Scriptural Sermons

As newly called conscripts, Jesus’ disciples made up a decidedly ragtag corps. Jesus’ first conscripts were Peter and his brother Andrew. Peter and Andrew were, as we all know, fishermen. It’s safe to conclude that Peter was the dominant brother. Peter was always the one to take the lead. He was always the first to speak up. And he was always right at Jesus’ side. In fact, for many key parts of Jesus’ ministry, Andrew was nowhere to be found. He was probably sick of being in Peter’s shadow all the time. No doubt he had been there his whole life long. Jesus’ next conscripts were James and his brother John. Again, they were fishermen. James and John were nicknamed the Sons of Thunder. They must have been fishermen with attitudes. And their attitudes toward Peter and Andrew could only have been competitive. How could it be otherwise? Two sets of brothers? Both sets fishermen? One set nicknamed the Sons of Thunder? And in fact, James and John were known for being competitive. They once took Jesus aside and requested the number two and number three positions in whatever it was that Jesus was hatching. They weren’t even sure exactly what it was, but they were sure that they deserved to have higher positions than the others. Jesus’ next conscript was Matthew. Matthew was not, thank heavens, a fisherman. Had he been a fisherman, it would have complexified group dynamics beyond confusion. Matthew was, rather, a toll collector. This, in fact, would have clarified group dynamics. The four fishermen now had a common enemy. Toll collectors were collaborators with Rome. Not only did they collect tolls from the peoples Rome occupied to pay for their use of Roman roads, but they were notorious for overcharging then skimming off the top. Where there is money, of course, corruption is in the wings. The fishermen may have had their personality flaws – birth order issues, delusions of grandeur, and the like -- but at least they were not traitors and thieves. No doubt the plot thickened with the conscript Judas. Judas was a zealot. You could say that zealots were the opposite of toll collectors. Toll collectors were collaborationists. Zealots were insurrectionists. Zealots opposed Roman occupation with fanatical and violent zeal – hence the name zealot. Their modus operandi was guerrilla warfare. They were known to have mingled among crowds with daggers concealed in their cloaks with which they stabbed Roman sympathizers. This definitely discouraged Roman sympathizers. Rome, in turn, invented the crucifix to discourage Zealots. You can imagine the dynamics between Matthew the collaborationist and Judas the rebel - not exactly kissing cousins. And then there were the rest of the conscripts – Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, James, the son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, and Simon. Not much is written about them, because there was probably not much to write. We could presume them to be slackers. All Thomas is known for, for example, is his doubt. Yes, the newly called conscripts made up a decidedly ragtag corps. It’s a wonder they could be in the same room together. As far as I can make out, they had but one thing in common. They all hoped to get something out of Jesus. They had taken a risk in reporting for duty, albeit not much of one. They didn’t have that much to lose. A toll collector? A zealot? A quartet of fishermen? A handful of slackers? They definitely had more to gain than to lose. But none the less they had taken a risk in reporting for duty. None of them were quite sure what Jesus was establishing, but he was establishing something, and in taking a risk in reporting for duty, they had staked their claim. And now it was payoff time. Jesus was finally getting down to brass tacks. He had made a name for himself throughout all the land through his provocative words and works. He had processed into Jerusalem to public accolades. He had captured the interest of every Jew in the city. The momentum made it certain. The disciples would now receive what they hoped to get out of Jesus. Visions danced in their heads – the fishermen, of prestigious appointments; the toll collector, of money; the zealot, of the overthrow of Rome; the slackers, of sinecures. Jesus had gathered them all together in one room. Their eyes were fixed on him with anticipation. And what did Jesus do? He washed their feet. Peter, true to his personality, would have none of it. That was a servant’s job, and a servant’s most menial job - to wash feet caked with sweat and dirt and dust. Peter sat stupefied with horror as Jesus took off his outer robe and kneeled down before him, “Lord are you’re going to wash my feet?” he cried in dismay. Jesus persevered, saying, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” Jesus tried to impress upon his disciples again and again that even in their incomprehension they must trust him, but it was always for naught, as it was now. Peter declared defiantly, “You will never wash my feet.” But Jesus was not to be dissuaded. “Unless I wash your feet, you have no share in me.” Jesus was now threatening to disown Peter, and this was not lost on him. He repented immediately, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” But Jesus’ intention was not to be altered. And so, he washed their feet. And when he had finished, he attempted to explain why he had done so. “If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. I have set an example that you should do as I have done to you.” So that was it? That was what they were going to get out of Jesus? Jesus was nothing more than a servant, and they were expected to be the servants of a servant? There’s only one way it could have been any worse. They could have been expected to be the servants of a servant of a servant. Had they had time to consider the matter, they would have surely decided to pack it in. First thing in the morning, it would have been back to the nets, back to the toll booth, back to schemes to overthrow Rome, back to the slacking. But they hadn’t time to consider the matter. Before the next day dawned Jesus was arrested by his enemies, and the chain of events was set in motion that would lead to his execution. All this renders downright inexplicable that some few weeks later, Peter and John, no longer ragtag in any sense of the word, now in perfect harmony of purpose, were about the streets of Jerusalem healing in Jesus’ name. For instance, they encountered a crippled beggar at the gates of the temple, that same temple that Jesus had lately cleansed. Peter declared to him, “I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you, in the name of Jesus Christ, stand up and walk.” And he did. And not only were they healing in Jesus’ name, they had taken up Jesus’ cause over against his enemies. And when Jesus’ enemies began to persecute the disciples as they had Jesus, Peter with perfect courage of conviction, proclaimed, “If we are questioned because of a good deed done to someone who was sick…let be known to all of you, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ, whom you crucified, but whom God raised from death…. ‘the stone that was rejected by the builder, has become the corner stone.’ There is salvation in no one else.” The disciples had become servants of the servant - and with no hesitation, reluctance, trepidation, or equivocation. Just the opposite, in fact. They were sure. They were enthusiastic. They were fearless. They were convicted. And so, what did the disciples come to learn between then and now? They came to learn the qualitative difference between what they wanted to get out of Jesus and what Jesus wanted to get out of them. What they wanted to get out of Jesus was in service to themselves. It was, therefore, selfish. And it was worthless, really, of no real value or substance. It would live with them so long as they lived, and then it would die with them. But what Jesus wanted to get out of them was service to humankind in his way of redemption. It was, therefore, selfless. And it was worthy, of real value and substance. And, yes, it would live with them so long as they lived, but it would never die, just as he never died. It was just like he had taught. It was a treasure hidden in a field which someone found and, in his joy went and sold all he had to buy that field. It was the one pearl of great value who someone sold all he had to buy. And learning the qualitative difference between what they wanted to get out of Jesus and what Jesus wanted to get out of them, learning the qualitative difference between service to themselves and service to humankind in his way of redemption made all the difference in their lives. And it makes all the difference in our lives as well. Friends, he conscripts us too to be servants of the servant; and so, “Be imitators of Christ, and live in love, as Christ loves us and gave himself up for us…” Amen.

I spoke over the summer about my late friend Dean. My dad was his good and great friend for over fifty years, and when my dad died, I stood in for my dad as best as I could until Dean’s death this past spring. Dean was no slouch intellectually. He earned an undergraduate degree in theology from Northwestern University and graduate degrees in theology from Yale University. So Dean knew his theology, but his true gift was as a wordsmith. He ended up in the perfect job. He was an editor at the theological journal The Christian Century , a position he held for sixty years. Dean was not someone you would be keen to play Scrabble with, unless you liked to lose. My dad and I could hold our own with him, but when the Scrabble game came out at Thanksgiving, everyone else left the room. 1972 may not seem like a significant year for you, but it is in my family. 1972 is the year the game Boggle came out. Dean brought Boggle to Thanksgiving that year. Boggle allowed him to up his game, because in Scrabble you are limited to 7 letters. In Boggle your letters are unlimited. You can spell as long a word as you can. A few months before he died, Dean was in a rehabilitation facility, and we were playing Boggle in the Recreation Room. A man asked if he could join us. “You really don’t want to do that,” I said. “This man may look innocuous, but he is not. He is as deadly as a shark. Trust me.” “I’ll take my chances,” he said, with naïve confidence. The first word Dean spelled was Anfectung. “Nice one!” I said. “Wait a minute,” the man said. “What in the world is Anfectung?” It sounds foreign. “It’s German,” I said, “but it passed into English untranslated so in my opinion he gets credit.” “But what is it?” He persisted. “It’s when it feels like Satan is pummeling you,” I said. Dean continued, “The word was made famous by Martin Luther. It refers to times of spiritual affliction and trial and terror and despair.” At that point the man said he was throwing in the towel. “I told you he was deadly as a shark,” I called out after him. Anfectung. I guess it’s an insider’s word. But it’s not an insider’s experience. It’s when life hits us; and hits us hard. It’s when we feel crushed under our burdens. It’s when we feel we can’t go on. It’s when we lose loved ones. It’s when we lose jobs. It’s when we develop health problems. It’s when we have accidents. It’s when we find ourselves mired in dysfunction relationships. It’s when we find ourselves in financial trouble. It’s when we learn we have been betrayed. It’s when we wake up in the middle of the night awash with existential dread -- thinking of all the bad things we’ve done; thinking of all the suffering and injustice and misery and violence have wracked existence. It’s when we fear death. At any rate, the Bible gets Antectung. The Bible is not superficial. It doesn’t present us with fake people living fake lives. It presents us with real people with real lives living real lives. And this means it presents us with Anfectung. Think about Job. The thing about Job is that he was a really good person. He had no bad karma. We tend to have this idea that if you’re a really good person, life will reward you. That’s the way it should be anyway. Such was not the case with Job. His servants were murdered and his livestock stolen when marauders fell upon them. Directly thereafter, he lost all ten of his children when their house collapsed on them. But that was not the end for Job. He fell victim to a horrendous wasting disease that covered him with weeping sores. To make matters even worse, his friends turned on him and said he really must not have been a good person all along, for God to visit all these afflictions upon him. “Let the day perish in which I was born! Why did I not die at birth, come forth from the womb and expire?” He cried out. And then there is Paul. Truth be told, he was not as good a person as Job. In his early years he persecuted the nascent church, presiding proudly over the stoning of Stephan. But he turned his life around after he encountered the risen Christ along the road to Damascus. I guess it’s truer to say that Christ turned his life around. At any rate, he put his past behind him. And that’s when his troubles began. He was whipped, beaten with rods, stoned, jailed, and eventually executed. And Job and Paul aren’t isolated examples. God himself demanded that Abraham sacrifice his beloved son. Imagine how you’d feel in the wake of that demand. David’s beloved son was murdered by his own general -- that after David had begged his general to protect him. Jeremiah was persecuted non stop over the course of fifty years. And what about Jesus for crying out loud? The Son of God. The one person in all of history who should have been loved and respected and honored and obeyed. The one person in all history who actually deserved to be worshiped. No, the Bible gets Anfectung. And speaking of Jesus, in the morning’s gospel lesson, his death lay squarely before him. He, however, was more concerned for his disciples than himself. I suppose we can relate to this. As a parent a large part of the reason I hold life so dear is for the sake of my children. At least for now, they need me. I am irreplaceable to them. I couldn’t bear them to grieve my loss then navigate life without me. So Jesus tried one last time to do what he could for his disciples. He gave them twin assurances, first bad news and then good. The bad news: You will have tribulations. They come with life. You will have tribulations. But then the good news. I have already conquered the world. I have already conquered the world. And on his cross he experienced the full gamut of Anfectung. Betrayal. Desertion. Injustice. Pain. Cruelty. Suffering. Loneliness. Desolation. And in his resurrection he overcame them for our sake, so that we can too, starting now and stretching into eternity. He has already conquered the world. And he continued. When we believe this. When we really believe it -- in our hearts and in our minds and in our souls, then amidst our tribulation we will experience the peace that passes understanding. Everyone should read C.S. Lewis. He is perhaps the greatest Christian apologist of the twentieth century. He was writing a letter to a dear friend who was dying a death that was particularly painful. Not surprisingly she experienced Anfectung. This is what Lewis wrote to her: “Pain is terrible, but surely you need not have fear as well? Can you not see death as the friend and deliverer? It means stripping off that body which is tormenting you: like taking off a hair shirt or getting out of a dungeon. What is there to be afraid of? …. Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave it with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind. Remember, though we struggle against things because we are afraid of them, it is the other way round—we get afraid because we struggle. Are you struggling, resisting? Don’t you think Our Lord says to you ‘Peace, child, peace. Relax. Let go. Underneath are the everlasting arms. Let go, I will catch you. Do you trust me so little?’" Friends in Christ, do not trust him so little. Trust him much. Amen.

Exodus 20:1-17 John 20:24-30

The gospel of John, which through most of the history of Christianity has enjoyed a certain prominence, if not to say preeminence, among the gospels, has been demoted by contemporary scholars. It has been demoted on account of all of its abstractions – all of its metaphors and allegories. These indicate to scholars that the gospel of John contains little hard historical information about Jesus; that the gospel of John is, rather, they believe, merely a theological interpretation of him. And hard historical information about Jesus is the name of the scholarly game nowadays. The scholarly game is to extricate from the gospels the “historical Jesus.” The gospel writers were, after all, scholars presume, ancient people with ancient, therefore outmoded, understandings. If scholars could only extricate from the gospels the historical Jesus, we would know who he really was and could respond to him appropriately. If Jesus were really a sage, then we could grow in his wisdom. If he were really a social or political revolutionary, we could join forces against existing power systems. If he were really a healer, then we could bind up the wounded. If he were really a spiritualist, then we could cultivate inner transformation. I, personally, do not salute the gospel of John’s demotion. I am not particularly impressed with the scholarly game of extricating from the gospels the historical Jesus – as though this were even remotely possible in the first place – in order to know who he really was. Bumpkin that I may be, I think the gospel writers knew who he really was and is. He is the Son of God. He is the Lord. And this is precisely why the gospel of John expresses itself in abstractions; in metaphors and allegories. How else does one express the mystery that lies behind history? And the import of history, for Christians at least, is not history itself, but the mystery that lies behind it. It is just as poetry in the last analysis better expresses who we fully are than a biology textbook. Our import is the mystery that lies behind our biological makeup. John indeed understands that Jesus was a historical man, but he seeks to express the import of that historical man, the mystery behind that historical man – that he was the word made flesh. Accordingly, he expresses himself in abstractions – metaphors and allegories. And so Jesus, in the gospel of John, declares of himself: “I am the light of the world.” “I am the bread of life.” “I am the good shepherd.” “I am the gate for the sheep.” And profundity compounds profundity there. For recall that God in the book of Exodus first declared of himself, “I am who I am.” I am who I am?” But who was he? He was an unknown sovereign, further knowledge of which he would not grant to his people, as he struggled with them, disciplined them, formed them away from their rebellious nature into the means of his salvation. But then, in the fullness of time, the word became flesh, no longer, “I am who I am,” but “I am the light of the world, the bread of life, the good shepherd, the gate for the sheep” – no longer unknown, but manifest as our vision in the darkness, our spiritual nourishment, our tender and keeper, our one and only way. No, I, at least, am not quite ready to strip the gospel of John of its rank for its supposed paucity of hard, historical information about Jesus. And of all John’s abstractions, I think the one from this morning’s gospel lesson is my very favorite. “I am the true vine, my father is the vine grower…and you are the branches who bear much fruit.” What a beautiful metaphor. Jesus the vine and we the branches – Jesus sustaining and nourishing us with his own life, infusing us with his own essence, with the father tending us both. What’s more, as branches we bear his fruit. We are in history his ears and eyes, his hands and feet. We are utterly dependent upon him for our life and vocation, but surprisingly, he too is dependent upon us. Here is a metaphor that truly captures the import of history and our history, the mystery behind them both. I suppose this metaphor is my very favorite though because it brings me solace. I have gotten to an age in life where I know I am nothing without him and this metaphor confirms that I am right, that I am nothing without him. But it confirms too that I am not without him. That’s solace. Solace but for one possible spoiler, for Jesus talks of pruning, “Every branch that bears fruit (the father) prunes to make it bear more fruit.” To a branch, pruning is not an inviting prospect. It sounds painful. This talk of pruning turns solace to tension, to fear, to dread even. But, in truth, it should not. What Jesus is teaching when he talks of pruning is the way to view the trials that befall us, whether they are trials that befall us as God’s judgment for our fault or error, or trials that simply befall us, it matters not. Jesus is teaching the way to view them. They are the opportunities to bear more fruit. Our trials must not, must never, then, make us cynical, hard, sullen, bitter, complaining, or angry. No, this is self-indulgent and self-defeating, and the one always leads to the other. What’s worse, it is faithless. No, our trials must open us up to new opportunities for helpfulness, new opportunities for sympathy, understanding, fellow feeling, compassion, and humility. And this too is solace. Not pie crust solace that crumbles before the realities of life, but real solace, that covers the realities of life. The life of C.S. Lewis provides the perfect illustration of this. Many of you are probably familiar with his writings, but perhaps not with his life story. His mother, whom he loved dearly, died when he was a boy of ten. “It was the end of my world,” he wrote. “I remember my father in tears. Voices all over the house. Doors shutting and opening. It was a big house, all long, empty corridors. I remember I had the toothache. I wanted my mother to come to me. I cried for her to come, but she didn’t.” In his suffering, Lewis retreated to a fortress in which he felt safe, away from emotional involvement or attachment. He retreated behind walls of reason and intellect. He grew to adulthood an avowed atheist, but his reason and intellect eventually led him to discredit and disclaim atheism and to embrace Christianity. Upon his conversion to Christianity, he became one of its greatest defenders. But Christianity remained for him an intellectual, rational proposition. Then, rather late in life, he met an American woman – a Jew who had become a communist, who then converted to Christianity after reading Lewis’ books. Her name was Joy Gresham. She had come to England with her son fleeing an unhappy marriage – destitute, distraught, with no real plan but to get away from her old life and to meet Lewis. Theirs became an odd kind of friendship, this now world famous author and this woman of questionable standing. But once she claimed his acquaintance, he felt a certain obligation toward her, an obligation, as well as an appreciation and fascination with her mind. “Her mind was lithe and quick and muscular as a leopard,” he wrote. “Passion, tenderness and pain were all equally unable to disarm it. It scented the first whiff of cant or slush, then sprang, and knocked you over before you knew what was happening.” One day she made a strange request of him -- that he marry her so that she could avoid extradition to America. It was just to be a paper marriage, nothing more. He agreed to do it, and they married by civil ceremony. Shortly thereafter, she was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer. He then and there realized that he had fallen in love with her. They married again on her deathbed, this time by a Christian ceremony. Then a miracle occurred. Her cancer disappeared, and theirs became one of the great love stories of history. But when her reprieve was over, when she died of bone cancer some years later, Lewis’ safe fortress of reason and intellect had been breached. His suffering was extremely intense, but only weeks after her death he was able to write this, “From the rational point of view, what new factor has her death introduced into the problem of the universe? What grounds has it given me for doubting all that I believe? I knew already that these things, and worse, happened daily. I would have said that I had ‘taken them into account.’ I had been warned…We had been promised sufferings. They were part of the programme. We were even told ‘Blessed are they that mourn,’ and I accepted it. I’d got nothing that I hadn’t bargained for……Of course it is a different matter when the thing happens to oneself, not to others…Yes, but should it make such a difference as this? No. It wouldn’t have for a man whose faith had been real faith….whose concern for other people’s sorrows had been real concern. If the house collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards. My faith which ‘took these things into account’ was not faith. The taking them into account was not real sympathy. If I had really cared, as I thought I did, about the sorrows of the world, I would not have been so overwhelmed when my own sorrow came. Mine had been an imaginary faith playing with innocuous counters labeled, ‘Illness’ ‘Pain’ ‘Death,’ and ‘Loneliness.’” For C.S. Lewis then, at the nadir of his suffering over the loss of his beloved Joy, he saw the opportunity to bear more fruit. “I have been given the choice twice in my life. The boy chose safety. The man chooses suffering.” He allowed himself, like his savior and ours, to be made perfect by suffering. Few things are certain in life, but this is. Trials will come to us all. But the mystery behind history, that mystery that once took flesh, teaches us that through our trials we can bear more fruit, and in so doing grow in his likeness. Amen.

The great English novelist and essayist Dorothy Sayers once wrote, “…. it is no wonder that the women were first at the cradle and last at the cross. They had never known a man like Jesus – there had never been such another.” The woman of this morning’s gospel lesson is undoubtedly one of whom Sayers wrote. It is certain to say that she had never known a man alike Jesus, that there had never been such another. The mere fact of the conversation between them would have been unusual enough in her experience. According to the social norms of Jesus’ day, men and women, particularly strangers, did not engage in passing conversation. But passing theological conversation between strange men and women, such as this was, would have been utterly unheard of. Theological conversation between men and women was actually prohibited by Jewish religious law. Add to this that the woman was a Samaritan. There too was a prohibition in Jewish religious law against all contact between Jew and Samaritan. The Jews deemed the Samaritans heretical and unclean. Their animosity towards them was intense. And add to this the Samaritan woman was of suspect moral virtue. By her own admission she had had five husbands and was now living with a man without benefit of marriage. Even by today’s thoroughly libertine standards, this constitutes suspect moral virtue. It accounts too for the reason she was at the well alone at noon in the first place. The well in Jesus’ day was not merely a place to draw water, it was a social center of a community. The members of a community gathered at the well in the relative cool of dusk to socialize and exchange the day’s news. A woman who had had five husbands and was living with a man without benefit of marriage would have been about as welcome in a social center of a community, again, as she would be today. And so she drew her water alone at noon. Yet Jesus entered into conversation with her. As I said, it is certain to say she had never known a man like Jesus, that there had never been such another. Further indication of this is that immediately following their conversation, the Samaritan woman, despite her self-consciousness about her marginalization in her community, rushed unselfconsciously back to her community to share with it her conversation with Jesus. And so, we may conclude from this morning’s gospel lesson that Jesus in a way unprecedented in their experience, entered into conversation with women, even women with more strikes against them than mere womanhood, and in so doing engaged them, elevated them, and evangelized them. But we miss the point entirely if we stop here. Because Jesus entered into conversation not especially or particularly with women, but too with the disenfranchised, insignificant, and scandalous of virtually every imaginable description – those suffering from spiritual torment and mental illness, those afflicted with infectious diseases, the handicapped, criminals, prostitutes, adulteresses, slaves, foreigners, tax collectors, peasants, children……Jesus did not shun any of them. And all of them he engaged, elevated, and evangelized. But we miss the point still if we stop here. Because Jesus entered into conversation not especially or particularly with the disenfranchised, scandalous, and insignificant, but too with those on the upper echelons of the social ladder – the educated, wealthy, and powerful. Jesus entered into conversation with the rabbis of the temple, lawyers, Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, a rich young ruler, and even the Roman procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate. It must be conceded that Jesus, with his penetrating discernment of human motivation was keenly aware that those on the upper rungs of the social ladder, through self-satisfaction or arrogance over their deemed accomplishments and standing were prone to disdain for or affront to Jesus’ conversation, but still he entered into conversation with them. The point is Jesus entered into conversation with everyone – all with equal integrity, authority, and concern. Everyone who met him in fact could say that they had never known a man like Jesus, that there had never been such another. He recognized no particularity whatsoever. And what are we to make of this? What are we to take from it? We need only return to this morning’s gospel lesson for an answer. Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman led her to believe that he was a prophet, and so she sought from him clarification about something she had never understood. “The Samaritans worship on this mountain, but the Jews say worship must take place in Jerusalem.” Jesus replied, “Woman believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship neither place. The hour is coming, indeed is here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and Truth.” Jesus declared to the Samaritan woman that the hour is coming when true worshipers will worship the Father without reference to the particularities of Jew and Samaritan, indeed without reference to any particularities – particularities of gender, denomination, orientation, nationality, race, class, age – because true worshipers will worship the Father in that which will override particularities and declare humankind one – the Spirit and Truth he would bestow upon his church. This then is why Jesus entered into conversation with everyone – to invite everyone beyond their particularities to his church. And his invitation was as radical and universal as his love. He invited everyone. He invited everyone. It sure sounds good. But that open invitation has issued a strenuous challenge to the church since its inception. The very first Christians wondered with dismay and chagrin – Surely Jesus could not have meant the Gentiles? But of course he did, and that strenuous challenge is now our own – to be the church in the fullness of our particularities, in this complex and confusing post modern world in which the fullness of our particularities have overrun and overwhelmed us. But the test of whether we are the church is how well we meet this strenuous challenge. Perhaps precisely when we experience the dismay and chagrin of the first Christians, it may signal particularities we must struggle to overcome. Perhaps too it is the very calling of Christians to engage in strenuous challenges and without them we become jejune and feckless. One thing is certain, it is only by his Spirit and Truth that our efforts to be the church will succeed, so let it be our common commitment to enter fully into that Spirit and Truth, and in so doing endeavor to unite with all those who with us in his Spirit and Truth declare him Lord. Amen.

One of my favorite poems was written by the Christian poet John Donne. I am sure you are familiar with it. It begins, “No man is an island.” The reason I love that poem is because it corrects the sense we tend to have, the fear we tend to have, that we are indeed islands. We are different from one another. We are separate from one another. We are alone. Because we do have that sense. This is why, I suppose, we project images of pleasantry and normalcy and sameness. We want to fit in. We want to be, in Donne’s words, “a piece of the continent; a part of the main.” No one wants to be an island. I had an experience last week that was really revealing. A student of mine asked me to come to her vocal recital. “You sing?” I asked, trying to conceal my surprise, because she is really quiet and self spoken. “Actually, singing is my passion,” she said. So I went to her recital -- sat with a colleague from the music department. Her performance was nearly indescribable. Her vulnerability was in full display. It was so obvious she was risking herself; and taking that risk because of who she wanted to be, but was held back by her shyness from being. Her performance was magnificent, made all the better because her full humanity was on display. It was met by thunderous applause. Afterward, my colleague and I rushed her. “You were fantastic! You are an inspiration to everyone to hazard yourself to the world!” I exclaimed. “Never mind that,” my colleague in the music department said. “Your performance was, musically speaking, flawless.” She teared up. Then tears were rolling down her face. I sensed it was more than gratitude for the compliments. “All my life I have felt so trapped by my shyness,” she confessed.. “I felt like I never belonged, like an outsider looking in on life. It’s hard to explain.” “I understand perfectly,” I said. And I did because of Donne’s poem. She felt different, separate, and alone. She felt she was an island. When she performed, she felt like she had finally joined the human race. I noticed my colleague in the music department wasn’t saying anything. “I understand perfectly too,” he in his turn confessed. “My late mother was an alcoholic. I spent my entire childhood hiding that fact. I had no friends outside school. If someone invited me over I had to say no, since I could never invite them back. Talk about feeling like an outsider looking in. I looked in at everyone who seemed to be living their lives free of shame and secrecy.” He felt different, separate, and alone. He felt like he was an island. “I suppose music was my way out too. My fellow musicians became my family.” As I said, it was a revealing experience. What it revealed is that it’s true. It’s a fact. We probably all, for one reason or another, tend to have the sense, the fear, that we are islands. It could be the result of shyness, or as the result of an alcoholic parent. It could be the result of a disease or disability. It could be as the result of some hidden vice. It could be the result of a non-traditional family. It could be the result of being the black sheep in a traditional family. It could be the result of money problems. It could be the result of creed or race or orientation. We could all cry with Job, “My brethren are wholly estranged from me!” Jesus was walking from Judea to Galilee, a distance of about 100 miles. When’s the last time you walked a hundred miles? That’s quite a distance. And it was seriously hot in that region especially at noon. 100 miles and 100 degrees. Jesus was tired, so when he came upon a well he sat down to rest. The only wrinkle is that the well was in Samaria, enemy territory. There was no love loss between the Jews and the Samaritans. A Samaritan woman came to draw water. But this would have been odd. Unless you were a traveler, no one came to draw water at noon. No one came out at all at noon. The sun was too high in the sky. It was too hot. Noon was lunch time and nap time. Only after the sun was nearly set did people come to the well to draw water. But she couldn’t come at that time. She felt different, separate, and alone. She felt like an island. Worse, she felt like an outcast. But why? It was because she had had five husbands, and the man with whom she was presently living was not sixth. The passage does not tell us why. Why did the Samaritan woman have this string of men in her life? I suppose it could be that she was a brazen and licentious woman. It could be, but I doubt it. Women didn’t have the choice to be brazen and licentious in those days. It’s probably more likely she was some kind of a victim. In those days women’s fortunes turned on their husbands. Their lives were lived largely in the private sphere as opposed to the public sphere. They had no outlets in any public arena. If women had a bad husband, their lives were largely reduced to that. So for her first husband, she probably had a bad husband, hence a bad life. But by the same token a woman needed a husband to subsist. The first husband either died or left her. Then she needed to find a new husband. Who would want her? What value had she? The cast off of a bad husband. And so she probably went from bad to worse, with her second husband even worse than the first. And her value decreased with each successive husband. The man she was with presently wouldn’t even marry her. I am speculating, of course, but my guess is that she had that string of men in her life because it was the only way she could survive. Who would choose that for herself, after all? But here’s the thing. Jesus refrained from judging her. A Samaritan woman with a string of men in her life. He instead engaged in a conversation with her. And he was no fellow outcast. He was the word made flesh, the Son of God. But he engaged with her in a conversation -- talked to her like she mattered, like she had a mind. He made her feel less different, less separate, less alone, less like an island. Even his disciples were blown away by this. And she was so elated by her feeling that someone had addressed her like she was actually a member of the human race, she rushed back to her fellow Samaritans, those who had stigmatized her. She announced with thrill that she could only have just met the Messiah, and she introduced Jesus to them. And he stayed among them, they who were now unified by their common allegiance to him. Now we should get this. We all unified by our common allegiance to Jesus the Messiah. And it helps us to overcome our feeling, our fear, that we are different, separate, alone...that we are islands. But what we may not get is that there is a world of strangers out there who we may presume feel that they are different, separate, and alone, that they are islands. And so Jesus bids us to follow his example. We are to forswear all judgement. We are to engage all people in ways to make them feel that they are loved and honored and respected, that they belong to the human race. Because the bottom line is that we need each other. We need each other because God created us to need each other. At the end of my favorite poem, someone has died. A bell is tolling that death. “Do not ask for whom the bell tolls,” Donne wrote, “It tolls for thee.” We have that in common, at least. We are all going to die. And Jesus through his cross has used our common fate as a way to unify us eternally with his father. That is our destiny, so until that time, let us all prefigure it. Amen.

I am a big fan of the teachable moment. For those of you who might have heard that expression but can’t quite name what it is, a teachable moment is when a spontaneous occasion arises for you to teach -- to offer your expertise or experience. The key word here is spontaneous. As a teacher, a teachable moment occurs when I am delivering a routine lecture, and someone asks a question. This allows me to apply the material in a fresh way that is relevant to the questioner. As a parent, a teachable moment occurs for me about a hundred times a day. This is because kids have so very much to learn on so very many levels. Teachable moments are an ad hoc kind of way to teach, but some of the best teaching takes place in teachable moments. I think it’s precisely because they are spontaneous. They’re live. They’re real life. Jesus, in this morning’s gospel lesson, had a teachable moment -- at least he thought he did. A massive crowd had followed him into the middle of nowhere. Jesus had gone to the middle of nowhere to get away from it all. But the crowd heard he had been performing miracles, and they wanted to witness one. But getting to the middle of nowhere took some time, and by the time the crowd got there, they were tired, but particularly they were hungry. They had wanted to witness a miracle, and they were about to. Jesus canvassed the crowd for what food they had. It was not much -- two fish and five loaves of bread. Jesus multiplied them so that the entire crowd was amply fed with leftovers to spare. That got their attention. Jesus then again tried to get away from it all, but it was not to be. By the next morning, the crowd caught up with him. They wanted to see that miracle repeated. But this time it was not so much for the sake of witnessing a miracle, but because the miracle filled their bellies. They saw Jesus as their meal ticket. “You’ve got it all wrong,” Jesus told them, and he attempted to clarify. “I am more than a meal ticket. The miracle got your attention. That’s why I performed it -- so that I have your attention when I impart to you the fullness of it, when I impart to you that I am God’s gift to you of divine life for all eternity.” The crowd was flabbergasted, flabbergasted as well as skeptical, if not to say chagrined. “Just who are you claiming to be?” The crowd demanded. “Moses himself, the founder of the faith, fed his people bread miraculously. Remember manna, Jesus? So you are saying you are greater than Moses?” Here it was. His teachable moment. “ So you are saying you are greater than Moses?” “Yes, exactly! Yes, precisely! That’s what I am saying. Yes, and yes again. That’s it. Moses fed his people bread miraculously. He satisfied their physical hunger. But still they died. I am greater than Moses. I have come not merely to satisfy your physical hunger. I have come to awaken in you a spiritual hunger, a hunger for God’s gift of divine life for all eternity which I and I alone can give you. You must believe that I am the Bread of Life!” Unfortunately, his teachable moment did not go so well. Their response has to be the lamest responses in human history. “Oh yeah?” They retorted. “Well we happen to know where you came from. We know you are Joseph’s son from Nazareth.” Joseph was some random carpenter. Nazareth was in the boondocks. Yes, this is as lame as it gets. For one thing, it’s wrong -- demonstrably and empirically wrong. Great men (and women) emerge out of nowhere. There are no predictors for great men and women, none, whatsoever. Not place. Not time. Not lineage. Not gender. Not race. Not wealth. Not education. Great men and women just emerge. Abraham. Moses. David. Amos. Ruth. Mary. Paul. Or closer to home Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King, Jr., young Malala who I mentioned a couple weeks ago. You could probably name a few. They all just emerged. But beyond that there is an insidious prejudice lurking that unless you have the right zip code, the right era, the right family, the right sex, the right color, the right net worth, the right degree, you’ll never amount to anything. So his teachable moment was lost to lameness, lameness in the extreme. It makes you wonder just why his teachable moment failed so miserably? Didn’t he at least deserve the benefit of the doubt? I mean, he did just multiply those loaves and fishes. And 5,000 people means a lot of multiplication. And prior to that he healed a paralyzed man, paralyzed for nearly forty years. And prior to that he healed a boy who was more dead than alive. And prior to that he turned water into wine. They had nothing to lose, after all. His offer was not exactly shabby - divine life for all eternity. Not too bad an offer in the face of all the ravages of sin which play out under the specter of death. They had nothing to lose, they just had to believe. But they refused. They shut him down because of where he came from. It’s inexplicable really. Friends, his teachable moment still stands. It is now offered to us. He speaks to us across the centuries. “I care about your physical needs. I care deeply. This is why I fed you. This is why I healed you. This is why I rescued you from death. I care about your physical needs. But there is more than the physical. There is the spiritual. And this is my ultimate care. I can bestow upon you spiritual life, divine life, in the here and now and in the great hereafter. Because I am greater than Moses. I am greater than any man. I am the Bread of Life. Believe in me.” How will his teachable moment go with us? Will it go any better, or will we refuse his offer? Will we shut him down? Of course, we can’t do so using their response - We know where you came from. That’s already been exposed for its lameness. But there are other forms of lameness. How about this one? “You and that musty old book full of myths and miracles. It’s so passe we wouldn’t even bother to open it. We have a better offer than yours, and one much more up to date. We have high tech distractions. We have laptops and smartphones. We have netflix and amazon prime. We have facebook and instagram. We have world travel and even space travel.” How will his teachable moment go with us? Will it be lost to our own forms of lameness? Blaise Pascal was one of my heroes. He was a great man who, parenthetically, emerged out of nowhere. He was home schooled by his father who was a tax collector. He turned out to be one of the greatest geniuses in human history. He was a brilliant and groundbreaking Mathematician and Physicist, but he is best known as a theologian. He never intended to be a theologian. God intended him to be a theologian. Like Paul and Augustine, he had a dramatic conversion experience. At any rate, as a theologian, he developed what came to be known as Pascal’s wager. His wager stated that it is only rational to wager that God exists. If he does not, you’ve lost nothing, doubtless lived a more moral and upright life that accomplished some good. But if you wager God does not exist, and he does, you’ve lost everything. Let Pascal’s wager be our own. As Christ implores us, “Do not doubt but believe.” Amen.

I have a word for you. Hamartia. H A M A R T I A. Hamartia. Don’t be concerned if you’ve never heard of it. You should never have heard of it. It’s not even English. It’s Greek. It’s an archery term. It has to do with missing the mark. If you think of it, there are many ways you can miss the mark in archery. You can aim poorly. You can aim at the wrong thing. You can not aim at all. At any rate, there you have it. Hamartia. A Greek archery term for missing the mark. But, you may be thinking, so what? It’s highly unlikely that there is even one among us who would claim to be an archer. The only thing we aim is our clicker at the television. Hamartia? So what? But I’d push back a bit here. We may not be archers, but our ancestors were. For tens of thousands of years, they aimed their arrows. They aimed their arrows until it became part of their very make up. And we are their descendants. Their make up is our make up. Psychologically, at least, we still aim. We aim at all sorts of things. But of greater import is the fact that hamartia is the biblical word for sin. And it is the perfect choice of words, because it captures perfectly the biblical concept of sin. To sin is to aim poorly. It is to aim at the wrong thing. It is to not aim at all. It is to miss the mark, and the mark, of course, is God. And speaking of foreign words, I have another one for you. This one is Hebrew. Torah. T O R A H. Torah. The Torah is the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, in other words, The Law. It is often translated teaching, but this is no translation at all. It’s more of a colloquialism. Torah is properly translated as the straight shoot of an arrow. To follow the law, then, is to position yourself to hit the mark, and again the mark is God. Yes, this concept of sin is all over the Bible. It’s very simple really. It boils down to this. If you want to avoid sin, aim toward God. Aim toward God. And the Bible gives us ample evidence of what happens when you don’t aim toward God. Cain. Lamech, Saul, to name a few. And then there’s Nabal from this morning’s Old Testament Lesson. Nabal, by the way, means fool. Nabal was a rich man, loaded in fact. He made his fortune in sheep and goats. So clearly much of his life was spent aiming toward money. But it brought him no happiness. You know that expression that money does not buy happiness? Well it’s true. No, Nabal, as the Bible describes him, was surly and mean. And you could add to that he was miserly. David, having fled Saul’s court for his life, was living in the wilderness with a band of loyal men. Some of David’s men approached Nabal with a request. Might Nabal throw a feast for David and his men? It was a feast day, and David and his men, after all, had been protecting Nabal’s flocks and shepherds in the wilderness. Nabal had three thousand sheep and a thousand goats. That’s a lot of protection. Plus, it was David who was asking. David was by this time a prestigious and famous and heroic man. He was soon to be king. It was actually an honor to be asked to throw a feast for David and his men. But Nabal jeered at the request. He flung insults and invectives at David’s men. That’s how it goes with cussed figures like Nabal. They lie in wait, like a spider in its web, hoping they will be engaged so that they can make everyone else as miserable as they are. David at once had the measure of the man, and he would have straight away killed him had Nabal’s wife Abigail not intervened. Behind Nabal’s back she herself provided the feast, apologizing profusely to David for her husband. It gave David time to pause. He realized that had he taken vengeance upon Nabal he would have been aiming at the wrong thing. He would have been aiming at vengeance, not at God. Nabal, David reckoned, wasn’t worth his sin. The next day, Abigail confessed to Nabal what she had done, and Nabal had a coronary. Literally. His heart exploded with rage and he died. The world was well rid of him. David and Abigail were married, and they never looked back. Yes, the Bible gives ample evidence of what happens when you don’t aim toward God. You live a life of sin. You make hell on earth for yourself and everyone around you. This certainly provides us with some strong motivation to aim toward God. But the question then becomes, How? How do we aim toward God? We do so by listening to the command of his son. “I am the way the truth and the life.” But I’m afraid this immortal expression lands us back in the land of foreign words. I am the way, Jesus, declares, that’s clear enough, and it’s true enough. Jesus is the way. But he then declares that he is the truth. It’s that word truth. It doesn’t mean what you think. It doesn’t mean what we normally think of when we think of the word truth – truth and opposed to falsehood. It means something more like the true flight of an arrow. Jesus is declaring that that he is our mark. He is our way; he is our mark, and when we aim toward him, we will have found Godly life – life free of sin and full of blessing. This gives new meaning to the expression “Aim high.” Yes, friends, aim high; higher than all that the world can give you. Aim for the God of Jesus Christ. Aim for heaven. Amen.