Pure and Undefiled

Pure and Undefiled from Joseph Taber on Vimeo.

James 1:17-27

17Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. 18In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.

19You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; 20for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. 21Therefore rid yourselves of all the sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.

22But be does of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. 23For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; 24for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. 25But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act - they will be blessed in their doing.

26If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. 27Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

This is the Word of the LORD

Thanks be to God

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

1Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, 2they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. 3(For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) 5So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” 6He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; 7in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’ You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”

14Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: 15there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.

21For is is from within,from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, 22adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. 23All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.

This is the Word of the LORD

Thanks be to God.

Let me tell you why I think the decline of mainline protestantism is a good thing.

How's that for an attention-grabbing first line.

For about the last forty years, United Methodists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, some Baptists, and Presbyterians have seen their churches grow older, and grow smaller. They still have the big steeple in the center of town, but they no longer have the people to fill their pews.

What's more, the culture has shifted. We used to dominate the culture. Churches used to be the only thing open on Sunday, and "blue laws" kept it that way. We didn't have to compete with brunch or weekend sales for the attention of the people around us. We could build a new building, or a better program, or hire the best staff, and people would fill our sanctuaries and education wings. The church was the center of the culture, and all each individual congregation had to do was be healthy enough that people didn't leave as soon as they arrived.

Now, however, that is not the case.

The church is not the cultural and political powerhouse it used to be. We can no longer rely on our position in society to protect us. Mainline membership rolls and budgets are shrinking, and the solutions that have sustained us for so many generations are meeting with less and less success.

People increasingly see the church as hypocritical, judgmental, and irrelevant. The expectation is that “church people” are always proper, and that our God is supposed to somehow protects us from all harm because we are pure and undefiled by sin.

Perhaps instead of claiming we are pure and undefiled, we should admit we are broken and unworthy, that “every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” For the church, success doesn’t mean larger crowds and bigger budgets, it means pointing to Christ in both joy and grief. We recognize, as James urges us, that God, the Father of lights, is the source of all our gifts.

I think the decline of mainline protestantism is a good thing. I think that in those days of cultural dominance, the church forgot who it was, and whose it was. We forgot that we are the church of Jesus Christ. We forgot that  God, “In fulfillment of his own purpose… gave us birth by the word of truth.” We grew dependent on the culture and upon civil authorities to ensure our survival.

As our numbers decline and our dominance fades, we remember that the church is not called to survive, it's called to proclaim resurrection. In a frightened world, the church is a beacon of hope declaring that though we have much to fear, we know that our Lord, Jesus Christ, is more powerful than fear. The decline of mainline protestantism has forced us to reclaim our identity.

The church’s story moves from slavery to liberation, from death to resurrection. When we are the same as the culture to which we are sent, it is all the more difficult to offer our story as an alternative. We get caught up in the anxiety around us, we start to believe the fear that creeps so easily into our consciousness. In those moments, when we forget who we are and whose we are, we deceive our own hearts. 

In the days our cultural dominance, we somehow began to equate the size of a church with God's action in a church. The dominant logic was that if God was really working in a church, then their membership would swell. But God doesn't always work in that way, and growth does not always mean numbers.

The American Church is emerging from a time when we bought into a narrative of a passive faith. The cultural forces at work taught churches nationwide that all we had to do was show up and listen. We’re called to worship God in thought, word, and deed. American Christians have a lot of practice at worshipping God in word. Presbyterians, with our emphasis on education, have a long tradition of worshipping God in thought. From a place of cultural dominance we can do both these things passively. “James addresses the deception of passive faith and offers a durable definition of pure religion, the word of God indeed.” Just as Jesus is the Word of God made flesh, so the church is called to enact the word that has been planted in us.

The Pharisees and some of the robes step onto the scene. Folks who upheld tradition to the point that it became an idol. Their once-faithful practices grew stale and they could not see the new life God was breathing into them. Their tradition, just like the best parts of ours, was rooted in scripture.“…the fault lay in this, that they did not think that God could be properly worshipped in any other way.” They were so busy trying to build themselves up that they deceived themselves into trying to limit God. They were doing thrift deed, but for the wrong reason.

We've been fighting the battles between intention and action for a long time. Action that is not backed up by faithful intention is hollow. Good intentions without actions are worthless. When these issues come before Jesus, he sidesteps the hand washing and drives to the heart of the matter. “By quoting Isaiah, Mark indicates that this issue is not unique to Jesus or the Marcan community, but has a history extending back to the prophets.” The Epistle of James shows that conflict between right belief and living our beliefs extends into the early church, and our own experience teaches us that it didn’t end there. We're not going to win that battle. We're fighting against our own nature, and the image of God in which we are created is stained, defiled by the evil intentions of our broken hearts.

But the battle is won, and we don't have to fight anymore. We just have to do. We have to remember that so much of this nonsense is just passing through. At is growing within us, each of us and all of us, is the implanted word, the word of truth.

In worship, we reveal who we really are, and if we’re different outside worship, that’s where we’re pretending. Worship reminds us of our identity and empowers us to be doers of the Word.

But we cannot stop there. This sanctuary is not meant to keep the world out and it is not meant to keep the people of God in. God has brought our hearts close to himself and "in fulfillment of his own purposes he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures."

With the word of truth implanted in us, the commandments of God flow out of us. If we act otherwise then we are just fooling ourselves. When we hear God's word, we must be doers who act simply because that is who we are.

So if we're not doing, we are hiding from our own identity, an identity rooted in Jesus Christ. "You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God's righteousness." So many of the things spinning around us in the air are pushing us towards division, and anger, and fear. But we will not be teased out into anger, because there's no room inside us for things that can defile. We will be called forth in joy as the ones who are filled with the presence of Christ. The Word became flesh and made his home among us, now as those who look to the perfect law, as we are abandoned the commandment of God, we persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act.

So in the coming years, as the American Church is said to be in decline, the Presbyterian Church of Lowell will worship God, grow in faith, and show God’s love to everyone. We will do this not from a sense of superiority, but because we remember our identity as the church of Jesus Christ. We will be guided by our tradition, but we will not make an idol of it. We will hear God’s word proclaimed, but we will not stop at hearing. We will live what we believe by pointed to the sovereignty of God over all aspects of our life, not just within these walls.

We will be doers of the word, and even when we fall into the vil intentions of our own broken hearts, we will still welcome with meekness the implanted word which has already saved us. God’s word commands response and summons us to life, and we will be doers of the word. We will proclaim the good news of God in our actions as a church, and in our interactions between particular members.

Because that’s simply who we are: our identity is rooted in whose we are. And we belong to God. Amen.

Spellbound

Isaiah 56:6-8

6And the foreigners who join themselves to the LORD,

to minister to him, the love the name of the LORD,

and to be his servants, all who keep the sabbath

and do not profane it, and hold fast my covenant-

7these I will bring to my holy mountain,

and make them joyful in my house of prayer;

their burnt offerings and their sacrifices

will be accepted at my altar;

for my house will be a house of prayer for all peoples.

8Thus says the LORD GOD, who gathers the outcast of Israel,

I will gather others to them besides those already gathered.

This is the Word of the LORD

Thanks be to God

Mark 11:15-19

15Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; 16and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. 17He was teaching and saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations? But you have made it a den of robbers.”

18And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching. 19And when evening came, Jesus and his disciples went out of the city.

This is the Word of the LORD

Thanks be to God.

This passage belongs in Holy Week.

The story falls just a day after Jesus parades through the streets of Jerusalem, after the Hosannas have dwindled to murmurs in the shadow of the temple. Jesus began his week with a triumphal entry on Sunday, a first thing Monday morning he heads to the temple to stir things up.

This passage belongs in Holy Week, yet it's also a difficult word to hear when our worshipping lives dwell amid the ritual, tradition, and beauty of an established church. After all, as one of the lunch bunch crowd pointed out, we have tables, we sell things to raise money.

This passage belongs in Holy Week, because Holy Week is the season when we read scripture that should make us uncomfortable, even as we look to the liberation of the cross and the empty tomb. But at the end of August, the discomfort we nurtured during Lent and Holy Week is dwarfed by the ritual and routine of summertime worship and back-to-school rhythms.

But in spite of all the discomfort, and its distance from our minds and routines at this point, when I asked someone at the beginning of the week what their favorite passage of scripture was, they immediately lifted up this story of Jesus flipping over tables.

The generally gentle Christ gets a little violent in this passage. It stands out, folks remember it, are attracted to it even, and oftentimes we bring our own baggage along for the story.

This passage is often used as an invective against false worship. People look at Jesus’s action here and see a man who has lost his temper at all the ways people were misusing the temple for personal gain.

Wouldn’t you know it, every person who looks into this passage sees Jesus condemning the very worship styles they themselves dislike. Each to their own bias, as their limitations give them perspective. The author and theologian Anne Lamott wrote that “You can be pretty sure you’ve created God in your image when it turns out he hates all the same people you do.”

Commentaries lift up a church that is absent of social justice, or a church that is too accommodating of a culture, or a church that is stuffed up with doctrine, or a church that doesn’t have any discipline. Is Jesus condemning organized religion? Is he condemning religion that supports Imperial authority? Is he condemning a sinful culture that threatens to contaminate pure traditional worship?

Almost every time this passage is brought up, it’s a judgment against folks who aren’t doing church right. Wouldn’t you know it, the folks who aren’t doing church right are always someone else, never the folks doing the judging?

But this story is not just a judgement we can pull out to support our own biases. This little corner of the gospel is good news. I don’t think it’s about false worship, I think it’s about God intervening in our lives in unexpected ways. This story is one where God comes to the center of our community and purifies it.

The temple was the center of Jewish religious life, it was the house of the holy of holies, where the Ark of the Covenant was kept. This is the throne of the Most High God. The connection with the LORD radiated out from that architectural point to the surrounding countryside and the rest of creation. One could not pass through Jerusalem without passing by the temple. At its best, it was the beating heart of Jewish identity, a grand promise for the promised land. A center where anyone could come and access the Holy One of Israel.

So here's the thing, it's not so much a matter of false and true worship, the temple was a real thing that was the center of life for God's covenant people. The temple was filled with all the reverence and ritual of God's own law and human interpretation. People had to purify themselves even to enter the building.

And yet, even the holy of holies could not contain the Lord of Hosts. Despite humanity’s best efforts to establish and uphold God’s law, the temple still needed cleansing.

We are given some clues as to what practices were going on, but if we get too lost in the content of what Jesus cast out we’ll miss the organizing narrative. Questions about doves and moneychangers and what people were carrying through the temple must not distract us from the whole story.

Then one day, the Son of Man entered the temple. He cleansed it of impurities and reminded those in the temple of what that religious institution was meant to be: just as the covenant people were to be a beacon to all peoples, so the temple was to be a house of prayer for all nations.

Jesus does not condemn the practices from a distance, he doesn’t complain about how things should be better. He takes action. Jesus is the embodied Word of God, and when the Father commits him to cleansing, that means teaching with both the words of his mouth and the movement of his body. The Son of Man, the Word made Flesh, God with Us, chooses a dramatic, disruptive action and breaks the whole assembly out of their stuckness.

Jesus intervenes in the temple, reminding those around him of their identity grounded in God’s action. When he entered the temple that day, amid all the noise and busy-ness, “Christ…had only this object in view, to show by one visible token that God had committed him to the office of purifying the temple” (John Calvin. Calvin’s Commentaries, Volume 17. 11-12.) In purifying it, he gives the people back to themselves, he gives them the freedom to follow what God is doing in the world. 

The people are spellbound by his teaching. Uncontested amazement at the glory of God that shone through this man, Jesus. For the house of prayer for all nations and the beacon to all people are dim reflection of the light that shines in the darkness, which is Christ. And the darkness does not extinguish the light.

In this passage, Jesus cleanses and lifts up the earthly throne of God. The holiest aspects of human life are not exempt from God’s purifying redemption. A few chapters after this one, Jesus will be lifted up, not on a throne, but on the cross. The depths of human suffering are also not exempt from God’s unexpected and redemptive intervention.

So we can use this passage to criticize others if we choose, although I wouldn't bother. Seems to me like if we use scripture to judge others we forget that we also are subject to judgement. Perhaps instead we should remember that holiness is not a function of who is always right, it's a gift from the one who sits at God's right hand.

So perhaps this passage doesn’t belong in Holy Week. Perhaps the shadow of the cross extends so far that we do not see this cleansing in the joyful light that leaves the people spellbound. Perhaps this little chapter of the gospel belongs in ordinary time, to remind us that neither the heights of human achievement not the depths of human suffering are beyond the reach of our loving and sovereign God.

Therefore we are joined to the LORD, not through our own ability but through the cleansing love of Christ, who casts out so that all may be invited in. It is our Lord Jesus Christ who holds us through his words and his action, and who brings us to God’s holy mountain, and makes us joyful in God’s house of prayer. For the LORD is our God, who fashioned and made us, protects and sustains us, and reaches into all facets of humanity to make us whole, and to gather us in gratitude to sing Praise to God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Living Bread

Living Bread from Joseph Taber on Vimeo.

Proverbs 9:1-6

1Wisdom has built her house, she has hewn her seven pillars.

2She has slaughtered her animals, she has mixed her wine, she has also set her table.

3She has sent out her servant-girls, she calls from the highest places in the town,

4”You that are simple, turn in here!” To those without sense she says,

5”Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed.

6Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight.”

This is the Word of the LORD

Thanks be to God

John 6:51-58

51I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

52The Jews disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up in the last day; 55for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. 56 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. 57Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.

This is the Word of the LORD

Thanks be to God.

Dear John,

Why so complex? Why do you make everything so complicated and confusing? You record all these saying of Jesus and he seems to speak in circles. Now John, I’m not saying you’re bad at communicating, I’m just saying that Matthew and Luke didn’t have this problem. But you, John, you love a good image. And I wonder, you know, as a concerned brother in Christ, if maybe you get a little lost in your metaphors. For example: this “living bread” you talk about. I mean, is it bread, is it flesh, is food, is it Jesus? Listen John, Jesus is clearly offering us a gift here, and the way you have told the story has given us an excuse to take that gift and use it as a wedge. I’m not blaming you, John, I’m just saying that we’ve been given “living bread” and because we’re people, often simple and without sense, we need a little more clarity from our gospel writers. I’m not saying I blame you, I’m just saying it’s your fault. After all, John, We’re not that different from the Jews who surrounded Jesus, not understanding who it was that stood before them. "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"

John, you’re a great writer, and when you get those images rolling, there’s some really beautiful stuff in your library. That whole Word became flesh and made his home among us thing? Big fan. You’re better than any of the other gospels and point to how Jesus is God, and I think that’s really important. But seriously, John, how does that whole life of the world/flesh/bread/Jesus thing work itself out? Can you give a footnote or something to explain it?

Well let’s see how Jesus clears things up “So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you earth the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”

See John, that’s what I’m talking about. I don’t feel like I know any better than I did before what’s going on. You seem to be really resisting my polite request for an explanation.

John, it makes me wonder if maybe the “living bread” doesn’t have a clear explanation, and you’re just enjoying the mystery of it all. That seems like your style John. You crowd the images into your version of the story so that we won’t be able to diagram the details. Instead, perhaps it’s more fitting for us to be grateful for the mystery.

After all, Wisdom invites us in.

John, you remember Wisdom. Not our own wisdom, of course. Wisdom takes on human form in the book of Proverbs. She's an aspect of the divine, a personification of a gift from God. The one who comes from God invites us in to a meal she has prepared, in a house she has built. John, Wisdom’s hospitality spreads even to the simple, the immature, those without sense. Dining with wisdom is not an awards banquet for those who are most brilliant, or most discerning.

John, Wisdom invites us in to share a meal that is a gift for all.

Perhaps that's what we overlooked in the living bread. We have sought to explain, understand, nail down, and we have forgotten who has invited us into the meal. The divine wisdom that surpasses all understanding sets a table before us and invites us to eat living bread. The Word made flesh who made his home among us offers us true food and true drink. "Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me."

We live because of Christ. There's a double meaning in that. Not only is Christ our source of life, but he's also our purpose for living. We live because of Christ, who lives because of the living Father. I wonder, John, if you piled your gospel full of imagery and metaphor because you wanted to preserve the mystery of God.

John, here’s what I think. We come to this table to eat living bread, not because of any magic trick, but because in Communion, we are elevated by the power of the Holy Spirit to dine with our Lord. I don't know how it happens, I only know that when we gather around this bread and this cup, we are awakened to the real presence of Christ in our midst.

A few years ago, I sat in on a few session of a Worship and the Arts Conference. The worship leader was a Korean artist, and as the week wound down, he invited us to join the conferees for their closing ceremony, which would involve communion.

We gathered around small tables, sitting or kneeling next to them in a very traditional Korean Presbyterian posture. Then the worship leaders began passing out the elements, the bread and the cup, for us to share the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. The juice was a simple cup of grape juice, just like you could find in any of a thousand Presbyterian Church across the United States, but the bread was different.

It was colorful, not just the browns and whites of a regular loaf of bread, but with blue and green in it as well. The worship leader explained that this bread was a special kind of rice cake. In the Korean culture, they baked this cake for special celebration, times of great joy.

John, as you know, I’m a middle class white American male, so to translate it from their culture to mine, it was the equivalent of using birthday cake as communion bread. The bread itself represented the liveliness of celebration, the joy of a shared meal. John, I’ve got to tell you, I cannot think of a more appropriate bread for communion. We remember Christ who broke the bread and gave it to us, and also we remember that this is a the joyful feast of the people of God. The liveliness of the celebration points us right back to the living bread. It reminds us that we live because of Jesus. That, John, is a joy worth celebrating.

So John, I guess I take it back. The layered meanings aren’t meant to answer or explain, they’re meant to point us toward the mystery of the living bread which we eat until it consumes us. The living bread shows how the story of Jesus overwrites and completes our own narrative, and is the root of our identity, even as we express it in our own particular ways.

John, in our congregation, the communion bread is usually a baked pie crust, sliced into serving and passed around to be shared by all. I think that is every bit as fitting as the celebratory rice cake of the Korean Worship and the Arts Conference. Here in the south, we have deep roots of sharing a home-baked pie as a sign of love, of hospitality. The fillings are interchangeable: blueberry, apple, blackberry, cherry, rhubarb, but the value is knowing that it is extended as a gift, as an expression of love.

Here in our culture, John, the pie crust carries the love of the community to whomever eats it. So too the communion bread carries the love of Christ to all who eat it. For Christ is the living bread.

What’s more, our congregation has a special connection to pie crust. John, you know we’ve put together thousands of Chicken Pot Pies and sold them so that we could reach out to the community around us with a playground.

So as we take communion this morning, we are to remember the living bread, which is given for the world. John you know that just as the living Father sent Jesus, and he lives because of the Father, so whoever eats the living bread will live because of Christ. With all your complicated layers and sometimes confusing images and metaphors, John, we’ll also hold on to the mystery of it all. We’ll remember that God is still working in this congregation, among these people who join us in this meal. The bread and the cup in communion nourish our bodies in the same way that God’s presence nourishes our whole selves. This bread wakes us up to the truth that Christ is with us, and the living bread sends us out into the world to spread the good news of God. John, confronted with the mystery of faith, we’ll join Wisdom as she sends out her servants and calls from the highest places in town. We’ll add our voices to the invitation, telling and retelling the mystery, pointing to Jesus and proclaiming “This is the bread that came down from heaven… the one who eats this bread will live forever.”

Dear John, I hope this letter finds you surrounded by God’s grace, and filled with the hope and peace of the Living Bread.

Your Brother in Christ,

Joseph

Otherwise the Journey

Otherwise the Journey from Joseph Taber on Vimeo.

1 Kings 19:4-8

4But [Elijah] himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die. “It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” 5Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, “Get up and eat.” 6He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. 7The angel of the LORD came a second time, touched him, and said, “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” 8He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and nights to Horeb the mount of God.

This is the Word of the LORD

Thanks be to God

John 6:35, 41-51

35Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

41Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven?’” 43Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. 44No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. 45It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. 46Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. 47Very truly I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. 48I am the bread of life. 49Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

This is the Word of the LORD

Thanks be to God.

Elijah is running scared. He's just won a great victory over the prophets of Baal, and has killed many of them. Jezebel, the queen, has sworn to kill Elijah for his resistance to her rule. So Elijah is running scared.

Then, out in the wilderness, beneath the shelter of a solitary broom tree, Elijah's shame catches up to him. 

Elijah is the prophet of the LORD, he has seen God do amazing things, and is charged with speaking on God's behalf to a people who have a tendency to wander. He knows that the LORD is God, and that there are no other gods before him. Elijah knows that God will protect him. And yet, faced with the threats of wicked rulers, Elijah is running scared.

The people of Capernaum are grumbling. They have seen Jesus do amazing things. He had fed thousands of people with a few loaves and a couple fish. Now he is telling them that they completely missed the point of the miracle of the bread. So the people of Capernaum are grumbling.

Then, in a marketplace near Galilee, gathered around Jesus, the people of Capernaum hear Jesus speak.

The people of Capernaum have followed Jesus. They have seen him do amazing things, healing people, restoring them to themselves, and teaching them so much about God. They know that the LORD is God, and that something is special about this Jesus. The people of Capernaum know that God is working among them. Yet faced with a challenging teaching from Jesus, the people of Capernaum are grumbling.

"He asked that he might die. 'It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.'"

"They were saying, 'Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven?’”

But God's not done working through Elijah just yet. And the people of Capernaum haven't yet seen all that Jesus is giving them. In the face of shamefully running away, in the face of grumbling about teachings they don't understand, God reaches out to them and provides.

Jesus reaches out to the people of Capernaum without compromising his message. They’re struggling with his divine origins, after all, they grew up with him. "It is precisely the news of what God is giving them, and how radically this contradicts what they themselves are making of Jesus's arrival, that provokes the insiders at Capernaum.” The people of Capernaum are complaining because God is not meeting their expectations. So Jesus pushes them a little harder, challenging to look for God’s presence making his home among them.

The people of Capernaum have sought Jesus out to see his deeds of power, and to hear him teach. In the midst of their grumbling, Jesus offers them hope that God has called them to follow Christ, and that they do not need to be bound by their fear of death any longer. “Do not complain among yourselves. No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day.”

Jesus provides assurance to the crowd. Indeed his words carry the same assurance to all who have read and hear his words of hope throughout the centuries of church history. When we come to Christ, it’s because God has been at work in our lives even before we could respond. We have the assurance that our future is provided for.

But embedded in that message of providential hope is a challenge. Christ draws us into a closer relationship with him, and a fuller discipleship of God. In true Gospel-Of-John style, he does it with metaphor and imagery that leaves the people of Capernaum scratching their heads. "The gospel of John does not explain, but only challenges its hearers to be those who do learn and do come.” Jesus, in the Gospel of John, gives us both assurance and a challenge. When we meet Christ, we come away with both providence and a mission.

We have been called by God. We are learning from Jesus. We are fed by the bread of life. What then, will we do with the nourishment we have found in Christ?

We meet Elijah under a solitary broom tree. He is dropped down into shame and despair. “It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” He is running in fear, and prays to God to end his journey.

God answer his prayer with a firm “No.”

“Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, ‘Get up and eat.’ He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water.” Where Elijah had asked for death, God instead provided him with food and water. Our prayers matter to God, but they don’t control God. God has plans for us, to show God’s greatness by working through us, even those of us who, like Elijah, run away in fear. Because we too are no better than our ancestors. The God of our ancestors, however, continues to work through us, and will not let us stay under a solitary broom tree out in the wilderness somewhere.

When Elijah doesn’t quite get it, and lies back down again, God prods him a little harder. “The angel of the LORD came a second time, touched him, and said, ‘Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.’” The providence is there, a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water, but Elijah is also reminded that he is on a journey, even if he doesn’t know the destination yet. God’s providence provides a challenge, and that challenge give Elijah a new direction, so that he’s no longer running away in fear, he is following God’s call.

As we wrestled with our 1 Kings text at lunch bunch earlier this week, one of the folks there observed that God provides, and if we ignore what God provides, the journey will be too much for us. A journey of fear leaves us empty, but if we take in the fullness of what God has given us, we can follow in Elijah’s footsteps and go “in the strength of that food forty days and nights to Horeb the mount of God.”

Horeb is another name for Sinai, where the people of God encamped and received the law, which gave them an identity as the people of God, who would be a light to the nations. Horeb is the place where Elijah’s imperfect ancestors were taught by Moses, who was taught by God.

Centuries later in Capernaum, Jesus reminds the crowd of the prophet who wrote that “they shall all be taught by God.” Jesus knows that God is all about breaking down some barriers. Jesus is, himself, the fullest expression of the inbreaking of the kingdom of heaven into the world. “Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.” Just as the ancient Israelites gathered at Sinai, and as Elijah journeyed to Horeb, the mount of God, so too the people of Capernaum gather around Jesus, to see him work wonders, to hear him teach and interpret the scripture.

Jesus challenges us to put down the forbidden fruit and to take up the bread of life, that we may replace our self-righteous knowledge of good and evil with the wholeness of "they shall all be taught by God.” The law that was given is fulfilled by Jesus Christ, the prophets who spoke pointed to the Jesus Christ, and the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ leads to the cross and the empty tomb so that we might believe Jesus when he tells us that “I am the bread of life.” 

God has provided something beyond our wildest imagination: The Word made flesh. God who is with us. It’s beyond even the miracles that our ancestors had seen. “Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.” But this time is different. This is not a temporary portion, a cake baked on hot stones or a jar of water. “This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.” Just as Elijah found a new purpose out of God’s providence, So we too find our true identity in Jesus Christ. "For the reason why we obtain life by faith is, that we know that all the parts of our life are contained in Christ.” All the parts of our life are contained in Christ, our challenge then, is to answer God’s call on our lives to grow in faith.

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

God’s work in the world has changed everything. In Christ, we are given the freedom to follow God, to be taught by God, to live as servants of the Holy One. The living bread is set before us so that we may be nourished, body and spirit, but God’s presence among us. Otherwise the journey would have been too much for us.

So, taught by God, fed by Christ, and empowered by the Holy Spirit, how will we respond to the challenge?

Let’s find out. Amen.

Confession of Doubt

Confession of Doubt from Joseph Taber on Vimeo.

Ephesians 3:14-21

14For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. 16I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, 17and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. 18I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

20 Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, 21to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.

This is the Word of the LORD

Thanks be to God

Mark 9:14-29

14When they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them, and some scribes arguing with them. 15When the crowd saw him, they were immediately overcome with awe, and they ran forward to greet him. 16He asked them, “What are you arguing about with them?” 17Someone from the crowd answered him, “Teacher, I brought you my son; he has a spirit that makes him unable to speak; 18and whenever it seizes him, it dashes him down; and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid; and I asked your disciples to cast it out, but they could not do so.”

19He answered them, “You faithless generation, how much longer must I be among you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him to me.” 20And they brought the bow to him. When the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth.

21Jesus asked the father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. 22It has often cast him into the fire and into the water, to destroy him; but if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.” 23Jesus said to him, “If you are able! - All things can be done for the one who believes.” 24Immediately the father of the child cried out, “I believe; help my unbelief!”

25When Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You spirit that keeps this boy from speaking and hearing, I command you, come out of him, and never enter him again!” 26After crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, “He is dead.” 27But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he was able to stand.

When he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?” 29He said to them, “This kind can come out only through prayer”

This is the Word of the LORD

Thanks be to God.

Earlier this year, I had the confirmation class read the entire gospel of Mark from cover to cover. We covered it in two weeks, and basically only had time to hit the high points, wrestling with any questions they had about the weeks assignment.

This is one of those passages that we slowed down to spend a little more time on.

Stories about unclean spirits are problematic for 21st century Christians. They don’t fit into our worldview. Are they just a pre-modern description of mental or neurological illness? First century Judaism didn’t know anything about brain science or psychology. Did they use “unclean spirits” to cover a multitude of disorders in the same way that “leprosy” described any skin condition? Or is there actually a sense of spiritual warfare between unclean spirits holy spirits?

Stories about unclean spirits are eye-catching. But what catches my eye in this passage is when Jesus makes a distinction, saying “This kind can come out only through prayer.”

There’s a problem with that too.

If this kind can only come out through prayer, then where’s the prayer?

At no point in this passage does Jesus raise his eyes to heaven, or address his Father, or do anything else that we recognize as speaking to God. He rebukes the spirit, then takes the boy by the hand and lifts him up.

“This kind can come out only through prayer.” So where’s the prayer?

“I believe, help my unbelief.”

It’s the prayer of a desperate and frustrated father, who has done all he can for his son. He has tried to care for him, he has protected him when the spirit “cast him into the fire and into the water, to destroy him.” This father has been beaten up by years of trying to cope. “I believe, help my unbelief.”

Perhaps he heard stories of these new teachers and healers. Perhaps he heard of the disciples and how they were something new, and had done many deeds of power when Jesus sent them out into the world. Perhaps he was just chasing any lead, any hope, so that he could keep moving forward. Each failed healing grinds him down just a little more. Maybe he even angrily wonders why God would allow his son to suffer at the hands of this unclean spirit. He’s frustrated, but he’s got enough faith to try one last time, “I believe, help my unbelief.”

So he takes his child to the disciples, who have done great deeds of power in other places, and among other people. They have healed the sick and cast out unclean spirits elsewhere, so this man brings his son before them and asks for a miracle.

The disciples failure leads to an argument. Scripture doesn’t say how we descend into argument, or how the scribes got involved, but they’re causing a bit of a disturbance, and a great crowd has gathered around them. Jesus, fresh off the mountain from the transfiguration, approaches them, and “they were immediately overcome with awe, and they ran forward to greet him.”

Jesus points them back toward the crowd, just because God is with us doesn’t mean we get to ignore the world around us. “He asked them, ‘what are you arguing about with them?’”

A tired father, who has just seen his hope for his son devolved into an argument between disciples and scribes, steps forward, with maybe just a touch of defiance. He tells his son’s story, reminding all who are present of what’s at stake. “‘Teacher, I brought you my son; he has a spirit that makes him unable to speak; and whenever it seizes him, it dashes him down; and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid; and I asked your disciples to cast it out, but they could not do so.’” The argument dissolves. This father has stepped forward to remind the crowd that their theological and political arguments can take a back seat to the fact that his son needs help.

Jesus gets it. He has seen crowds use the sick and those with unclean spirits to prove their own points. He has seen crowds who are more concerned with being right than with being helpful. The argument between the scribes and the disciples shows that they are not immune to preferring rightness to righteousness. Jesus’s rebuke slams the whole crowd, and challenges the father to continue standing up for his son. “He answered them, ‘You faithless generation, how much longer must I be among you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him to me.’”

The father from the crowd stepped forward in anger, challenging Jesus for the failing of his disciples, and challenging the crowd for their argument in the face of those who are hurting. But now, Jesus is stripping way all the layers, refocusing them all on the human being who is suffering in their midst. Wiping away the father’s frustration and opening him up to being vulnerable by bringing his son to Jesus.

In that vulnerability, there’s a glimmer of hope. Perhaps this man Jesus is able to help. Perhaps the unclean spirit will no longer harm my son, perhaps I’ll be set free of having to worry every moment. Perhaps all the frustration and pain is ending for both of us. Perhaps things are going to be better…

They bring the boy forward, and things immediately get worse. “When the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth.” It’s not a quick, clean miracle. Like we have seen in our own lives, things get worse before they get better, as though it’s a last gasp by the things that hold us back. The boy and his father are prisoners of his condition, and at the doorway to their release, things get suddenly worse, and doubt begins to creep in.

Wouldn’t it be nice if, in the face of the unclean spirit seizing this boy, Jesus sprang into action and immediately freed the boy? Wouldn’t it by nice if Christ, seeing the suffering waved his arms and solved the problems and the whole crowd went away proclaiming the good news of what they had seen? Wouldn’t be nice if everything got fixed promptly and we never had to endure hardship like this boy or his father?

But the gospel is not a fantasy where everything works out easily. It’s a truth that sometimes life is hard, but that we do not endure things alone, for the kingdom of God is at hand, and we are awakening to God’s presence among us.

Jesus, seeing the boy seized and foaming, asks the father a seemingly disconnected question. He asks “How long has this been happening to him?”

How long? This has been happening since his childhood! This unclean spirit has even tried to kill him by casting him into fire and water. You ask how long? How long are you going to let my son suffer? How long are you going to watch him right here in front of you? “If you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us!”

Jesus catches on the momentary flash in the father’s eye, and pushes him a little farther, challenging him to step out of his frustration and grief so that he’ll be able to be the father his son will need when he is freed from the unclean spirit. “Jesus said to him, ‘If you are able! - All things can be done for the one who believes.’” This is not a matter of pity, it’s a matter of restoration in the face of all the pain and grief of a lifetime of frustration and disappointment.

“Immediately the father of the child cried out, ‘I believe; help my unbelief!’”

Jesus takes that little ember of hope, and breathes life into it. “I believe, help my unbelief” catches fire and builds this father back up as he cries out to God in prayer. “I believe, help my unbelief.” The son is freed from the unclean spirit, but the father too is made whole again, restored in the eyes of the community and restored to his relationship with God, able to confess both his faith and his doubts.

“I believe, help my unbelief” is as honest a prayer as they come. It’s not an instruction or a form that is “appropriate” it’s a raw and unguarded connection between a broken human being a loving God.

The climax of this story is the father’s confession of faith, and his confession of doubt. Each is incomplete without the other, and Jesus goads him until he gets both. The son was freed from the unclean spirit, but the father needed to be healed too.

Jesus’s deeds of power, like casting out spirits, are mind-blowingly impressive. If that were all, he’d be a mythic hero of the faith. This story shows that he’s more than that. Jesus of Nazareth, who is the Son of Man, who is the Messiah, is the one who sets us free. He frees us from the power of sin and death. He gives us the permission to be honest with God again, saying “I believe, help my unbelief,” as both a confession of faith and a confession of doubt. Jesus Christ took a father out of the sinking sand of his despair and set him back on the solid rock of the identity of Jesus Christ, who loves us so much that he will not let us go. Therefore we can have hope beyond even our confession of faith, or our confession of doubt. Because God, in Jesus Christ, holds us fast and lifts us up.