paul says that “now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face.” A Duke Chapel wedding attempts to project a perfect picture, a mirror image of what appears in the pages of bridal magazines. The towering gothic architecture, the stained glass windows, the triumphant organ music, the long, flowing, white train on the bride’s dress. This is the perfect day. The perfect venue. The perfect couple.

Perfect, perfect, perfect.

You might recall a question sometimes asked during weddings, “If anyone knows a reason why these two people should not be joined together, speak now or forever hold your peace.” I seldom hear this question asked anymore. The implication seems to be, if something imperfect is buried beneath the surface, we’d really rather you didn’t dig it up. We prefer the facade of perfection to the complexities of reality.

Love, however, does exactly the opposite. One of my favorite poets, Susanna Childress, speaks of being loved, “with all [her] dirty pockets turned inside out.” I think this is a helpful image. I think that Paul has turned the Corinthian’s dirty pockets inside out, calling attention to their misguided understanding of gifts, reprimanding them for leaving love out of the picture. In verses 1-3 he draws attention to specific spiritual gifts, the ones folks might be most likely to be puffed up about – tongues and prophecy. Without love, he says, speaking in tongues and prophesying are nothing. They’re useless, a nuisance even. Better to be silent, to say nothing, than to create all that needless racket.

This is precisely where love comes in – patient, kind, rejoicing in the truth – not in a facade of perfection. Love turns the dirty pockets inside out, sorts through the lints balls, spare change, crumpled receipts – and somehow still rejoices in the truth of the person found there. Without love, even our gifts – the things that look good on the surface – are nothing. But with love, everything changes.

“Love” that relies on a false exterior will fade away when the object of love tires of keeping up the act of perfection – it doesn’t abide like the love Paul is talking about. But love that sees clearly – face to face – imperfections and all – already knows the dirty secrets, and loves you not only “in spite” of them but because of them. It doesn’t get scared off when the cracks inevitably start to show.

In second half of the passage Paul talks about a present reality that will come to an end, and points to future fulfillment: while tongues and prophecy will cease, love never ends, we are told. Love abides. Love speaks to the “now” – NOW faith, hope, and love abide – but it also looks forward, towards a time when we will be “a spotless mirror of the working of God” (Wisdom 7.25-26), when we will know fully, even as we have been fully known. Through loving, and being loved, we become better, or more full, versions of ourselves – we start to see others more clearly, ourselves more clearly, and God more clearly.

There is an intense vulnerability to seeing one another face to face, to sharing our lives. Being “fully known” can be a little frightening, and while our knowledge, now, is limited, it might be disconcerting to think that God’s knowledge of us is not. There is a reason that we burry certain things deep down in the bottom of our pockets. In many ways though, isn’t this what we try to live into together, as we share our lives? To know one another, and so to love one another as God loves us?

Paul goes on in chapter 14 to tell the Corinthians to “Pursue love and strive for the spiritual gifts.” Though he comes down hard on their focus on spiritual gifts in chapter 13 as a source of division, he is walking a thin line. The concern is with whether these gifts are practiced lovingly, shared for the upbuilding of the whole community rather then merely the individuals who do the speaking. These gifts that become such a consuming focus are temporary, partial – and perhaps part of what needs to be said is that you, your love, your gifts, alone, are not going to fulfill anything in the end. But a word of truth, spoken in love, endures.

Thinking about the wedding image again, the moment that a bride walks down that long isle might feel as if it is the fulfillment of love, but it isn’t. The love of two people for one another might be real, might be part of the process of sanctification, but it’s not the whole picture. It’s incomplete. Their love is part of a larger community, and Paul is calling for prophecy which edifies that entire community, for words that we can make sense of together. It’s not enough simply to know one another; that knowledge must be accompanied by speech – right speech, speech that actively builds the community.

Words that are not childish, words that tell the truths of who we are, and who we hope to become together, words that unite rather than divide.

Words of encouragement. Words of consolation. Words that reveal and teach.

Even seemingly simple words like, “I’m sorry,” and “You are forgiven.”

Words like, “How can I help?” and “How are you really doing?”

Words like, “I am here for you,” and “I will pray for you.”

Words that can be said by even – or especially – the weakest among us.

Mary Raber
Odessa, Ukraine
January 2010

Dear Friends and Family:

This started out six weeks ago as an Advent letter, but I’m sure you know how these things go… Let this serve as a belated greeting for Christmas and the New Year. I sincerely wish you God’s blessing as we go on in 2010.

Teaching
At the moment I’m outside of Ukraine. In a few weeks, while I am attending the annual research colloquium at International Baptist Theological Seminary in Prague, I will be applying for a new year-long Ukrainian visa. In the meantime my thoughts are full of teaching plans. Beginning in February I will be teaching Baptist/Anabaptist history in Odessa, a course that I will repeat in Donetsk in April with a group of blind students. I’m looking forward to that as a new experience; my selection of reading material is already being recorded for their use. During the fall semester I taught five intensive courses—two in Odessa and three in Donetsk. Fifteen years ago intensive courses were the norm because most of the qualified teachers came from far away, usually the U.S. or Germany, and couldn’t stay very long. Nowadays there are more national instructors, but intensive courses are still necessary to accommodate the many part-time students. I respect the part-timers’ determination. Most of them attend classes for two weeks at a time, eight hours a day, three times a year, sometimes for as long as five years. Of course, it’s hard to keep up the commitment. In October I worked with eight preachers on their teaching skills; two years ago their group numbered twenty! At the end of a course, the students pack up all their homework assignments, intending to bring them back to the next session several months later. This fall I created a disaster for myself; now my most exasperating problem is keeping track of all the work I’ve assigned with different due dates to dozens of students spread out across the entire country!

My first appearance as a real, live academic!
Donetsk Christian University has been holding regular gatherings for instructors to present their own research. In November I was their guest lecturer. You may remember that I am writing a doctoral dissertation on charitable practices and social service ministry among Russian evangelicals in the early twentieth century. For the lecture I chose a side issue, but one that I thought would interest my listeners: “Baptists and Money.” The Russian church periodicals of that period have a lot to say on the topic! It was the first time I have presented my own work anywhere besides to my fellow doctoral students, and it turned out to be more fun than I expected. Members of the audience—students and faculty of DCU—asked a surprising number of questions, some of which I could answer!

Limitations—and grace
It’s easy to be thankful for some things: thousands of miles traveled during the past year without mishap; old and new friends all over the world; the pleasure and challenge of teaching; the curious details of daily life; and insights gained from study. Other gifts are less obvious. Over the past year I’ve become more aware than ever of situations I can’t mend. I’m close to several people involved in serious unresolved conflicts. Many people I know in Ukraine are frighteningly deep in debt. Others are ill. I don’t see any reason to expect that the Ukrainian political situation will improve, in spite of the noisy presidential campaign going on in preparation for elections on 17 January. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed. On U.S. Thanksgiving Day I stopped in to visit my friend Larisa where she works at a tiny Christian publishing house. Since she’s a good person to pray with, I told her about how helpless I was feeling and wept a little bit. While we were talking, another friend, Vova, came in. When he saw that I was crying, he offered to recite a poem he had written about tears. Of course, I told him to go ahead. Mysteriously, Vova’s poem comforted me. Or rather, not exactly the poem itself, but the way Vova and Larisa showed me their love and acceptance. What is it about this place? In so many ways, life in Ukraine is a shambles. On the other hand, for me at least, this is the land where, when I expect it least and need it most, a man walks in and unaffectedly begins to recite poetry. As for feeling overwhelmed, I don’t know anything else to do but continue to lift up all kinds of situations to God: “I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” (Psalm 27:13-14). The shadows close in when I begin to think I have to solve things on my own and that there’s something wrong with me if I can’t.

Epiphany
The good news is that this is the season of the church year—Advent, Christmas, Epiphany—that reminds us we are right to hope in God. Our expectation is well placed. Even if we’re reduced to tears sometimes, that doesn’t mean God has let us down. On the contrary—Christ is risen, indeed! We celebrate Jesus’ life in our fallen world: “The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world” (John 1:9). Walk in the light!

Thank you so much for your loving support.

With peace,
Mary Raber

“The members of the body that seem to be weaker are necessary” (I Cor. 12:22). That’s what Paul says in our passage from I Corinthians—Ben mentioned this verse in his sermon last Sunday, and I’ve been thinking about it all week. What does the apostle Paul mean? Why are the weaker members necessary? Why does God give greater honor to the lesser members, the inferior parts, the weakest members, the least honorable parts?

Since we’re all adults here, let’s get to the heart of the matter. Paul is talking about human genitalia. Yes, that’s what Paul is talking about when he describes the fragile or vulnerable, yet necessary members of the body. Paul uses this human analogy to talk about the weaker members of the church body—those members we recognize as fragile or weak or least honorable. Paul makes this connection obvious in verse 22: “the apparently weaker members are actually necessary.” This is the clean version, a translation that doesn’t require parental guidance. The Greek word translated as “necessary” has another common meaning—anagkaia: it has two common meanings, “necessary” and “genitals.” And Paul capitalizes on the dual meaning of the word—there’s a part of the body, he says, that is absolutely necessary for the functioning of life: that is, the necessary member, the private parts, or whatever euphemism you want to use.

So, now that you know what Paul is up to in this passage, let me read it to you again:

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are actually necessary, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less presentable have more beauty, whereas our presentable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving greater honor to the lesser member…

Paul uses human anatomy to make a basic point about the corporate body of the church. Every part is necessary; without eyes or feet, the body cannot function as it is created to function. Every part, every member, is absolutely necessary—that’s Paul’s basic point throughout this section in I Corinthians. But then he adds, with a wink and a smile: Yes, even that “necessary member” is absolutely necessary, it’s the most necessary part of the body. As Paul says, “God has so arranged the body, giving greater honor to this lesser member” (v. 25). The lesser member, the part of the body that we keep hidden, that is least presentable, is actually the most necessary member, the most honored, the most beautiful.

Paul doesn’t say anything new when he talks about people as if they were one body. Everyone in Corinth understood that kind of language—it was as old as the ancient philosopher Plato. Citizens form one body—together, all of the people form a political body. But here’s the difference between Paul and all the other Greek and Roman philosophers and politicians: While Paul’s contemporaries talked about every member of society as being an absolutely necessary part of the body, everyone knew that the head was the most necessary. And the head of the political body was the sovereign, the king, the one at the top of the masses. While people were told that they were necessary to the health of the social body, the king was the most necessary member of society. Without him, everything would fall apart.

But Paul takes this body language and turns it upside-down. The head is not the most necessary member; the necessary member is the most necessary member—the genitals, not the head. And then Paul talks about the nature of that necessary member—it’s hidden, fragile, weak, and vulnerable. It’s easily forgotten as you go about your daily work, unless you have to use the bathroom—then you quickly discover its necessity. Or for sex. I won’t go into details.

Even though we don’t have kings anymore, our context is similar to Paul’s. Let me point out a few ways. We are told that we are all necessary members of American society, but we know that we are not the most necessary. Those people are on Capital Hill. That’s the head of the body called the United States. If one of us disappeared tomorrow, the political body of the United States wouldn’t bat an eye. But if the president disappeared, then we would be in a state of emergency. To be told that we are necessary to the health of the U.S. is really an empty statement—something to make us feel good about ourselves without making any real difference for our lives. Our so-called representatives really don’t care about representing you or me; instead they rely on polling data, on popular opinion—and I’ve never been polled or asked any questions. Not one of my representatives has ever asked me if she or he actually represented my ideas about how society should be organized. They make national decisions on my behalf without asking for my consent. One way to take the incredibly low voter turn out in the United States is to say that people have figured out that their voices don’t really make a difference. At the very least, it has become untrue for political leaders to claim that their authority comes from the consent of the people—how can that be true anymore if so many people don’t vote for them? Are the people who don’t vote no longer part of “We, the people”? Whatever you think about the brokenness of the political system and what we should do about it, if anything, the point is that the heads of the body don’t need the lesser members of society. The people with power in this country don’t need to consult with this guy called Wolf who lives in the woods behind Wal-mart. He doesn’t matter. He is not a necessary member. His vote will not be courted in any election.

We could also talk about how economic power is also hierarchically organized in this country—a new kind of trickle down economics seems to be alive and well. Our government has taken money from the masses and given it to the heads of the financial industry—all for the sake of the health of our national body, or so they say. In our economy, the head is honored with gifts and special treatment, not the vulnerable members.

For us to talk about politics and economics is not an extra feature of the gospel—at least not for Paul. It’s not like politics is a topic we can choose to talk about or not. It’s actually a topic internal to the gospel—our spirituality has a political form, a material body. Spirit and body, the church and politics—the two cannot be separated. For the apostle Paul, to expose the failures of the political systems we live in is part of the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus. In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul is engaging in subversive politics. He is exposing the contradictions within the established structures. The people in power use the metaphor of the human body to show that their position is most important to the health of the political body. Without the head, they say, society would fall apart. And Paul takes their language and turns their world upside-down. The head is no more important than any other member—except for the genitals, the necessary member. For Paul, the advent of Christ, the good news of Jesus, is that all things are made new—the old structures of power are passing away, they have outlived their usefulness. Through Christ, there is now a new way of being together, a new way of being a political organism, a new way of being a body.

Worldly politics, worldly power, is centered on the head of the body, “the heads of state,” we could say. The head becomes the most important member. But for Paul, in the church the forgotten members—the hidden and vulnerable and fragile—are the most important. That’s where Paul focuses our attention—on the vulnerable and weak, not the people on the top. The gospel is about forming a body, an assembly of people—what Paul calls “the church.” And when Paul talks about this body of people called “the church,” he isn’t using specialized religious language. He isn’t talking about a religious gathering for spiritual people. The word church—in Greek it’s ekklesia—is a common word for a political gathering, the same word people would use for a town hall meeting or a session of Congress. Let me read you the definition from the standard Greek lexicon—ekklesia: Generally understood in the Greco-Roman world as a regularly summoned legislative body, an assembly (BDAG).

Basically, Paul is saying that the authorized legislative bodies are not healthy bodies because they focus on the head—power flows from and returns to the head. And instead of sitting around and letting them make a mess of things, there’s a new legislative body that Jesus started and in it we care about the lesser members of society: the vulnerable, the hidden, the fragile, the weak. It’s all there at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry as we heard already from Luke’s Gospel: “he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free…” (Lk. 4:18).

To receive this good news, the gospel of Jesus, into our lives is all about making room in our body, in our lives together, for the weakest members—and not just make room, but give them the place of honor and find out how they are absolutely necessary to the health of our church and society.

The gospel creates a body where the most vulnerable are the most necessary. Now let’s make this personal. It’s easy to talk about the contradictions at the heart of U.S. politics and economics. But it’s another thing to pay attention to how power is organized in our daily lives. Who has the power at your workplace? Who is at the head and who is at the bottom? Who are the replaceable people? Maybe that’s you. Or maybe it’s someone under your authority. You may be one rung up the ladder from a number of other people. What would it mean for you to give the people at the bottom the most honor, to affirm the goodness of their creation, of their being?

The good news is that Christ has come to dismantle our hierarchies of power. No one is more special than another; everyone is an absolutely necessary gift from God. And if you need some way to rank someone’s importance to the community, then consider how the most vulnerable part of the body is the most necessary member. We give the greatest honor to the weakest among us. This is the case for us at church, in our worship services; and it should be the case in our everyday lives—at our work, in our politics and economics. We give the most attention to the forgotten members of society and our community, not the ones who put themselves in the spotlight and claim to have the power to change the world.

From my experience, I think you have made this church into a place that makes room for everyone to find their voices—even the weakest among us, people who usually never are given a chance to speak up, to offer the rest of us what they think God is saying. The shape of our worship shows us that every person is important—God can speak good news through anyone here. That’s what kept me coming back to church seven years ago. I had never been part of a worship service that made space for anyone to share. I don’t think we acknowledge enough how risky it is to let anyone have the floor and share what’s on her or his mind. No one can predict or control what another person will say. Every worship service is a risk—and that is good news: our time is full of newness, completely unpredictable newness. Who knows what may emerge in our midst this time?

But this is only the beginning. Our worship together is only the beginning of our week. How will you honor the lesser members? How will you share with them the good news of what God is creating: a new people that finds ways to honor the dishonored.

Lingering thoughts:

1. We cannot objectify the weak among us. There is something wrong with looking around for weak people and figuring how to care for them. Weakness can’t be a static, definable, identity. It’s something discovered through friendship—and the weakness we find in another helps us befriend our own weaknesses.
2. When we receive the weak, they transform our body. We grow into their weakness; their weakness is shared, offered as a spiritual gift to the rest of us. To receive someone who is weak as an equal instead of inserting her or him into a master-slave relationships, requires that we ourselves become weak. Only the weak know how to receive the weak. Only Jesus can receive the weak without overpowering them. The cruciform life is the weak life that becomes good news to the weak.
3. How do we become weak? Weakness is the way your presence makes room for someone else to be who they are—without prerequisites, without pretention, without illusion, without facades. Weakness is the way your presence invites someone to emerge, to become more human, to be the creature God loved into existence. Weakness is about embodying a dispostion of welcome, of invitation, of letting someone just be, without any need to impress you or win you over. Because you are already on their side. That’s weakness: to show someone that you are on their side, and they can simply be who they are, the one who God loves.
4. Why exactly are the weak necessary to the health of the body?

(Here’s a pdf of the sermon)

“They can beg and they can plead / But they can’t see the light, that’s right / ‘Cause the boy with the cold hard cash / Is always Mister Right, ‘cause we are / Living in a material world / And I am a material girl / You know that we are living in a material world / And I am a material girl.”

That’s Madonna’s song from the ‘80s, “Material Girl.” Some things never change—maybe they just get worse. I got this letter in the mail the other day. I’ll start by reading the envelope: “Dear Jesus, we pray that you will bless someone in this home spiritually, physically, and financially. St. Matthew 18:19… And please dear Jesus, bless the hands that open this faith letter that can change these lives, and we ask thee to give them the desires of their hearts.”

They want me to send them information so I can have a Golden Prosperity Faith Cross, and my prayers answered.

I’ve seen a letter like this once before. Last year sometime, I think it was in the spring, I was sitting on a rocking chair with Ms. Caroline—everyone calls her Ms. Broom because she’s frequently seen in the early morning, out on the sidewalk in front of her house, with her broom, sweeping away any dirt that might have gathered from the night before.

I was sitting with Ms. Broom, out on her porch in Walltown, and she started asking me if I thought God answered prayers. I said yes, of course—I’m a pastor, after all. Then she told me about this letter she got from some church in Texas. The letter promised her that God would answer one of her prayer requests if she wrote it down on this special piece of paper shaped like a cross and put it in her bible, and if she laid her hand on her bible every night and prayed for that request. Oh, there was one more thing. She would need to write her name and her prayer request on an enclosed card and mail it back to the church in Texas with $15 so they can pray as well.

I asked her for the card where she wrote down the prayer request, and I told her that I would take it and pray for that request and she could just keep the $15 and spend it on groceries or something. I asked her if she thought I could pray just as well as those people in Texas. She thought I could. So she let me take the card, and I prayed, and I was mad. I was mad at these people who wanted to use Ms. Broom’s faith in Jesus to make money. I was mad that there are Christians out there who turn God into a tool to make money off of poor people in Walltown—Ms. Broom told me that she gets these kinds of letters all the time, and so do her neighbors. I don’t know how people in Texas figure out where poor people live in Durham, but they do.

So, I was a little surprised to get this letter. I didn’t think I was poor. Now, there are plenty of reasons why this stuff is bad, really bad, disgusting even. There is plenty here that makes me want to run away from being tagged as a “Christian”—I don’t want people to associate me with this trash. But there’s also something else. There’s something here that makes me wonder.

Let’s go back to that wise sage of our time, Madonna. She’s somewhat right: we are living in a material world, and we are material people. But there are good and bad ways to care about our materialness, our material world and our material desires. I’ll start with good materialism. It’s there in our passage from Acts. Through the work of Philip, the people of Samaria accepted the word of God. Philip “preached the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ” (8:12). And many were baptized. When the apostles in Jerusalem heard about people being baptized in Samaria without their oversight, they sent Peter and John to check in on this new movement (v. 14). And here’s where we find the good materialism. Verse 17: “Peter and John laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.” Notice how the Spirit comes through the hands, through the flesh, through bodily contact. Some people like to separate body and spirit, material and spiritual, what we do with our bodies and what we do with our thoughts—but that’s not what happens in this story. The Holy Spirit goes to the people of Samaria with Peter and John, all the way from Jerusalem. The Spirit travels with people; the Spirit happens in human contact, a material point of contact, the laying on of hands, a touch.

This touch is the affirmation of fellowship, of solidarity. The laying on of hands is the communication of the Spirit, which makes possible their communion, their fellowship, in the same body of Christ. Now the same Holy Spirit circulates through the church in Jerusalem and this new church in Samaria. They are all wrapped up in the same movement of God. These two different groups become part of the same movement through something done with human hands, with bodies that travel, with the material of this world. The Holy Spirit comes through human contact. The Spirit flows through material, fleshy stuff like our hands.

The spiritual fellowship and solidarity that happens when Peter and John lay their hands on the Samaritans was probably difficult for John. I imagine he had a hard time letting the Holy Spirit unite him with these Samaritans. It wasn’t too long before this trip with Peter that John made a similar trip with Jesus. In Luke chapter 9, Jesus and the disciples needed travel through Samaria, but the people there refused to let Jesus and his band of followers pass through. So, in retaliation, John and James asked Jesus if it would be OK to kill off all the inhospitable people: “Lord,” they asked, “do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” (Lk. 9:54). Jesus rebuked John and James, made a detour around Samaria, and let the people be. And now, some years later, John finds himself with the Samaritans—but this time he has to call them sisters and brothers. His enemies become part of the family, through the spread of the gospel. And now John unites himself to them through the Holy Spirit, as he lays his hands on them.

This is the good materialism of Christianity. It’s about flesh and blood, material bodies, and the way we are drawn together through the Holy Spirit. It’s about people with different stories and different ways of seeing the world getting mixed up together. For Christians, the presence of the Holy Spirit is experienced with our bodies, with our hands, as we greet one another in the name of Christ, as we lay hands on each other and pray, as we pass each other the peace of Christ, as we serve bread and wine to one another at the Lord’s Table.

Christianity is about our hands; it’s about what we do with them—our work, our play, our relationships. And with all of this, with the work of our hands, with our friendships, with our worship services, comes the Holy Spirit—in the material of it all. To go back to Madonna, we are living in a material world and we are all material girls…and boys. And we can’t separate our material lives from our spiritual lives. It all happens together, with the same hands, in the same bodies, with the same material. We take our work seriously, we take our relationships seriously, we take what we do with our hands seriously, because all of this stuff, this bodily life, is what the Holy Spirit flows through.

That’s good materialism—it’s the way we care about our material existence because it’s all part of God’s creation, and God’s Spirit comes to us through it as we pass the Spirit along through the same material life. And that’s what struck me about this crazy letter I received on Friday. These people take material seriously—even if they misunderstand it at the same time. They offer a golden cross, a “2-1/4 by 1-1/2 inch beautiful, blessed Prosperity Cross.” And they say: “You may wear it, carry it or keep it in your wallet as your point of faith contact with your Heavenly Father for His spiritual, physical, emotional and financial blessings (III John 2, Philippians 4:19, Galatians 6:7, Deuteronomy 8:18, Malachi 3:10, 11).”

So, obviously they are wrong to turn a golden cross into a magical charm to get what we want. But, as cheesy as it sounds, there is something to their language of material things being a “point of faith contact.” I like that language. That seems to be what happens in our story from Acts when John and Peter lay hands on the Samaritan church. There’s a point of contact, which ushers in the Holy Spirit.

I think that’s how we are to see all of our lives. As we go about our day, we are always being drawn into relationships, into points of contact with other people; and what if we welcomed all these moments as places where the Holy Spirit happens in our lives and in their lives, in whoever you touch—whoever you talk to, whoever you stand beside.

For the people who sent me that letter, they talk about faith in a God who wants to give me lots of money and good health. That seems to be a bad form of materialism—a perversion of what God is all about, of what God does in fact provide us. God does give us wealth, God does want us to prosper—but God’s provision looks very different than what they talk about in this letter. God provides us with a wealth of friendships, with sisters and brothers, with a spiritual family that is made up of real, physical people. The material of this world, the material of our lives, is the same stuff that the Holy Spirit is building into the kingdom of God. God gives us people to depend on, and to depend on us. God gives us messy relationships like God gave to John—those people he couldn’t stand, the Samaritans, people he wanted to destroy. And that’s what God gives us—a wealth of people, a spiritual family, a bunch of relationships that circulate the eternal life of the Holy Spirit in our bodies, through our hands, in the present, right now. Every person we encounter comes with a question: will you receive her or him as a spiritual gift, and will you let the Holy Spirit mix your lives together and form the kingdom of God?

On Friday when I checked the mail, I got two letters. I already told you about the first. But I also brought the other one. It’s addressed to all of us here at Chapel Hill Mennonite. This letter testifies to a very different kind of materialism—to use the language from the other letter, this one bears witness to a kind of “point of faith contact.” It’s a letter that shows us what the kingdom of God is all about—and that is our connection to real people, which is the material through which the Holy Spirit circulates. It’s a letter from the Huebners. For those of you who don’t know them, they worshipped with our church last year. Now they’ve moved back to Canada. I’ll close by reading a bit of the letter; it’s written by Rachel on behalf of the whole family:

Dear…friends at CHMF… It’s hard to believe that it has been 8 months since we left you all… By now we are feeling at home in Winnipeg again. But memories of Durham are fresh. The kids often get a far off glazed look in their eyes and say, “Do you remember when…” as if Durham was in another lifetime. We are fortunate to have so many wonderful memories…. We love hearing from everyone and greatly appreciate each email, even if we don’t promptly respond. You are all precious to us. Peace to you, Love Rachel (for the Huebners…Chris, Miriam, Jonah, + Marcus).