A Word About Labor Day & Pentecost 14

 

Labor Day Parade in Washington DC, 1894

Wayne, the ever-faithful and tireless volunteer sexton of Faith Lutheran, dropped by the office this morning after picking a bumper crop of tomatoes and cucumbers from Faith’s community garden. He wanted to show me how fecund out little plot has been before taking the produce down to Feast of Justice, our Lutheran food cupboard here in Northeast Philly.

“I don’t want to be pessimistic,” Wayne said, “but I don’t think you’re gonna see a whole lot of people in church this Sunday.”

I have to agree with him. It’s Labor Day Weekend, the “unofficial end of summer” here in the US. The weather should be nice at the Jersey shore, so I suspect church attendance might be sparse.

But that’s okay. I just hope that this weekend won’t be treated as a simple excuse for one more day of frolic before the kids go back to school. Let’s just take a sec and think about labor, okay? The first Monday in September owes its holiday status to a decree passed back in 1894 to celebrate the Labor Movement in America. This was at a time when unions were being formed so workers—many of whom had faced abuse at the hands of their employers—could demand decency and fairness from capitalists who would not voluntarily set aside their own natural inclinations towards greed and manipulation had they not been persuaded to do so. I think, on the whole, this has been a very positive thing for us as a country, wouldn’t you agree?

On the theological side, Martin Luther maintained that any work a person does—be it harvesting a field, teaching a child, milking a cow, or driving a cart—in some way benefited others. In 1520 Luther published his treatise To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation in which, among other things, he railed[i] against the notion that ordained priests were somehow holier than other folks. He maintained that all Christians have a priestly calling. We all can pray prayers of intercession for each other, and the work we do, if done nobly and with integrity, is a Godly work.

So! Let’s enjoy this Labor Day and consider how our work is a service to others. If you’re still earning a paycheck, thanks for doing your part—however you do it. If you’re retired, thanks for the work you did. You’ve earned your rest. May God bless and protect all who labor and keep them safe on the job. May the needs of all be met, and may fairness and equity be the goal of our society. Amen!

And now, a word about Pentecost 14:

“From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” (Matthew 16:21)

Judy asked if I would give her a little sip of water. The heavy medications she’s on give her a very dry mouth, and she wasn’t sure she could swallow the communion wafer I was about to give her. I held the Styrofoam cup of ice water close to her face so she could sip from the plastic straw. She apologized that her thirst interrupted the flow of the liturgy, but I assured her that it was okay.

On my way out of the nursing home I ran into Darlene, Judy’s niece and caregiver. Darlene’s job lets her work remotely, so she’s been able to sit with her aunt and keep her company now that Judy has been placed on hospice care.

“It’s hard to see her like this,” Darlene said. Her aunt’s cancer is progressing rapidly. She is now totally confined to her bed, in pain, and just waiting for the end to come. As I drove back to church I thought Judy is now where Jesus was—on the cross.

How could we have our faith without the cross, I wonder? How could we know a God who doesn’t know us, who hasn’t been where we all will go? In the gospel appointed for Pentecost 14, Year A (Matthew 16:21-28), Peter rebels against the notion that Jesus should endure the degradation of the cross. It’s hard to blame Peter, however. I imagine he’s been brought up like all the rest of us to fear pain and disgrace and value wealth, power, and importance in the eyes of others. Yet, setting his mind on such “human things,” as Jesus says (v.23), Peter has become the stumbling block.

The problem with human glory is it’s finite. The road to human achievement always leads to disappointment. One may win the Super Bowl one year, but the trophy will be passed to others the next year. You may conquer the world. Then what? As the poet Thomas Gray wrote,

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave

Awaits alike th’ inevitable hour:

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.[ii]

 

The ‘human things” always seem to separate us from each other and from God. We put our faith in our own understanding or our own piety or our own good works or our own faith we neglect God’s grace. Or, we put our faith in our own achievement, forgetting that making ourselves great means making others less. “Human things” split us apart, but the cross brings us together. Jesus came to walk the path we all walk, sharing in our collective humanity. Sometimes—and all too often—it means sharing our pain and disappointment.

So how do we share this walk with Jesus? Saint Paul’s words to the Roman church in our Second Lesson (Romans 12:9-21) are a very practical guide to denying ourselves and taking up our cross. If we’re to outdo one another, let it be in showing honor, loving the unlovable, and walking humbly with one another. Rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep.

Our job as Christians is, I think, always to look for Christ in others and let others see Christ in us. As I spend time with Judy as she enters this last part of her earthly journey, I see not only Christ’s suffering, but Christ’s grace. Jesus on the cross gave comfort to his companions and spoke words of forgiveness. Judy does her best—even through her immobility and discomfort—to make me feel welcome and valued. With her and with the many other saints I’ve watched depart over the years, I get a great sense of peace, understanding, and dignity. There is in the cross a nobility which nothing else can achieve.

God’s peace be with you, my friend. So glad you came to visit this week.

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[i] Luther liked to rail. He was good at it.

[ii] Thomas Gray “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” 1750.

What's Your Key? (Reflections on Pentecost 13, Year A 2023)

 

“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (Matthew 16:19)

Keys are pretty important, don’t you think? Now that I’m in my sixties I tend to misplace my keys a lot, and that causes a certain quantum of anxiety. I need my keys, although there are some things now that used to require turning a key but no longer do—like starting your car. But back in the day you had to have keys to get into stuff. One summer when I was in college I worked at a ladies’ shoe store. I was a full-timer, so I got a key to the front door of the shop. The assistant manager also had a key. Of course, it required both keys to get in. I guess the retail powers-that-be didn’t trust pitiful underlings to enter the store unaccompanied.[i] Only the all-powerful manager possessed all the keys.

In our gospel lesson for Pentecost 13, Year A (Matthew 16:13-20), Jesus—who seems pretty pleased that Peter has passed his little oral quiz—tells his disciples he’s giving them the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. They get the privilege of locking stuff in or opening stuff up. What this basically meant in Jewish tradition was Jesus gave his twelve buddies (and, by extension, all of us in the Christian faith) the authority to prohibit (bind) or allow (loose). BUT: we’re reminded that we’re only trustees here. We may think we’re only turning the keys here on earth, but we’re actually turning them in the Kingdom of God.

The main key we’re given is the key to understanding our relationship with Jesus. Peter has seen Jesus do some pretty freaky stuff. He’s seen him cure the sick, feed the hungry, square off against the high muckety-mucks, and even walk on water and calm a storm. He’s heard him preach some fantastic and puzzling words of alternative wisdom, too. Peter isn’t a super-educated guy. He may not understand geo-politics, quantum physics, or why his religion won’t let him eat a cheesesteak, but he knows one thing for dead sure—his friend Jesus is the most awesome human being he’s ever met, and if the Spirit of God is dwelling in no one else, it’s dwelling in Jesus of Nazareth.

The first key to our faith is the person of Jesus and our answer to the question, “But who do you say that I am?” (v. 15)

I think there may be any number of keys we could use to unlock this question. There’s the Norman Vincent Peale key. It says that Jesus is your very present help in time of trouble. You can always think positively because Jesus is there to look after you and bring prosperity to your life. There’s the Billy Graham key which says Jesus is your savior who died for you and saved you, a poor, miserable sinner, from the just and terrible reward for your iniquity. There’s the Dorothy Day/Reinhold Niebuhr key which says Jesus is your guide to compassion and activism for the sake of the poor. There’s the Nadia Bolz-Weber key which says Jesus is the voice of love and inclusion for those who have been marginalized, victimized, and left out of society. Perhaps we need all of these keys plus a key or two we haven’t thought about yet.

We’d do well to consider, however, that being handed the keys of the gospel is like being a sixteen-year-old kid who has been handed the keys to his dad’s car for the first time and told he better bring it back without a dent or scratch on it. The keys of the kingdom come with responsibility. They are not meant to lock us inside in snug safety. They are to open the door of our thinking and our hearts and allow others to come into the presence of Christ.

What is the key to your faith? And when was the last time you opened it up to someone else?

I hope you’ll think about that this week. Maybe you’ll share your thoughts in the comment section, too. But regardless, thanks for coming by. Do come again!

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[i] Actually, there was no guess work about this. They DIDN’T trust us. We had to take a polygraph examination before we were hired. The assistant manager I worked with that summer graciously validated the company’s paranoia by stealing thousands of dollars of merchandise from the store later that year.

Isaiah and the Exiles (Reflections on Pentecost 12, Year A 2023)

 

Russian icon of Isaiah, 18th Cent.

“Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, I will gather others to them besides those already gathered.” (Isaiah 56:8)

It was a rather emotionally-charged Sunday last week at Faith Lutheran of Philadelphia. Our bold and hardy Church Council had the somewhat unpleasant duty of rendering unto our congregation this very unfortunate bit of news: it looks like we’re going broke.

Yup. Just like a lot of mainline Protestant congregations (and not a few Roman Catholics and members of the Orthodox communions), our cozy little spiritual haven is falling prey to the rapacious maws of old age, the effects of the recent COVID pandemic, rising prices, competition from mega-churches, a vastly more secularized culture, and a whole lot of other stuff I probably haven’t thought about. This means we’re going to have to make some draconian cuts to our budget. To do this we’ll have to find another congregation in more or less the same predicament—but without a called pastor—and ask if they’d be willing to share the services of your Old Religious Guy and split the cost of keeping his body and soul on speaking terms. This suggestion was met with a small amount of weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Now, it’s not that the good folks of Faith aren’t willing to share, but this arrangement would involve a change. Lutherans aren’t big on change.[i] Change means loss and loss means grief and grief sucks.

Fortunately for your Old Religious Guy, I get to preach on Isaiah 56 this week, a passage which speaks to the situation in which we find ourselves. How so, you ask? Let me explain.

Our First Lesson for Pentecost 12 (Isaiah 56:1, 6-8) is from what smart Bible scholar folks call “Third Isaiah.” Actually, we don’t know how many writers there were who composed the part of the Hebrew Scriptures we call the Book of Isaiah. It was at least three but probably many more. What we do think, however, is that one guy couldn’t have written all this stuff by himself unless he lived to be 250 years old—which seems rather unlikely. This collection of prophetic writings spans too long a time period.

Here’s the wonky stuff: “First Isaiah” (Chapters 1- 39) deals with stuff that happened in Israel and Judah before the Babylonians went to war and whooped the tar out of them. It’s mostly warnings about corruption, apostasy, idolatry, lack of compassion, and has a healthy dose of condemnation about foreign affairs and foreign countries. After all, what good’s a prophecy without a little condemnation?

“Second Isaiah” (Chapters 40-55) speaks to the people of God who are in exile in Babylon and offers glimmers of hope.

Finally, “Third Isaiah” (Chapters 56-66) speaks to the post-exilic people of God. These folks have returned to their ancestral land to find that things just aren’t the same as they were back in the good ol’ days.

The story of the people’s exile in Babylon and the prophecies which surround it takes up a pretty good chunk of your Bible. As Christians, we naturally want to focus on Jesus. It’s easy to forget that huge part of Scripture which deals with failure, defeat, disgrace, disappointment, frustrated nostalgia, and heartache which is the Exile story. It might be a good idea for us to remember that this distasteful chapter of Israel’s history played the second lead role next to the story of the Exodus in their group consciousness. It was their own version of the Great Depression, and it was still smarting a few hundred years later by the time Jesus came along.

One of my favorite smart Bible scholar guys, Marcus Borg, has this to say about the Exile:

As an image about God and us, as an epiphany of the human condition and the solution, what is (the Exile story) saying? What is life in exile like? We live in a century in which millions of exiles and refugees know the experience firsthand. For the rest of us, it is fruitful to imagine what life in exile is like. It is an experience of separation from all that is familiar and dear. It usually involves powerlessness and marginality, often oppression and victimization.[ii]

Even though, as Borg explained, the experience of this devastating failure was deep fried into the psyche of God’s people, the prophet called “Third Isaiah”  tried to draw attention away from the disappointed sense of nostalgia and offered a vision of what God can do with God’s people provided they’re willing to use a little imagination. God isn’t interested in recreating the old Jerusalem. God’s been there and done that. What God is asking for is an expanded and inclusive community which invites, unites, and shares. It might’ve been necessary for an older model of religion to die so a newer one could be born. In this sense, change isn’t such a bad thing.

I think we can identify with the exiles who returned from Babylon to find a ruined Jerusalem and wondered how their faith was to survive. We’ve returned from COVID to find fewer butts in our pews and fewer bucks in our offering plate. Our young people don’t share our spirituality, but that’s not to say they’re not finding a contextual spirituality of their own—a spirituality which welcomes people formerly estranged and emphasizes acts of mercy over church doctrine and tradition.

The history of God’s people is always one of disaster and deliverance. The children of Abraham became the slaves of Pharaoh, but God rescued them. David’s mighty kingdom became the vassal of Babylon, but God rescued them. Our Savior was crucified, but he rose. Even the nation of Israel was obliterated, but it was reborn centuries later. Change may mean loss for us, but not for God.

God’s sneaky like that.

Keep the faith, my friend. Thanks for reading.

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[i] Ever hear the old joke: How many Lutherans does it take to change a light bulb? None. We DON’T change. OR: It takes seven. One to climb the ladder and replace the bulb, and six to stand around and talk about how much better the OLD bulb was.

[ii] Borg, Marcus, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith (San Francisco: Harper, 1994) Page 125.

How to Walk on Water (Reflections on Pentecost 11, Year A 2023)

 

"Christ on the Sea" Boucher, French 18th Cent.

But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” (Matthew 14:27)

When we last left Jesus in the Revised Common Lectionary’s gospel lesson for the 10^th Sunday after Pentecost (Matthew 14:13-21) he was doing some pretty cool Messiah-type stuff—healing the sick and feeding the hungry. Matthew’s gospel presented these activities as miracles, but, when you stop to think about it, we, as a society, could probably do the same things the Lord was doing if we had the resolve to do them. After all, seeing to the basic necessities of our fellow human beings is kind of what our Christian vocation calls us to do. Nothing miraculous there.

On the other hand, walking on water is pretty much a miracle.

The story of Jesus perambulating merrily across the Sea of Galilee—blatantly defying the laws of natural science—right in the middle of a howling wind storm is something which stretches credulity. If you’re feeling a little cognitive dissonance with the gospel lesson for Pentecost 11 (Matthew 14: 22-33), I’d advise you not to worry too much about it. Don’t get wrapped up in wondering if this is literal or not. If you do, you might miss the point of the story.

If you’ll permit me a rather wonky digression, our boy Matthew loves to throw in references to stuff in the Hebrew Scriptures. In that insightful albeit vexing book of Job, God makes a reference to walking on water, and Job says God “trampled on the waves of the sea.[i]” Walking on water is just one of those fun things God does. Jesus’ stroll across the waves and his announcing himself to the disciples by saying, “It is I” (which in the Original Greek is ego eimi, translated literally as “I AM,” the name God uses in Exodus 3:14) are obvious references to the divinity of Christ.

But you already knew that.

So what can this tale, which most of us have heard a whole bunch of times, teach us today? One of the little details which pops out at me this time around is verse 23, “And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone.” I’m glad Jesus finally got a break. At the top of chapter 14 we learn that Jesus’ friend and mentor, John the Baptist, has been executed by Herod Antipas. When Jesus hears about this, he decides to take a little time for himself (Wouldn’t you?) and gets in his boat for a short retreat on the other side of the lake where he can be alone and think things through. Unfortunately, his plan falls to pieces when a whole horde of sick and needy people, apparently accompanied by the twelve disciples (who also could use a course on etiquette and personal boundaries), come charging around the Sea of Galilee on foot like teenage girls racing to get Taylor Swift tickets.

Jesus heals the sick and provides food for the masses. Then he packs off his twelve buddies in the boat, and asks the five thousand plus well-fed and healthy supplicants to give him a little space. Why? So he can pray. So he can get himself refueled by being in the presence of God—the eternal God who sees and understands beyond our human moment.

Meanwhile, the twelve disciples are having a pretty rough time on the Sea of Galilee. As happens, an unexpected windstorm has blown up, and these guys are now trying to stay afloat. You may know that, for the ancients, water was a symbol of chaos and uncertainty. We all need water to live, but too much of it will kill us. The disciples are out in the dark feeling lost, scared, and confused—just like we do much of the time.

So, in the wee small hours of the morning, Jesus calmly strolls out to be with them. He’s bringing peace because he’s been in conversation with the Father. He’s got his eyes on the bigger picture. He’s not afraid of stuff—not of failure or embarrassment or poverty or any of the human things which keep the likes of us up at night. He’s not even afraid of death.  He knows this is just a moment in God’s time.

We’ve been having some nasty summer storms in my part of the world lately. I guess that’s due to climate change. Of course, we always get plenty of warning from the weather dude on the local TV station. The guy I usually watch on the early evening news has all kinds of colorful charts and maps which show when the storm will come. What I think is cool about this is his colorful charts and maps also show when the storm will end. I always think of God as the Doppler radar of our human journey. From God’s vantage point, the swirling chaos of our lives is only momentary. All the forces which create it are finite.

Of course, if you’re like the disciples in the boat, you don’t know how things will turn out. Everything is scary. They’re ready to see Jesus as a ghost, a specter of death in the midst of their fear and confusion. But Jesus calls to them and tells them not to be afraid. He’s the calm in the storm. Naturally, Peter wants to rush out to him, to walk with the guy who seems to have it all together when everything else is breaking apart. Jesus is cool with this. But Peter, like all the rest of us in our troubled or transitional moments, gets side-tracked by the chaos and starts to sink into it.

Jesus does what he came to do—he saves poor old Peter, just as he’s come to save the rest of us from ourselves. I always wonder what he said to his guys once he climbed into the boat with them. I imagine it being something like this: “So what were you guys worried about? You’re fishermen. You know how to handle a boat, right? Look: our whole spiritual movement could’ve died when John got busted, but it didn’t. I might’ve been overwhelmed by that crowd back there who wanted food, but I wasn’t. We could’ve run out of loaves and fish, but we didn’t. Knucklehead here could’ve drown, but he didn’t. You’re afraid of uncertainty, and I get that. Just don’t forget my Father is stronger than anything you’ll ever come up against. And, by the way, you might’ve noticed that the winds have died down. So let’s go home and have breakfast, okay?”

It’s easy for us to be like Peter in this story. Our challenge is to be like Jesus—to have such a strong core of love and faith that we can walk through the dark weirdness and confusion and still be able to reach a hand out to others.

Stay strong my friend. It’s only when we panic that we die. And please come and visit with me again. I do so enjoy your company.

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[i] Job 38:16 and 9:8 respectively. I have to give a shout-out to Professor Nicholas Schaser of Macalestar College in St. Paul, MN who wrote the commentary on this passage for the Working Preacher website this week. Thanks, Professor Nick for pointing out the references in Job. I really dig Job, but I’d never have noticed this or connected these passages to this week’s gospel on my own.

Inexhaustible (Reflections of Pentecost 10, Year A 2023)

 

When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. (Matthew 14:14)

You know I do a lot of funerals, right? Last week I was on a conference call with two young women for the purpose of preparing the memorial service for their beloved big brother. Big Bro was young by our standards (although my standard is anyone younger than I am is too young to die!), only in his early forties. His death came, as deaths have a nasty tendency to do, without any kind of warning. It was just a sucker punch, made a bunch worse because it followed the death of the girls’ mom only four short months earlier. That’s a ton of grief stuffed into a very small sack of time.

I was on the phone with the bereaved sisters for about forty minutes, and, as you can imagine, there was a lot of crying. I did what pastors do—I listened and prayed and made suggestions. I offered what comfort I could under the circumstances, which wasn’t much. There’s just not a whole lot you can say at these times. I mean, every death is sad, but not every death is tragic. This one, coming as it did, was tragic. I hung up the phone with a profound sense of my own impotence.

I also felt pretty wrung out. Other peoples’ emotions can kick your butt just as hard as your own can at times. The conversation with the two young ladies made me think about the gospel lesson appointed for Pentecost 10, Year A in the Revised Common Lectionary (Matthew 14: 13-21). I started to wonder how Jesus might’ve felt when he was confronted with so much pain and need by all those folks chasing after him. If you read this story in context by starting at the top of chapter 14 you’d have to figure Jesus wasn’t in the jolliest of places when the necessity to feed five thousand people and heal their sick was dumped in his lap. His great mentor, John the Baptist, had just been decapitated by Herod. Think about it: if your great friend and mentor just had his head lopped off by a cruel and venal dictator, how do you think you’d feel?

Jesus just wants to be alone. He gets into a boat and goes away by himself. He doesn’t even take Peter and James and John with him. Sometimes you just have to shut off the noise of the world. The trouble is, the noise doesn’t want to be shut off. Need and sickness and hunger follow Jesus and don’t even allow him time to be sad and process.

So what does he do? He summons up his compassion, and he meets their needs. Even while grieving—and we have to believe that Jesus grieved—it turns out he had enough love in him to get the job done. God’s store of love and mercy is inexhaustible.

Fear of privation is a tool of the devil. The Hebrew scripture lesson the Revised Common Lectionary marries to this gospel tale was written (or so we believe) around a time when the exiles in Babylon stood a good chance of going back to their old turf. The prophet wanted to give them a picture of what God’s rule should be like once their homeland was restored. It’s a picture of abundance, given to all—even folks from other nations!—without condition or qualification just as Jesus gave to the multitude.

I officiated the funeral service for the young man the day after I spoke with his sisters. One sister was, as the old King James Version would say, “great with child.” I asked her how she was feeling and she confessed feeling apprehensive about giving birth to her second child. “I don’t have my mom anymore,” she said, “and with my brother’s death I feel emotionally drained.” Trying to console her, I assured her that, when the baby came, God would give her all the love, compassion, strength, and understanding she needed. Our God is a God of abundance, not scarcity. Even when we fear we won’t have enough—either materially or emotionally—God provides.

May the abundance of God’s love console and strengthen you in your journey this week.

Thanks for stopping by, and do come again!