Category Archives: Spirituality

Faith, Sermons, Spirituality, Stories

Sermon, June 11

In the letter known as Romans, the apostle Paul was writing to the Christian community in Rome, which he didn’t know yet; his other letters are largely to churches and people whom he knew well. 

He’s trying to present himself and his understanding of the Gospel, in a way that will make the church in Rome take him seriously. 

One of the early topics Paul takes up is the question of the place of Gentiles, non-Jewish Christians, in the church, in a time in which Christianity was still largely a movement with in Judaism. 

Paul himself has been a faithful and observant Jew. When he mentions “the Law” here, that is shorthand for the whole way of life to which the Jewish people are called through their covenant relationship with God – prayer and worship practices, kosher food rules, rules about money, wealth, and land, and much, much more. 

And, of course, circumcision – the core mark of the covenant.  

Paul is arguing with the idea that only people who already follow Jewish law can become part of this new thing God is doing in Jesus Christ. And he does so by talking about Abraham, the person with whom God formed the first covenant that became the basis for the Jewish faith. 

Paul says that God called and blessed Abraham not because Abraham was a righteous Jew – there was no such thing yet! – but because Abraham was faithful. He responded readily to God’s call, and went where God sent him. 

And therefore – Paul says – God can likewise call faithful Gentiles today. Obedience to the Law is not the only way to enter into relationship with the God of Israel, made known in Jesus Christ. 

That’s what Paul is up to, here. 

But Paul is also simplifying Abraham’s story a good bit! 

Let’s take a look. 

Paul says, “No distrust made [Abraham] waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. …”

Well… Yes. But also: no.

Our Genesis text today is the beginning of Abraham’s story. At this point his name is Abram – and his wife is Sarai. We are still early in first book of the Bible; the LORD who speaks to Abraham is not yet really known to humanity.  The last human God spoke to was Noah, and that was many generations earlier. 

So Abram’s ready response to God, when God addresses him out of the blue, is striking. God tells a wealthy, 75-year-old man to up and leave home – and Abram says, Okay. 

I wonder if Abram’s responsiveness has to do with the fact that despite his wealth, Abram wants something very much indeed. He wants a child. He and Sarai have never been able to conceive. And even though God doesn’t specifically promise, yet, to give them a child, God does promise to make Abram a great nation. That his lineage won’t die out, as he fears. 

That catches Abram’s attention… and perhaps drives his willingness to follow this call. Maybe what we have here is a meeting of deep needs: God wants to call and form a nation, and Abram wants to be a dad. 

So, here, at the very beginning, yes, we see Abram’s trust in God. This is a heck of a leap of faith. 

But there are lots of other moments in Abram’s story that are less clear. 

Abram and his household travel into the land of Canaan, and he builds an altar and worships God. But then there’s a famine and Abram and Sarai go to Egypt. 

Abram tells Sarai, “You are a beautiful woman; and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife’; then they will kill me. So, say you are my sister, so that my life may be spared on your account.”  …!! 

Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, takes note of Sarai’s beauty and takes her into his house as a wife, and gives Abram a lot of gifts as thanks!  

But then God afflicts Pharaoh with various plagues, and Pharaoh figures out that Sarai is Abram’s wife and angrily gives her back. 

And Abram sets off again – with Sarai, and all the gifts from Pharaoh.

It’s an unsettling episode, and suggests a deep fearfulness in Abram – such that he won’t even protect his own wife. 

God speaks to Abram again in a vision, and Abram complains that God has still given him no children; his heir is a favored servant. God says, “Your very own child shall be your heir… look towards heaven and count the stars: so shall your descendants be!”  

Then we get the line Paul is quoting, here in Romans: “[Abram] believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.” In other words: Abram’s trust in God’s promise counted as righteousness, before the Law existed as the measure of human righteous behavior. 

Yet in the very next verses Abram questions God! God promises Abram that his descendants will have a homeland, and Abram asks, “O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” 

It’s one of a number of places in Scripture where somebody asks God for a sign to confirm that a prophetic message actually has authority behind it! 

God gives Abram his sign, and and a more detailed promise of a future homeland. Now is Abram able to trust in God’s very specific and detailed promises? Well. Sort of.

Abram – now 86 years old – and Sarai decide to take matters into their own hands with respect to this promised child. It seems that Sarai cannot have children, so she tells Abram to spend some private time with her enslaved Egyptian servant, Hagar. If Hagar and Abram have a child, that child could also be “counted” as Sarai’s child, because Hagar is enslaved. 

This arrangement was not so strange, in that time and place – something to bear in mind when people talk about Biblical marriage! But Genesis lets us know that it was still not a great idea, here. Hagar does get pregnant, and tensions arise between Sarai and Hagar. 

When Sarai complains, Abram tells Sarai, She’s your slave; do whatever you want to her. 

So Sarai drives Hagar away into the desert. 

I want to talk about Hagar another time, so let me just say here that this sure seems like another significant failure of trust. 

Both in taking this ill-advised path towards providing Abram with a son; and then not having the courage to stick with that plan and protect the woman carrying his much-wanted child. 

FOURTEEN YEARS PASS. Then God shows up again. God gives Abram a new name, Abraham; God once again promises Abraham many offspring and a homeland; and introduces the covenant sign of circumcision. 

Then God gives Sarai a new name too – Sarah – and says that Abraham and Sarah will have their own child. 

Remember when Paul said, “[Abraham] did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb”? 

Well: Genesis chapter 17, verse 17, says: “Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself, ‘Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?’” ROTFL! 

Finding this promised child improbable, Abraham asks God to instead bless Ishmael, the son he had with Hagar. 

God says, I will bless Ishmael; but you and Sarah will have a son. 

And Abraham believes all this enough to circumcise himself and all the men and boys of his household – so that’s saying something!… 

In Genesis 19, three angels visit Abraham and Sarah and repeat the promise that they will have a son. We’ll hear that story next Sunday. 

But then – while we’re waiting on Isaac’s promised conception – Abraham and Sarah travel again, and once again Abraham tells the locals that Sarah is his sister, and once again the local king – King Abimelech of Gerar – takes Sarah as a wife! God tells the king in a dream, “You are about to die because of the woman whom you have taken; for she is a married woman.” Abimelech, like Pharaoh before him, is pretty mad at Abraham about the situation. 

Abraham explains that Sarah is actually his half-sister, so it’s not a lie really; and he says, “I did it because I thought, There is no fear of God at all in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife.” 

Abimelech gives Sarah back to Abraham, and 1000 pieces of silver besides. 

So, even after all these concrete, specific promises that he and Sarah will have a child, Abraham is still doing this weird, fearful thing, putting his wife at risk! 

After that, finally, Sarah conceives and baby Isaac is born. Sarah gets jealous of Hagar again, and Hagar is driven out, again. Then we come to the story of the binding of Isaac – which it’s possible to read as the ultimate proof of Abraham’s trust in God, or as the most fundamental failure of trust possible. Father John will speak about that story in a couple of weeks, so I’ll leave it there for now. 

I want to be clear: These are ancient, ancient stories, which probably tell us more about how the Israelites were trying to make sense of their own history and what it meant to be God’s people, than they do about specific things that happened in the literal historical sense. 

But: the minds and hearts and voices that passed down these stories, and eventually crafted them into texts that endure, were thoughtful and wise. 

They expected readers or hearers to come to know Abram’s story as a whole.

They expected readers or hearers to see Abram struggling with faith, with trust, in all these little separate episodes and in the overall story arc. 

Abraham’s story is a lot more complicated than Paul makes it. It is not just one simple, whole-hearted Yes that settles things for good. 

Abram lived a long life, with many twists and turns. There were times when he felt very clear in his path and his relationship with God, and times when he really second-guessed whether God was with him or had a purpose or plan for him. When he questioned whether God would lead him through  whatever he was facing. 

And I think that’s important.  Not just as a matter of arguing with Paul’s exegesis, his interpretation of Abraham’s life, but for us as people of faith. 

While I can’t relate to most of the specifics of Abraham’s story, the pattern – the ebb and flow, the push and pull – of his life of faith seem very familiar to me. 

I do have a base level of trust in God’s goodness; I believe that God loves and holds me.

But that by no means makes it easy to navigate or bear everything that life brings. I struggle, and second-guess, and question, too. 

Having and holding a basic, core Yes to God doesn’t mean we don’t wobble or waver.  And I think there’s hope in that, actually. 

Not so much in Paul’s reading of Abraham’s story – Paul’s description of Abraham as someone who was SO faithful, who believed SO strongly, never questioning, that God blessed him and worked through him to accomplish God’s purposes. 

But there’s hope when we read Abraham, the great-grandfather of three world religions, the way that Genesis actually presents him: as someone who wants to believe; who struggles and yearns and messes up, yet fumbles his way through a faithful life.  Confused, impatient, often afraid. But still: a life of faith. A life in conversation with God.  A holy dance with God’s purposes for self and others. 

May we indeed have a faith like Abram. 

Amen. 

Coronavirus, Sermons, Spirituality

Sermon, April 26

This morning, I’m taking the opportunity of our online worship to do something that’s harder to do in church – look at some art together. I mentioned last week in the evening gathering that there are wonderful paintings of some of these Easter Gospel stories by the artist Caravaggio, who lived in Italy from 1571 to 1610. Caravaggio’s work represents some rich and wonderful visual exegesis – reflecting on a Scriptural story and drawing meaning out of it by rendering it artistically. 

Here is his painting of our Gospel story from last week – The Incredulity of St. Thomas.

Remember, when the other disciples told him that they had seen Jesus, risen from the dead, while he was not with them, Thomas said, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” In Caravaggio’s image, Jesus is guiding Thomas’s finger into the wound in his side. As much as to say, “If this is what you need, Thomas… let it be so.”

How would you describe the look on Jesus’ face? Unmute & share what you’re seeing, if you’d like – just a word or two. You can do it in Chat, too. How would you describe the feelings on Thomas’s face?….

When you’re looking at a Caravaggio painting, always notice the hands. He paints very expressive hands. Notice Thomas’s left hand. Does that add to how you read his feelings, in this moment? 

All right. Let’s move to this Sunday’s Gospel – another beautiful story of followers of Jesus meeting the risen Christ. Two of the disciples, Jesus’ friends and followers, are leaving Jerusalem – burdened with sadness and disappointment. They had hoped that he would be the one to redeem Israel – to free their nation and people from the degradation of Roman rule, to a new era of freedom and holy strength, like the remembered time of King David. 

But that’s not what happened. Jesus didn’t call the people to him and start a righteous revolution. Instead, the imperial powers and the local powers, Pilate, Herod, and the chief priests, worked it out among themselves to dispose of him. It wasn’t even especially difficult. And now, the great moment of hope and possibility has passed. They’ve heard about the empty tomb and the rumors that maybe Jesus is alive; but still, it feels like everything is over. They might as well go home, and return to the normal lives they abandoned when they joined the Jesus movement. 

We know both their names, by the way, though Luke only names Cleopas. John, in his Gospel, names the women who were standing near the cross – one of them is Mary, the wife of Clopas. 

Clopas and Cleopas are very likely the same name. And it makes all the sense in the world that this was a married couple traveling together, since we know there were women among Jesus’ disciples, and since the story ends at a home they share. 

So, Mary and Cleopas are headed home, sad and weary.  But then a stranger approaches and falls into step with them. He asks them, What are you talking about? And when they tell him, he says, Wait, have you even READ the Scriptures? It was necessary for the Messiah to suffer these things! And as they walk on, the stranger re-interprets Scripture to them, texts of liberation like Exodus and texts of judgment and promise like the Prophets, to show them that passing through death to new life is a story God tells in the world, over and over and over again. 

And then they reach Emmaus. And Mary – I’m sure it was Mary – says, Oh, please stop here with us. It’s getting dark. We don’t have much in the cupboard, but I’ll borrow from a neighbor. Stay. And the stranger agrees to stay. And over their simple shared meal, he takes bread, and blesses it, and breaks it, and gives it to them. And the words and the voice, the way he lifts his hands, the way he meets their eyes when he holds out the bread – suddenly, they see. They recognize. They know. 

Here is Caravaggio’s image of the supper at Emmaus.

You’ll notice that Caravaggio thought both of the disciples on the road to Emmaus were men. What else do you notice?…

A couple of notes: The servant is a self-portrait of Caravaggio. Caravaggio’s Jesus here doesn’t look like a conventional Jesus – he is young and androgynous or even feminine. This is how Caravaggio has interpreted the fact that the disciples didn’t recognize Jesus – he must have looked different in some way. Compare the Jesus in Caravaggio’s painting “The Taking of Christ,” who looks a lot more like “normal” depictions of Jesus.

Then Jesus – disappears. (While he does have a real human body, the Risen Jesus seems to be able to pop in and out of our reality in a new way!) And Cleopas and Mary stare at each other, with understanding and hope dawning on their faces. And they RUSH back to Jerusalem – seven miles by night! – to tell the other disciples what has happened. How Jesus walked with them and talked with them, and was made known to them in the breaking of the bread. 

That phrase may sound familiar! It’s used in one of our Eucharistic prayers, Prayer C. The congregation says it: Risen Lord, be known to us in the breaking of the bread. It’s also in a beautiful prayer we use in the evenings sometimes, a prayer based on this story: Lord Jesus, stay with us, for evening is at hand and the day is past; be our companion in the way, kindle our hearts, and awaken hope, that we may know you as you are revealed in Scripture and the breaking of bread.

Sharing the Eucharist, breaking bread that is the Body of Christ and sharing it among the fellowship of believers that is also the Body of Christ, is central to our church’s practice. We are fasting from it now, for a season, for the sake of human wellbeing – for one another and for our wider community. I know that fast is really hard for some folks. I’m sorry. We will return to the Eucharistic table, when we have discerned that it’s safe enough, and how to do so with minimal risk. 

The breaking of the bread is a really important moment when we can see and feel and touch the Divine. But it’s far from the only such moment. I love what Mary and Cleopas say to one another: Were not our hearts burning within us, while he was speaking to us on the road? Hours before they recognized their mysterious traveling companion as Jesus Christ, God incarnate, hours before this eucharistic meal, they had the sense that they were hearing something powerful and important and true. I think that’s why they begged the stranger to stay with them. Not just kindness or politeness, but also a sense of connection, possibility, urgency. 

Were not our hearts burning within us? I know what that feels like. That sense of hearing important truth, truth that will change how I think and how I live. Or hearing something that has a call on me. I know the feeling of a deep-down nudge that says, Pay attention. There’s something here. Something that kindles your heart and awakens hope. You’re close to one of the cracks in everything, where the light gets in. I am more or less attuned to those nudges, that strange inner warmth, depending on how well I’ve been sleeping, how hard I’ve been working, how open and present I’m able to be. But I do know that feeling. 

We love gathering at our church building – but we know God doesn’t live there. We love sharing the Body of Christ in Eucharist – but we know that’s not the only place to meet Jesus. We may be all shut up in our homes, but the risen Jesus walks right through locked doors, friends. 

Where is the Holy showing up for you, in these days? Where might the Holy show up for you, if you look, and listen? If you open your heart to expect that even here, even now, God has a word to speak to you, or a gift to offer you, or a mission of love to invite you into? Listen to your heart, friends… notice when it burns within you. 

Response question: Where have you seen or sensed God’s presence, gotten a glimpse or whiff of the Holy, in these days? … 

Sermons, Spirituality

Sermon, Oct. 6

Let’s talk about Luke – the name by which we know the author of this Gospel, one of the four Biblical books that tells the story of Jesus’ life, teaching, death, and resurrection. Luke is writing perhaps fifty to sixty years after these events. He’s talked with people who were there, and he’s read various written accounts, including Mark’s Gospel and at least one other compilation of Jesus’ teachings and sayings. He’s not satisfied that anybody has really pulled it all together into one coherent, compelling account yet. So, he tells us in the first chapter, he decided to take on the task of investigating everything carefully and writing down an orderly account, so that everyone may know the truth. 

To do this, Luke is trying to combine all these various sources. Imagine him with index cards all over his desk, moving them around, trying to get the timeline right, to match parables with sayings with healings, and so on. Overall, he does a pretty good job…though I think he sticks too many morals onto the ends of parables sometimes. 

Today’s Gospel passage feels to me like some of Luke’s left-over index cards. Luke has it on good authority that Jesus said these things, but he doesn’t know where to stick them into the story. So there’s this part in chapter 17 where Jesus just says stuff. There are three sayings in this section; today’s Gospel passage contains two of them. The first is a short speech about handling others’ bad behavior. Jesus says, Don’t cause others to stumble; rebuke those who sin; but also be ready to forgive, over and over again. This passage is also in Matthew’s Gospel, because Matthew was reading some of the same sources as Luke, and we’ll read it on a Sunday next year, when Matthew will be our core Gospel text.

Then there’s this saying about faith like a mustard seed; and then the saying about the obedient slaves. From there, Luke chapter 17 goes to a healing story and then some of Jesus’ teachings about the end times, including everybody’s favorite Bible verse, “Where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.”  (That’s Luke 17:35, if you want to embroider it on something.) 

I don’t think the two teachings in today’s text are directly related, except in the general sense of “stuff Jesus talked about.” They’re just a couple of index cards Luke put together, trying to organize all this material. So the jump from the obliging mulberry tree to the weary slave really is a jump; it’s not just you. But that doesn’t help us that much, because even if we take them separately, these are both difficult sayings. 

Listen to the second saying again: Jesus said, “Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from ploughing or tending sheep in the field, “Come here at once and take your place at the table”? Would you not rather say to him, “Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink”? Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, “We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!” 

The word translated as slave here is doulos in Greek, and it’s a tricky word to translate into American English. The range of practices by which one person was bound to serve another person in the ancient Near East were somewhat different from our American experience with slavery. The same word is translated as “servant” in some other passages, and in some translations of this passage. But the emphasis in this little story is on the power imbalance between the master and the worker – and it’s clear that the worker has little authority or autonomy. He doesn’t get to rest when he’s tired; he doesn’t get to eat when he’s hungry. Anyone who could easily find other work would probably do so. Slave seems like the right word to use. 

So what is Jesus saying, here? Is he saying that God’s relationship with us is like the relationship of an exploitative, even abusive, master? I don’t think so. I think Luke put this index card in the wrong place. 

See, Jesus is very audience-conscious. He always knows who he’s talking to and what they need to hear, whether it’s comfort or challenge. When he’s talking to ordinary folks, he tells stories about farming and fishing, housekeeping and sheep-herding. When he’s talking to his rich friends, he tells stories about property development, lavish banquets, and staff management.

When he begins this little parable with, “Think about how you treat your slaves,” that makes me think he is not talking to his usual crowd of penniless seekers -even though that’s where Luke pastes the story into his text. I think Jesus is talking to people who own slaves, and treat them exactly like this, and think that’s normal. And I think the jarring language is very intentional. 

Think: You’re a wealthy man who’s also publicly religious. You participate in holy days, you give generously to the Temple, you keep the food purity rules, and so on. Maybe you’re a little proud of all that. Maybe you reckon your wealth is because God is especially pleased with you. And then Jesus looks you in the eye and says, All your righteousness is only doing what you have been ordered to do, by Moses and the prophets. It does not make you God’s special favorite.

So I’m hypothesizing that this parable might have been originally spoken to folks who were wealthy and somewhat self-righteous. Did Jesus know anybody like that? He sure did. He went to dinner with people like that back in chapter 14, and he had a few things to say to them. He mocked them a little for their status anxiety and jockeying for position, and then he told his host, ‘You think you’re being pretty generous with this nice dinner party. But you know, most of your guests will have you over to dinner within a month, to return the favor and show off their houses. If you really want your generosity to impress God, hold a banquet and invite all the poor folks in your neighborhood, even those who beg in the streets.’ There’s an echo here of the Sermon on the Mount, earlier in Luke’s Gospel, when Jesus said, “If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.”

If we imagine the saying from today’s Gospel being spoken at that dinner table, or one a lot like it, Jesus’ description of harsh treatment of slaves makes sense. He is not endorsing the master’s behavior. He’s calling out what he sees – a shallow righteousness without kindness. And he’s trying to shock and humble his elite hearers by equating them with slaves, reminding them that while they feel pretty important among their neighbors, they are lowly before God. The first shall be last, and the last shall be first. 

There is a more general teaching buried here, I think – that following God’s ways is a basic pattern of life, not something extra for which you earn a gold star. But I believe Jesus is shaping his message in this text for a particular audience, and we are not that audience – unless any of you are particularly nasty to your household help. 

That leaves us with the mustard seed and the mulberry bush! Here it is again: The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”

The apostles, here, means the group of Jesus’ disciples whom he’s appointed to go out and spread the good news of God’s redemption. So… he’s talking to us. No way to dodge it this time. 

I have two conflicting gut reactions to this text. One is, That’s not how things work. Jesus is talking about faith as if it were stage magic. The point of faith is not to manipulate reality. When the Marianne Williamsons of the world suggest we can focus our prayers and get a hurricane to turn away from our favorite beach resort, they misunderstand both God and world. In my most faithful moments, in the moments when I know deeply and boldly that God’s redemptive love is powerfully at work in every human circumstance – I still have not been able to throw trees around. (Though I admit I’m not sure I’ve tried.) So my first reaction is, honestly, to be a little angry. Jesus’ playful hyperbolic language about the power of faith here seems misleading and possibly harmful. 

But my second reaction is: Yeah, Jesus, you got me. In my most faithful moments, my faith is still so small. The Greek word here, pistis, is really more like trust. What do we trust in? It’s so easy to trust in things like tomorrow being a lot like today; like a plastic card that somehow allows you to buy food; like my own competence, and the illusion of control. It’s so hard to trust in God, unseen and unknowable. 

There’s a term for this: functional atheism. It means we believe in God, but don’t actually run our lives that way. Author Parker Palmer defines functional atheism as “the belief that ultimate responsibility for everything rests with me.” Molly Baskette, from the United Church of Christ, suggests you might be a functional atheist if you often find yourself saying, “‘I can handle this all by myself.’ ‘Don’t worry about me.’ ‘Yup, just fine.’” That doesn’t mean our belief is shallow or insincere. It means that our culture has successfully sold us the myth of rugged individualism, complete with stress and loneliness. It means that it’s hard for us to feel and trust in God’s near and loving presence. Gerald May writes, “Even if we believe devoutly that God is present with us, our usual experience is that we are “here” and God is “there,” loving and gracious perhaps, but irrevocably separate. “We just don’t understand ourselves,” says [Saint] Teresa [of Avila], “or know who we are.”  (Gerald May, The Dark Night of the Soul)

Maybe I shouldn’t admit this from the pulpit, but I find that all of this names me better than I like. If my faith were like a mustard seed… 

Hmm, doesn’t mustard seed sound familiar?… 

Jesus talks about mustard seeds twice in Luke’s Gospel. One day – about four chapters earlier – Jesus was telling stories about the Kingdom of God, God’s alternate reality of justice, mercy, freedom and love. And he said, “The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in the garden; it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.” (Luke 13:18-19)

The Kingdom of God might seem tiny… but it GROWS. It grows and spreads, and becomes strong and gracious and lovely. What if our faith can do that too?

[Show people mustard seeds] These are seeds from the garlic mustard that grows in many places on our church grounds. It’s a very different kind of plant than Jesus is describing, but it’s part of the same big family of mustard plants. And it has the same tendency to start out tiny… and end up big. I’m sure some of you see garlic mustard as an enemy… but you’ve got to respect how resilient and prolific it is. 

Jesus says, The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed… And Jesus says, If you had faith like a mustard seed… Our Bible translation says “faith the size of a mustard seed,” but the original Greek doesn’t say anything about size – it’s just, like a mustard seed, in both of those passages. Maybe Jesus’ reply to his friends’ request isn’t shaming them for having little faith. Maybe instead he’s saying that the quantity of your faith doesn’t matter; that in fact it’s not even quantifiable. Because faith is like the Kingdom is like a mustard seed: it seems so small, but throw a few of those seeds around, and suddenly the woods are so full of the stuff that you’re asking volunteers to come pull it up. 

On the days when my faith feels small, when I trust too much in myself or the world and forget to trust in the God who knows my name and loves me beyond imagining – what I need on those days isn’t to beat myself up about it, but to trust that small things matter. My faith – our faith – however tiny or weak it might feel, can make a difference to us, to others, to the world. That’s why we started talking about these spiritual practices, a few years ago. We got together and asked ourselves and each other about why we follow Jesus, and what church means to us, and when we’re aware that we’re doing something because of our values and convictions as people of faith. And we took all that beautiful qualitative data and shook it all up and ended up with the discipleship practices we’re talking through this fall; we’ve done Welcoming, Abiding, and Wondering so far, and today is blessed Francis and Reconciling. 

These practices: they are things we already do, because we’re already formed by our faith and the way it orients us in the world, often at a level we’re not even conscious of. But naming and talking about them also helps us be intentional about looking for opportunities to practice them more faithfully and fully. 

That’s how our faith – our capacity to trust in God and let that trust make a difference in our lives – that’s how faith is like a mustard seed: smaller than a fingertip, but holding within itself the gracious tree, the resilient weed, that lives, and grows, and spreads, and changes things. 

Molly Baskette’s summary of functional atheism: 

https://www.ucc.org/daily_devotional_functional_atheism_1

Sermons, Spirituality

Sermon, Feb. 21

Cast your mind back over the other churches that you have attended or visited. Think about the art, the holy images, that adorned their space. Stained glass, icons, painted reredos, images on or above the altar.  Did any of those holy images happen to include… a chicken?

At St. David’s Episcopal Church, in Bean Blossom, Indiana, their altar area includes an image of the Holy Chicken. More specifically, a mother hen, with a halo, and her wings spread over her chicks. The presence of the Holy Chicken image at St. David’s goes back to 2007, when one of their associate clergy, Tim Fleck, preached a sermon on this very Gospel text that comes to us today.

Here’s the image – I know it’s hard to see from a distance; come take a closer look later, it’ll be with our other holy images around the font. Tim took this photo himself, in Palestine, in a little church on the side of the Mount of Olives. The church is called “Domine Flevit,” or “The Lord Wept,” and it commemorates the spot where Jesus wept over the city of Jerusalem – its stubborn cruelty, its hopelessness, its inevitable doom.

The chicken image is a mosaic on the front of the altar. It depicts Jesus as a protective mother hen, a visual interpretation of his words in our text today: “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”

Tim recounts having this image up on his computer screen, as he reflected on the sermon at his day job, and having his co-workers find it HILARIOUS. There’s just something funny about chickens, and this chicken in her heroic and noble pose was definitely LOL-worthy.  Others were a little bothered by the depiction of Jesus as something as humble, ordinary, and stupid as a hen.

Tim says, “The lowly hen doesn’t have much of a biblical pedigree… God and the prophets are compared to eagles, to leopards, to lions: to tough, macho animals. But this scripture and its parallel in the Gospel of Matthew are the only places in the canonical scriptures that even mention the chicken.”

Chickens are not strong, or fierce, or beautiful. They’re close to the bottom of the food chain. They can’t even fly. Jesus calls King Herod a fox, in this passage, just before he likens himself to a chicken. When a fox and a chicken enter the ring, we know who’s going to come out at the end of the match – with feathers on his snout. The smart money is always on the fox. But Jesus sides with the chicken.

All the chicken has going for her is what you see, right here: her protective love. A love so strong that she will put her own body between her chicks and the teeth or claws of a predator. If someone wants to get to her children, they’re going to have to go through her, literally. That won’t deter most predators much;  her beak and claws are no match for a fox, hawk, or raccoon; but given the choice between abandoning her chicks as tasty snacks for whatever’s after her, and making a getaway herself; or sacrificing herself in the hope of saving them – she chooses the latter. The foolish, the loving, the holy choice.

In an essay on this text, Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “If you have ever loved someone you could not protect, then you understand the depth of Jesus’ lament. All you can do is open your arms. You cannot make anyone walk into them. Meanwhile, this is the most vulnerable posture in the world –wings spread, breast exposed — but if you mean what you say, then this is how you stand.”

I should say, here, that I know very little about the nobility and self-sacrificial tendencies of actual chickens. Jesus is alluding to what chickens are said to do -just as the images of pelicans, found in many churches, show a mother pelican feeding her young with her own blood, nourishing them at the cost of her own life- a beautiful and rich image that probably has nothing to do with any actual pelican behaviors. (By the way, if you don’t know where St. Dunstan’s pelican is,

you should go on a little hunt later…!)

Jesus identifies with that allegorical chicken. He sees the danger that surrounds Jerusalem, that stalks God’s children, hovering low overhead, or creeping through the tall grass nearby. What danger? All kinds – wretched poverty, the oppression of greedy and merciless rulers, disease, political and religious instability,  the kind of kill-or-be-killed mentality that develops in desperate and marginal circumstances. Remember: forty years after Jesus’ trial and execution, Jerusalem will lie in smoking ruins, the great Temple torn down, not one stone left upon another.

Jesus sees this future; he sees the suffering and struggle of the present; and his heart aches, aches, for the people of Jerusalem, God’s people Israel, who have lost so much, and have yet more to lose. But like the hen, all he has to offer is his stubborn love.  Tim writes,  “All the hen has to offer is her refusal to abandon her children and her willingness to die for them, even as they ignore her and wriggle out from under her wings. All the hen has to offer is her faithfulness.”

Let’s turn from one strange image in today’s Scriptures, to another: the smoking fire-pot and flaming torch floating around between chopped-up animal parts, in today’s text from Genesis.

This text comes from the portion of Genesis that tells the long story of God’s covenant with Abram, later re-named Abraham – stretching from God’s first call to Abram to leave his father’s house, in chapter 12, and follow God to a new land and a new destiny; through the difficult story of the binding of Isaac and the sacrifice of the ram, in chapter 22. In chapter 15, where we find ourselves today, God reiterates the promises that God has already made to Abram, in chapter 12 and chapter 13: you will have many descendants, and they will live in a homeland that I, God, will give you.

But Abram is having a little trouble with these promises. He’s an old man, and he and his wife Sarah have no children. He’s got some real doubts about this whole descendants thing, and what’s more, the land God has promised him seems to have people living in it already.  A lot of people. God’s promises seem unlikely and remote. So Abram asks, How can I know these things will happen? How can I trust you?

That’s the context for this strange symbolic scene. The thing is, it wouldn’t have been strange to Abram – at least not in its general form. This was how people formalized covenants, in the Ancient Near East. We know this from other ancient texts and images, that help us understand the symbolic assurance God offers to Abram here. When two people, or representatives of two groups, wanted to establish a covenant – perhaps about a territorial boundary, or a mutual defense agreement, or an important marriage, or some such – they would cut animals in half, and walk together between the halves of the carcasses. Maybe part of the meaning and power of the rite came from the spilled blood – blood is a potent symbol of both life and death in Near Eastern thought and religion. Maybe the cut-up animals implied what would happen to the covenant partners if one of them violated the terms of the agreement – a grisly form of “Cross my heart and hope to die.” In Biblical Hebrew, the verb that’s used for forming a covenant is “cut” – you “cut” a covenant, grammar reflecting the ritual practices of the times, invoking those animal parts on the ground.

So God is using symbols that Abram could understand and trust, to say, as emphatically as possible, LOOK, I am GOING to do this thing for you. God strives to answer, once and for all, Abram’s plaintive question: How am I to know that I will have these blessings? That the good things you promise me will come to pass?

But while in this scene God uses the common cultural ritual of covenant-formation, there’s a really important difference: this covenant is one-sided.  Normally, both partners pass between the animal parts. But here, only the symbols of God’s presence, the fire-pot and torch, do so.  Abram simply looks on, a witness, a recipient.

Nahum Sarna, author of a classic study of the book of Genesis, concludes his analysis of this covenant scene, saying, “The astonishing fact [is] that [this] covenant completely lacks… mutuality. It is a unilateral obligation assumed by God without any reciprocal responsibilities being imposed upon Abraham. The use of established legal forms of treaty-making to express such a situation is a dramatic way of conveying the immutable nature of the divine promise.” (Sarna, Understanding Genesis, 127)

A one-sided covenant – a paradox, and very nearly nonsense, in the common understandings of Abram’s time and place. There will be – of course – a human side to the covenant. We get around to that in Exodus, and more so in Leviticus. Those who live as God’s chosen people will be called to live in distinctive and sometimes demanding ways, as a people set apart, the holy people of a holy God. But here, at the very beginning, the root, the heart of it all, the covenant, the relationship between God and humanity, is fundamentally one-sided. God always loves us more than we love back. God always gives us more than we give back. God always begins the conversation.

The thread that runs through these two strange images, the holy chicken and the torch floating between animal parts, is the thread of God’s tender and boundless love. Our prayers and liturgies name God again and again as Almighty, and surely God is mighty; but these images, and so many others in Scripture, tell us, too, that God is vulnerable. We can hurt God’s feelings. We can push God away. God is vulnerable to us because God loves us so damn much. Because God wants to be with us much, much more than we want to be with God.

I challenge you, as I challenge myself, to hold that in your heart as part of your understanding, your inner image of God. Every time the Holy Chicken catches your eye, think of God like that: of God’s heart revealed in the anguished love of Jesus Christ, longing to hold close a people who were just not that into him. Of God’s heart revealed in the ancient absurdity of a covenant in which one party promises everything to the other, asking nothing in return.

Of God – if you will – as that awkward boyfriend or girlfriend who forgives you too easily when you’re mean or careless, who says “I love you” first and then says it again just a little too often, or at the wrong moment; who stands in your driveway holding a boom box, playing a love song at top volume, to tell you how he feels about you, how he will always, unshakably, feel about you. No matter how many times we question. No matter how many times we turn away. No matter what the danger, what the pain, what the loss.

As Tim writes in his Holy Chicken sermon, “God will be there, putting herself between us and the foxes and predators of this world. God will be there with her wings outspread and her breast exposed, saving us at the cost of her own life.

God will be there, stretched out on the hard wood of the cross, vulnerable, but refusing to abandon her children. God will be there.”

Thanks be to God.

 

Thanks to Tim Fleck for his wonderful 2007 sermon “Chicken.” 

Barbara Brown Taylor, “As a Hen Gathers Her Brood,” (March 11, 2001), accessed at www.textweek.com March 3, 2007; quoted in Tim’s sermon.