Sunday, March 29, 2009

“Warning: Jesus is Calling Us to be Very Weird” Fifth Sunday of Lent March 29, 2009

(First, read the passage for this sermon: John 12:20-33)

Jesus Christ is a superstar, at this point in John’s gospel. It’s the biggest time of the year in Jerusalem, for Jews. It is Passover. Great crowds have gathered in the city, from all over the hinterlands, for the annual celebration of God’s delivering the people from slavery in Egypt. And Jesus is providing extra excitement! Here’s what we read in John’s story, just before this morning’s reading begins: The next day the great crowd that had come to the festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, shouting,
"Hosanna!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord --
the King of Israel!"


You know what we call our celebration of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem? That’s right: Palm Sunday, or the Sunday of the Passion. It’s next week! In John’s story, though, Jesus’ enemies react badly to all of this acclaim: The Pharisees then said to one another, "You see, you can do nothing. Look, the world has gone after him!"

As to confirm the Pharisees’ worst fears, about the whole world going after Jesus, this morning’s story begins: Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. Jesus’ followers are now expanding beyond those of the Chosen People who think Jesus is the Christ. Now Gentile converts are coming, too.

We read, They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, "Sir, we wish to see Jesus." Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. The Greek converts approach Philip, because his name is Greek, and because he comes from Bethsaida, which is a town close to the Gentile area. Philip picks up his fellow disciple, Andrew (who also has a Greek name), to approach Jesus, and Jesus answered them, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”

You do know where the story is going to go from here, right? (Here’s a clue: what’s going to happen two weeks from this Friday, on the day we call “Good Friday?” Yes, that’s where the story is going from here.)

And here’s what strikes me at this point. At Jesus’ greatest fame and power, he does not build a mega church. He doesn’t begin writing best-selling books outlining the path to spiritual success and psychological happiness. He doesn’t respond to the request for a cover story, from the reporter from Time magazine. He doesn’t accept the President’s invitation to pray at the inauguration.

Instead, here’s what Jesus does. He tries to frighten away as many followers as he can!

Jesus answered them, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” Well, you and I have certain expectations of what that means, according to the way our culture adulates the rich and powerful. ButGod has different ideas. Jesus says these shocking things: “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit."

And: "Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life."

And: "Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also.”

You and I are called to die to ourselves? We are called to “lose” our lives (which means that we are not to be the center of our own little universes?) We are called to servanthood? Then I must warn you: Jesus is calling us to be very weird – at least according to our culture’s criteria of glory and fame.

I am very pleased to see how many of us are well along the path into weirdness, following Jesus’ call! For instance, you and I are right now worshiping the God who created us! (What a weird thing to do; an act of resistance against the culture that does not consider this to be the sabbath day, with any sense of holiness – but to be “the weekend.”) In this community of faith, you and I encourage each other to give away money! (That’s weird. The first thing many financial planners advise is to stop tithing to the church.) In this community, we practice taking seriously and listening to those we disagree with. (That’s really weird.) In this community, we practice loving those we don’t even like. (How weird is that?)

All of this weird behavior is a sign that you and I are bearing fruit. The key to understanding what Jesus is talking about are these words: “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

Jesus is saying that he, the Son of Man, is glorified by dying on the cross – which is about as strange a thing as Jesus could possibly say. (Remember how offensive that would have been? Remember that today’s equivalent to the cross is the lethal injection syringe?)

Jesus is saying that it is necessary for him to die, so that he can bear fruit.

Using the Bible to provide commentary on the Bible, here’s what that means. In John’s story, two chapters further on from where we are this morning, Jesus alerts his followers to the lasting fruit that will come from his death and resurrection: "I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.” The Holy Spirit continues Jesus’ work in the world.

And, again using the Bible to provide commentary on the Bible, I think of one of the most important sentences in all of St. Paul’s writings: By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23)

There is a direct line, then, from the work and words and presence of Jesus the Christ who dies to bear fruit, and that fruit of the Spirit that shows up in you and me, when we die to ourselves!

Here’s another description, from Paul, of what this looks like: As God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. (Colossians 3:12-13)

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control? Compassion, kindness, humility, meekness? Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive?

Warning! Jesus is calling you and me to be very weird – at least, according to what is usually honored and celebrated in our culture.

You and I are called to be very different from that.

You and I are called to be church: “a new and alternative public;… a new and distinct society, a new and extraordinary social existence where enemies are loved, sins are forgiven, the poor are valued, and violence is rejected.”

You and I are summoned “to take the reign of God seriously, and it is an invitation to allow our lives, commitments, and relations to be ordered within that deviant politics called the church.”

You and I are called to be church, “a people whose lives are marked by such practices as forgiveness, enemy-love, inclusive table fellowship, and a sharing of material possessions.”

All of these behaviors are “subversive of an old order that, since Jesus, is passing away.” (Quotes from Bryan Stone, Evangelism after Christendom, page 179, 180)

How can we possibly bear such fruit? By imitating Christ. By dying to ourselves.

And that’s not a heavy or onerous thing! Instead, it leads to a better way to live! We die to what exhausts us and dehumanizes us – holding grudges, competition that creates winners and losers, coercion, thinking that you are valuable according to what you produce, imagining that there is scarcity. We die to all of that which deadens us – so that God can raise us, to be what God created us to be! So that we can bear the fruit of the Spirit, as individuals formed in community. So that the Spirit will form us in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control; in compassion, kindness, humility, meekness; in mutual forbearance and forgiveness.

Why do we gather as church? One reason is so the Holy Spirit can form us in this weirdness, as we practice the faith.

Can you do that alone, without gathering as church? Man, I sure can’t.

Here are some provocative sentences, from Bryan Stone: “Salvation is impossible apart from the church, not because the church has received salvation as a possession and is now in a position to dispense it to or withhold it from others. It is instead because salvation is, in the first place, a distinct form of social existence. To be saved is to be made part of a new people and a new politics, the body of Christ.” (Stone, page 188)

In this community of St. Stephen, then, we practice what that looks like: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control; compassion, kindness, humility, meekness; mutual forbearance and forgiveness.

As we embody that life, we are the body of Christ. And others are attracted to it – because it is a better way to live. It is a more joyous, grace-filled way to live!

Thanks be to God, who is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pastor Andy Ballentine
St. Stephen Lutheran Church
Williamsburg, Virginia

Sunday, March 22, 2009

“By Grace You Have Been Saved” Fourth Sunday in Lent March 22, 2009

(First, read the text for this sermon: Ephesians 2:1-10)

The apostle Paul might have written the letter to the Ephesians. But probably not. The style and the Greek vocabulary is much different from those letters which are indisputably from the pen of Paul. (According to introduction in the new Lutheran Study Bible, “For example, some sentences in Ephesians are unusually long….Nearly ninety words appear in Ephesians that do not appear in other letters written by Paul.”) This kind of thing is easy to see, for Greek scholars. It would be as if English readers compared a passage of Faulkner, for instance, with one from Hemingway. From the different styles of writing, from the different vocabularies used, it would be obvious that two different people wrote those two passages.

In the second and third centuries, though, as church leaders were deciding what would be in the collection we call the New Testament, it didn’t really matter who wrote Ephesians. It was common for a follower of a prominent person to write in the name of that person. What was important was that the letter proved to be so helpful to the churches of the first centuries! It was an easy choice to include Ephesians.

The letter so clearly describes the nearly-inconceivable grace of God. The author has composed a letter of perfect Lutheran theology!

Oh. Wait. It’s the other way around, isn’t it? It’s Luther’s emphasis on grace that comes from the Bible, right?

In fact, the Bible offers contradictory witnesses to God. Over a period of 1,600 years or so, as the authors composed the writings that eventually came to be collected together as the Bible, the authors were witnessing to how they understood God to be working in their times and their places. And so, in the Bible, God seems to act in conflicting ways. That gives rise to an inaccurate stereotype that I hear a lot: “In the Old Testament, God is a God of anger and vengeance. In the New Testament, God is a God of grace and forgiveness.”

It is true that there is a lot of violence in the Hebrew Scriptures. (I said a couple of weeks ago that the story of Elijah is better than any of the “Indiana Jones” movies.) And, it is true that various writers portray God as involved in the violence. (Look at this morning’s story, out of Numbers. Is there any story more weird?! Numbers 21:4-9)

But, mostly, the Old Testament is full of grace! We see that by considering just a few examples.

Consider, for instance, the call of Abraham and Sarah. Who were they that God should call them? Did they deserve God’s favor? Uh uh. Pure grace.

Consider the call of Moses – a no account sheep herder, working for his father-in-law. Pure grace.

Why would God choose the insignificant, powerless, land-less, nomadic Hebrews to be the Chosen People? Why did God save those Chosen People from slavery in Egypt? Why did God give them the 10 Commandments? Of course, the answer to all those questions is: pure grace from God.

Does God get angry in the Bible? Well, certainly! For one example, God’s anger is that of a jilted lover according to the prophet Hosea, because the people have given their love to other gods. Most often in the Old Testament, God’s anger is that of a loving parent, despairing as he watches his children engage in behavior that will destroy them. (Perhaps you’ve known that terrible, angry love, with your children.)

But just as with any parent, all through Bible, God’s anger is temporary. All through the Bible, God offers new chances – even though the people have given no reason for God to do that! God never tires of welcoming the errant children back. Why does God do this? Pure grace.

Grace is the primary and unifying theme – throughout the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament. In the Pauline writings, in particular, grace is the point of everything that God has done and everything that God will do. In the Lutheran tradition of Christianity, based on Paul, we assert that grace is fundamental to God. And this passage from Ephesians is as radical a statement of grace as we’ll ever encounter.

You were dead. You were dead. I was dead. Let’s start there.

You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. “Disobedient”: there is the theme of repentance that we’ve encountered in many of our readings during Lent. To be disobedient is to turn away from God, and, instead, to follow “the ruler of the power of the air,” as Paul puts it. (There he is reflecting the cosmology of his time: the ancient assumption that the habitat of demons was up there, in the air.) Repentance means to turn back towards God!

There are Christian traditions that require repentance, as something we do first, in order to be saved. Hmmm. Does God withhold salvation until people first prove that they deserve it, until they first repent? That is not what the author of Ephesians is describing. Instead, it is all pure grace. Listen:

All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. (My emphases.) But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ -- by grace you have been saved -- and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, the author repeats himself! For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God – and I say to myself, “Thank God!” Because, I don’t know about you, but I am constantly reminded of how powerless I am to save myself, or even to improve myself. I think, “OK. I’m doing well overcoming this grief stuff”; and then I see a video of my loved one back when she was alive and healthy and beautiful, and then the tears come as if they are new. I’m not doing well at all! I can’t work myself out of it! I can’t do it myself!

Or, I’m working too hard, right? I’m driving myself, and I find myself feeling trapped, and I start becoming resentful. So I come across some good “self help” advice somewhere, in some reading: of how to regain balance; and I recover some perspective; and that works for, how long? Thirty-two hours or so? But 33 hours later I’m driving myself mercilessly again, because I’m motivated by law: if things fall apart, it’s my fault, right? I can’t free myself from this captivity to sin! I can’t work myself out of it. I can’t do it myself!

It is into this, our condition of sin, that God has come. God has come in the flesh and blood of Jesus the Christ, who died on the cross and then rose from the grave. And this is the effect of that: For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God -- not the result of works, so that no one may boast. Pure grace! Our salvation is not what you and I do. Our salvation, instead, is what God has done. Pure grace. For by grace you have been saved through faith.

Can it be that easy? That’s the question we ask. That’s what makes God’s radical grace so difficult to accept and believe! Can you believe that our salvation is a gift, without us doing anything?

And – aren’t you and I supposed to work? Aren’t we supposed to do good things? Hasn’t God given us our work to do?

The answer is: Yes! Of course. Indeed, that is why God frees you and me from the need to save ourselves! We can stop trying to do that now. That’s been done. Now, you and I can devote our energy to the work God gives us to do, our ministries, among the people God gives us to work with and live with and play with.

Listen to how that’s expressed, in the last verse of this morning’s reading (again, with my emphases): For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

So. What about you, on your journey of faith? It’s all grace from here on out, right? Pure joy, right? You’ll never again be hard on others and even harder on yourself. Right?

Yeah, right. It’s the life-long paradox that Luther calls being “saint and sinner.” Separated from God in sin, we turn away from grace. We live by law. We beat ourselves up for every tiny failing. Repentance, the turning back to God, must be a daily movement of our journey in faith.

At least weekly, as we begin our sabbath day worship, we confess our sins and then you hear these grace-saturated words: “In the mercy of almighty God, Jesus Christ was given to die for us, and for his sake God forgives us all our sins.”

Or, using the “right-hand-column” words, as I did a few minutes ago this morning: “God, who is rich in mercy, loved us even when we were dead in sin, and made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved.” (Recognize those words? They’re from this morning’s reading in Ephesians! That’s what liturgy is: the Bible, adapted!)

The words of absolution continue: “In the name of Jesus Christ, your sins are forgiven. Almighty God strengthen you with power through the Holy Spirit, that Christ may live in your hearts through faith.”

Pure grace.

And so, given salvation, freed by that pure grace, the writer of Ephesians puts it this way: we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

Thanks be to God!

In the name of God, who is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pastor Andy Ballentine
St. Stephen Lutheran Church
Williamsburg, Virginia

Sunday, March 15, 2009

“Can We Imagine What God Is Doing? Third Sunday of Lent March 15, 2008

(First read the text for this sermon: 1 Corinthians 1:18-25)

In 1991, before we moved to Wilmington, Delaware, Patty and I were looking at houses with a realtor. We were in an old city neighborhood, about 15 blocks from the church building where I would be working. So the houses were quirky. Each one was different from the others. Each one was wonderful!

Some of the houses also had not been updated for, oh, 60 or 70 years. I remember the realtor peering through the window in the front door of one house and, as she unlocked the door to let us in, she turned to us and said, “Now, just to warn you: this one is going to take a great deal of imagination.”

That comes to my mind, as I think about the Sunday morning passages we’ve been reading during these weeks of Lent. You and I are missionaries to this old, unrenovated world of ours, and the passages are urging us to use our imaginations! Can we imagine what God is doing?

You may remember that, two weeks ago, the gospel passage included the keynote of Mark’s story: Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."

I wonder about those words: “The kingdom of God has come near.” Later in Mark, Jesus speaks similar words to a scribe who knows all the right answers. (Mark 12:34? Jesus says, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” Many of us are using the Book of Faith Lenten Journey for our prayer and journaling during this season, and author Henry French offers this interpretation: “Not far? Why not in? Perhaps because Jesus saw a difference between knowing the right answers and living the right answers. The distance between ‘not far’ and ‘in’ is the distance between talking about love and loving.”

Could it be that moving beyond talk about love – and actually loving – is a sign of repentance? Of turning towards God? Or – more accurately – is it a sign of the daily re-turning to God? That was what Jesus was teaching with his harsh words in last Sunday’s reading from Mark. Jesus said to Peter, “For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things." The theme, again, is repentance.

To repent means to re-turn to God. Living in God, then, our imaginations are Spirit-filled! We see our way clear to carry our crosses (that’s from last Sunday’s reading in Mark), which means to live as citizens of the kingdom of God. We pray for that, each time we gather: “Your kingdom come.” Luther teaches: “In fact, God’s kingdom comes on its own without our prayer, but we ask in this prayer that it may also come to us.” (Small Catechism) Our prayer, then, is to be Spirit-filled in our imaginations, so that the kingdom will not simply be near to us, but that the kingdom will be here, in us!

You need to know that all of this is foolishness. (At least, others think so.) None other than St. Paul tells us that – in his first letter to the congregation he founded in the city of Corinth. Paul writes: For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. Then he writes: For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe.

Do you have the imagination to see how foolish it is, that God has worked redemption through the cross? That God has won victory through the cross?

Do you see this to be foolishness? I ask that because I wonder: Has the cross lost its ability to be scandalous? Let me try this. What if I were to say that, instead of adorning ourselves with beautiful and expensive crosses, as jewelry, you and I should wear lethal injection syringes around our necks?! Would that be scandalous? After all, a lethal injection syringe is the 21st century equivalent to the cross. That’s the method the state uses, today, to execute criminals.

The first century Roman empire executed criminals by hanging them on crosses. It happened all the time. (Pontius Pilate was especially cruel and bloodthirsty.) In fact, this method of execution happened to be especially useful when it came to killing the purported “king of the Jews” – because, according to Jewish teaching itself, hanging someone on a cross indicated that the criminal had been cursed by God! (Deuteronomy 21:23) How could Jesus have been the messiah, then? How could such a thing be said about Jesus, who died under the most vile death sentence, condemned as a criminal according to Roman law and cursed by God according to Jewish law? It takes a lot of imagination to claim Jesus to be the Christ!

Here is what we prayed, in the first sentence of the Prayer of the Day last Sunday morning: “O God, by the passion of your blessed Son you made an instrument of shameful death to be for us the means of life.” That claim is utter foolishness! It is scandalous – to both Jews and non-Jews!

That is still true, today – when we consider what it means for us to respond to Jesus’ call, to carry our crosses. That means to do the work that God gives us to do – to be servants to those who are in need, which means we don’t have much time to feather our own nests. Carrying our crosses means living according to the virtues of the kingdom of God: love, hope, faith, presence, patience, humility. When we carry our crosses, we exhibit the fruit of the Spirit, as Paul describes that in Galatians (5:22-23): love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Carrying our crosses means to refuse to take on the trappings of worldly power. Instead, we are servants. Carrying our crosses means to touch lepers; in other words, to advocate for those considered to be unclean, according to the wisdom of the world. As citizens of the kingdom, we work on behalf of the powerless, rather than the powerful. We live in humility, rather than in self-promotion. We live by grace, rather than worrying about what we’ve earned, or what’s “fair.” And we give witness, through our cross-carrying, that this is a better way to live.

There’s one other thing about carrying the cross. You and I receive from the Spirit the radical courage that we need to resist the "wisdom" of the world. Because, according to that “wisdom,” we are to win! We are to out-vote! We are to overpower, if necessary! We are to judge! We are to be more forceful than our opponents, to coerce them to see things our way; not to let them speak; not to listen to them or to consider whether they might be right, because we’re right and they are wrong, and God is on our side! (You want proof that that is the wisdom of the world? Watch any of the political debate shows on TV.)

What is the result of this violence, this way of creating winners and losers who are then immediately preparing for the next fight? Bryan Stone puts it this way: “We live in a world that is increasingly cynical, pessimistic, and calloused – a world that has learned not to trust, expect, or hope.” (Evangelism After Christendom, page 56)

Where is the wisdom in that?

Paul asks the same thing! Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength.

It is impossible to understand these words without Spirit-filled imaginations.
Can we imagine what God is doing? Can we imagine what God is calling us to? As Bryan Stone describes it: “[T]o speak of God’s reign breaking into history is to speak also of a people called into being by that reign and in whom that reign is embodied in habits, practices, disciplines, and patterns that are intrinsically social, practical, and public. Moreover; it is through this people that God’s reign, by being displayed, is offered to the world.” (Do you have the imagination to see us, as church, offering that?)

”The reign of God, therefore, was nothing abstract or ethereal for Jesus and for those who heard him. The inbreaking of God’s reign both demanded and made possible an altered set of allegiances in which obedience to God relativizes one’s family and national identities while calling into question customary patterns with regard to the status of women, children, the poor, and those otherwise ostracized or considered strange (tax collectors, prostitutes, lepers, Samaritans).”

Through the “tangible practices of eating, sharing, meeting, and service[,] Jesus’ evangelism is not just the preaching of a message but the gathering together of a new family, a new household.” (pages 78-79)

In other words, the Holy Spirit constitutes the church, a community, so that people can live foolishly together – at least, according to the wisdom of the world.

Why does God the Holy Spirit create in us such community? It is so you and I can demonstrate by our way of living what it looks like to live according to the kingdom that Jesus embodied – because now we are the body of Christ in the world, and God uses the church to save the world!

As Paul puts it: For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe.

Do we have the imagination to see what God is doing? Do we have the imagination to live today as citizens of the kingdom?

If so, then what fools we are (according to the wisdom of the world)!

What joyous fools we are!

In the name of God, who is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pastor Andy Ballentine
St. Stephen Lutheran Church
Williamsburg, Virginia

Sunday, March 08, 2009

“Losing Ourselves in Jesus” Second Sunday of Lent March 8, 2009

(First, read the passage for this sermon: Mark 8:31-38)

In last week’s reading from Mark, this was Jesus’ announcement: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news." (Mark 1:14-15)

Does the word, “repent” put you off? I would not be surprised if it does! Many associate repentance with fundamentalist pulpit pounders who cause people to be afraid of God!

But repentance is a positive movement. To repent means to turn, or to return. To turn towards the God who made us and who loves us. Repentance means to turn away from what is self-destructive that which causes despair. Repentance means to turn towards the hope and joy of the good news, the good news of our salvation that has been won for us by Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.

So, what is the movement called for? It is to turn, or to return.

This morning in Mark, we are eight chapters later in the story. This morning, we read that Jesus rebukes his most prominent follower. (“Rebuke” is the translation of a very strong Greek word!) Jesus says to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things."

What is Jesus saying to Peter? He is telling Peter to turn – and to return! “Turn away from human things,” Jesus is telling Peter. “Turn towards divine things.” It’s the same theme as in last week’s reading.

The theme is developed in this morning’s story from Mark. And we encounter more teaching that might cause you heartburn! [Jesus] called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

"If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves …” Are those words off-putting to you? These words remind us why many people think of the season of Lent as a real downer: that it is to be a dreary season of deadly devotional practices; of having to give up what you would really like to be doing. Is there any joy in that? And so, by extension, is there any joy in the Christian life, with all this talk of self denial and losing our lives?

The next thing I’m going to say is counterintuitive – which is not unusual, because most of the Christian gospel is counterintuitive! Let me suggest that, in fact, all this talk of self denial and losing our lives is the path to joy, a joy that is deep and abiding!

Here’s why. “For those who want to save their life will lose it” means that we are to lose ourselves in Jesus. This is a promise of the good news of Jesus the Christ: that you and I discover our true selves by losing ourselves in Jesus. Let’s think about how this works.

Some of you may remember that, from last Sunday’s reading in Mark, I raised the theme of wilderness – which all of us have experienced. The wilderness is where we find ourselves to be when things have fallen apart. The wilderness is where it’s hard to figure things out. It’s hard to rediscover the path. The wilderness is where we encounter our demons. The wilderness is where we are when our defenses fall apart, and our protective pretences and facades crumble.

Here’s how that relates to today. Those protective pretences and facades are what prop up our false selves. When we are protecting our false selves, then we’re afraid of discovering who we are. And something else: we cannot begin to know, or to be comfortable with our true selves.

But Jesus is calling us into honesty. When Jesus calls his followers to deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me, it is those false selves that we are called to deny. That false self is the you who does things because of artificial motivation, because someone has told you that you should, rather than acting out of who you are, the person God has created you to be. Your false self is stuck on what the law tells you: “You’re no good. You’re certainly not good enough!” Your false self worries about what others think of you. Your false self cannot believe the good news – that our salvation has been won through the death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ – because your false self is trying to justify yourself, to save yourself, to make yourself good enough!

Can you even do that?

Of course not! The Order for Confession and Forgiveness speaks the truth with the words that we said a few minutes ago: “we are captive to sin and cannot free ourselves.” Is that not true?

So why do you and I try to free ourselves? (See how pervasive sin is? We are in its grip.) When God the Holy Spirit moves within you, and you turn away from that self-help mentality; when you repent, when you deny your grasping, false self; then the Holy Spirit has room to work! Then God has the chance to liberate your true self from its captivity to sin!

Do you think the Holy Spirit could have room to work, through your Lenten faith practices? What joy could result, especially during this time of high anxiety. When you deny your false self, you find yourself free from every illusory security. For instance, a pastor named Kathy Beach-Verhey recently prayed, “Lord God, this financial crisis highlights our love of and dependence on money, and as people of faith, this helps us to call into question our values and priorities…Loosen our bonds to our money and our material possessions we pray, Lord God, at the same time that we pray for you to calm our anxious hearts and minds.”

In this morning’s story from Mark we read this: [Jesus] called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

What joy results, when we receive power from the Holy Spirit to deny our false selves. Then God can break down those protective pretences and facades that we have erected. Then God can liberate our true selves – the people God has created us to be! Then you and I are free to take up our crosses – which means we are free to do the work God gives us to do, in service to others.

Will carrying our crosses entail suffering? Maybe. Will the work God has given us to do, our ministry, our servanthood, entail suffering? It could. It is much more likely that carrying our crosses will lead to deep fulfillment.

Here’s why. Losing ourselves in Jesus means letting go. It means freedom from our false selves, stuck in our condemnation by the law. We lose ourselves in the salvation that Jesus the Christ has won for us, through his death and resurrection. Losing ourselves in Jesus means that we become free to do our ministries, the good works that God gives us to do!

We lose ourselves in Jesus, then, on behalf of others. God liberates our true selves. God creates in us lives of joyful servanthood.

Thanks be to God who creates us, and who saves us, and who makes us holy. Amen.

Pastor Andy Ballentine
St. Stephen Lutheran Church
Williamsburg, Virginia

Sunday, March 01, 2009

“On the Journey – Driven Out Into the Wilderness” Lent 1 March 1, 2009

(First, read the text for this sermon: Mark 1:9-15)

The wilderness is a frightening place.

The wilderness is where we find ourselves to be, when things have fallen apart.

The wilderness is where it’s hard to figure things out. It’s hard to rediscover the path.

When we’re in despair, we’re in the wilderness.

The wilderness is where there are physical and moral trials; where there is temptation and sin.

And so, here is a stunning verse, from this morning’s reading in Mark: And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.

Think of this. God the Holy Spirit drives God the Son out into the wilderness – a geographical place: desert, a place hostile to human life; but also the place of ambiguity, and physical and moral trials, and conflict, and fear, and despair, and hunger (both physical and figurative).

And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.

Isn’t this a verse we usually ignore? For one thing, in Matthew’s parallel version of this story we read, “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness…” In Luke we read, “Jesus…was led by the Spirit in the wilderness…” Both of these versions offer much gentler notions, don’t they? In neither version is Jesus driven out into the wilderness!

Don’t we usually think of the Holy Spirit as a gentle presence? That is how the Spirit is described in verse 10 of this morning’s reading, after Jesus has been baptized: And just as he was coming up out of the water, [Jesus] saw … the Spirit descending like a dove on him. In how many thousands of stained glass windows, do you think, is the Holy Spirit portrayed as a dove? A dove is also a symbol for peace, right? So – how peaceful is the Holy Spirit, right? How gentle? How comforting to us, in all our sorrows?

But how easy is it to go from there to thinking of the Holy Spirit as an innocuous wisp of gentle breeze? A god who is innocuous is easily dismissed! Ignored! The witness to God in this morning’s story from Mark prevents such sentimentality. God the Holy Spirit is driving the newly-proclaimed Son of God out into the wilderness – the place of ambiguity, and physical and moral trials, and conflict, and fear, and despair, and hunger (both physical and figurative).

And that depiction of the Spirit as a dove? That itself is only a partial reading of verse 10 in this passage. In full, that verse reads: And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. The heavens torn apart! This is apocalyptic language – words bearing the images of God’s bringing history to its final climax. In fact, the apocalyptic is all through this short passage. The opening formula, “In those days” alerts us to God’s final days. Not only are “the heavens torn apart,” but a voice comes from heaven! And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

This is a description of Spirit-filled upheaval.

When have you experienced upheaval? When have you found yourself in the wilderness?

When you are grieving, you’re in wilderness.

When you are working through an experience of betrayal, you’re wandering in wilderness.

When you’re debilitated by illness, you know what wilderness is.

But here‘s something else. In the wilderness we encounter God, in a primal and unmediated way.

Time in the wilderness is dangerous. Time in the wilderness can lead to dis-integration. But: God can also use wilderness time of ambiguity, and physical and moral trials, and conflict, and fear, and despair, and hunger (both physical and figurative), to bring us back to God. Sometimes it is only when we are wandering in wilderness that God can get through our thick skulls and hardened hearts. Sometimes it’s only through wilderness experience that we come to know our need for return; our need to repent, and believe in the good news.

So – can it be that this morning’s gospel portrayal of God is actually true? Can it be that God the Holy Spirit drives us into the wilderness when we’ve gotten too comfortable? When our idea of God has become too tame? Too limited? Too domesticated?

Boy! That’s a counter-cultural notion! And the culture infects the church. One in our congregation objected to something I said not long ago because he was offended by it. He said, ”It is important never to offend the members of the congregation.” Well, I understand the Biblical image of God the Holy Comforter. That is the acceptable god in our culture: a warm, fuzzy, inoffensive god. But, to many, many people, that god has become boring and unnecessary and easily dismissed! This morning’s verses from Mark do not describe such a god. Such a domesticated god cannot cause Spirit-filled upheaval.

Look at the passage. Not only does the Holy Spirit descend like a dove upon Jesus. The same Spirit immediately drives Jesus out into the wilderness! Indeed, Elizabeth McGregor Simmons writes that the wilderness is “where people who are serious about living the Christian faith are of necessity driven.”

Hoo boy!

The wilderness is where we encounter our demons.

The wilderness is where we are when our defenses fall apart, and our protective pretences and facades crumble.

The wilderness is a hostile place. We are exposed. We acutely know our need for God.

Here’s another thing. In the wilderness, you and I are not abandoned. God is right there with us when we are in wilderness.

Do you see that in the passage from Mark? And the Spirit immediately drove [Jesus] out into the wilderness, we read. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts;… Scary, scary stuff, huh? But then we read this: and the angels waited on him.

In the Bible, angels are fierce. They are more than equal to any demonic forces out there in the wilderness. If you know the stories in the Hebrew Scriptures, you are reminded of other times when angels provided God’s presence to those driven out into the wilderness by God. The angel guided Moses and the Israelites during their 40 years of desert wilderness (Exodus 14:19; 23:20). The angel brought nourishment to the prophet Elijah when he was starving in the wilderness (1 Kings 19:5-7).

Same thing, here, with Jesus. And same thing, with you and me. God is in the wilderness, as fierce, protective presence, where we are face-to-face with our demons; and when our defenses have fallen apart, and our protective pretences and facades have crumbled; and when we come to acutely know our need for God.

Let me say one final thing. I think I know why God the Holy Spirit has worked on me through these words in Mark, so that I am focusing on all of this. It’s because the themes of the 40-day season of Lent encourage you and me to be honest about our wilderness experiences! Instead of covering up those frightening and disorienting experiences, the season of Lent encourages us to enter into them; to know acutely our need for God.

Why? Because then there’s a chance that the resurrection of Jesus from the dead will mean something to us!

Because of the resurrection, you and I live! That is the good news of the Christian faith.

Remember: this announcement in words of Jesus comes to us only as he emerges from 40 days in the wilderness: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."

In the name of God, who is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pastor Andy Ballentine
St. Stephen Lutheran Church
Williamsburg, Virginia