Not a Mite Would I Withhold

You’ll have to watch me today because this could easily dissolve into a sermon about money today. I admit the temptation is there. We had our Administrative Board meeting last week and there’s a significant budget shortfall for the year. I’m looking at all those things we have designated for second-mile giving this year and I’m praying in confidence that we will meet those needs as a congregation as we have done every year.

This is not a sermon about meeting the budget, though. It’s not a sermon about tithing, the biblical practice of giving a tenth of our income to God. It’s not a sermon about stewardship or sowing seeds of faith or any of the other terms that we use when we talk about our financial giving.

It’s not that a sermon about any of those things would be wrong. We don’t talk about it enough, actually. Jesus talked about money a whole lot more than he talked about sex or any of the other areas we spend so much time worrying over. And money is important because what we do with our money says a lot about who we are and what we value. Jim Wallis, the editor of Sojourners magazine, is fond of saying that a budget is a moral document. Our national budget says something about what we value as a society. Our personal budgets say something about we believe as individuals and where we give our allegiance.

But this is not a sermon about money or budgets – it’s a sermon about giving. Now that sounds like I’m still talking about money, I know, but I’m after something more. I don’t want to be like the old junk dealer who was talking to his donkey. One day a man came out of his house and he saw the local junk dealer out by the road with his cart full of junk hitched to the most pitiful-looking donkey he had ever seen. The donkey was lop-eared and shaky and didn’t look like he could pull a child’s wagon. But there was the junkman saying, “Come on Sally. Come on Old Paint. Come on Sturdylegs. Come on Pete. Let’s get this cart moving.”

The man went up to the junk dealer and said, “What are you doing? Who are you calling? There’s only one donkey here.”

The junk dealer leaned over and whispered, “I know, but if Sally thought she was the only one pulling this cart she’d never do it.”

So I’m not here to try to pull one over on you today. I really do want to talk about giving and I want to do it because the gospel story today is a story of giving and a story of living…really living and what it takes to do that.

The story is a very simple one that involves an act so simple that it might have gone entirely unnoticed it Jesus hadn’t pointed it out. It involves a poor, bereaved woman and two coins that she puts into a collection box. She probably didn’t even know it at the time, but she was showing something amazing about how God works and about how life works.

We are near the end of the story by the time we get to Mark chapter 12. Jesus has finally come to Jerusalem after telling the disciples over and over that this was where the end would come. This was where the whole journey would reach its climax. He was headed for the cross, he had told them. Headed for death. And then to be raised again.

The tension was mounting. The crowds had gathered. Everybody expected a showdown or a throwdown or some sort of satisfying resolution to this challenge Jesus presented.

Jesus engaged in a series of conflicts with the religious authorities and those who were vying for power. It was Jesus vs. the scribes, Jesus vs. the Sadducees, Jesus vs. the Pharisees. All with an audience trying to decide for themselves: Who was the more believable representative of God’s message? Whom could the people trust?

The chief priests, scribes and elders were the first to hit him up with a challenge, questioning his credentials. “Who gave you the authority to do these things you do?” they asked. Jesus artfully avoided their question by asking them to weigh in on John the Baptist, another prophet much beloved by the people and much reviled by the leaders. When they didn’t answer, Jesus refused to do so, too.

The Pharisees and Herodians were next with a question about taxes. Should good Jews pay taxes to a pagan Roman emperor or not? Again Jesus stumps them with a good line. “Give to the emperor the things that are his, and to God the things that are God’s.” How were they going to say that anything wasn’t God’s? They were stuck and they knew it.

The Sadducees followed with a ridiculous question designed to catch Jesus in the controversy over whether there was a resurrection of the dead. A scribe tried to enlist him in a conversation about which commandment was the greatest. And at the end of it all the critics were silenced. Jesus had handled himself so well that Mark says no one dared ask him another question.

But Jesus wasn’t done. He wanted to make sure his message got through. So right there in the crush of the Temple he turned to those listening and put in a dig at the scribes, the most learned men of the faith. “Keep watch on what the scribes do,” he said. “They like to wear the latest fashions, they like to be noticed whenever they go out in public, they eat up the fortunes of widows, they like the best seats in the synagogue and the best places at feasts. They will receive the greater judgment.”

Then we get some detail about where Jesus is. He’s standing there in the Temple and he’s in full view of the collection box. People are coming and putting in money. Then she shows up. A widow who approached the box and put in two small coins – mites they are called in some translations, not worth much more than a penny.

What do we know about this widow? Was she destitute because of the scribes who, Jesus said, “eat up the fortunes of the widows”? We don’t know. But Jesus sees a lesson here. He calls the disciples, a much smaller group for a much more intimate story. “You see that woman, that widow,” he says. “She has given more than anybody else. They all gave out of their abundance, but she has given out of her poverty. In fact, she’s given all that she has to live on.”

That’s how many translations put this, and when we translate it that way it makes the widow into a great model of sacrificial giving. She gave all that she had to live on. What a radical model for human beings to follow.

But it’s more than that. The literal Greek is that she gave her bion. Now you may not think you know that word, but you do. “Bio” is the found in words like biology and biography. It means life. It’s more than just what she had to live on…she gave her life.

This is not just Jesus giving the disciples a model for how they were supposed to give money – its Jesus one more time telling them what he is doing in Jerusalem. In the face of unjust scribes who devour the houses of widows, what does this widow do? She gives her life.

Who else does this? Who else will stare down the injustice and unjust powers in this world and give his life? It’s Jesus. This woman is, as New Testament scholar Katherine Grieb says, “a type of Jesus Christ who similarly chooses to give ‘his whole life’ in the face of those unjust structures that destroy it.”[i]

Good for Jesus, you say. He was God, though. What sort of model is that for us? And the widow – well, she was pretty extraordinary, wasn’t she? Does Jesus expect all of us to be a type of Jesus Christ?

I often hear this when I am having discussions with people about their giving. I ask it myself. How much does God expect from us? Most of us can see the good that comes from giving. We like to see the church responding to needs in the community. We like to see new programs taking off to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. We like to welcome new staff to help our ministry grow. When Drury or Jeff tell us about where our church donations go we feel good, (I hope!), about where that money is going.

But I feel the same way when my seminary asks me for money. Or the United Way. Or the Boy Scouts. I am giving because I see that my gifts are going to make something good better. But I am not going to give to those things to such an extent that it affects my ability to live in the manner to which I have become accustomed…am I? Would Jesus want me to give until I don’t have enough to live on?

What the widow’s gift shows me is that, in fact, what Jesus wants is for us to give until we are ready to die. Until we are ready to die to the world that has a claim on us that is so tight that we can’t see the reality of what God is doing in the world. When I am giving to God but still am hung up on what I can get from the world, I am no better than the scribes giving from their abundance. When I am giving but still clinging to my car or my plasma TV or my clothes to give value to my life, I am giving from my abundance. When I give so much that I discover what it really means to trust in God, then I am giving in a way that lets me die to the world and to live with Christ.

The Iona Community has a prayer that goes, “Help us not to offer you offerings that cost us nothing.” That’s what all the others were putting into that box. Offerings that cost them nothing. Offerings that may even have been to their advantage if the right person saw them. Offerings that did not begin to touch the deep joy and deep need to give that was implanted in their souls, that is implanted in each of us and which we sense every time we are touched at our core –when a baby is born or a sunset draws us in with its glory. Only the widow was giving from that place that knows that no half measure can suffice to give thanks for this life we have received from God.

I’m going to close with a poem. Franz Wright is a poet who became a Christian when he was far down the road in life. After struggling in many ways, he placed a lot of hopes on his baptism. He saw it in the same way that Paul talks about it, as a dying with Christ so that we can live with Christ.

His poem “Baptism” begins with his statement that the insane person he had been is dead.

I drowned him and he’s not coming

back. Look

he has a new life

a new name

now

which no one knows except

the one who gave it...

his first breath as an infant

past the waters of birth

and his soul’s, past the death waters, married --

Your words are spirit

and life.

Only say one

and he will be healed.[ii]

I’m out of my league in unraveling all that that says, but what I hear here is that the poet Wright is longing to find life and health and hope by dying to the world he has known. He will give his whole life to find what comes beyond “the death waters” of baptism. Nothing else will do. Jesus wants his whole life.

Just as Jesus wants yours. It is what giving is all about – modeling our lives after the savior who gave up everything to love us to life. Thanks be to God.

Mark 12:38-44

As part of his teaching, he said, "Watch the scribes from a distance. They like to walk about in long flowing robes and to be greeted respectfully in the market. They like the best seat in the synagogues and the best spots in banquets. They eat up the homes of the bereaved and pray with great show. They will receive the greater judgment."

As he was sitting there in the sight of the collection box, he watched how the throng threw money into the box. Many rich people were throwing in great amounts. But a poor, bereaved woman came and threw in two small coins, which were worth about a cent. He called his disciples and said to them, "I tell you the truth: This poor, bereaved woman has given more than all those who are giving to the collection box. All of them gave out of their abundance, but she, from her poverty, gave all that she had, all she had to live on."

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[i] A Katherine Grieb, “Blogging Toward Sunday: Two Widows True to Type,” Nov. 2, 2009, Theolog, blog of the Christian Century, http://theolog.org/2009/11/blogging-toward-sunday-two-widows-true.html.

[ii] Franz Wright, “Baptism,” Walking to Martha’s Vineyard, [Alfred A. Knopf:New York, 2007], pp. 44-45.

New Day Coming

An interesting thing is happening in funerals these days. A subtle shift is taking place, particularly for families who may only come to a clergyperson or a church at the time of a death. Funerals are moving from a service recognizing the victory of God’s love over death through resurrection to a celebration of the individuality of the person who has died. Now there is a place for remembering the individual and the unique ways he or she revealed God’s love, but what’s happening in some cases now is that all of the service is about the dearly departed.

The British writer A.N. Wilson has seen it go much further in his country. In a recent newspaper article he quoted an English vicar who said, “I wonder why on earth I am present at the funeral of somebody led in by the tunes of Tina Turner, summed up in the pithy platitudes of sentimental and secular poets and sent into the furnace with I Did It My Way blaring out across the speakers.”[i] (Did you know that ‘I Did it My Way’ by Frank Sinatra is the most popular funeral hymn in parts of Britain?)

I haven’t felt like that vicar too often, but I do see it coming. We are a forgetful people and we live in a forgetful, more secular culture. When we lose touch with the story and the faith that makes us Christians, what’s left? All we’ve got is Frank Sinatra and a photo display of our greatest moments.

But that’s not all that there is to say. As Christians we are people who have a different notion of time and it affects what we say about death and what we believe about it. It also affects what we say about those who have died after accepting Christ’s mercy and grace.

Today is All Saints Day, one of the high, holy days in the life of the church. John Wesley, the original Methodist, referred to it in his journals as one of his favorite days of the church year. It’s a day when remember how God has used human instruments to reveal God’s glory and grace. “We have this treasure in earthen vessels,” Paul says, “so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.” [2 Corinthians 4:7-10]. That’s what saints do – they make visible in their bodies the life of Jesus.

That sounds like a high calling and it is. It’s the greatest thing we can be called to. But it’s also not just reserved for an elite group – the Mother Theresas and Apostle Pauls among us. It is what Paul called all of the Christians he wrote to: “To all God’s beloved in Rome who are called to be saints” [Romans 1:8] “To the church of God in Corinth…called to be saints” [1 Co. 1:2]. “To all the saints who are in Jesus Christ in Philippi” [Philippians 1:1]. And if the Corinthians and Philippians can be saints, then maybe we might aspire to the same.

So today we remember the saints, we celebrate the saints, and we do something else – we look forward to the time when we will gather with the saints to praise God and to eat. Did you catch that vision from Isaiah today? “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of well-aged wines, of fat things full of marrow, of well-aged wines well refined. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces.” We are headed for something special.

That’s what makes the Christian view of time so special. We do not believe that the world is right when it says that history is an endless cycle of the same thing over and over. We do see familiar patterns and we know we make a lot of the same mistakes that human beings have always made, but this doesn’t mean that we’re not going anywhere. The arc of history does have a direction and a purpose.

So when Christians start telling the story of the world they start with a God who took the chaos of the primordial waters and started crafting a creation. God pushed aside the firmaments and made space for life to flourish. God started making fish and birds and land animals and every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. God made spiders and centipedes, platypus and porcupines, and finally God made a man and a woman and said, “This is good. This is very good.”

That’s where this story begins – an earth where God could look upon the work of God’s hands and see that it was good. But then sin entered the world. The first humans ate from that tree in the center of the garden and anger, murder, lust, jealousy, pride, and a host of other sins began to eat away at the relationship between God and the people. There was still goodness in the earth and in the people, but it was covered over and distorted and marred by the evil that was filling the land.

So God began a liberation project. Starting with Abraham and Sarah God made covenants with the wayward people. God promised to bless the people and to make them a great nation so that all the earth could be blessed. Abraham heard the promise. His children heard the promise. They were still far from perfect people, but they knew that God had joined God’s story with theirs. God had joined God’s name with theirs. When Moses asked God in the burning bush to give him a name, God’s response was: “I am the God of Abraham and Isaac. I am the God of Jacob. I am the God who is known by whom I choose to be with.”

So God freed the Hebrew slaves from Egypt and led them across the Red Sea. God led them into a new land and made a nation out of them. God was angry when they strayed and wept over their failure, but God did not abandon them and kept talking to them through the prophets and giving them visions of who they could be if they remembered that they were God’s people. Isaiah the prophet promised a new day coming when the death would be no more and the people would feast on the holy mountain.

Then the story reaches a climax at one particular point in Israel’s history. In one moment all of God’s work in conquering sin and death was done and made plain. The liberation project was completed. The great ‘I Am’ who spoke to Moses became the great ‘I am for you’ as Jesus died on a cross.

It was God’s way to go the distance and to reveal the depths of the divine love. In Jesus we knew a God who would give up his very life to bring us home. It was a love beyond all loves.

And here we are. On this side of the cross. With the victory won and the tomb empty. The whole purpose of history has been revealed. We know God’s name – This is the God of Israel and the God of Jesus Christ. We know where it all ends. We stand on the future which is in God’s hands.

So what is the point of this time in between? This time between the cross and the kingdom feast? It is a time for us to call on God’s name and to listen for our names. It is a time for us to work to model the kingdom that is to come in the here and now.

In Steven Spielberg’s movie Schindler’s List, we get a portrait of the horrors of the Jewish Holocaust in Europe during World War Two. The movie begins with typewriters typing the names of Jews being displaced from their homes by the Nazis in Poland. Stern, Horowitz, Heinz, Pfefferberg. At various other times there would be huge lists from which the clerks would yell out names as people boarded trains for work camps and ghettos and gas chambers. Names are called out over and over.

It is much more powerful to hear names than to simply say six million people died in the holocaust. This movie tried to say Solomon Eisenstein died in the holocaust, Yitsak Mantz died in the holocaust, and many others we don't remember died as well, but they each had a name. We name them because their memory still goes with us in this life among those who remain in their struggle to find life after this evil.

The film ends with the remaining survivors coming to place a stone of remembrance on the grave of Oscar Schindler, who saved them. One more name of a flawed human being who tried to bring a little divine light into a dark world.

We each bring our own names to this service today. Names of people we know and love who continue to speak to us. God continues to use the memories of these saints to move us and form us. And as we gather these names together, as we light candles of remembrance, we lift them up to celebrate what God was able to do through them. This is not a day to praise the saints, but a day to celebrate Christ's work in the saints. That is what makes this a high holy day.

What the communion of the saints looks like beyond this life is beyond our knowing or telling. The Bible can only approach it through images and so we talk of pearly gates and streets of gold. But the most consistent image through Old and New Testaments is that of a feast. Jesus talks about a wedding banquet where even the poor are honored guests. He tells his disciples at the Last Supper that they will meet again at a similar meal in the kingdom.

In Isaiah’s vision of the feast God gathers all the peoples of the earth together on a mountaintop. And God lays out a spread of the most fattening, cholesterol-loaded food you can imagine. Everything's cooked in butter, there's real cream for the coffee and you can eat cheesecake for dessert ‘til the cows come home. Best of all God will be there among the people, among the saints, wiping away every tear from their eyes and abolishing death as a thing which can separate us. That's what this feast at the end of time is all about.

It seems so hard for us to imagine, but you know what? We get a foretaste of it every time we gather around this table. When we gather here we don't just gather as a group of people in the here and now sharing a common meal. Because at table are Christians of every place and time. At this table time means nothing and we enter a new realm where the impossible becomes possible. We participate in the communion of saints and we imagine what the world can be like if we start living like kingdom people.

Last Tuesday I went to Washington for the dedication of the new urban ministry project that Wesley Seminary is beginning with two downtown churches. Our own Shelly Newsom is moving into the residential community there this weekend. In one of the presentations a Wesley professor, Jessica Duckworth, talked about how she had two rules for the students in her classroom. One was that there was to be no whining about lay people. The second was that there was to be no talk of dying churches. She has a crucifix in her classroom to remind the students that the dying is over. Jesus opened the door for resurrection when he left that cross. So what lies ahead for every church and every person who will begin a relationship with Jesus is life.

Jesus is here at this table, arms open wide to embrace us. Inviting us to come and find out what life is all about. Eternal life is not a gift to be unwrapped after death. It is a treasure to enjoy today and now. This may look like just another ordinary table. But you know the stories we tell around this table and they are like no other stories on earth. And we can't ever look at this table in the same way again. Thanks be to God - who works through saints and makes us saints as well.

Isaiah 25:6-10a

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of well-aged wines, of fat things full of marrow, of well-aged wines well refined. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth; for the Lord has spoken.

It will be said on that day, "Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation." For the hand of the Lord will rest on this mountain.

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[i] A.N. Wilson, “Tina Turner and a ‘me’ generation no longer knows how to cope with death,” Daily Mail, 22 Oct. 2009, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1221815/A-N-WILSON-Tina-Turner-generation-longer-knows-cope-death.html#ixzz0VXaw9PO3/.

After the Storm

Psalm 131 has always been one of my favorite psalms. It’s very short. It goes like this:

O LORD, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; my soul is like the weaned child that is with me. O Israel, hope in the LORD from this time on and forevermore.

“I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.” I’ve been occupying myself that way for my whole life. Do you do this? I know that there are things I am never going to figure out. Try as I might I am never going to figure out my IRS Form 1040, why God made mosquitoes, the rules to cricket, the Pythagorean theorem, why cats can never decide whether they want to be in or out, or women. But it doesn’t mean that I’m not going to try. I didn’t get a degree in philosophical theology for nothing! I would never have gotten that if I hadn’t occupied myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.

I don’t think I’m being unbiblical when I do this, either. I admire the psalmist when she says this. I think that it is important that we calm ourselves…that we quiet our souls…that we retain a childlike trust in God. Every journey into the realm of thinking about things too great and too marvelous for us ought to end here – resting in God. But biblical characters do take on the big questions, too.

Think of Abraham who got wind of God’s plan to wipe out the people of Sodom because of the wickedness of the city. Abraham decides he must confront God – to intervene on behalf of the people. Would God really bring destruction on a whole city when there were innocent people inside? Abraham wants to ask God to relent to save the city, even if there are only ten righteous people in it. Genesis 18:27 shows us Abraham in midstream saying, “Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes.”

Or think of Job, whose story we are returning to today. If there is a book that invites us to think about something too great and marvelous for us, it is Job, the Bible’s longest exploration of a problem that still plagues us all these centuries later: If God is good and just and powerful, then how do we explain the persistence of suffering and pain in this world? How do we make sense of the pain that we go through – that we see others go through? How should we respond when hard times come our way?

There is no straight line to an answer to these questions in Job. In fact, it seems to be a pretty conflicted book. Many people read it and come away with the idea that the book fails to answer any of these questions. Even Job himself is a conflicted character.

The book begins with a little deal being made in the courts of heaven. God and Satan are bargaining over the fate of Job who is described as a perfectly upright man – the kind of guy you could count on to do just the right thing in every situation. If you needed someone to be a witness in a case down at the city gate Job was your man. If you needed a trustee at church Job was the guy. If you needed a solid citizen for the Board of Supervisors you just might look to Job to do that. He was a man who feared God and turned away from evil. A pillar of the community, you might say.

Did I mention that he was also rich? He was as wealthy as a man could be in his day and this was taken as a sign of blessing. Seven sons and three daughters. 7,000 sheep. 3,000 camels. 500 yoke of oxen. 500 donkeys. 500 donkeys might not sound like a blessing to you, but believe me, that was big stuff in Job’s time. Bling looked a little different back in the day.

He was a faithful man, too. Job prayed for his children every day and offered burnt sacrifices on their behalf on the off chance that they might have cursed God, even inadvertently. It’s pretty clear that Job was a good guy.

So God and Satan decide to put this to the test. Satan’s job is to wander the earth seeing if people are living up to their potential and to accuse them if they aren’t. One day he shows up in the heavenly courts and God said, “Did you happen to check out my servant, Job, while you were out there? I know there are some pretty poor specimens upon the land, but there is nobody like Job. A perfectly upright man. Fears me. Turns away from evil. You’d have a hard time making a case against him.”

Satan takes up that challenge, though. He says, “Are you telling me that Job doesn’t have any weaknesses? Looks to me like he doesn’t have much reason to curse you. I bet if you took away some of that stuff he enjoys he’d be singing a different tune.”

So God agrees to this, disturbing though it is. The Satan was given a free hand and within a matter of hours Job’s blessed life was ruined. Fire fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and attending servants. Chaldean raiders took the camels and slaughtered the servants who were with them. A tornado hit a tent where all of his children were feasting and every one of them was killed. Even the donkeys were wiped out by a band of marauding Sabeans. Not even the donkeys were spared.

Job’s response was to tear his clothes, shave his head and fall down to worship God. He said, “I didn’t have anything when I came into this world and I won’t have anything when I leave it. God gives. God takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” That’s it! No wailing and gnashing of teeth. No lawsuits demanding compensatory damages. No tearful tirades against the injustice of the universe and God in particular broadcast internationally on CNN. Just “I was naked at birth, and I’ll be naked at death. Blessed be the Lord.”

A few days later the Satan showed up in the heavenly courts again. God asked, “Did you happen to check out my servant, Job, while you were out there? There is nobody like Job. A perfectly upright man. Fears me. Turns away from evil. And even now, after all that he’s lost, he still maintains his integrity. Not bad, huh?”

This irked the Satan. “Well, of course! You wouldn’t let me touch him. People can let go of a lot of stuff as long as it doesn’t get to their own skin. You let me afflict him personally and we’ll see how much longer he ‘maintains his integrity.’” Once again, God agreed to the terms with the restriction that the Satan could not kill Job.

Within minutes Job was suffering with evil sores over his entire body. So, he took a piece of an old broken pot, probably one broken in the disasters that had befallen him, and he went to sit on a heap of ashes, probably one left over from the feast tent that had burned, and he scraped his skin with the broken pottery.

Job’s wife came over to him. She looked at Job in his misery and said, “When will you give it up? How long will you maintain your integrity?” (Where have we heard those words before?) “Why don’t you just curse God and die?”

Job, however, is made of different stuff than most folks. He told his wife that she was talking like a fool and then he said, “God sends us good things and we receive them gladly. When God sends us evil how should we react?”

That’s the Job we get at the beginning of the book of Job. It’s the Job we think of when the book of James talks about “the patience of Job” [James 5:11]. This Job is faithful no matter what. He takes a licking and keeps on ticking. He stares down disaster and holds on to his faith. He praises God, even when he has every reason to curse God.

But that’s the Job of the early chapters of this book. In the middle of the book we get the angry, impatient Job. When his friends come to sit with him after the disasters that have befallen him they weep and then they sit in silence for seven days and then Job snaps. Job chapter 3, verse 1 says, “Job opened his mouth and cursed the day he was born.” He cries out to God, “Why didn’t I die at birth? Why should I suffer like this without understanding?” “Truly the thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me. I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest; but trouble comes” [Job 3:25-26].

Now this is more like it. This is a Job we can relate to. He’s not cursing God exactly, but he certainly has a lot of questions. And he wants answers.

His friends are not very sympathetic. They try to get him to accept their pat answers for why this suffering has come on him. It must have been something he did. He must have done something wrong. Somebody must have done something wrong. Surely his calamities are the sign that God was displeased with him. They started out right. They sat in silence for seven days. But when they opened their mouths they stopped being friends and started to add to Job’s woes.

Job turns on them, too. In chapter 19 of the book he lets it rip:

Have pity on me, have pity on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me! Why do you, like God, pursue me, never satisfied with my flesh? "O that my words were written down! O that they were inscribed in a book! O that with an iron pen and with lead they were engraved on a rock forever! For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. [Job 19:21-27]

You hear this verse, “I know that my Redeemer lives” and maybe you hear that old hymn by the same name. But what Job wants is an avenger – somebody who will stand in for him as an equal to God. The word in Hebrew is ‘goel’ and it means a blood-avenger – someone who will stand up for you when you are wronged and go after the offender. Job is saying that if there is any justice in this world then the last word to be said about his situation will not be his death, but his vindication before God. “At the end my goel will stand up for me and God will be on my side!”

Finally, God does appear in this book. Right after one of Job’s friends has made another speech saying that mortals cannot find God, there is God speaking from a whirlwind, and God is angry…mocking. “Who is this who obscures my intentions with his ignorant words,” God asks. “Stand up and answer like a man” [Job 38:1-2].

Then for four chapters God goes on to ask Job questions. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Can you send rain on the earth? Do you know when the mountain goats give birth? Do you set the wild donkeys free? Can you comprehend the wonder of my creatures?” On and on God goes, finally appearing to Job and demanding a response from him.

When Job finally speaks, he is humbled. It’s the first part from our reading today. He has his audience with God. He has seen God in the flesh. But all of his anger and self-righteousness seems pointless now. “I have spoken about what I didn’t understand,” he says. “Things too wonderful for me, which I didn’t know…I am cast down like trash and repent in dust and ashes.” That’s it.

Why is Job content with this? Why does Job let God get away without an explanation? Maybe it’s because there is no answer that can satisfy the person for whom the whole world comes down to ‘what happens to me.’ There will always be some injustice to the world from my perspective. If God made it so I would never suffer cancer, then my hangnail would rise to the level of an existential question. If I never suffered grief, then the guy cutting me off on the road would make me question God’s goodness. There will always be something.

And maybe I never know this unless I enter into the mystery of pain and suffering and loss. Not that God wants us to suffer these things. I don’t believe that. But maybe we understand more about who we are and who God is when we endure the darkness of this world.

Scott Cairns wrote a book recently called The End of Suffering: Finding Purpose in Pain. In it he quotes the seventh-century Saint Isaac of Syria who said, “Blessed is the person who knows his own weakness, because awareness of this becomes for him the foundation and the beginning of all that is good and beautiful.” Cairns goes on to say, “Affliction seems to be our only reliable access to this kind of knowledge, this necessary confrontation with our own weaknesses…the only way we come to glimpse and thereafter to know our condition, to appreciate our vulnerability, and to live according to this new and chastening light.”[i]

There is a wisdom that can come through suffering. There is a knowledge that helps us to see the world, through all of its darkness, as a place of shattered light – a place where God’s goodness and beauty is breaking in on the world. I’m struck by the image of God asking Job whether he could comprehend what it means that God knows when the mountain goats and the deer give birth. “Do you know the time when they give birth, when they crouch to give birth to their offspring, and are delivered of their young? Their young ones become strong, they grow up in the open; they go forth, and do not return to them” [Job 39:2-4]. A God who cares even about the birth of a goat or a deer…who can delight in the details of their growth and development, surely cares about our pain. There is still beauty and wonder in this heaving world. The challenge for us is to see it.

Which brings us to the very surprising conclusion of Job. After the devastation. After the loss. After the cries to heaven and the fruitless rationalization of the friends. After the storm in which God appears to him and the final repentance of Job in dust and ashes. What happens then?

Job is restored. At least as much as is possible. God gives Job twice as much as he had before. He had 7,000 sheep, now he has 14,000. 3,000 camels before, 6,000 camels after. 500 yoke of oxen, now 1,000. 500 donkeys, now 1,000. His brothers and sisters and all who had known him before come over to break bread with him. He has seven more sons and three more daughters – these more beautiful than any other women in the land. And Job lived for 140 more years and saw his children and his children’s children and their children, too.

Of all the disturbing things that happen in the book of Job, I think this is the most disturbing. Because it seems to say that if we just endure, God will bless us with every material blessing. If we just hold on and stay faithful, no matter what Satan can throw at us, we will have 1,000 donkeys! But you and I know that this is not so. We have seen faithful people, saints even!, endure unimaginable things and they never received their long life and riches. If we assume that Job’s fate is the fate of all the faithful who endure suffering, we will be disappointed.

When I was growing up, there was a little girl in our congregation, Susan, who was a few years younger than me. She was born with some chronic health conditions that meant she was always in pain and always unable to do what other children in the congregation could do. Her family ran up huge medical bills caring for her. Finally, when she was just a teenager, she died.

But Susan was a witness to our church. She always smiled and her family never complained. She had the sweetest spirit and she loved God. She loved God more than anybody I ever knew. She never “got over” her condition, but she certainly knew blessings. And she was a blessing to us.

We may not always get long-life and riches, but with the right eyes we can see hope even in the midst of suffering. With the right eyes we can see that God is right here among us, walking beside us, and the world is not a cruel trick being played on us – it is the theater of God’s glory.

I’ll close with another story. Mary Karr is one of my favorite writers. She is a poet who has written a series of autobiographical works about her life growing up in East Texas. Her third book, Lit, about her conversion to Christianity and her struggle with substance abuse, is coming out this month.

Mary Karr lived a rough life. Dysfunctional is not the word to use to describe her family. Her experiences are hard to read about and her writing is often profane, suiting her rough upbringing. But something vibrant and vital sustained her into adulthood and into her writing. In her book, Cherry, she describes a time as a teenager when she was so bored and distraught that she thought to commit suicide.

She put on a black dress that she had outgrown and took a number of pills she had found in the house. Her despair and hopelessness was so great that she thought this might get the attention of her parents, who had many problems of their own. The pills only made her sick and when her mother checked on her she just rocked her on her lap in a rocker, never knowing why she was sick.

She writes about the experience:

When Daddy comes in, he carries you to bed. Is there anything you feel like you could eat, Pokey? [That’s what he calls her.] Anything at all?

All you can imagine putting in your mouth is a cold plum, one with really tight skin on the outside but gum-shocking sweetness inside. And he and Mother discuss where he might find some this late in the season. Mother says…I don’t know. Further north, I guess.

The next morning, you wake up in your bed and sit up. Mother says, Pete, I think she’s up.

He hollers in, You ready for breakfast, Pokey? Then he comes in grinning, still in his work clothes from the night before. He’s holding a farm bushel. The plums he empties onto the bed river toward you through folds in the quilt. If you stacked them up they’d fill the deepest bin at the Piggly Wiggly.

[Heck] if I didn’t get the urge to drive up to Arkansas last night, he says.

Your mother stands behind him saying he’s pure USDA crazy.

Fort Smith, Arkansas. Found a roadside stand there with a feller selling plums. And I says, Buddy, I got a little girl sick back in Texas. She’s got a hanker for plums and ain’t nothing else gonna do.

...it’s when you sink your teeth into the plum that you make a promise. The skin is still warm from riding in the sun in Daddy’s truck, and the nectar runs down your chin.

And you snap out of it. Or are snapped out of it. Never again will you lay a hand against yourself, no so long as there are plums to eat and somebody—anybody—who [cares] enough to haul them to you. So long as you bear the least nibblet of love for any other creature in this dark world, though in love portions are never stingy. There are no smidgens or pinches, only rolling abundance. That’s how you acquire the resolution for survival that the coming years are about to demand. You don’t earn it. It’s given.[ii]

There are no smidgens or pinches in love, only rolling abundance. How do we know this? Because God doles it out that way. When it seems like suffering and death and a cross are the only things real in this world…God’s love changes the equation. And you don’t earn it. It’s given. Like a juice from a plum given by a half-crazy father, that love flows downs and over us to remind us that whatever else this world may be – it is not God-forsaken. It is full of rolling abundance. Thanks be to God.

Job 42:1-6, 10-17

Then Job answered YHWH:

“I know that you can do all things and nothing you intend can be frustrated. You asked, ‘Who is this that conceals counsel without knowledge?’ Well, I have spoken about what I didn't understand, things too wonderful for me, which I didn't know.

“‘Listen now and I will ask things of you and you will teach me.’ I had heard of you by the hearing of my ears, now I see with my eyes. So I am cast down like refuse and repent in dust and ashes.”

After YHWH had said these things to Job, YHWH spoke to Eliphaz the Temanite, "My nostrils burn in anger against you and your two companions for you have not spoken truthfully about me as my servant Job has."...

And the LORD restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends; and the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before. Then there came to him all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before, and they ate bread with him in his house; they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him; and each of them gave him a piece of money and a gold ring.

The LORD blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; and he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand donkeys. He also had seven sons and three daughters. He named the first Jemimah, the second Keziah, and the third Keren-happuch. In all the land there were no women so beautiful as Job's daughters; and their father gave them an inheritance along with their brothers. After this Job lived one hundred and forty years, and saw his children, and his children's children, four generations. And Job died, old and full of days.

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[i] Scott Cairns, The End of Suffering, [Paraclete Press, Brewster, MA, 2009], pp. 18-19.

[ii] Mary Karr, Cherry, [Penguin Books: New York, 2000], pp. 116-17.

Be Careful What You Ask For

It’s not an easy thing to be a disciple – to be a follower of Jesus. You’ve got to do a lot of things that seem backwards. You’ve got to forget things that you’ve taken to be true all of your life. Things like – “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” Things like – “Always look out for number one.” Somehow being a disciple changes all that and it’s not easy.

How do we know it’s not easy? Well, just look at the first disciples. When you read through the gospel of Mark, a clear question emerges which has vexed the best biblical scholars over the years: Where on earth did Jesus find such a hopeless bunch of disciples?

I’m not trying to be unkind to the first apostles here. They obviously ‘got it’ eventually, otherwise we wouldn’t be here. But they have absolutely no clue what is going on throughout the entire book of Mark. And that’s true not only of the lesser-known disciples like Thaddeus, Bartholomew and Fred. [You didn’t know there was a disciple named Fred? See how little known he was?] It’s also true, and maybe particularly true, of the big 3 that they didn’t know what was going on. And who were the big 3? Peter, James and John.

Let’s just run down the list here, shall we. Chapter 6 – Jesus walking on the water. It’s just after the feeding of the five thousand and the disciples have gone on ahead in the boat while Jesus stayed on the mountain to pray. A rough storm comes up, Jesus walks out to the boat on the water, the disciples think he is a ghost, Jesus gets in the boat and the storm ceases.

Now after all that drama on the high seas, what do you think impresses the disciples most? Mark 6:51-52 says, “They were astounded because they did not understand about the loaves.” Walking on the water, calming the storm – they could handle that, but what they really want to know is, “What was that bread trick all about?” They still don’t get it two chapters later when Jesus wants to feed the four thousand. Having seen it all before they can’t understand how Jesus is going to feed the crowd with seven loaves and a few fish.

Chapter 9 – Jesus tells the disciples about his coming crucifixion and the first response of his group is to argue with one another about who is the greatest. Jesus is very calm about this conflict and he sits them down and he tells them two things: First from Mark 9:35 – “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Sound familiar? The second thing he tells them in verses 36 and 37 is that they had to welcome children if they were to welcome God and follow him.

Well, it’s only shortly thereafter that the disciples send the children away from Jesus and are rebuked for it and only shortly after that that the disciples become very concerned because Jesus says it will be hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of God. What does this tell us? The disciples had very short memories and they kept having the same conflicts over and over.

Which brings us to the passage for today. It’s getting late in the story now and Jesus has finally turned toward Jerusalem – the place where the final scene in this drama will play out. As he walks on he’s being followed by this group of disciples who are no more in the picture now than they have ever been. The disciples, the text says, are amazed – probably still trying to figure out how to get a camel through the eye of a needle. And the other followers are afraid, but then again people are afraid all through the gospel of Mark – the disciples in the boat, the woman healed of the flow of blood, the woman at the tomb when they find it empty. At any rate, it was not exactly an informed and courageous group that was setting off on this final journey.

So Jesus decides to stop and talk with the twelve disciples and, for the third time, he told them what was going to happen. This time he makes it more explicit than any other time. He says, (and here I’m reading from Mark 10:33-34), “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again." This is the first time he’s told them about the abuse he’s going to suffer before being killed. Before he’s simply said that he would be killed.

This time, when they hear it, the disciples don’t react with anger or disbelief as they have in the past. In fact, they don’t seem to respond at all. Maybe they’re getting it! Maybe they finally understand what this journey to Jerusalem is all about! You might think that, but you’d be wrong.

James and John now come to the front. Poor James and John – convinced to the last that Jesus was going to lead them to power and ambitious to be right beside Jesus at the head of the nation. They ignore Jesus’ dire warnings and all the stuff about the first shall be last. They come to Jesus and say, in verse 35, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” That’s not presumptuous, is it? It’s kind of like the prodigal son asking his father for half the inheritance without waiting for him to die, isn’t it?

Maybe the brothers thought they had earned this special treatment. After all, Jesus had asked them to go up on the mountaintop for the transfiguration when he appeared with Moses and Elijah and his clothes were transformed into a blinding white and God’s voice spoke from the sky. The only other disciple who got to be there for that was Peter. They also got to go along with Jesus into the synagogue leader’s home when Jesus raised a little girl from the dead. They felt they had a special relationship with Jesus.

“What do you want?” Jesus asks.

“When you come to power, let us be your right-hand men. Well, actually, let us be your right-hand and left-hand men – one on each side.”

Jesus shakes his head and says to the brothers, “You don’t know what you’re asking.” And they really don’t. These are the disciples we’re talking about, remember. So Jesus goes on to ask them if they can drink his cup. Now what could that mean? What is the cup that Jesus is going to drink? It’s his suffering and death.

In Mark 14:36 Jesus is praying in the garden of Gethsemane before his arrest. He has taken three disciples along with him. Can you guess who? And even though he asks them to stay awake, Peter, James and John fall asleep while he is praying this prayer. He prays, “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want.” That’s the cup he’s offering to James and John. And the baptism? It is the baptism into his death. As Paul says in Romans 6:3, “All of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death.”

That’s what Jesus knows is ahead – not the kind of glory that he disciples expect – but something much harder than they can imagine. And at the end, when Jesus’ glory is finally revealed on the cross, who does get to be on his right and his left? None of the disciples. Jesus is crucified between two thieves and they are the ones who are present as his glory is revealed.

James and John know none of this, though. So when Jesus asks them if they can drink this cup and receive this baptism they say, “We can. We are able.” Jesus accepted their commitment but goes on to tell them that what they ask for is not his to grant.

So the brothers go back to the other disciples. The reunion did not go well. You remember that this is the same group that was just arguing about who was the greatest. For the brothers to now go back to the other disciples, having sacrificed their relationship with them in order to secure a pledge from Jesus of special treatment – well, you can guess how that went over. I guess if the disciples had really been listening to Jesus and had accepted their status as servants of all – servants even of these upstart brothers – they wouldn’t have gotten upset. But they did, and so Jesus has to come settle the dispute.

“Look,” he says, “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant.” The word ‘servant’ in Greek suggests a household steward, someone who might wait on you at the table. We get our word ‘deacon’ from this word. But Jesus doesn’t want them to get the impression that they should stop there. It’s not enough to be a servant with some status. They’ve got to go lower. “Whoever wants to be first among you must be slave of all.” A slave has no status. No legal rights.

Jesus goes on to point to himself as a model. “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve,” to use his status in an unconventional way, “and to give his life as a ransom for many,” to give up his status entirely in order to win the whole world and to save our lives.

Those eager, ambitious, foolish disciples – ready to jump to the glory seat without counting the cost or reckoning the purpose of the journey. So slow to learn, so slow to understand – and yet they followed, in wonder, fear and hopefulness.

A lot like us really. We are a people who often find ourselves following after Christ without any concept of what we’re doing. Oh, we made a commitment. We chose our course by saying, “Yes, Jesus is Lord,” but did we really have any idea what the journey would entail? Have we really given any thought to what might be required of us if we took this journey seriously? Do we yet know or understand how our own personal dreams of fulfillment are tied up in this Christian enterprise or what it will mean for us to find ourselves if the most prominent symbol for finding ourselves is a cross?

Jason Byassee, who teaches leadership courses at Duke Divinity School, wrote an article this week about David McClure as a model of leadership. McClure played on the Duke basketball team until last year and that is a very prestigious group to be a part of. Duke wins basketball games and stars from that program go on to be stars in the NBA. But David McClure was not a star. In fact, Byasee says, most folks probably won’t even remember his name.

What McClure did, though, was invaluable to his team. He was all over the court. He was the guy they put on the opponent’s best player to guard. He was the guy you could count on to do everything he could to get a rebound or a loose ball. He was the guy who set up his teammates so that they could make the shots that would end up on the highlight reels. One of his teammates said, “Somebody who doesn’t watch us closely won’t understand how important he is…He’s a glue guy. He does a little bit of everything.”[i]

Byassee says that glue is an interesting word because it’s also the word that St. Augustine used to describe the work of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is “the glue, or the love, between the Father and the Son. Likewise the Spirit is the One who glues us creatures to the Son and so to the Father.” Is it too much to say, then, that if we are to imitate the work of Jesus and the work of the Spirit in this world, that it will be something like the work of glue in binding people together rather than breaking them apart? Maybe, Byassee suggests, we need more “invisible, sticky leaders” who will lead by being servants…being glue.[ii]

What was the great failure of the disciples in this passage we read for today? I believe that is was their failure to count the cost of discipleship and the cost of discipleship is love – a love that gives itself to the world in service…a love that does not neglect the importance of our relationships with others…a love that reorders the values of this world for those who see it through the eyes of love.

In short, the cost of discipleship is a love like Christ’s, which neither forsakes the world for other realms nor is content to leave the world as it is. And if we are fools like James and John who foolishly answer Jesus’ question with the ignorant reply, “We are able,” the journey to the kingdom does not take us directly to a glory seat but instead leaves us at each other’s feet as servants of life in a land of death.

In the shadow of the cross we sense the light of resurrection. In the mystery of Jesus’ self-giving we find the brilliance of God’s love. You can be glue. Thanks be to God.

Mark 10:32-45

They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them; they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. He took the twelve aside again and began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying, "See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again."

They came to him – James and John, the sons of Zebedee – and said to him, “Teacher, we would like for you to do for us whatever we request.”

He said to them, “What would you like for me to do for you?”

They said to him, “Appoint us to sit, one on your right and one on your left, in your glory.”

Jesus said to them, “You don’t know what you’re asking. Can you drink the cup that I drink? Can you be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?”

They said to him, “We can.”

Then Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink and the baptism with which I am baptized will be your baptism, but to sit on my right or my left is not mine to give, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.”

When the other ten heard this they were angry with James and John. Jesus called them over and said to them, “You know that the ones who seem to rule over the Gentiles lord over them and the great exercise authority over them. It should not be so among you, but rather whoever wants to be great among you will be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you will be slave to all. For the Son of Humanity did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

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[i] Greg Paulus, quoted in “Featherston: McClure is Duke’s ‘Glue Guy’”, GoDuke.com, 2/4/2009, http://www.goduke.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=4200&ATCLID=3662455.

[ii] Jason Byassee, “Invisible, Sticky Leaders,” Call and Response Blog, Duke Faith and Leadership Insititute, 10/15/2009, http://www.faithandleadership.duke.edu/blog/10-15-2009/jason-byassee-invisible-sticky-leaders.

My Life is an Open Book

Up in the mountains there was a family that had an outhouse out back on the property. There was a little boy in the family who hated using that outhouse. It was hot in the summer, cold in the winter and it smelled horribly all the time.

So one day the boy decided he was going to do that outhouse in. The creek that ran by the outhouse was up and he thought he could make it look like the work of the flood if he found a way to push it in. He found an iron bar and he went out to the outhouse, slipped the bar under one corner of the house and with one huge push he turned it over into the creek that ran right by it. The outhouse floated on away.

That night his father came in and told him they were going to have to take a trip together to the woodshed. There was always bad news for the little boy. The little boy asked why and his dad said, “Son, somebody pushed the outhouse into the creek today. Was it you?”

The boy ‘fessed up but he added, “I read in school where George Washington confessed to chopping down the cherry tree and his father didn’t punish him.”

“Yes,” the boy’s father answered. “But George Washington’s father wasn’t in the cherry tree when he chopped it down.”[1]

Confession, they say, is good for the soul. But you and I know that as human beings we can resist confession even when we know it’s good for our souls. We don’t want to admit that there are things we have done that need to be brought up for air and light. We don’t want to believe that being honest with ourselves and others is necessary. We’re pretty content believing that we don’t need to change. We may recognize that inside there is turmoil and discontent, but somehow we get the idea that other people or outside forces are always the source of that discontent when, in fact, confession would reveal that most of what needs to change is in here.

This is also true for nations. Following the decades of enforced segregation in South Africa under the system of apartheid, there were a lot of folks who called out for retribution and pay back – to bring justice on behalf of the black and colored citizens of that country who had been locked out of anything resembling equality. Others felt that a process of sorting out rights and wrongs would be so massive and cause such dislocation that there ought not to be any looking back at all. Just keep moving forward.

What the country did, though, was to set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. People were invited to come and stand before the commission and to testify to what they had seen, what they had experienced and what they had done. The results of the commission were mixed. It allowed truth to be told but it did not always lead to reconciliation. But for some of the people who came, just being able to tell their story was a powerful act of confession.

In Capetown, South Africa, a man told the Commission the story of how he had been shot in the face by the police during a political gathering in one of the settlements. As a result he lost his sight. “He also told of how, two years later, the police beat him with electric ropes, suffocated him, forced him to lie in an empty grave and tortured him in other ways.”

When he was asked how he felt after having delivered his testimony, he replied, “I feel that what has been making me sick all the time is the fact that I couldn’t tell my story. But now it feels like I got my sight back by coming here and telling you the story.”[2] Confession – revealing what is deep and most true about us – for individuals and for nations can be healing – like getting sight back.

Why am I talking about confession this morning? It’s not just because we’ve been talking about it this week in the wake of David Letterman’s confession of moral failings on national TV. That was a strange sort of confession. It was brought about because of the threat of extortion. It was done in front of his studio audience and it was not really clear if he was doing the whole bit as a monologue. Even Letterman himself called it creepy.

No, the reason I want to talk about confession is because I believe that’s where we go when we pay attention to the passage from Hebrews this morning. “The word of God is alive and powerful and more cutting than a two-edged sword. It penetrates to the point of dividing soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, of discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Before this word no creature is hidden. All are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account.”

That’s quite a statement. It says to me that if we are really confronted with a new life in Jesus that it is not just some pleasant little endorsement we are making. We’re not just choosing Jesus in the same way that we choose a brand of clothes. I might choose a certain designer or a certain label because I want the brand to speak for me – to tell other people that I have a certain kind of taste or certain values. My clothes, rather than my words or actions will speak for me. I might still be an insecure, hopelessly uncool person, but my clothes will tell you something different.

That’s not how it works with Jesus. Jesus doesn’t just want your endorsement – Jesus wants your life. Jesus doesn’t just want you to put a fish on your car and go on as if nothing else has changed – Jesus wants you to fish for people. Jesus doesn’t just want you to go to church on Sunday – Jesus wants you every day of the week. And it’s because Jesus has a two-edged sword.

That’s a violent image, isn’t it? The word of God is more cutting than a two-edged sword, piercing down to the joint and the marrow, laying us open so that there is nowhere to hide. Because, you see, Jesus knows what that if you are going to be transformed it’s got to be a change right down in the center of your life, where soul meets body and where your intentions, your thoughts and your desires are born. That raw stuff that is at the center of us all – the stuff we don’t want to acknowledge, the stuff we don’t want to pull out for others to see, the stuff that we keep hidden away, stuffed inside – that’s the stuff Jesus knows needs to be changed because it’s our true self. And no matter how much you try to paper it over or put fish stickers on it or dress it up in your Sunday best – that stuff is going to be around your soul like a millstone until you bring it out through confession.

When you think about it we wouldn’t want that word of God to be anything less than a two-edged sword would we? A word that left us just the same as we have always been is no word of God at all. A word that didn’t confront sin and woundedness is no word of God at all. A word that didn’t speak truth to us, that didn’t liberate us, is no word of God at all. A word that didn’t open us up to something greater than ourselves so that we could experience real redemption, real reconciliation, real forgiveness, real transformation – this is no word of God at all.

The theologian Karl Barth says:

An imagined Word of God, …however well and truly imagined, as a mere dream…remains outside the real world and existence of [human beings], leaving the other subjects in the sphere of our world and existence unmolested, but also unillumined and unconsoled in the depths of their creaturely existence. But now God has become [hu]man, and therefore Himself a creaturely being, in His Son, and in this human world of ours His Son lives on in the form of His instruments and their witness. So His power in this testimony is also a concrete power at the heart of this sphere, consoling and healing, but also judging and assailing.^[3]

Do you hear what Barth is saying here? A word of God that only consoles us without also judging our lives is not worthy of being called God’s word. A word of God that only heals without assailing us is not worthy of the name. We want a God to turn the world upside-down because look at the world!

And here’s the good news – God has sent the word that the world needs for its salvation. The word is Jesus Christ. As Hebrews says, this is our great high priest – God’s son – who came and lived among us. Who knows what our weaknesses are like because he was one of us. He was tempted like we are, though he did not sin. And because he is priest he can make the offering that needs to be made.

You remember the sacrificial system that God had established in the Hebrew scriptures. In order to atone for the people’s sin, the priest would take an animal and sacrifice it on an altar. He would take a knife and pierce the animal until it was laid open before God. The priest would do this over and over because the problem of sin was never “solved.”

Now, Hebrews says, Jesus has become the priest who offered himself as sacrifice. Once and for all. He has gone to the cross and laid himself open for the worst that could be done to him. Pierced in his side. And victorious because ultimately God is victorious over sin and death. Ultimately God wins. And God is merciful and God loves you and me and this world so much that God does not want us to remain as we are. God wants us to win, too. To be made new. “When anyone is in Christ, that one is a new creation; everything old has passed away. See, the new has come” [2 Co. 5:17].

The folksinger Nanci Griffith has a song called “These Days My Life is an Open Book.” In the song she is talking about raw and desolate her life is as she looks for love in this world. She sings this song as if to a lost lover who now only exists as a memory.

“These days my life is an open book,” she sings, “missing pages I can’t seem to find. These days your face in my memory is in a folded hand of grace against these times.” She’s singing about a lost lover but what if that lover is God? What if that lover is the one who knows who she is…who has walked beside her in this world and who knows her story is not a tale of loss but a promise of grace “against these times”?

What if your life were an open book with a story being told in its pages? And what if that story were being written and rewritten by a God who loves you and who wants to make you whole? What if there is a home for you and me? And what if we go there together? To go with boldness and openness before the throne and to let our lives be remade in the likeness of our brother Jesus? What if? Thanks be to God.

Hebrews 4:12-16

For the word of God is alive and powerful and more cutting than a two-edged sword. It penetrates to the point of dividing soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, of discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Before this word no creature is hidden. All are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account.

So then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the son of God. Let us hold fast to our confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses - he was tested in every way that we are only without sin.

So let us approach the throne of grace with openness so that we can take hold of mercy and find grace for help in time of need.

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[1] Adapted from http://www.jokesaboutfathersday.com/fathers_day_joke_690.html.

[2] Truth and Reconciliation Commission Final Report, Vol. 5, Ch. 9, http://www.polity.org.za/polity/govdocs/commissions/1998/trc/5chap9.htm.

[3] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, I.2, [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956], p. 676.