Peace Community Church

Acts 8:26-40
May 6, 2012
Steve Hammond

I think it was a test. When the Ethiopian asked to be baptized I wonder if he thought Philip would really do it. Sure Philip talked big about who Jesus was, but in the end would it all be the same? The Ethiopian had been turned away before, allowed to come on his pilgrimage to the Temple, but not allowed to go in. The polite term for it was that he had been emasculated and thus did not conform to the heterosexual norm. As committed as he was to his religion, he couldn’t be allowed on the inside because that would upset the established order of things.

Philip, though, also knew a bit about the established order of things. We first read about Philip a couple of chapters earlier. It’s a really interesting story. That very first church in Jerusalem was made up of Hebrew speaking Jews and Greek speaking Jews, meaning that the Greek speakers were converts. The Hebrew speakers believed their faith was more authentic. When they all converted to become Jesus followers they carried the same prejudices and resentments with them.

One of the places where this flared up in the early church was with the distribution of food. Remember, they kept a common purse and distributed food and other needed items among the whole group. The Greek speaking converts said their widows, in particular, were being neglected in favor of the Hebrew speaking widows, so they went to the Apostles and complained. In an amazing way of resolving, or realy transforming the conflict, the Apostles decided to appoint a committee, made up entirely of Greek speaking converts, to come up with a solution to the problem. Philip was one of them. Think about that. It would be like the Kendal Residents Association being upset by something the management was doing out there and the management said, “Okay, lets have the Residents Association come up with the solution and implement it.” The even further step the Apostles could have taken would have been to appoint some of the Greek speaking widows to the group, but it is still pretty amazing they went as far as they did.

So Philip saw for himself how this Gospel of Jesus could really shake things up. He, apparently, enthusiastically baptized the Ethiopian eunuch, in spite of how controversial it must have seemed. And the church has had a presence in Ethiopia ever since.

It was important to the Ethiopian eunuch that he be baptized, received fully into the church, become a full fledged member of the movement that was then called The Way. The Ethiopian liked this way of Jesus. And I think, that for him, baptism wasn’t simply that most personal of spiritual encounters between and individual and God we often make it out to be. For him, his baptism wasn’t most of all that sign that God had accepted him. I think the eunuch had already figured that out. His baptism showed that the community of Jesus followers accepted him and he accepted it. This eunuch who was unable to have a biological family now had a spiritual family. Philip had passed the test. The Ethiopian was no longer an outsider. He had been invited in.

I think it is important we have a similar understanding about baptism ourselves. Baptism is not, as it is often portrayed in the media and many of our churches, a solely personal transaction between an individual and God. It’s about entering into a community of Jesus followers bent on turning the world upside down.

Some of you may have run into Brother Jed and his companions who were preaching on campus this week. They would like nothing more than for us all to get baptized and save ourselves from hell, make that personal transaction between ourselves and God, get ourselves right with God.

What baptism is about, though, is getting this world right with God and getting us right with each other. This community of faith we choose to be born into with our baptism, is a community that helps us and we help to find The Way, the way of Jesus.

Do you remember where Jesus talked to that woman from Samaria about the living water that “will become a spring of water gushing up into eternal life?” That’s what baptism is about; this living water of Jesus that overflows in our lives, not only all the way to eternity, but to the world around us. The eunuch understood that and, thankfully, Philip understood, too.

Philip got it right. He passed the test the Ethiopian gave him. And we are still being tested today. The history of the church has been, sadly, a history of exclusion, of figuring out who doesn’t belong, who shouldn’t take the plunge in the baptismal waters. Even today, perhaps the biggest controversy in the church is whether gay and lesbian folk should be allowed in, should be drenched with the living water.

A good case is made by some scholars that the word eunuch had a broader meaning in Jesus’ time than ours. A eunuch may not necessarily have meant only those who had been castrated, but gay people, and all the others who were seen as the sexually other.

Philip and the Ethiopian both understood that if Jesus taught us anything he taught us that his movement is open to everybody. Those waters of baptism get us all as wet as anybody else. And we are always being tested by those same waters, always being challenged to take this message of Jesus and run with it to the ends of the earth, upsetting the established order of things all along the way.

I love this story. There’s Philip, at the insistence of the Spirit, heading down to this deserted stretch of road, running along side the Ethiopian’s chariot and finally hoping in. The two of them, a eunuch and a Greek speaker, two outsiders, deciding they are going to take Jesus seriously, who was rejected as an outsider himself and plunge into the waters of faith, and see what happened.

And here we are today, called to the same water they were baptized in, called to carry that living water of Jesus with us. We are called to plunge in and conceive a new world where, for example, those who are discriminated against or oppressed are the ones trusted and relied on to make things better. That’s the world the eunuch believed he could help create if only he were allowed to dive in. The same waters and world await us.

John 10:11-18, I John 3:16-19
April 29, 2012
Mary Hammond

Renown theologian and author, Karl Barth, was asked toward the end of his life to sum up his theology. Surely, the person who posed that question was expecting a sophisticated answer from such a prolific and highly regarded scholar. Surprisingly, Barth responded with the text of a simple Sunday School song: Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.

The Apostle John seemed to come to the same conclusion when he penned both the Gospel of John and the epistle, I John. Scholars believe he was probably in his 80′s or 90′s at the time of writing. As an eyewitness to the public ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus, John possessed a unique vantage point on the story. He had watched the Spirit drench the frightened disciples–including himself!–at Pentecost. He had witnessed the travails of the Church throughout its nascent years. He had struggled alongside communities of faith as they faced competing theological claims and addressed wayward disciples. He watched a Church tested by fire rise to new heights and descend into petty distractions and disputes.

As he distilled and expressed his theology in writing, the Apostle John drew upon decades of experience. For him, the clarion call of the Gospel was to love. That call was rooted in the penetrating love of God, made visible to humanity in the life and ministry of Jesus, God’s begotten Son.

Is it rather “old school” to be talking about love? Don’t we talk about that a lot, anyhow, here at Peace Community Church? Indeed, we do. Yet, talking about love never loses either its importance or its power.

The day that talking about love in the Church becomes unnecessary is the day that the Church of Jesus Christ, worldwide, is known—really, truly known—for its love. It’s not known for its triumphalism, parochialism, or nationalism. It’s not known for its xenophobia or homophobia. It’s not known for its classism or exclusivism. It’s not known for its patriarchy or paternalism. It’s just plain known by its LOVE–pure and simple, profound and deep. Love.

In both the stories of the Good Shepherd in John 10 and the instructions about love recorded in I John 3, we see the Apostle describe both the nature and embodiment of “real love.” In the Gospel reading, John offers the followers of Jesus a quick and simple test for distinguishing the huckster from the Good Shepherd, the charlatan from the genuine leader. His test is this: What kind of lover is that person? Is he or she deeply committed and personally invested, discerning yet generous of heart? Or is that person primarily focused on self-aggrandizement and self-interest, ready to abandon ship at the first sign of trouble? The lessons about love that appear in these two passages mirror sharpening insights in my own life, so I’m going to weave the two together.

One of the biggest lessons I have learned rather forcefully since our daughter Sarah’s death in November is this: love makes a difference, but it doesn’t always change the outcome of a situation. Contemplative writer and theologian, Thomas Merton, often speaks of “disinterested love.” This is not love without depth. Instead, it is love without an agenda–even a good agenda. It is love only for love’s sake.

As I lavished my love on Sarah last year, I had the best of agendas–Mom Agenda Extraordinaire. I wanted her to get better than she had ever been in her whole life. I wanted her to grapple with the darkness in ways she had not been able to do for so many years while stretched so thin by academic demands. I could go on and on about love’s agenda last year.

Jesus’ friend, Mary, anointed him with costly ointment shortly before he died. Her act of love was precious. His act of receiving that love was precious. Their profound understanding of each other’s need in a time of great crisis was precious. But Jesus was still arrested and crucified a few days later. Mary still faced the brutal execution of her beloved friend and every one of her feelings about that loss.

Did love make a difference? It made a difference to Jesus, and it made a difference to Mary, but it didn’t make a difference in how the story unfolded. At least, not that time. Sometimes it will, and sometimes it won’t, and we are not in control of those equations.

Love can be a pricey gift, like the love of a Shepherd who risks his own life for his sheep. If we are serious about learning to love with the love of God, and not with our own frail echoes of that love, this is a really important lesson to learn, and a difficult one, at that.

Secondly, love is relational. The Good Shepherd knows his sheep by name, and they recognize his voice. The apostle suggests that the sheep will not follow the voice of an imposter. When compassion lives in us, we cannot love from a distance. Love comes up close. Love seeks to know the Other, deeply in fact. Love tries to understand what they need, how they see, why they laugh and why they cry. The Shepherd is aware of the weaknesses and frailties of the sheep and seeks to protect them as much as possible.

We can love from a geographical distance, but we cannot love from an emotional distance. When the neighbor becomes Other to us, we cannot love. I think one of the reasons Sarah walked so faithfully with others in their darkness is that she knew her own darkness so well. Love accompanies and goes the distance. Again, this is often not easy.

Finally, love is open and inclusive. Jesus tells his disciples that he must gather in “other sheep who are not of this fold.” In a first century context, this would reflect to his Jewish-born followers the in-gathering of the Gentiles. Two thousand years later, who are these other sheep Jesus continues to gather? I believe that this promise goes far beyond the separations between Jew and Gentile prevalent in first century Palestine.

Shall people of diverse religious faiths throughout the world persist in harming one another in the name of their own particular deity? Do not our deities then become tribal gods over whom we fight? We have to pose serious questions about religious violence and interfaith relationships in our own day and time. The Good Shepherd does not just tend to his own flock of sheep and ignore or condemn all the other sheep. Instead, the shepherd continues to widen the circle, drawing others into the sheepfold.

Love is a noun, but it is also a verb. I recently read a quote from Cory Booker, the Mayor of Newark, NJ. It was on a poster shared via Facebook. The mayor says this: “Before you speak to me about your religion, first show it to me in how you treat other people. Before you tell me how much you love your God, show me how much you love all His children. Before you preach to me of your passion for your faith, teach me about it through your compassion for your neighbors. In the end, I’m not as interested in what you have to tell or sell as in how you choose to live and give.”

Amen.

from Luke 23
Steve Hammond
April 22, 2012

It had been a tough few days. Jesus had been arrested, humiliated and tortured, and then crucified, these travelers, Cleopas and probably Simon Peter, had been with the others just that morning when some of the women came running into the hide out and told them they had seen Jesus alive. Some of the group had gone back to the tomb and discovered it was empty. But what were they to make of all of that? It just seemed like it was time to go home.

You can imagine their conversation as they walked that seven mile journey. It had been quite a time with Jesus. Was this the end? Had the movement really been so brutally crushed? But what about that empty tomb? And then this stranger joined them, who didn’t seem to have any idea what has just taken place in Jerusalem.

He did talk to them about the Bible, saying that they shouldn’t be surprised at what had happened. They really didn’t get it. But it was late and had been a long day, so they asked him if he would like to join them for supper. When he broke the bread and gave thanks they realized it was Jesus, who immediately disappeared. And when he vanished so did their desire for much needed sleep. They hightailed it the seven miles back to Jerusalem to tell the others what had happene. As they were all talking about all these things, Jesus appeared in their midst and they had a Bible Study.

Every year Mary and I go to the Baptist Peace Fellowship’s Peace Camp. There are lots of good things that happen there including the Bible Studies. And the reason the Bible Studies are so good is that the leaders tend to have the same method Jesus did. “He went on to open their understanding of the Word of God, showing them how to read their Bibles this way.”

One of the things we have learned from folk in the Baptist Peace Fellowship is a better way of reading the Bible. We’ve learned to question assumptions we often bring with us when we study the Bible.

It was that way with the disciples. They weren’t just having trouble trying to wrap their minds around the fact that Jesus, who had just been killed, was standing right there in front of them, eating fish, and talking about the Bible. That’s hard enough for anyone to grab hold of even in pre-scientific times. But there was also the problem with the fact that he had been killed in the first place. Resurrection, in their minds, shouldn’t have even been an issue. Everything they had been taught was that, according to the Bible, the Messiah was going to be a triumphant military leader who would destroy all of Israel’s enemies rather than be literally hung out to dry like Jesus was. Remember what they said to the incognito Jesus as they walked with him to Emmaus. “And we had our hopes up that he was the One, the One about to deliver Israel.”

We live in a country, that for the most part, has a very similar attitude about the Bible that the disciples had before Jesus had this Bible Study with them. We want to believe that the Bible offers us a Messiah who will do the same things people of ancient Israeli times hoped he would do for them. We have just put it off to his second coming. Since he was killed by his enemies the first time, we have been told that the Bible is really telling us we have to wait until his second coming for Jesus to come and destroy his enemies, turning the streets red with their blood. I’m sure glad this is not the way Jesus read the Bible.

John van de Laar suggests that the way we have been taught to read the Bible, the way contrary to the way of Jesus has “historically been one motive behind colonialism, Christian triumphalism, and even Christian violence against people of other faiths. This is tragic and horrifying, since nothing could be further from the Gospel of peace and grace that Jesus lived and taught. Even today, in a mistaken belief that we are somehow “witnessing” to Christ, Christians have engaged in crusades against evolution, climate change, Islam, homosexuality and even social justice.”

I’m so glad that we don’t have to read the Bible that way anymore. What Jesus and folk from the Baptist Peace Fellowship, and so many others have helped us to realize, is that the Bible is much more interested in the powerless and the outcast than the powerful and the insiders. God isn’t looking to confirm the status of the empire, nor to bring it down in violent destruction, but to undermine it with a whole new way of living in this world. Jesus showed us what some of those ways are; peace, forgiveness, mercy, compassion, inclusion and welcome, love, humility, worship, prayer, faithfulness, and commitment to God’s desires for this world.

By reading the Bible the way he did, Jesus was telling his disciples it should be neither a surprise that the religious and political powers colluded to kill him, nor that their ways of death could not overcome the life of God. But they were surprised by the crucifixion and the resurrection. He by neither.

It’s one thing to read the Bible the way Jesus did. It’s another to read it with him a couple of days after he has been killed. That, of course, leads to the whole question of what resurrection is about. If that was tough for people in Jesus’ day, it’s even tougher for us. But here is what we do know according to today’s and other accounts of the resurrection of Jesus.

First of all, it was real. Some people say that the stories of the resurrection of Jesus were really metaphors, ways that the disciples were trying to describe their feelings about the impact Jesus had had on them. He was going to remain alive in them. But you really don’t get that from any of the characters in the stories. All of the stories about their initial disbelief and the change that took place in their lives when they saw Jesus right in front of them, seem to take it out of the realm of metaphor of symbolism. The real question, I think, is whether we believe them.

Secondly, Jesus wasn’t a ghost. He seemed to be able to walk through locked doors, but ate fish with the disciples during that Bible Study. Here is what the book of Acts says. “After his death, he presented himself alive to them in many different settings over a period of forty days. In face-to-face meetings, he talked to them about things concerning the realm of God. They met and ate meals together.”

The third thing is that he, evidently, looked different. Those two followers walked with him for several miles and had no clue as to who he was. Mary mistook him for a gardener. But when he spoke her name, she recognized him, as did the Emmaus travelers when he offered thanks to God and broke the bread.

Kate Huey in her blog she writes for the United Church of Christ says this about the resurrection of Jesus. “For many reasons in the early years of the church and just as much today, people of faith tend to separate the body and the spirit, with the spirit more important than the body. On the other hand, our culture hardly recognizes that the spirit exists and must be fed. And yet we know that we are saved in our whole being, body and soul, and that somehow that salvation gets worked out here, on earth, in our bodies just as much as our souls. As Stephen Cooper puts it, “To insist on the reality of the resurrected body is to demand that we accept our present reality as the place where transformations of ultimate significance take place.” (Feasting on the Word Year B, Vol. 2). And Cynthia Lano Lindner eloquently describes the resurrection as “God’s affirmation that creation matters, that love and justice matter, that humanity, in all its ambiguity and complexity, is still fearfully and wonderfully God-made” (The Christian Century, April 21 2009).

When he gathered with the disciples that same night, Jesus told them they could recognize him by looking at his hands and feet. Were the wounds from the nails still there? John has a similar story where he shows those wounds to Thomas and the others. Luke doesn’t mention the wounds. Maybe the wounds are a given. Or maybe what’s important to Luke is not the wounds but those feet that traveled the length of Israel, the feet shod with the gospel of peace. And those hands that reached out and touched the untouchable, healed the sick, comforted the sorrowing; those hands that offered blessing and were raised in prayer.

It had been quite a three years those disciples from Emmaus and the others had had with Jesus. But after that quick trip to Emmaus and back, they realized the journey was actually just beginning. They would be doing a lot of Bible Study with Jesus for the next few weeks. But Jesus told them to wait in Jerusalem until the Spirit came. Then they would be empowered to be the feet and hands of Jesus, wounds and all, themselves.

Hope

Hope is fragile.
As the world pushes in around us
With words and acts of hatred, violence, and ignorance,
Hope gets lost,
Buried under weight of political jargon, false accusations, and broken promises.

But hope is resilient.
When grief and anger and despair plague you day after day
And you’re not sure how you can go on
Hope remains,
The light that is always shining even when the night is at its darkest.

And hope can be powerful.
When that little light grows into a radiance that cannot be contained,
That completely dispels the darkness
Hope triumphs,
Overcoming sadness, despair, anger, fear, and even death

Hope is a promise.
A promise that no matter where you are or what you are feeling,
You can find it, in music, in sunrises, in family, and in friends.
Hope lives
In the promise of new life, in the promise of this Easter morning, and in the promise of God’s grace.

Easter Sunday
John 20:1-18
April 8, 2012
Mary Hammond

Resurrection has taken on a new face for me during the past few months—the face of my first-born child. As pastors, Steve and I have accompanied parishioners and their families through many deaths. All of our parents and grandparents have passed away, as well as several aunts and uncles, and even a couple young cousins.

Yet, there is nothing in my experience to date that begins to compare to the amount of time I have spent contemplating death, resurrection, and the afterlife since Sarah’s passing on Thanksgiving Day.

There are times in our lives when “the rubber meets the road,” so to speak. Our lived experience crashes into our theology. Will we re-frame what we thought we knew? Will we face what has exposed itself as poverty-stricken in our former way of seeing? Will we grab God’s hand and walk the extra miles along unfamiliar paths? Will we build new alliances with faith, mystery, and paradox; with unanswered questions and questionable answers? Or shall we cower in a corner, clutching the familiar, when all is said and done?

These sound to me like some of the same questions that Jesus’ disciples faced as they encountered the empty tomb that Easter morning so long ago.

I always wonder how it was for the women, waiting and weeping through that agonizing Sabbath day of rest until they could touch, handle, and care for the dead body of Jesus. It was their job, after all, a job that rendered them ritually unclean according to their faith, but a job women have done so lovingly and well over countless centuries and millenia.

Wednesday marked the fifth anniversary since my mother’s death. How much I needed to caress her face and feel the warmth of her flesh shortly after the nursing home notified my sister and me in the middle of the night that she had passed! How much I needed to stroke Sarah’s hair, kiss her forehead, and caress her cheek when Steve and I made the long trek to the Funeral Home in Williamsburg! How much the women around Jesus surely yearned to touch him throughout that long sabbath day.

It is no surprise that Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb early Sunday morning as the sun is still rising. She is laden with spices and ointments for the body of her beloved friend, teacher, and healer. A colleague of mine worked for years as a suicide counselor. She explained to me the distinctions between “instrumental grievers” and “intuitive grievers.” Instrumental grievers need tasks, plans, ‘things to do’ to process their grief. Intuitive grievers need ways to sit, reflect, hold, touch, remember. We are often a blend of both, to greater or lesser degrees.

Mary Magdalene is ready, even yearning, to “do something” that helps her feel closer to her dead friend. Some days I just need to pull out something in Sarah’s hand-writing and read it, just to feel connected to her authentic voice. Fortunately, she left us a treasure trove of writing, and she was also a pack-rat! Caring for Jesus’ body must have been like that for Mary, I think.

But Mary isn’t prepared for what comes next. She arrives at the tomb, and the stone is rolled away. “Oh, no!” she fears. “They have taken his body!”

This is not an unrealistic reaction. Jesus was executed by the collusion of both Roman and religious authorities. Influential people wanted him out of the picture. Couldn’t they want his body out of the picture, as well? Wouldn’t it be prudent for the Romans to hide the evidence of his execution, especially when–a mere week before–crowds formed on the streets in Jerusalem and hailed him as king? Who knows what kind of backlash there could be, after his death?

Mary runs off to tell Simon Peter and “the other disciple whom Jesus loved,” known as the Gospel writer, John. The two men come to the tomb and look. Seeing only linens inside, they leave. John hints that he “believes,” but he doesn’t say what kind of “believing” that is. He qualifies this statement by asserting that the disciples do not yet know that Jesus is risen.

It is not surprising to me that they leave. Their leader has been executed; are they next? Could they be identified and rounded up by the authorities? Is there nothing else to see, with an empty tomb before them? Who knows what is running through their minds? The political risks the male disciples face seem to be greater than those of the women, given the culture and times they live in.

Mary Magdalene lingers. I get that. Frankly, I wouldn’t have been able to leave, either. Our daughters, who chose not to accompany us to the Funeral Home, asked us how it was to view their sister’s body. I told them that it was hard–of course it was hard. But far harder was leaving that room, which was ultimately something we had to do.

So Mary lingers. Soon she encounters two angels sitting in the tomb. They speak to her. She is weeping the whole time. Her vision is probably kind of blurry and clouded by her tears. Her face might be buried in her hands. With a heart utterly bereft, her head might be bowed.

Mary hears a voice of one she assumes to be the Gardener, until a point in the conversation when the visitor calls her by name, “Mary…”

Instantly, she Knows, with a capital “K” on the word “Knows.” A cosmic “K,” if you will. The voice she hears belongs to Jesus–not a gardener, not an angel, not a figment of her imagination, not a projection of her own grief.

Jesus.

He speaks with her. She came to the tomb to touch him, anoint him, prepare his body for a proper Jewish burial. She still longs to touch him. She wants to grab him, hold him, cling to him, never let go. But he desists. ‘No, Mary, go tell the others…’

And Mary becomes the first witness to the resurrection. In spite of the fact that a woman’s witness at the time is disallowed in a Jewish court of law, Jesus sends Mary. It’s just like him–an upstart even after rising from the dead!

Other Gospels tell us that no one believes her—it seems to them an idle tale. I’m not surprised. Some of the connections I have experienced between this world and the next since Sarah’s death could easily solicit the exact same reaction. At times, I’ve doubted like Thomas. I’ve thought I was hearing a Gardener, a stranger, the figments of my own imagination, the projections of my own grief. Who would ever believe me? Who would believe Mary Magdalene? I profoundly ‘get that’ in ways I never got that before.

But while he was still alive, Jesus kept saying these things would happen. The light overcomes the darkness. The seed that falls to the ground and dies is the one that bears fruit. In three days this temple will be destroyed and rise to new life.

Huh?

Mary Magdalene converses with a risen Christ. She doesn’t recognize him until Jesus calls her by name. Thomas has to see the marks from the nails in Jesus’ hands to believe (John 20:24-28). The two disciples traveling the Emmaus Road have to sit down to a meal with Jesus and watch him breaking the bread before their eyes are opened (Luke 24:13-32). In the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, Luke reports this: “After Jesus’ death, he presented himself alive to them in many different settings over a period of forty days” (see Acts 1:1-5).

The disciples face a head-on collision between their learned theology and a risen savior. They have before them two choices–denial and entrenchment, or faith and transformation.

In my last sermon, I mentioned my recent sunrise walks. Everything is parable and metaphor to me on those early morning excursions. Once the trees are covered with springtime leaves, their arching cathedrals of green obscure the intensity of the colorful fireworks on the horizon. Paradoxically, spindly, barren trees of winter more fully reveal the glory of the Light. It’s already happening as winter slowly births spring.

Yet, if I peer closely at nature’s rhythm, I notice how the darkness itself invites the dawning. The barrenness fertilizes the ground of both earth and heart. The cold, stark simplicity of winter unveils the explosive beauty of the heavens. So it is with Easter morning.

“Come, sweet Easter morning. Come, sweet happy day!”

Amen.

Mark 14:1-11
April 1, 2012
Steve Hammond

When you read the story of the last week of Jesus’ life, one of the saddest things is how quickly things went bad. On Palm Sunday everyone was greeting Jesus and proclaiming him as their new and wonderful king. Just a few days later many of the same people were screaming crucify him, crucify him. He was turned over to the authorities by Judas, one of his own disciples. He was abandoned by the rest. He was infamously denied by Peter.

It’s hard enough to read what happened physically to Jesus that week. But it’s so much worse when you think about him having to face that all alone.

It turns out, though, that I haven’t been reading the story very well. Jesus did not go through all of this alone. Sure, the disciples did flee. The crowds did turn on him. Judas did betray him. He felt forsaken by God. But there are other people and other stories. One is this woman with the alabaster jar. She did this amazing thing. She smashed a very expensive jar, with even more expensive perfume in it, and started pouring it on Jesus’ head. Some of the folk were outraged. They said the money would have been better spent on feeding the hungry than on fancy jars and expensive perfume.

Jesus told them to chill out by saying the woman did a good thing. She realized what none of the rest of them had been able to figure out. Jesus was about to die. This was her way of acknowledging how grateful she was for Jesus. Her act of love and generosity almost got lost in the argument that pursued. But Jesus was right. He said what she had done would be remembered wherever the good news is preached. And we are still talking about her today.

You also have to be careful with this story because of that one line that gets so abused, the one where Jesus talked about the poor always being with us. I am amazed by how this one sentence has been used to dismiss all that Jesus said and showed us about taking care of the poor. Too many people read this as if Jesus were saying we have no responsibility to help the poor since you can’t really do anything about poverty anyway. But that’s not what he suggested at all. Rather he was telling his dinner companions that there will always be chances for them to help the poor, with their own money, rather than this woman’s money. She wasn’t denying or ignoring the poor that day. Nor was Jesus. She was just trying to support Jesus. She did not abandon him. If nobody else was going to be with Jesus until the end, she was going to be.

She wasn’t the only one though. There was that Roman military officer, that Gentile occupier, who acknowledged that a great injustice had been done. “This one surely was the Son of God.”

The Gospel stories tell us that everybody mocked Jesus as he was dying; the priests, the scribes, the passers by, even those who were being crucified with him. But Luke’s story includes a different memory. One of those being crucified with Jesus offered his support, saying that maybe he had earned a cross, but there was no way Jesus had. “Remember me when you come into your Kingdom, Jesus.” “Friend,” Jesus said, and a much needed friend he was, “before day’s end we will be in Paradise together.”

Then there were Joseph of Arimathea who risked being exposed as a Jesus follower when he asked Pilate if he could take Jesus’ body to his own tomb. Helping Joseph in that task, and also outing himself, was Nicodemus, the religious leader who came to Jesus that one night.

So Jesus did not die alone. There were others, I’m sure, who stayed with him whose stories have not been recorded, and whose stories I’ve perhaps forgotten. Can you think of others?

When we read the story, or the stories, again, we realize that Jesus did not die alone. Sure there was plenty of other agony, physical, psychological, and spiritual, but he wasn’t totally abandoned. And that is not insignificant. Having the support of others makes a difference even when you can’t change things. I know that in such a profound way now. Nothing can change the fact of our daughter Sarah’s death. But the support we have received, realizing we aren’t going though this alone, has made such a difference. Mary and I, and Rachel and Grace are walking this lonesome valley, but we are not walking it alone. And I’m so glad Jesus wasn’t alone either, even though it was so hard.

What this congregation does so well, what you do so well, is walk with others like you have walked with Mary and me. And that’s not easy. But just think how when you walk with others, when you make sure they aren’t alone, it’s like walking with Jesus during that last week of his life. “When you have done it to one of the least of these, you have done it unto me.”

So Jesus wasn’t alone when he died. There’s also another thing I’ve been thinking about we might keep missing as we read the stories of that last week for Jesus. Who killed Jesus? [Wait for answers.] The Romans, the political power with the collusion of the religious establishment. When I look at a lot of the hymns we sing, though, especially around this time of the year, and a lot of the teaching you hear in a lot of places, it’s like Rome or the religious establishment had nothing to do with it. It was you who killed Jesus. It was me who killed Jesus. It was God who killed Jesus instead of killing you and me.

Now this gets into new, and perhaps troubling ground, for some of you. We have heard most of our lives that we killed Jesus by being so sinful. Movies like that Mel Gibson one, and so much else only reenforce that idea. We can’t go into it all now, but as you read or hear the stories about Jesus’ death this week or whenever, remember that salvation can come, in ways other than feeling like and acknowledging that it was really you who drove those spikes through Jesus’s hands and feet. Salvation can come without God having to kill Jesus instead of killing you and me and your children and grandchildren or parents or sisters or brothers or kids starving in Africa. Does that really sound like the God Jesus trusted in? Just imagine that the cross can mean something else, that the salvation that comes through the death of Jesus on the cross can have a different meaning, or meanings, than what we have been told.

And please, please don’t let Rome and the power structures off the hook. We miss so much of the story, or the stories, when we gloss over the fact that it was Roman soldiers, at the order of the Roman governor, with the encouragement of the religious power structures, who drove the spikes through Jesus’ hands and feet. It wasn’t you or me.

Do you know what a disruptive technology is? It’s a technology that comes along and completely alters the status quo of the current technology. It changes everything. Record companies are learning what disruptive technologies are with the ease of file sharing over the internet. Horse buggy manufacturers learned what disruptive technologies were when automobiles started appearing on the roads.

Jesus had a disruptive faith that challenged the power structures of his, as well as our day. Those power structures still want us to believe that it was you and me that killed Jesus. It makes it so much easier for them to do what they have in mind. But remember that the stories we will read and hear this week tell us about a power struggle between Jesus and the political and religious structures of the empire. It was a life and death struggle, and still is. A struggle where Jesus was not alone. Nor are we. And when the empire nailed Jesus to the cross that day, it thought it had won. It didn’t. But that’s next week’s story.

John 12:20-33
March 25, 2012
Mary Hammond

When it comes to end-of-life realities, time itself seems altered. It deepens, weighs more, and moves more slowly. There is enhanced significance attached to every moment on either side of a death. Afterwards, both re-framing and reflection continue for a long time.

John’s Gospel is dated the latest of the Gospels, assumed to be written around 90-100 A.D. The writer is not as concerned with historical chronology as the other Gospel writers are. He organizes his material theologically with the goal that others may see and believe as he has seen and believed.

Much of this Gospel takes place during the last days of Jesus’ life, that heavy-laden week of cataclysmic proportions. The story before us today occurs six days before Jesus’ execution. We have already witnessed the cleansing of the Temple early in John’s narrative, the raising of Lazarus from the dead, and the anointing of Jesus by his dear friend, Mary. If we read through the Gospel of John to this point in Chapter 12, we have even heard the story we will be retelling next Sunday–Jesus’ procession into Jerusalem when the crowds hail him as King.

Some Greeks have arrived in Jerusalem to participate in the Passover Festival. Jerry Goebel offers an interesting theory in his on-line Lenten reflections from April 2, 2006 (onefamilyoutreach.com, “The Hour Comes”). He suggests that these Gentiles might have witnessed the ruckus Jesus raised on the Temple grounds when he overturned the tables of the money-changers, driving out both merchants and animals. That incident took place in the vast Courtyard of the Gentiles, the only part of the Temple area where these Greeks would have been welcome. Had they been there themselves, or might they have heard tales of this confrontation from others? These are interesting possibilities to consider…

So the Greeks approach Philip, one of Jesus’ Jewish disciples with a Greek name. Their request is simple: “We want to see Jesus.” Philip could take them to Jesus, but he doesn’t. Why the hesitation in granting these foreigners an audience with Jesus? Do old prejudices rear their ugly head? It is not uncommon for the disciples and Jesus to disagree on what people merit an audience with Jesus.

So Philip speaks to Andrew about this request. Andrew is the other Jewish disciple with a Greek name. Still, no action. Finally, the two of them inform Jesus that some Greek pilgrims want to see him.

Their question is simple, although it is only implied in the text. “Should we bring these people to you, or not?” It basically begs a “yes,” “no,” or “later” kind of answer.

However, if you look closely at Jesus’ response, that’s not what they get. Instead, Jesus shares what seems to me a montage of rather coded reflections on the realities before him. Six days before his death, he has a lot on his mind. He considers both his inner struggle and deep resolve about facing the circumstances to come. He affirms the cosmic impact of the decisions he weighs.

Jesus acknowledges the paradoxes of his story. Surrender is the pathway to freedom, death the pathway to life, losing the pathway to finding. Suffering love vanquishes the prince of darkness. Being “lifted up” draws all people to himself.

It helps me to look at the Gospel of John more as a painting than as a narrative–a painting which juxtaposes colors both muted and bold in an abstract but compelling way…a painting splashed in darkness and light, evoking contrasting images of both mystery and clarity.

The miracle at the wedding of Cana, retold early in John’s Gospel, is a sign that Jesus begins his public ministry. Now the Greeks are asking for him. Jesus declares that the time is come for him to be glorified. Is this moment a sign that the ‘Jesus story’ is about to bust out of its seams and expand beyond anything anyone but Jesus could imagine?

A voice from heaven speaks, reminiscent of a moment during Jesus’ baptism. Some bystanders hear thunder; others assume it is the voice of an angel. Jesus counters that the voice speaks not for him, but for them. He is prepared to face what comes, as hard as it will be. They are not. Another sign of an important turning point in the ministry of Jesus.

The reversals of the Reign of God are in full, but muted view. They are much easier to “read into” the story after the death and resurrection of Jesus than beforehand. John is writing to an audience who has the death and resurrection of Jesus in the rear view mirror. “What does the ‘Jesus story’ mean?” John’s narratives ask throughout the Gospel. “What does it mean for you?” they echo again and again.

As Steve said last week in his sermon, it is not just the death of Jesus that is redemptive—it is his whole story. It is the way Jesus lived, the words he taught, the courage he exhibited. While the powers he challenged executed him, they could not defeat him. The ignominy and shame of a criminal’s death gave way to dazzling light and new life in resurrected glory.

I have been leaving for my morning walks before dawn so that I can spend the last half-hour home walking straight into the sunrise. It has been spectacular and unrepeatable every day, varied by the mist and cloud cover, or lack thereof. Through the dark silhouettes of barren, wintry tree limbs at Westwood Cemetery peeks the dazzling morning light–a red and yellow fireball, seething with energy and life. As the sun rises, the sky is sprayed with combinations of pink, purple, gray, white, blue, red, and yellow. The barren tree branches of late March reveal the light behind them more clearly than hordes of leafy springtime greenery ever could. This becomes a metaphor for the wintry, exposed seasons of our lives, where, paradoxically, we can often see the light more clearly if we gaze deeply into the dawning.

“Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried,” Jesus says, “it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over” (John 12:34).

As we continue this season of Lent, Jesus calls us to both mystery and paradox, but he also calls us to come and see for ourselves, reflect on his story, make it our own, and live into it day by day. Amen.

Anita Peebles
March 21, 2012

Hmmm…what an interesting passage Luke 14:25-32). Hating my family doesn’t sound like something Jesus would want me to do…but let’s focus on something else first. In this scripture, Jesus is telling the people that if they want to follow him and be disciples of his to learn from his teaching, they need to evaluate the costs. This is what I think of when people (or I) say, “Well, he never said it would be easy…” But I usually don’t think about the “cost” of following Jesus. I sure didn’t when I started to think about God and whether I was a Christian or not.

I was raised in a Methodist church in a small, conservative town in mid-Michigan. I was always too shy to leave my mom and attend Sunday school regularly, so I went to the adult church services when my mom did. When I was in 7th grade, I decided to join a youth group in preparation for our confirmation as members of the church. Before I was confirmed on Easter 2005, I had to be baptized, and for both of those ceremonies, I had to go through classes and learn about the Bible and the teachings of Jesus. I remember learning about all the things we had to do to follow Jesus: love people, help the poor, feed the hungry, honor our parents, etc. etc. Something I don’t remember, though, is learning that we have to consider the cost of being a follower of Jesus, the cost of being a Christian. I remember thinking about and discussing what I was called to give up: things of the flesh, things of the world. I remember hearing stories about where Jesus told his disciples that they must be prepared for people to hate them and persecute them and even kill them because of him. I thought that was just a side effect…a truth we had to deal with. I never thought about having a choice whether or not to follow Jesus. God was just there, a given, and some people just refused to recognize God, but hey, they’d come around eventually…But as time went on and I saw that some people just weren’t going to believe…I wondered. It turns out, we do have a choice.

What does it mean to have a God that allows us to have a choice to follow him? People have said to me, “Well, if there was a god and he did want you to know he really exists and is real, he would have made everyone believe in him.” But that erases the point of having faith in something we cannot see or comprehend fully. That’s not the god I constantly search for, that’s not the god who I know. The God I know is capable of being distant, and capable of being close. God is able and willing to give us a choice to acknowledge the existence of a being completely beyond our imperfect understanding. Having a god that is willing to allow us to choose to wander away and who will be waiting for us to return so he can welcome us with open arms is one of the most meaningful aspects of my personal faith.

In order to choose God, Jesus says we must consider the cost of making that choice. Just as the king in the scripture reading sat down and considered if he could go into battle with ten thousand men against twenty thousand, and still hold his head high, we have to think about what we’ve got on our side and what we’re going up against. Just as the architect has to consider if he has enough materials to complete the job, we have to consider if we have enough faith, or strength, or love, or whatever it takes to follow Jesus and get the job done. What does THAT mean? Getting the job done? I think it refers to how much we can give in the name of Jesus. Whether or not we are sure of our talents and gifts and whether we can honestly dedicate them all to God. Giving up everything for God.

In this passage, Jesus isn’t calling us to actually HATE our parents and siblings and friends…he is calling our attention to what needs to be the center of our lives: he is calling us to choose God. If we love and trust someone more than we love and trust God, He is not the true ruler of our lives. Jesus is calling us to take up our crosses, whatever burdens and cares and troubles and joys and sorrows and pains we have, and follow him. He wants us to put all of these things out in the open space between our hearts and His, not hiding or withholding anything, but trusting in Him enough to bare our souls to Him. By letting Jesus into the secret places of our hearts, the shadowy parts of our days, we are allowing Him to shower us with grace, and we are openly asking for and acknowledging that grace. Only then can we take up our cross, and follow him. He knows our cross more intimately than we know it ourselves, and he can help us shoulder it on our daily earthly journey. By dedicating our whole lives to God, by putting everything out in the open and being willing to put everything on the line, we can follow Jesus, the one who lifts us when we fall, holds us near when we weep, and the one who lights the candle in the darkness.

This is what we must consider when evaluating what to do about Jesus’ command. It’s not easy, choosing God. No one said it was easy. Jesus…didn’t say it was easy.

John 3:14-21
Steve Hammond
March 18, 2012

[Hold up a JOHN 3:16 sign and ask where the last place was people had seen a sign like that.]

I’m not sure if it is as prevalent at athletic events as it used to be, but signs with nothing but John 3:16 written on them, or stenciled into sweat bands, or etched into the black stuff under the quarterback’s eyes, are still pretty common. That whole thing of making not even the words we read in the 16th verse of the third chapter of John, but simply the verse reference J O H N 3 : 1 6 shorthand for the gospel seems, to me, pretty odd all in itself.

A funny thing happened on the way to this sermon. I was going to end by inviting all of you take a sheet of paper and during the offering so you could write down a verse you might like to hold up during a nationally televised football game or knitting competition. But we are just going to go ahead and do that now.

In the pews you will see some sheets of paper and markers. During the offertory you are invited to write the chapter and verse number of something from the Bible that you think is important. Maybe it’s not the verse that sums up the whole Gospel for you, but something that you want to make sure people don’t miss about the Gospel.
There are Bibles in the pews to help you out. And if you can’t remember the verse just write out what it’s about. And it doesn’t have to be one verse. It can be a story. It can be the Beatitudes. The Sermon on the Mount. One of the resurrection stories or one of the birth stories. Whatever you would like to have on your sign, including John 3:16. [Take up the offering]

One of the things I hope we realize from our sharing is that it is hard to sum up the Gospel in just one verse or one story from the Bible. Contrary to what you often hear, the Gospel is not simple, even though there are those who would suggest that you can capsulize the Gospel in one verse like John 3:16.

The verse starts talking about how God loved the world so much that God sent Jesus to us. And then it says that whoever believes in Jesus shall not perish, but have everlasting life. But is it saying that God only loves those who believe in Jesus? And if believing in Jesus is the key to eternal life, what do we have to believe?

I’ve got a feeling that a lot of those folk who hold up the John 3:16 signs at football games have very strong views about what it is that you have to believe about Jesus to receive that eternal life. And I’m also thinking that it’s probably a lot different than a lot of other people believe.

I’m also pretty sure that when Jesus talked about belief, he was talking about something much more than a set of propositions we agree to, or a statement we can sign, or a creed we can recite.

Belief in the way Jesus was talking about, I think, was something much more akin to what we would think about when we use the word trust. Jesus had this profound trust in God that went far beyond the things he believed about God.

And, again, I don’t think that’s something you can capsulize in simply one verse like John 3:16. There is a lot of interesting stuff going on in this story besides that one verse. And you also have to remember we don’t exactly know what the author intended as quotes from Jesus and what was commentary on the writer’s part. Some scholars say this whole section we read this morning are meant to be seen as the words of Jesus. Other say that the part that starts with the “God so love the world,” are meant to be taken not as the words of Jesus but the writer’s comments about God sending Jesus to the world.

John’s gospel is all about light and darkness. Here Jesus meets Nicodemus in the dark of night. In the very next story he meets this Samaritan woman in the middle of the day. Nicodemus, a ruler of Israel, had a harder time understanding what Jesus was about than this woman at the well did. And, of course, Jesus wasn’t even supposed to be talking to her on two counts, much less drinking water from her cup. She was a woman and she was a Samaritan. But she was the person of the light rather than Nicodemus a religious leader of Israel.

I don’t think the contrast between their two stories is accidental. It just tells you that you can’t shorthand the gospel by waving a John 3:16 sign in front of a camera.

It’s also important to be aware of what John 3:16 says and what it doesn’t say. Notice that John 3:16 doesn’t say anything about the cross. What it does say is that God gave God’s only son indicating, I think, that God offered us Jesus for many reasons than for Jesus simply to die. That’s why I have trouble with the emphasis on what is called the substitutionary atonement, the idea that the only way any of us could escape the fires of hell is by Jesus being nailed to a cross.

Remember what we are doing here; suggesting that the gospel can’t be so easily shorthanded by simply one verse or, much less, by the chapter and verse number. It’s not that there isn’t something important, something redemptive, something that saves us by the death of Jesus on his cross. But there is also something important, something redemptive, and something that saves us by the way he lived, which was not, of course, unrelated to the way he died. The way Jesus lived, led to his death. Or to put it another way, if Jesus had lived another way, gone along with the ruling religious and political class, not challenged the status quo, conformed to the customs and assumptions of his day, nobody would have ever wanted to kill him in the first place. And there goes the substitutionary atonement.

Again, I’m not trashing the idea of Jesus dying for our sins, there’s just a bit more to it than most ideas of the substitionary atonement suggest. If it’s all about the substitionary atonement then it doesn’t matter how Jesus lived. It is simply he was born and then he died and God raised him from the dead. Nothing else matters about Jesus.

As we finish I just want to mention that odd story about the bronze serpent on that pole in the desert, that Jesus references. [Have somebody read that story from Numbers 21:4-9]. I’m thinking that the writer of John’s gospel might well have latched on to that story because of his own experience. Here is someone who was with Jesus, who saw the life that was in him. It could have well seemed like the whole business of the snakes in the wilderness was a story that resinated in his own life. He knew that when Jesus was lifted up, Not simply lifted up on a cross, but lifted up as the One showing us a new way of living in this world, when he saw Jesus for who he was, then it was kind of like looking at that snake on the pole. Jesus saved him, Jesus rescued him from all the snakes that were biting at him. When he looked to Jesus he was alive and living in new ways. Maybe that’s why he might have put Numbers 21:4 on the sign he held at the football game.

As we have shared all those verses and stories that are meaningful to us what I hope we are learning is that God works in our lives in many ways. The Gospel is all of those stories and verses that mean something to us even, and most especially perhaps, when the snakes are biting.

John 2:13-22
March 11, 2012
Mary Hammond

When I read this story of Jesus’ cleansing the Temple in Jerusalem, I can’t help but think about insiders taking on their own religion. Jesus came to the Jewish Temple that day as a Jew. He literally—not figuratively–overturned what his religion had become, in that place, at that time.

Where was the House of Prayer for All Nations, when the Courtyard of the Gentiles was teeming with money-changers, sacrifice inspectors, Temple tax collectors, bleating sheep, and fluttering doves? Where was justice, when religious devotion bedded down with Big Business, fleecing the poor and enriching the Temple coffers?

According to ancient Jewish historian, Josephus, High Priest Ananias was a “great hoarder up of money” (see Pastor Edward F. Markquat, “the Cleansing of the Temple,” Gospel Analysis, Sermons from Seattle). His four sons and son-in-law, Caiaphas, were all high priests.

The House of Annas, as it was called, had a “lock” on the animal sacrifice business transacted on Temple grounds. Their influence and political power was formidable. Previously, the buying and selling of animal sacrifices took place on the Mount of Olives. In spite of protests by the Pharisees, this business was moved to the Temple area.

Then one day, Jesus came along. He couldn’t stand what he saw. Overturning tables, spilling money boxes, sending animals fleeing, Jesus offered powerful, prophetic resistance to the abuse of religion in God’s name. He challenged the silence that surrounded all that noise.

Throughout this endless political campaign season, I have thought a lot about what it means to “take God’s name in vain” and to “bear false witness.” Growing up, I was taught that “taking God’s name in vain” was about using cuss words. I witnessed my sister uttering a forbidden word during childhood. I subsequently watched my mother wash her mouth out with soap. I had no desire to ever experience the same fate.

As I’ve grown older, though, I’ve come to understand “bearing false witness” and “taking God’s name in vain” much differently, while I’m still no fan of swearing. We take God’s name in vain when we attach God’s name to actions and beliefs which the Holy One would never support. We bear false witness when we utter untruths or twisted half-truths and pass them off as truth, or fact.

We live in a culture where taking God’s name in vain and bearing false witness are epidemic. They have nearly become ‘sport’ in the political arena. We see the tragic impact of this in the disdain so many feel for religious faith. Sadly, I’m speaking of my own Christian faith right now. Jesus watched this scenario play out in the context of his faith right before his eyes.

The Hebrew prophets spoke out about the sacrifices that pleased God. Their critiques were not “new news.” Hear the words of Amos: “Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and cereal offerings, I will not accept them, and the peace offerings of your fatted beasts I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:22-25).

The expenses common laborers incurred as they brought their Temple taxes and sacrifices to Jerusalem were staggering. The Temple tax was equal to two days’ wages. Then there was the money changer’s fee, one day’s wage, because coins that bore the image of Caesar were not allowed in the Temple. The common currency of the Roman Empire had to be exchanged for silver coins from Tyre. A pair of doves, the sacrifice of the poor, purchased outside the Temple, also cost two days’ wages. Inside the Temple, that same pair of doves could cost the equivalent of 40 days’ wages. And don’t forget the Sacrifice Inspector’s fee: a half-day’s wage (from an article by Jerry Goebel of onefamilyoutreach.com). In today’s dollars, the Temple business was likely racking in 170 million dollars a year! (Pastor Edward F. Markquart, “The Cleansing of the Temple,” Gospel Analysis, Sermons from Seattle).

The religious leaders immediately brand Jesus as a trouble-maker, demanding evidence for his authority to create chaos in the Temple courtyard and upend their business dealings. Jesus offers them only a cryptic comment about destroying and raising the Temple in three days. The literalists are thinking in terms of bricks and mortar. The narrator informs his audience that Jesus is referring to his own death and resurrection, something even his disciples could not fathom at the time. Scholars generally see Jesus pre-figuring ‘the new community,’ a Temple not made with human hands, built around his presence through God’s Spirit.

This past fall, a group of 15 adults from church studied Brian McLaren’s book, Everything Must Change. Throughout its pages, McLaren contrasts two different ways of looking at Christian faith, the scriptures, and the world we live in. He calls one “the conventional view” and the other “the emerging view.” He makes a solid case for his belief that the “conventional view” is propelling us toward more violence, global crisis, and environmental degradation. He further believes the “conventional view” is leading us away from the God Jesus followed, distancing us from the radical commitments and practices of Jesus.

Jesus’ action in the Temple is much like the title of McLaren’s book: everything must change. Jesus is not tinkering. He’s upending the system.

Just as the fire of vision and justice burned in the heart of Jesus, what fire is burning within you that cannot be quenched but must burst forth into flame? What tables are you overturning? What tables are we overturning as a community of faith? Amen.