Prologue to the Gospel of John

I made this video as the final project for my Worship in the Arts class. It's a video presentation of John 1:1-18.

The idea behind this was to explore the idea of translation, moving between mediums and ways of expressing ideas. In short, telling ancient truths through new media.

One of my classmates pointed out that this is also an example of meta-narrative. Here I'm using the narrative of scripture to tell a narrative of the changes in how we engage with and experience text.

I don't consider myself an artist, although I acknowledge my own creative gifts, they largely lie in the areas of music, rather than visual arts. That said, I am quite proud of how this came together, and am very grateful for all the people who participated in its creation.

The art pieces are not mine, they are a picture of the stained glass window as taken through the baptismal font at St. Andrews Presbyterian Church, and a painting called "Day One," which is part of the Creation series by dear friend Rose McCurdy.

The music is an excerpt from Alfred Reed's Russian Christmas Music.

Together in the Storm

Together in the Storm from Joseph Taber on Vimeo.

Mark 4:35-41

³⁵Later that day, when evening came, Jesus said to them, “Let’s cross over to the other side of the lake.” ³⁶They left the crowd and took him in the boat just as he was. Other boats followed along.

³⁷Gale-force winds arose, and waves crashed against the boat so that the boat was swamped. ³⁸But Jesus was in the rear of the boat, sleeping on a pillow. They woke him up and said, “Teacher, don’t you care that we’re drowning?”

³⁹He got up and gave orders to the wind, and he said to the lake, “Silence! Be still!” The wind settled down and there was a great calm. ⁴⁰Jesus asked them, “Why are you frightened? Don’t you have faith yet?”

⁴¹Overcome with awe, they said to each other, “Who then is this? Even the wind and the sea obey him!”

This is the Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God.

It’s strange to talk about storms when it’s sunny outside. I can reach back to when I was in youth group and picture a day on the boat out on Lake James, near where I grew up. Picturing myself on a boat is no problem. Dave and Morgan can show you pictures of what the sea of Galilee looks like, so I can imagine being there, but it’s strange to think about a sky darkening, violent winds, torrents of rain and flashes of lightning when we look outside our windows at see birds singing, a lazy haze over the parking lot, and great helping of sunshine.

It’s strange to talk about storms when it’s sunny outside.

We’ve all certainly sat through the kind of great thunderstorm of which Mark speaks in this text, they’re a humbling display of the powers of nature, a place where one sees the hand of God in the majesty of creation.

But outside, it’s a bright sunny day with a high of 93 degrees, and man is it humid. But it doesn’t even really look like rain...

On a day like today it’s easy to keep this story of boats and storms out at arms length, to put it in a particular place in history and let it stay there, I have no doubt that Jesus and his followers sailed into some severe weather that evening on the sea of Galilee. But it’s strange to talk about storms when it’s sunny outside.

We can join Jesus in his Sunday afternoon nap, this story takes place after he’s preached a series of parables, and many preachers will tell you that the Sunday afternoon nap is one of the greatest gifts God has given us in this world, and on this lazy sunny day, we can curl up on a pillow for a great nap, but this storm business just doesn’t fit when it’s sunny outside.

Unless you’re dealing with another kind of storm in your own life. Not the kind of storm they tell you about on the news, where a nice suit and a smiling face report facts and describe computer models, but rather the kind of storm we put on our motivational posters, where it’s just a symbol for all the problems we’ve internalized. The storm has become a cliche, unless you’re in the middle of it.

I wonder if the disciples would have told this story to the people they met after Jesus’s earthly ministry ended. I wonder if they would tell it to the head of household who’s finances have dried up and he isn’t sure how he can provide for his family anymore. I wonder if they would tell this story to the mother holding her sick child. I wonder if they would tell it to the student who felt overwhelmed by all his responsibilities. I wonder if they would tell this story to the teenager who was sure she had disappointed her parents, and wasn’t sure if they would still accept her. I wonder if they told this story to the community in crisis, trying to decide how it would maintain its identity in the face of a world that is changing so quickly, or not quickly enough. I wonder what problems we would lift up that would inspire them to tell this story once again...I wonder...

Because when that’s the kind of storm you’re dealing with, then it’s the sunny day that doesn’t fit anymore, and it’s strange to be out in the sun when your storms are so great that your boat is swamped. When you’re in the storm, it doesn’t matter what the weather is like, you don’t want to have that Sunday afternoon nap on the pillow next to Jesus, you want this man to get up and help keep the boat from sinking.

We can echo the disciples voices: “Teacher, don’t you care that we’re drowning?” Teacher, we know that you’re still present, we know you’re right here in the boat with us. The wisdom of your parables is still ringing in our ears, even though we don’t yet fully understand. You speak and we struggle to hear it over the sounds of the thunder. We want to stand beside you, but the waves are crashing over the sides of the boat and our feet will not stay under us. Why do you choose now to be silent, sleeping in the midst of a storm that is more than we can bear. We need your instruction now, tell us what to do! You’ve told us how to handle our faith, now how do we handle this boat in the midst of a storm?

There’s a saying, “We’re all in the same boat.” It’s meant to convey that we all struggle through things together, but it also removes the particularity of the things with which we are struggling. I don’t know that I buy that the single mother working two jobs has the same struggle as the young man who is targeted by online bullying. The grandfather who struggles to find a place in a world where he and his closest friends are seeing the decline of their minds and bodies is going through something different than the young woman wondering if perhaps she does not love in the same way her friends do.

Perhaps we are not in the same boat. A congregation as diverse as this one and a church as diverse as the PC(USA) is full of people who see the world differently and interpret what they see based on different values. It’s tempting to think that we’re the only ones who are having to deal with all this mess, that somehow no one else can feel the same as we are feeling. No one else will have to face the problems we have. Especially in a world where the expectation is that one must have all the answers, one must have a handle on all of one’s problems, one must not show any kind of weakness or dependence on others. It’s as though it’s alright to ask for help if and only if you don’t need it.

It’s tempting to feel like we are alone out there in our own little boat, facing an impossible storm, especially when it’s sunny outside, and we feel like nothing can bring us back from our self-imposed separation from those we want to love, whom we want to love us. Perhaps we are not in the same boat. But we’re not brought together by some wooden fishing vessel. Our diverse particular little boats are united by Christ, whom we have followed out onto this sea, and into this storm.

And when our particular boats get swamped, Like the disciples in our scripture lesson, we only know that our master seems to be asleep in the back, either unaware or uncaring that this storm into which we’ve sailed is about to end us, and it’s tempting to think that our boats are either in the worst shape or are in the worst part of the storm, and we’ve got to somehow get by on our own.

But when we left the crowd and took God in the boat just as he was, other boats followed along. They heard the same teaching, they’ve seen the same wonders, and though their boats are different, we know that they’re out there, struggling across the stormy sea of Galilee as well, even though they cannot see our boat or be a part of our crew, we can know that no matter what the storm looks like to them, they are crying out to God just as we are: “Lord, don’t you care that we’re drowning?”

I’ve always pictured Jesus, hearing this question in his own boat, groggily getting up, calming the storm, somewhat grumpily saying to his disciples, “Why are you frightened? Don’t you have faith yet?” And immediately going back to his pillow and resuming his great nap.

But Jesus was only riding in one of the boats, the other boats wouldn’t have seen everything that happened. As the wind settled down and a great calm came over the lake, they would have looked at one another, then to the other boats, perhaps just in time to catch a glimpse of Jesus turning toward his disciples, maybe they were close enough to hear what he said to them, maybe they were far enough away to recognize who it had to be, that even the wind and the sea obey him. We don’t get that part of the story.

But we can infer that once they crossed the lake they all reached the same shore, and they mingled with the other crews, and each told their own part of the story, each shared their particular experience, and each saw Jesus through the eyes of those around them.

Although we’re in different boats, we’re all in the same storm. It looks different to each of us, and we experience and understand it differently, but more important than that diverse commonality is that we all see Christ’s hands calming that storm, and bringing us safely to the other side, irrespective of our own fears and faiths, our Lord goes through the great storm with us, and through the great calm after it. We see this Jesus differently, just as we saw the storm differently.

This week begins our three week series of exploring what the Bible says about Love, Marriage, and Sex. We will undoubtably find ourselves in different places on a number of issues these weeks, but we will come together all the same, listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit to surprise us in the midst of our disagreement. We cannot stop listening just because we disagree with one another, because that would refute the power of Christ to bring our little boats together, and to hold them safely as we find different ways of navigating across this sea.

We may not be in the same boat, but we are united in Christ, and our comfort in the storm is that we are not alone even while we are drowning. It’s strange talk about storms when it’s sunny outside, but it’s not the weather than unites us. It’s strange to talk about how sunny it is outside in the midst our internalized turmoil, but the storm cannot pull us apart. We know that our timid faith, such as it is, is in the Christ who holds us all together, no matter what boat we’ve put ourselves in, and no storm can shake our inmost calm while to that great rock we are clinging.

Prayer: Great God, we are in a time when it is easy to put ourselves into categories of for and against, of right and wrong. We live in a world that teaches us to order ourselves according to those with whom we agree, but you taught us that in Christ there is no Jew nor Greek, male or female, slave or free. Our boats are different, but your unifying love for us remains constant. Give us the strength to remember that we are your people, and though we’d rather all of this would settle down, living in the storms is where we can see that even the wind and the sea obey you. Help us to remember that your voice speaks amid the chaos, and that we will reach the shore together, not as identical people, but as a people united in your relentlessly transformative love. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

Thanks be to God?

Matthew 5:1-11

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:

‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

‘Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Amos 5:21-24

I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and grain-offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

This is the word of the Lord

Thanks be to God

Thanks be to God? Really? Were we reading the same passage? What’s all this “I hate, I despise” stuff? I thought we worshipped the God of love? Thanks be to God?I’m not sure I am grateful for this word. Give me more of that first one, where Jesus tells me I’m going to be happy later because I’m poor now...

At the seminary, we would read this passage and say that nobody is safe from this text. If you can see yourself in this text, it will convict you. For some reason though, I find myself drawn to it.

Maybe I’m tired of a culture who confuses God with Santa Claus, “Be a good boy or girl and you’ll get what you want.” Maybe I’m angry at the injustices in the world and it’s nice to see that God gets mad too. With all the lovey-peacey fluff floating around maybe I’m drawn to this passage because it’s about a God I haven’t heard as much about: a God of fire and wrath, the Lion of Judah, rather than the lamb. After all, this passage is talking about other people right? This one isn’t about me.

When I decided on this text, I thought it opened with “I hate, I loath your false worship.” That’s what I wanted it to say. I wanted to rail against the people who were just going through the motions and didn’t really mean what they were saying or doing. I even had a children’s sermon about how important it is to mean it when you say you’re sorry, or it doesn’t count.

But it doesn’t say that.

I wanted this text to look at the world and see all the same things I saw wrong with our culture. I wanted it to condemn the people who put our nation in a war with which I didn’t agree and sent other people’s brothers and sisters and daughters and sons to fight it for them. I wanted it to attack the people who’s emphasis of profit over safety dumped oil into our water. I want the prophet Amos to shake his fist at the people who created this economic crisis that threatens the jobs of an entire generation.

But it doesn’t do that.

I want to take this text and reword it so that it agrees with me, and then I get to have that Wrath of God in my hand, to throw at anyone that I think unworthy. I want this text to be a locker-room pep-talk that gets me back in the game so I can score the winning point.

But I don’t get to do that.

I get to read this text and let it lay me bare the same way it would have laid the rulers of Israel bare. I don’t like it. But this text is not one of comfort to a suffering people, it’s one of Judgement on a people who think they are immune from suffering because they do everything right. And I don’t like it. I don’t want our heavenly Father to be angry with me. I want to do something to fix it, find a way to soften that anger, or at least blame someone else so God won’t be angry with me. I don’t want to have a place in this text. But this text has a place for me whether I like it or not. Right next to everyone else who has tried to put their words in God’s mouth over the centuries. The text grabs us when we think we can bribe God into doing what we want and says: “But even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them... I will not listen to the melody of your harps.”

Let me stop there, and we can reassure ourselves that God still loves us, even when God is angry with us. That’s one thing that never changes. But we can’t just look for a happy-fun god in the Bible, because we spend a lot of time deserving God’s anger. We can’t duck out of this mess we’ve made with a few well placed sacrifices, or a few perfectly orchestrated songs. We can’t buy God off with a one time deal, or a limited time offer. We can’t have a party in God’s honor and expect God to be pleased enough to forget all the times we get it wrong. That’s not what God’s about. God created us, and God knows that we’re better than this mess we’ve made of the world. But we’re not going to earn it with offerings of material goods or with songs. We’re not going to win God over by giving back a portion of what God gives to us. God isn’t impressed by our wealth or cleverness or our own insight. The more time we spend trying to impress God, the more we hear “Take away from me the noise of your songs.” God wants to see us make a change in our world.

And So God says to Amos, “Let Justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.”

I remember when I was nine or ten, we had a huge series of thunderstorms, and a flash flood warning was issued for Morganton, where I grew up. We had these woods behind our house, and all the water from the storms flowed down to the bottom of the hill, and filled up what was a ditch in drier weather. I could hear the water dripping down onto the brim of my hat, filtering down from the tops of the pine trees to reach the bed of leaves that made up the forest floor. My father and I went exploring this brand new river, hiking deep into the woods seeing where it led, where it came from. The water was rushing in from all sides, all converging at the bottom of these two hills that formed the gully that was now a streambed. It pooled up in some places, several feet across, but only a few inches deep, and the leaves in those sections floated out to the edges, settling in a ring around the pools. In other places it was deep enough to fill up your rain boots if you made the mistake of stepping into it, and it was always moving, finding new places to fill as the rains continued to filter through the pine trees. The movement was strong enough that it pulled limbs and dead trees that were too big for a nine-year-old to move with it, collecting in narrower places to form its own dams, moving what seemed to me to be immovable, only to let it settle in a new place, changing the landscape of the woods. That memory, and the image of a storm-fed river changing everything about the landscape it touches is what comes to my mind when Amos writes “Let Justice roll down like waters.”

David LaMotte, a songwriter and peacemaker, recently gave a talk about the myth of the hero as a vehicle of change. “As a culture,” says LaMotte, “We tend to believe that what changes things is heroes, dramatic people doing dramatic things in dramatic moments.” But while heroes certainly exist, LaMotte says that big changes come out of movements, lots of regular people making small changes over time, rather than one larger than life person making one larger than life action in one larger than life moment. Those larger than life moments deserve a festival, like a fourth of July party, with fireworks commemorating a day when about 34 people signed a letter that started a nation. But this didn’t happen over night. Neither did a group of slaves taken out of Egypt become a nation just by crossing the red sea. It took 40 years of learning to live with one another in the wilderness, under a new set of laws to morph them into the people of God.. Likewise our nation didn’t just wake up one morning tired of being English, and we wouldn’t have a constitution, the document that sets us apart from other nations that came before, for another eleven years after we decided we were through with English rule.

Thousands of small changes. Thousands of tiny water droplets, filtering through the pines, creating the flood that changes the landscape. And once the rains stop, we’re still not done. because though Justice has rolled down like waters, we still have righteousness like an ever flowing stream. Always moving, always changing, like the Linville river, gradually cutting into the rocks to form a magnificent gorge, or to cut into the mountain itself to form the famous caverns. Thousands of years, thousands of water droplets, and an ever flowing stream providing life to the valley below.

Or like the Jordan river, which once dried up so the people of Israel could cross into the promised land, and eventually, thousands of drops of water later, baptized Jesus and began his earthly ministry. A ministry that proclaimed that this world would be turned upside down, and the poor would have a kingdom, and that mourners will be comforted, and that those whom the world has walked over would receive the world. An ever flowing stream, filled with living water, that would fill those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. It’s not a pool that we can go to when it’s convenient for us. A River that cuts through the landscape, changing everything around it, and the central point of life around it. It’s a continuous movement, not a singular moment. When we see the ever flowing stream, we know that God’s path is through the waters. It is not our place to skip across the stream like thrown stones, barely getting wet. If we want to bring change to this world, because we know we can be better than it is right now, we have to swim deeply.

If we buy into the myth that change comes from dramatic people doing dramatic things at dramatic moments, all we have to do is wait for the moment, and then be ready to act. Wait for the Day of the Lord, and then proclaim the good news. Wait for God to prove Godself, then decide to act. Wait for the two roads to diverge in the yellow wood, and then take the road less travelled. Wait for the Day of the Lord, and then take part in the establishment of the kingdom. But we’re not waiting for the day of the Lord anymore. The dramatic action has happened. Christ has been crucified, and Christ is risen. The day of the Lord has come. Now we live in the age of the Spirit, and it’s not dramatic Damascus road moments that change the world for the better. It’s not festivals or offerings or benefit concerts. It’s the mission of Paul, traveling throughout Europe telling the gospel even when nobody will listen. It’s the growing awareness that the poor aren’t different from us, so we help them not because it’s a tax deduction, but because it’s what needs to be done. It’s a movement, a movement of the Spirit within us and through us that makes us uncomfortable with what Amos has to say to us, and forces us to make the small changes, the thousands of water droplets, filtering through the pines, that effect real change in the world. Very few of us are tasked with making the decisive moments that move history forward. And even those who are called to those dramatic acts are charged with making all the small changes that lead up to the larger than life moment. But we’re not here to wait for the day of the Lord. We’re here to filter through the pines, and change the landscape around us, piece by piece. We’re called to work on behalf of the Kingdom of God in the age of the Spirit. Let’s get to work.

In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit, Amen.