Nelson Rivera
Mark 10:35-45
25 July 2010
St. James, Apostle

Probably I would be upset with James and John,
at least feeling indignant, like the other ten disciples.

Or . . . was it jealousy what those ten were feeling?

After all, James and John were normally found close to Jesus,
attentive to Jesus' words and doings.

The others probably did not do that well.

This may also explain why James and John were full of expectancy.
They could tell that something big was in the making:
they both had been listening carefully to Jesus.

Jesus had been preaching about the kingdom of God:
about the incoming rule of God, about its immediacy.
These two disciples, probably more than the others,
believed that the kingdom of God was at hand,
that is was going to become a reality, and soon enough, in their lifetime.

So, they jumped ahead of the others and made their request to Jesus.
They both made known to Jesus their hearts' desires.

"Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory."

Basically, they want to be there, at the center of it all.
They seem to recognize power when they see it.
Therefore, they want to be next to Jesus-
not merely with Jesus, or in Jesus, but rather next to Jesus:
almost on equal terms, and where others could see them.

Well . . . as you might guess, we have a problem here.

A first, Jesus challenges their assumptions:
Are you really able to do as I do?

Of course, James and John feel rather confident:
Yes, they could do like Jesus.
After all, they both have been very close to him.

Nevertheless, it is not even for Jesus to decide who sits where,
or who occupies what position, if any, in the kingdom of God.
This is not how it works in God's place;
this is not how it is under God's rule.

See, these disciples are applying their own thinking,
their own 'logic,' we might say,
and it is different from God's own.

The point here is not so much that these disciples' demands
are totally out of the question.
The problem is that those demands do not belong here.

Let's see.

The context of this story is Jesus' miracles, his many wonders,
on his way to Jerusalem.
Jesus had predicted increasing conflict, and an eventual crisis, around him-
he had been talking about his own fate, his destiny.

In the same manner,
Jesus had been teaching the importance of renunciation,
as a form of preparation,
for the arrival of the kingdom or reign of God.

It so happened that these disciples could make claims
of having sacrifice many things in their lives in order to follow Jesus.
Moreover, Jesus himself made remarks to the effect
that those who renounce things, even family, for the sake of God's kingdom, would be rewarded.

Or, at least, it sounded like that to them.

All that said-and here's the catch-they had missed something.
What is it? Jesus' own 'logic:' the logic of the kingdom of God.

This 'logic' goes like this:

v. 31 But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.

In today's reading, it takes the form of:

v. 43f But whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.

I like to call this kind of thinking 'the gospel logic.'
It turns thing upside down.
It presents the truth about God, or rather the truth about God's doing,
through the 'appearance of the opposite,' as Luther would say.

You can find it in different ways, but always pointing toward the same truth:
that it is God's way that really matters, and not ours.

You probably remember another one of Jesus' sayings.
In another instance of this 'logic,' Jesus proclaims that,
          But whoever wants to save his life will lose it,
          and whoever loses his life because of me, will save it.

It's gospel logic.

The accent is on what God does, not on what we do.
It proclaims a God who shows up where we least expected God to be:
a God who defies our attempts to determine and control his or her actions.

In today's story,
we also see that the disciples had also their own ideas about leadership.
We are safe to say that 'recognition' was one of the elements that they had in mind.

Jesus saw that they had ideas about 'ruling others.'
Maybe even a strong conviction about 'deserving the honor.'

Looking for recognition, ruling, and an honor.

However, Jesus speaks about a different kind of leadership.
His own doesn't rely on strength but on weakness;
does not emphasize self-reliance but trusting God;
and it doesn't rule out suffering while insisting in the following of Jesus.

Above all, Jesus speaks of servanthood,
especially about the need to serve the needy, the poor, and the least.

Thus, those who want to lead must serve.
Those who want to be first, must be last.

It is not by the rule of the strong, but by the gift of love that we relate to others.

Jesus seems to be turning things around-
or at least that's how it looks from our perspective.
What he really does is to apply the logic of the gospel
to human desires and experience.

Amen

Louise N. Johnson
Luke 10:38-42
18 July 2010
Eighth Sunday after Pentecost – Lectionary 16 [Cycle C]

38 Now as they went on their way, her entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. 39 She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to what he was saying. 40 But Martha was distracted by her many tasks, so she came to him and asked, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me." 41 But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; 42 there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her."

Maybe it was the sound of laughter spilling into the kitchen, or the warm cadence of conversation between friends, or perhaps it was the tedium of common kitchen tasks. Whatever it was, Martha could stand it no longer. She has been peeling the onions, seasoning the lamb, tending the rice, setting the table, making the beds. All the while, Mary, her sister and co-bearer of the burden of hospitality, has simply been lounging at Jesus feet. Just listening. And Martha has had enough. She bursts in hurt, frustrated, indignant. "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself?" And in the blink of an eye, Martha's frustration about Mary has jack-knifed into a question about whether or not Jesus cares.

The truth of the matter is, Martha has a point. In a world where travelers depended on others for food, water and shelter, hospitality was not just a lovely gesture, but a matter of life or death. If someone showed up at your doorstep, you had a cultural obligation to see to their care. And not just the bare minimum, but the finest you could muster. It was a matter of pride to offer the fatted calf, the softest resting place, and whatever precious water you had in store for drinking and washing. And so when Jesus arrives in the late afternoon, unbidden and unexpected, Martha takes up the mantle of hospitality, making ready the finest things for her guest and friend. All the while, Mary sits idly by, soaking in the sound of Jesus' voice, adding insult to injury.

But whether or not Martha has a point, Jesus doesn't bite when Martha's frustration bubbles over and she calls her sister and her Lord to task. "Do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself?" Apparently not. Which is more than a little confusing. Not only is Jesus himself counting on the hospitality of this household, but he has just sent ahead of him seventy others whom he has instructed to carry no provisions with them. Instead, he instructs them to count on this same hospitality along the way. So it is more than a little confusing when Jesus seems to take Mary's side in this dispute. "Martha, Martha," he says, "you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her."

But who will do the cooking, then, Jesus? And who will make ready the beds, fetch the water, set the table, sweep the floor, pay the bills, pick up the kids, get the car to the shop, finish the reading due for last week? Who will get to the store before it closes, do the laundry, mow the lawn, bathe the kids, get to the gym, call the plumber? Who will write a letter to our state representative, plan a bible study, call our friend going through a divorce, rework the budget to keep everyone in the office employed for another year?

The world is full of distractions. And not just the dispensable ones with which we choose to burden ourselves, but critical things. It is important to pay bills, attend to children, finish school assignments, mop the floor, call your mother. Even get to church, read your bible, find time to pray, take a shift at the shelter, fix a meal for Tuesday night. And what could be more important than Martha's task? It is hard to dispute the importance of offering hospitality - a matter of life or death- to your friend and Lord.

Which, I suspect, is why Jesus chooses this moment in time to make the point. Martha's task is clear. She is not doing superfluous work. Her task is not one chosen, but expected, necessary, even critical. Jesus is not asking her to set aside her knitting, turn off the TV or put away her cell phone. He is inviting her to set aside critical work. Which is what should make us sit up and pay attention, because the irony of the text is that even serving Jesus can get in the way of our relationship, with, well, Jesus.

God knows that I have my own mental list of the undone, unfinished, half-baked, long-overdue, and just plain embarassing. And I don't have any simple answers for you today about what else to leave undone. It all looks essential to me, critical even. Which I suspect is how it looked to Martha that day.

Lindel Anderson was my supervisor for Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE as those of us in seminary world call it), which meant that he had responsibility for shepherding a group of us through our first experiences as hospital chaplains. We spent the mornings and nights attending to patients. We spent the afternoons debriefing those encounters with sickness and death. As you can imagine, the afternoon debriefing sessions were fraught with the anxiety, fear and exhaustion we couldn't release in our encounters with patients and hospital staff. Lindel had a gift. He had spent most of his years as a military chaplain, developing the ability to be calm into very intense situations. And he was brilliant at it. He had an almost magical way of letting the tension out of a room by simply breathing. He knew that commands and directives would sound like one more skill for us to develop, one more thing to do, one more way for us to feel uncertain about our potential to serve in pastoral roles. So he simply breathed. In between sentences, his own and others, he would draw in a deep breath and let it out slowly and calmly. It was as if he were breathing in our anxiety, transforming it in his own inner crucible and breathing it out again as calm. In this way, he settled our deepest fears.

Martha was fraught with the cares of the world, weary and exhausted from the day's work, and wondering whether Jesus cared about her at all. She explodes into the room, the damn of emotions finally loosed. And Jesus takes his own deep breath and calls her back from the abyss. "Martha, Martha," Jesus says "you are distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing." Gentle and firm, Jesus leaves no room for Martha to wiggle out of a place beside him and back into the kitchen. His words are both law and gospel, judgment and grace. In one breath, he identifies for her the tyranny of tasks, her slavery to them and her deep need to sit for a while and let him be the host. Which is really what Jesus longs to do.

Fraught with the cares of the world, weary and exhausted from the day's work, wondering whether or not Jesus cares about us at all, is what the world will dish up for us time and time again. The lists will never get shorter, the tasks smaller, the needs less. And Jesus knows it. Which is why today, again, he invites you and me to a different table. To one where he serves as the host, a table where with morsels and sips, side by side with sisters and brothers, we are brought back from our own abysses. Here, at this table, he breathes in our cares, transforms them in his own inner crucible, and breathes out calm and life and forgiveness and healing and all the things we need to take up our tasks again. Hear him call your own name to this place, to this time, and come and rest for just a while. For right now, today, there is only need of one thing.

Jay A. Wiesner
Luke 7.11-17
6 June 2010
Second Sunday after Pentecost – Lectionary 10 [Cycle C]

I remember being at a friend’s house when I was in junior high. He and I were in the living room where my friend’s father was sitting in an easy chair, reading the Bible. There was a point when my friend’s father looked up and said to us, “You know, I am nearly 50 years old and I’m just beginning to understand this book.”

For a 14 year old, that was one of the strangest comments I had ever heard. I knew that my friend’s father read Scripture daily, immersing himself in it. I have no idea how many times he had read through the entire Bible, but I do know that it was more times than the number of years I had lived when I heard this seemingly strange statement.

There are books that you can read through once and then put them back on the shelf, never to return to them again. But the Bible is vastly different. It seems like every time that I open up the pages of Scripture, I find something new that I never expected. My soul must have skipped over words because there are things that I totally missed the first ten times I read it. Or perhaps, words take on new meanings as I continue to experience and live life in the community of the baptized.

Martin Luther read the complete Bible twice each year. He also translated it from the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek languages. He also wrote and preached a multitude of sermons, gave more lectures than can be counted, and helped raise a family. He was also in charge of running a Reformation and hiding from people who wanted to take his life. Where he found the time to do all of this, plus read the Bible twice a year, I haven’t a clue. But I do know this: finding time to read Scripture on a regular basis is absolutely important, not just in the lives of those who have a career in the Church, but for all of the baptized.

Fast forward, 23 years later, and I am beginning to understand what my friend’s father was saying. Each time the sacred page is opened, there is something new and living; something that might not have been seen or understood before. Here’s a sidenote: I wonder what it would look like to forget the lectionary for a time and simply read through Scripture. A church could take Scripture bit by bit, reading a lesson from the Old Testament, a lesson from a New Testament letter, then a Gospel lesson. The project wouldn’t be done until all of the Old Testament was fully read. Of course, the church would repeat the Gospel lessons and New Testament letters a number of times, but that wouldn’t be a bad thing. Just a random idea… now, where was I?

Discovering “new” things within the pages of Scripture. Something struck me about our gospel text for today. I’ve always had the idea or belief that when Jesus raises someone from the dead, it’s because death is the enemy. I’ve always thought that the person Jesus is most centered on in these raising from the dead stories is the dead one. It makes sense, doesn’t it? I mean, for many people today, especially in this country where death is so greatly feared, death is the ultimate evil. Of course, Jesus is going to be centered on the one who is lifeless so that he may give life to them. That’s what I’ve always thought.

That’s why these texts are so challenging for me, because I’ve never seen someone raised from the dead, at least, literally raised from the dead. I’ve seen many people given new life, being figuratively raised from the dead. I witness that all of the time. I personally have that experience every day. But I’ve never seen a dead man, who is really dead, absolutely, positively dead, raised to life and begin chatting away. When I looked at my backlog of sermons, I noticed that I have never in my life preached on this text. During the last cycle, I preached on the Galatians text. The cycle before that, I didn’t preach at all. But this past week, I read something in the pages of Scripture that I have never noticed before.

The dead man, lying on top of that bier, with the whole funeral procession around him, is not at the center of the story or at the center of Jesus’ attention. It doesn’t say that Jesus had compassion on him for being dead, even though, I always thought that it must have said that. Jesus most certainly has compassion. He has compassion that gets right to his gut, right to the core of his being, but it’s not for the dead man, it’s for the widow. “As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow . . . When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, ‘Do not weep.’” [Luke 7.12-13] I had never noticed that before and it was quite a surprise to me.

If you have done any reading of Scripture, you know that widows are on the fringes of society. The prophets of Israel believed that the benevolent and loving treatment of widows was one of the marks of Israel’s holiness [Isaiah 1.17, 23; Jeremiah 7.6; Ezekiel 22.7; Zechariah 7.10]. In ancient society, women went from their father’s household to their husband’s household and if their husband died, they could be left destitute. What’s more, sons were the holders of their father’s inheritance. If a widow had only one son and if that son died before her, all of the son’s inheritance, any kind of financial sustenance or personal property, would go back to her dead husband’s family! This widow, following her dead son being processed in funeral regalia, saw all of her security in this life being carried away from her, right along with the boy she had lost.

What have you lost? What has been taken away from you, either by others or by your own doing? Where are the places, deep inside your soul, that feel as dead and lifeless as the man on that bier all those years ago? What will God return to you so that you may feel whole again? It’s not always the most obvious things that come to your mind. It’s not always the thing that you think you want.

Jesus had this gut-wrenching compassion for this widow that he happens along. This widow has lost everything, from her husband, to her ability to eat and clothe herself, all the way down to her son. And so, Jesus, in his gut-wrenching compassion, stretches out his arm, touches the bier, and says, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” [Luke 7.14] By doing so, Jesus has made himself ritually unclean. He dirtied himself, not for the son, but really for the widow, so that the widow would be whole again and be able to give praise to God all of the days of her life. Notice that after this dead man sits up (and for some odd reason begins to speak right away), the next thing that happens is that Jesus gave this man back to his mother. It was the mother all along. The dead man would have been fine, in God’s good graces, but this widow is the one who needed to be brought back to life again. Jesus voluntarily made himself unclean, so that this woman would be whole again.

And so it is with you. In all of those spaces, in all of those places, where it seems like everything is lost, where it seems like death is all around, Jesus comes to bring new life and wholeness. It usually is not in the way that we expect or want or even understand, because it is true wholeness, not any kind of wholeness that we think we can create on our own. It takes time. It takes returning back to the things that we fully know, to find something absolutely new that we never thought we would be able to find.

I find it very fascinating that the people gathered who have seen all of these things take place are filled with fear and even within that fear they are glorifying God, reiterating what was said in the beginning of the gospel of Luke in those four wise and beautiful canticles. God is looking favorably on God’s people. The songs that were offered in the beginning of the gospel of Luke are beginning to take flesh: Jesus is doing something new among the people. And because of that, word is spreading all around for all people to hear.

This word about Jesus spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country. [Luke 7.17] Now, how is it going to spread throughout you and in your own territories in which you move and breathe, work and play? Open the Scripture. Turn the pages. It doesn’t matter how old you are. You’re just beginning to understand.

Melinda Quivik
Proverbs 8.1-4, 22-31; Romans 5.1-5; John 16.12-15
30 May 2010
Holy Trinity [Cycle C ]

Jesus said, "the Spirit of truth... will guide you into all the truth."

Then Pentecost happened.
The Spirit came to "guide us into all the truth…"

The Holy Spirit made people who spoke many different languages
able to understand each other.

The Spirit has come.
We are guided into truth.

But what is it that we know?
Do we understand our brothers and sisters
         who speak languages different from ours?
Do we understand the neighbor who speaks our language?
Do we even understand ourselves?

How can we know "all the truth?"
We know that our knowledge will fail us.

It doesn't matter how many times we put our faith
in a new and improved technology--
          for example, one that drills deeper and brings us more oil.
Our confidence in ourselves is misplaced.

It happens over and over:
we believe we can do new impossible things: overcome huge obstacles.
Yet, we cannot handle our relationship with the ocean floor
          let alone the depths of God.

The church--in its wisdom!--
has given us language for what we want to know…
so that we can know something… at least a little bit.
          "I believe in God the Father…
          in Jesus Christ, God's only Son… in the Holy Spirit…"

We also have symbols for what we know:
          --Bible, baptismal water, bread and wine, each other

And we have confessional statements that tell us what we CANNOT know:
"I believe that I cannot by my own understanding or effort
believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him.
But the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel,
enlightened me with his gifts,
and sanctified and kept me in true faith."

That's Martin Luther:
"By my own understanding or effort, I cannot believe,"
but the Holy Spirit
calls,
enlightens,
sanctifies, and keeps us in truth.

Despite our inabilities, Jesus assures us, "All that the Father has is mine."
The Spirit of truth "will take what is mine and declare it to you."

What belongs to the Father… belongs to the Son... and to you and me.

There's a dance going on here…
of who is who
and whose is whose.
There's an intertwining of person and belongings
that seems to have no end...

… which is why the church has had such difficulty over the centuries
          with the doctrine of the Trinity.

The holy scriptures talk about Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
as separate most of the time.

How does it work?
What does it mean?
Are the persons of the Trinity separate or the same?
Do they just have different jobs?
Do we worship three gods?

The church, East and West, split in part
over how the persons of the Trinity are related;
whether the Father and Son together created the Spirit
or whether there is a hierarchy: first Father, then Son, and then Holy Spirit.

[You may be thinking this is like the question
how many angels can dance on the head of a pin…]

In the 4th century, congregations began to say the creeds in worship
to force people to articulate the relationship between the Three
in a certain way.

We can ask: Why does all this matter so much?

It matters because the metaphor we have for God
is the metaphor we live by.

A pastor I know once asked some women in her church at a retreat
to draw pictures of God.
One woman drew a man in the sky
throwing flaming arrows at the hearts of women.
That's a metaphor you don't want to live by.

What you emphasize about God, sets you on your theological path.

Take God, the Creator.
A creator-god is safely distant, impersonal,
all-powerful, omnipotent, can do anything.
Believing in a creator is socially acceptable.
Something must have produced the earth and all stars, right?!

You can talk like this at cocktail parties
and people won't necessarily move to the other room.
Lots of folks say they "believe in a Supreme Being"
without being able to say much about that divine being.
They mean that a force made what exists.
It's logical.

Same with the Spirit.
Maybe some of us in this very room have said or even now say
we believe in a unifying spirit that permeates everything…
some animating energy, some pulsating liveliness.
Even physicists talk about a connection
between what is visible and invisible at the sub-atomic level.
People can die of loneliness, for example.

If you are Spirit-centered,
you don't have to make room for Jesus.
You can end up in Gnosticism which says
that the body doesn't matter much,
that this life is irrelevant.
That leads to thinking it's okay to spoil creation
(take a chance on oil spills)
because, in fact, only the spiritual side of things is important.
The physical is dispensable.

But, then, in this Trinity, there's Jesus.
Including Jesus in your God metaphor means
you embrace the stumbling-block.
That's not very popular at cocktail parties among the discerning set.
It sets you off as weird.

It's easier to believe in a unifying force that runs through all creation
--a spirit--even a Holy Spirit!--
or a Creator who set all this in motion--
than to believe in a person who was fully human and fully divine,
who died a horrible death,
and rose from the dead and ate fish in front of his followers
and said "Peace be with you."
That is hard to swallow.

Without Jesus, we have no Christian witness.
BUT if we emphasize Jesus too much or solely
or with the barest hint of mention toward the Creator and the Sustainer,
we can run into yet another twisted version of faith.

I once asked Walter Brueggemann why it is important
to read the Old Testament on Sunday morning.
(Many Protestant churches used to omit the OT reading
because they said it's not about Jesus;
or it took too much time.)

Brueggemann said that if you lose the OT accounts of faith
in favor of just the NT,
you easily end up with a kind of privatized,
me-and-Jesus religion.

If Jesus is all that matters,
the corporate dimension declines in value.
You get a lop-sided faith.

The Holy Trinity is a three-legged stool.
Set it down anywhere.
It won't tip.
Lose one leg, and the stool is wrecked.

But here's another reason why this matters:
It has to do with us.
Intimately.

The Spirit "will take what is mine and declare it to you."

I have a plaque on the kitchen wall that says,
"It takes a long time to grow an old friend."
It's from a friend who was new to me five years ago.
Now that new friend has become closer to being an old one.
There are parts of that friend that have become parts of me:
I see through her eyes sometimes now.
I understand how she might analyze something.
I am changed.

In this congregation, in the ELCA, in fact,
we are committed to living with the Holy Trinity
--our friend… our dancing partner--
as the very structure of how we see
who God is
and who we are.

It is no accident that on this Sunday
--when we ponder and celebrate a doctrine of the church--
we hear from Lady Wisdom
because we need her
to help us into this intimate slow dance.

Wisdom takes the lead, revealing life lived IN the Holy Trinity
through her relationship with us.

She raises her voice.
          (She uses words we can hear.)

She understands.
          (She understands YOU.
          She says, "I was beside [God] rejoicing in the human race.")

She stands by the gates of the town, calling out.
(Do you not know that in your heart of hearts?
"… my cry," she says, "is to all that live.")

Yet there is something else important about this Wisdom woman.

She is not us.
She is apart from us.
We do not possess her.

In the Bible, Wisdom is not just some wafting spirit,
some inner voice that we have to appropriate (as if we could!).
relationship with God!

She was "acquired" at the beginning of God's creating the world.
That's what it means that she was "created."
She was "the first."

And even more than that, HEAR THIS:
Wisdom is someone without whom the Creator could not have created.
She was "beside him, like a master worker."

This is the image of a fellow designer,
an architectural partner,
a planner, a visionary,
an enthusiastic admirer of what the Creator made.
She says, "I was daily his delight… rejoicing in his inhabited world."

This is a happy creature!
Wisdom is full of laughter!
Thank God!
I see the architectural office filled with large drawing boards,
excellent lighting,
sharpened pencils,
drafters hunched over their tables…
and Wisdom skipping through the room
excited about the creation which is ready to emerge
and then thrilled with what it comes to be.

Before anything in all creation had been made
(the depths, springs, mountains, hills, earth, fields, soil, heavens, skies…)
before all that,
Wisdom was.
Expectant… yearning.

I used to say that what I wanted in life was, finally, to be a wise old woman.
The truth is: At any age, none of us has to wait for Wisdom to be ours.
The wisdom is in our midst, in our ears and in our eyes and beside us.
Wisdom is this:
what we already have…
here in our lives…
is what belongs to Christ Jesus--freedom from fear,
          even of fear of death.

The truth has already been revealed to us
IN the stumbling-block that is our crucified and risen Lord
THROUGH the Holy Spirit who is our advocate and guide.
The Spirit guides us into all truth.
What is all truth?
Wisdom.

Along with Wisdom in God's architectural drawing room,
we know what there is to know:
God's love for us is deeper than any ocean floor,
higher than the heavens,
never-ending,
gracious,
and merciful.

THAT is the Wisdom of the Holy Trinity.
Amen.
Thanks be to God.