Category Archives: scripture

Sermon, Feb. 14

The lectionary gives us this bit from Kings to tell us who Elijah is, why he’s in this scene and why Jesus is talking about him. It invites a preacher to do what I’m about to do: talk about who these people were, and why they mattered. What does it mean that the scribes said Elijah must come first?… 

Elijah was one of the great Old Testament prophets, who lived in the time when David’s ancient kingdom had split into two kingdoms. Elijah’s words are encompassed in the historical books, Kings and Chronicles, rather than in a separate book bearing his name, like Isaiah or Jeremiah or Micah. 

Today’s lesson gives us the end of Elijah’s time on earth. His story begins in 1 Kings 17, when the word of God first comes to Elijah and he is sent to King Ahab of Israel. In the passage introducing King Ahab, the Bible says, “Ahab did more to provoke the anger of the Lord, the God of Israel, than had all the kings of Israel who were before him.” Notably, he worshipped Baal, the god of a neighboring nation. So Elijah goes to Ahab and tells him that God is punishing Ahab with a drought. (Which seems a little hard on everyone else!)… 

The story unfolds from there. Elijah has several run-ins with Ahab and his queen Jezebel. In between, he hides out in the wilderness or neighboring countries. Ahab has a nickname for Elijah: “Troubler of Israel” – because he always seems to have something critical to say. Ahab does not truly understand or perhaps care that Elijah is speaking for God.

Elijah’s prophetic vocation takes a lot out of him. Finally he tries to run away from it all. He literally lies down under a tree and wishes out loud that he were dead… does that remind us of anyone?… Then he journeys on to Mount Horeb, the Mountain of God. And there God appears to Elijah – not in powerful forces like wind or earthquake or fire, but in the sound of utter silence.  And the voice that speaks in that silence tells him that he is to anoint Israel’s next king, Jehu, and Israel’s next prophet – Elisha. Elijah’s successor. In other words: You’re going to get your wish soon, Elijah. Your work is almost finished. But not yet. 

Going forth from Mount Horeb, Elijah encounters Elisha almost immediately, plowing a field. Elijah throws his mantle – his cloak or outer garment – upon Elisha. And Elisha become his student and servant. 

Today’s lesson offers the moment when Elijah is taken up to God, and Elisha succeeds Elijah as prophet. At a basic level, the Jews of Jesus’ time – and today – anticipated Elijah’s return because Elijah didn’t die. Instead, he was taken up to God in some mysterious way. At some point the idea that Elijah might return became the teaching that Elijah WOULD return, just before the coming of the Messiah. The book of Malachi, written relatively late in the Old Testament, contains this prophesy:  “Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes.” (Malachi 4:5)

There’s a great deal of Jewish folklore about Elijah. Themes in the stories echo those in the Biblical texts about him: a helper of those in need and zealous prophet of God’s truth.  Though I was delighted to learn that there’s also an idea that when dogs are happy for no reason, it’s because Elijah is in the neighborhood.

In addition to the folklore, Elijah is an  important figure in Rabbinic literature and Jewish religious practice. At Passover Seders many Jews leave an empty chair and cup for Elijah – a sign of expectation and future redemption of God’s people. Some follow a custom of opening the door of the house and inviting Elijah in.

At the end of the Sabbath celebration, one of the prayers calls on God to send Elijah: “”Elijah the Prophet, Elijah the Tishbite, Elijah from Gilead. Let him come quickly, in our day with the messiah, the son of David.” You might hear a resonance with some of our liturgical texts that call for Christ to come again – soon! 

So: Expecting Elijah’s return, as a sign that God was about to act decisively in human history, was a pretty normal idea in Jesus’ time. That’s our context for today’s Gospel, the Transfiguration story. 

Notice that Elijah appears in this story in two ways. There’s the literal Elijah, visiting and talking with Jesus. (How did they know it was Moses and Elijah, anyway? Did they assume it, because those were two figures who were widely expected to return in some way? Or did they just KNOW in the way you sometimes just know things?…) 

Regardless: The text seems clear that the two figures talking with Jesus were actually Elijah and Moses. Incidentally, although the book of Deuteronomy tells of Moses’ death, there were later traditions that Moses also had been taken up to God while still living.

But in addition to an appearance by Elijah himself, Jesus also talks about a different Elijah: “Elijah is indeed coming first to restore all things… I tell you that Elijah has come, and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it is written about him.” What is Jesus talking about here? Well – he’s talking about John the Baptist. 

Jesus’ cousin, according to Luke; the wilderness prophet who proclaimed that God was about to do a new thing, and that people should prepare by changing their hearts and their lives. John the Baptist, who – like Elijah – got in trouble with the king for saying things the king didn’t want to hear. John the Baptist, who by this point in the Gospel had been executed by Herod. 

Jesus – and the Gospels – don’t think that John was literally Elijah, but that he fulfilled Elijah’s role in some sense: in his prophetic work, in preparing the way for Messiah, and even in his imprisonment and death. 

The dual appearance of Elijah in today’s Gospel works as a kind of icon of the Christian relationship with the Old Testament. There are things we receive directly, just as they are offered, such as the importance of Elijah as a holy figure; things we do not carry with us, such as continued expectation of Elijah’s coming; things we adapt and re-interpret, like seeing John the Baptist as a second Elijah. 

You may have noticed that I usually use the expression “Old Testament” rather than “Hebrew Bible.” I’m not entirely consistent about it, because to be frank, a lot of clergy use “Hebrew Bible” and there’s some amount of peer pressure at work!  

The intention in that terminology is to get away from describing the compendium of canonical holy texts from before the time of Jesus as if it were incomplete on its own, or has been replaced by the New Testament. I understand all that and basically agree with it. But. 

There are a couple of issues with the term “Hebrew Bible.” One is that some of the later texts of the Old Testament were originally written in Greek, like the New Testament. But that’s a detail, really. Fundamentally, I use the term Old Testament because Ellen Davis uses the term Old Testament.

Ellen Davis was my Old Testament professor at Duke Divinity School. She’s one of the great living professors of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible. Her class introduced me to Jewish Biblical scholarship. Dr. Davis works closely with Jewish Biblical scholars. She often helped us see the texts we were studying through Jewish eyes. She never let us forget for one moment that we shared these holy texts with another living tradition – and that we needed to read and study with curiosity and humility.  And: She uses the term Old Testament. (At least, she did in 2005.) 

Because, she explained, we are reading it as Christians. We can’t set that aside. It’s always part of our interpretive framework. Her assessment was that there’s something false and even appropriative about Christians using the term “Hebrew Bible.” So, even though there are real issues with the term “Old Testament,” I follow Dr. Davis’ practice. I trust her judgment on this matter. 

We DO read the Old Testament as Christians. We can’t help looking for the ways it seems to anticipate Jesus, for the undergirding principles and texts of our own faith. The New Testament is built on the foundation of the Old Testament, in so many more ways than most Christians realize. 

But I, we, also try to read and study the Old Testament for its own sake. Not just to collect the bits that seem like they might really be about Jesus and press them between the pages of our New Testaments like dried flowers. But to hear its voice and receive it as part of the great story of God and God’s people. 

If we were only reading the Old Testament for what it brings to the Jesus story, this is all we’d need: Elijah was a great prophet who was expend to return, thereby foretelling the coming of God’s Messiah. But if that’s all we took from this story, we would miss SO MUCH. 

This chapter about Elijah’s departure is so beautifully crafted. The repetition of the prophetic guilds addressing Elisha – “Do you know that today the Lord will take your master away from you?” – and Elisha’s response: “Yes, I know; keep silent.” The crossing of the Jordan – doubly evocative: Crossing the Jordan stands for entering a new chapter, new territory; and the parting of the waters reminds us of Moses at the Red Sea. Elisha’s passionate cries as he watches his master taken from him are heartbreaking – there’s no questioning the depth of his devotion and grief. Elisha’s taking up Elijah’s mantle recalls Elijah’s initial calling of Elisha by casting his mantle over him. 

And the story continues, beyond what we heard. The prophets want to send out some men to search the surrounding territory, in case Elijah fell to earth somewhere. Elisha says there’s no point. But the text says, They urged him until he was ashamed, and finally he said, Fine. Send them. Of course they don’t find Elijah, and he says, I told you so.

Then Elisha begins his work as a prophet. First he purifies the water for a nearby town. 

Then, as he’s on his way to Bethel, some children come out and mock him, saying, “Go away, Baldy! Go away, Baldy!” Elisha becomes so angry that he curses them, and bears come out of the forest and maul forty-two children. So, right out of the gate, the authors of this text want us to know that Elisha is not Elijah. Elijah was kind of cranky in the classic prophetic style, but not cruel or vengeful. 

Did you notice that Elisha asks for a double portion of Elijah’s spirit?Maybe it’s not because he’s greedy or ambitious. Maybe it’s because he’s desperately afraid that he’ll never be the prophet Elijah was. 

This is a story about devotion. It’s a story about loss, and grief. It’s a story about trying to step up to a responsibility that’s been handed to you. About aspiring to live up to someone you admire… and failing. Sometimes failing badly. But sometimes managing to do some good anyway. It’s a story at once deeply human and deeply holy. And that’s just this tiny slice – there’s so much more, even just in the surrounding chapters.  So many other stories I’d like to share… (We’ll get another one in a couple of weeks – you won’t want to miss it!) 

In gratitude for the gift of Scripture, let us pray… Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may recognize ourselves and our times in ancient stories; know ourselves not alone; and learn to see God at work even in times of struggle and grief; through the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

Sermon, Jan. 24

The chapter we received together is part of the first letter of Paul to the church in Corinth. Paul is offering guidance on a variety of topics – trying to lay out what holy living as followers of Jesus should look like. In chapter 6, for example, he says that Christians shouldn’t be taking each other to court; WORK IT OUT amongst yourselves. And in chapter 8, he talks about the pros and cons of eating meat from animals that were sacrificed in pagan temples. 

The lectionary wants to give us just the little section about loosening our ties with the world as it is. And that certainly would have been less weird to read in church. But – we read a lot from the Pauline Epistles, the letters of the early church written by the apostle Paul. Paul was a tremendously important leader in the first decades of Christianity. He started many churches and nurtured others. His teaching and preaching, some of which is preserved in his letters, shaped Christianity in fundamental ways. So it’s a good idea to pause, now and then, and reflect on who Paul was, and his vision of church and Christian life. 

Chapter 7 of First Corinthians is not the most obvious preaching text – especially in a church that generally leaves matters of partnership and intimacy to your own consciences. But there are some things I really love about it – awkward as it is. 

First, I love how much we get to know Paul, here. He’s really TRYING to understand marriage and intimacy and give good counsel about it, even though it is very much not his jam. Paul seems to be someone who was called to celibacy himself – he just doesn’t feel a yearning for intimate companionship or life-partnership. But he understands that other people do, and he’s trying to make allowances and offer good guidance – even though he can’t help but notice that having a spouse and a family seems to make people kind of distracted and anxious! But, as he says, he knows not everyone can be like him, so – it’s definitely better to marry than to burn. 

I enjoy how he talks about his own authority. Notice that he’s very conscientious, here and elsewhere, about specifying what comes directly from Jesus, and what is just him, Paul, trying to offer his best counsel. The advice against divorce – that’s something Jesus said. But other parts of this chapter are Paul – “I, Paul, and not the Lord”. 

There’s integrity and humility in that – but Paul also doesn’t want to sell himself short; he wants people to take his teachings seriously. “And I think that I too have the spirit of God!” Notice, too, that Paul is already softening Jesus’ rather stark stance; Paul implies that divorce could be OK if a couple has irreconcilable differences on matters of faith.

I enjoy how Paul’s writing style combines very pragmatic, concrete advice with occasional bursts of poetic language – like this nice bit of parallelism: 

“For the one called in the Lord as a slave is the Lord’s freeman, just as the freeman called is a slave of Christ.” 

And this text – with its echoes of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount:

I mean, beloveds, the appointed time has grown short; from now on, let even those who have wives be as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no possessions, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.

So part of what I appreciate is that in this single chapter, we get such a good sense of Paul’s voice, and who Paul is. It feels like meeting someone who lived 2000 years ago. That in itself is cool, for me. 

Paul’s sense of the provisionality of everything is the second thing I love about this chapter. When Paul writes this, it’s probably about twenty years after Jesus’ death and resurrection. The early Christians are holding onto a sense that Jesus may return very soon, but they’ve also already put two decades into developing ways of living as Christ’s followers in the world as it is. Paul is walking that tightwire – saying, The time has grown short; don’t get invested in things – but at the same time, we may still be here for a while, so, if you feel like you need to get married, go ahead. 

That sense of holding things lightly isn’t just because Paul and others anticipated the Second Coming of Christ and the end of the world as we know it. They were also living with profound uncertainty and risk. The worst persecutions of Christians started later, but it was already no picnic. Paul was repeatedly jailed and beaten. People lost family connections and livelihoods because they became Christian. 

In our Gospel for today: did you notice the first phrase, “After John was arrested…”? Mark doesn’t actually tell us what happened to John the Baptist until several chapters later. But Jesus’ mission begins in the shadow of his arrest. Mark is incredibly deliberate in his language. He is telling us here that Jesus knows, from day one, that his preaching and movement-building will likely lead to his arrest and worse. Everything that happens in the Gospels – and Epistles! – happens under the persistent threat of repressive violence.

When Paul advises the people of the church in Corinth to live as if everything might change tomorrow – or tomorrow might not come at all – he’s speaking about the reality of their lives as well as the expectation of the Second Coming. And I feel some resonance with that, today. Beloved friends, the present form of this world is passing away. Day by day, week by week, we’re slowly getting accustomed to the idea that there isn’t a switch that will flip and reset things “back to normal” – with public health, democracy, church, or climate. Instead we’re going to have to discern and build the new normal. Lots of new normals. Somehow. Together. 

The third thing I love about this chapter is how carefully egalitarian Paul is about gender. Now, there’s a great big asterisk there – for his time and place. We may rightly balk at some of his language – for example, we would say now that every person always has full authority over their own body. And of course, Paul has little notion of same-sex partnership or a diversity of genders. But note: in this whole chapter, Paul says almost nothing about women that he doesn’t also say about men, and vice versa. I think it’s fair to say that that’s both intentional and countercultural. The authentic letters of Paul name a number of women who were apparently leaders in the earliest churches. It only took a few decades for patriarchy to get a grip on the churches – for example, somewhere along the way, someone adds a couple of verses to this very letter, saying that women should not speak in church. But during Paul’s time, offering more respect, autonomy, and authority to women than some of the surrounding cultures and religions was part of what made Christianity appealing. And Paul is leaning into that, here. He’s actively constructing Christian marriage as equal and mutual. And – importantly – optional. More on that in a moment. 

Paul’s vision of church and Christian life were tremendously influential in shaping Christianity. And even looking at a text this specific in its focus, we can see some big ways that the church – that OUR church – is Paul’s church. 

First: Paul placed tremendous value on the shared life of church communities. He believed that a group of Christians practicing their faith together really MATTERS. Both as the workshop for faithful living, the place we question and struggle and learn and grow – and as the primary tool for inviting others into the way of Jesus. Notice, for example, that in all this advice about family life, Paul never says, Have a lot of babies so we can grow the church. He believes that Christianity is a way of living that – if done wholeheartedly by an imperfect but loving, hopeful, faithful community – will attract people. Over and over in his letters, Paul says: Focus on trying to follow Jesus; take good care of each other; and let God take care of the rest. 

Second: For Paul, Christian living doesn’t look like just one thing. The Church doesn’t offer a diagram of the perfect Christian family. Instead, it invites you into being a certain kind of person, formed by faith and worship, and trusts you to order your life accordingly. Paul emphatically affirms that churches contain couples and families, people who want to be coupled, people who used to be coupled, and people called to singleness. That’s important. And it’s a recurring theme for Paul, across the Epistles: there isn’t one template for Christian life. People’s households and food practices and observances can look different; what matters is whether they’re striving to follow Christ.

This is a part of Paul’s vision of church that, at its best, the Episcopal Church and the Anglican way of faith honor well. I hear it from former evangelicals exploring the Episcopal Church: that it’s strange, but refreshing, that our church doesn’t tell you the right – the Christian – way to do every little thing. Instead, we offer some foundations for faithful living, in our worship and teaching, and then expect people to exercise their conscience and make their own decisions. There is something very Pauline about that. 

Third: Paul anticipates that we’ll use our experience and reason and prayerful discernment to allow our understandings of God’s will and God’s purposes to evolve. Well: If I’m honest, Paul anticipates that PAUL will use his experience and reason to allow his understandings to evolve. Take the passage on enslaved people who become Christian, here. If you look this up in the New Revised Standard Version, you’ll find something QUITE different. The original Greek text is somewhat ambiguous – is it telling people that if they’re enslaved when they become Christian they should stay that way; or that they should seek freedom, so that they’re bound only to Christ? What we read together is David Bentley Hart’s translation – based in part on what Paul says about slavery elsewhere, in the letter to Philemon. 

By Hart’s reading, Paul is almost working out what he thinks as he writes this passage. He says, a couple of times, Whatever you circumstances were when God called you to faith, stay that way. He feels very strongly about that on the issue of circumcision. But he does waffle about marriage – it’s better to stay the way you are, BUT if you can’t handle being single, it’s OK to marry; AND if your new faith really comprises your marriage, it’s OK to divorce. As Hart reads it, enslavement is another such example. There’s no shame in being enslaved, but if you have a chance to seek your freedom, take it, so that you may be free to be fully bound to Christ and Christ alone. 

Paul makes space for a diversity of ways to live a faithful life – and for people to seek to change their circumstances – because Paul believes your desires matter. He knows that human desires can be disordered and lead us astray; he has plenty to say about that elsewhere. But I think he also has a pretty keen sense of the risks of trying to suppress or ignore our deep yearnings and needs. So, he advises, Seek a holy way to live out your desires – whether that’s taking steps to secure your freedom from bondage, or finding a partner for covenanted intimacy. Which is why, even though Paul had little notion of same-sex couples or diverse gender expressions, there’s a deep sense in which the Episcopal Church’s journey towards the full inclusion of LGBTQIA+ folks is grounded in Paul’s thought, Paul’s vision.

Paul wrote the letters to the Romans, letters to the Corinthians and the Thessalonicans, the letters to the Galatians, Philippians, and Philemon, and maybe Colossians. His voice and story are preserved in the book of Acts. His importance to the early church was such that at least four other letters were written in his name. His is the single voice we get to know best in the New Testament, with the POSSIBLE exception of Jesus. And even though he sometimes confuses and dismays me, even though I sometimes argue with him, I am grateful for Paul.

I’m grateful for his hopeful vision for Christian community, and his open-ended vision of faithful living. I’m grateful that he modeled extending our understanding of the way of Jesus into new situations. I’m grateful for Paul’s voice, Paul’s mind, Paul’s heart. And I’m grateful to serve in Paul’s church. 

Sermon, January 17

Readings for this Sunday may be seen here. 

When our reading from First Samuel begins, Samuel is a child living in the household of Eli – who was the semi-retired priest of the holy place at Shiloh. This was before Jerusalem. While we’re only two chapters into the first book of Samuel – who as the end of our reading foreshadows, grows up to be one of the great prophets of Israel – a lot has already happened that I think is important. This coming summer, we’ll have a lot more readings from the books of Samuel – so we might as well know Samuel’s origin story. 

Samuel’s father was named Elkanah. He was prosperous enough to have two wives, which was allowed in that time and place. And he was pious enough to visit the holy place at Shiloh every year, and make a sacrifice there. Elkanah’s wife Peninnah had many children, but Hannah, his other wife, had no children, and it made her bitterly sad. Peninnah would tease her cruelly about it, as well. Elkanah loved Hannah deeply, and would try to comfort her, saying, “Why do you weep, dear heart? You have me. Aren’t I more precious to you than ten sons?” But Hannah yearned for children of her own. 

So one year when the household was at Shiloh to make sacrifice, Hannah went into the temple there by herself, and began to pray from her heart, weeping bitterly. She prayed, “O Lord of hosts, if only you will look on the misery of your servant and give me a son, I will dedicate him to your service for the whole of his life.” 

Now Eli was sitting near the temple door. He heard and saw Hannah, and he thought she was drunk, and rebuked her. But Hannah said, “No, my lord, I am a woman deeply troubled! I am not drunk, but I have been pouring out my soul to the Lord.”  Then Eli – somewhat abashed, one hopes – said, “Go in peace, and may God grant you what you have asked.”

Hannah went home, her spirits lifted. And soon after that – Hannah became pregnant. When her son was born, she named him Samuel, which means, “God heard.” Because, she said, I asked God for this child – and look: here he is. 

Hannah kept her son with her as long as he was nursing, and then – probably when he was about three years old – she fulfilled her vow and took him to Shiloh. She presented him to Eli and said, “My lord, I am the woman who was standing here in your presence, praying for this child. God has granted my petition; so I am loaning him to God, for as long as he lives.” And she left him there for God. Hannah sings a song of exaltation and praise, plus a little bit of revenge, which bears a striking resemblance to the Magnificat, Mary’s song of faith, which we sang often in Advent!  – Mary, and/or Luke, surely knew the books of Samuel well. 

Hannah went on to have three more sons and two daughters. But her firstborn was always in her heart. Every year, Hannah used to make him a little linen robe and take it to him, when the family would go to Shiloh to make sacrifice.

So that is who Samuel is – and why he’s living with Eli. We don’t know how old he is when God begins to call him by night – but he could be quite young, five or six or seven. 

I love that story and I want us to have it in our hearts when we come back to Samuel the grown-up prophet in a few months. But those first two chapters of First Samuel tell us some important things about Eli, too. I said earlier that Eli was the semi-retired priest of Shiloh. He had handed on most of the work of serving at the Temple to his sons, Hophni and Phinehas. And his sons were not good people. 

In fact, the text says, they were scoundrels. They had no regard for God or the duties of the priesthood. They were only interested in taking the food people brought to offer to God. They’d send their servants to take food from people before the people had even finished making their offering. They’d also pester and assault the women who served at the entrance to the tent of meeting. They were rude, impious, and greedy, treating both the Temple and the people with contempt. Hophni and Phinehas did not think much of God, and God did not think much of Hophni and Phinehas.

Now, Eli knew what his sons were doing. He told them, “I hear terrible reports about you. Why do you do such things? You must not sin against God in these ways!” But of course, this doesn’t even make a dent in their behavior. “Ah, the old man, he’s so uptight.” 

Then Eli receives a prophesy. A stranger, a man of God, comes to him and tells him,  “Look, God chose your ancestors to serve God as priests – but when a family treats its holy ancestral calling with contempt, that family will lose its holy calling. Your sons are doomed; and I will raise up for myself a faithful priest.” 

When God tells Samuel, “I am going to fulfill all that I have told Eli about his house” – his family – this is what God is talking about. 

And then, not long after that, little Samuel starts to hear someone calling his name at night. 

It would be easy to look at today’s lectionary texts and preach about call. About vocation. The idea that God may at any time tap us on the shoulder – or whisper our name by night – and say, I have something I need you to do. Or, simply, Follow me. In our Gospel we see Jesus beginning to gather – to call – disciples. And I have preached this 1 Samuel story before as a text that reminds us that young children may hear God’s voice and follow God’s call. I believe that wholeheartedly!

But today I want to talk about Eli. I want to talk about being willing to hear the bad news about yourself. 

Samuel doesn’t want to tell Eli about God’s message. Probably because he loves Eli, rather than because he fears punishment – the text suggests a tenderness between them. But Eli presses the child: “Do not hide it from me!” And when Samuel tells him that God’s judgment on his household is coming, Eli speaks with what Robert Alter calls pious resignation:  “God is the Lord. Let God do what seems good to God.” 

And then there’s Psalm 139. The first few verses could sound reassuring, comforting – “You trace my journeys and my resting-places… you know every word on my lips.” But then we start to get a sense that being known so profoundly could be uncomfortable. “Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” In the heights of the heavens, the depths of the underworld, the ends of the sea – Even there, says the Psalmist, your right hand will seize me. I can’t even hide myself in darkness, for to you, O God, darkness is as bright as day. The Psalmist goes on to say, You’ve known me since you were secretly weaving me together in my mother’s womb – how could I hope to hide from you? 

This psalm is attributed to King David – and that fits really well. David had some moments in his life when he might well have wished God weren’t watching. More on that in a few months. But he also seemed to find relief in coming clean with God. Like Eli, when God sends someone to tell David the bad news about himself, David listens. And then there’s this odd little conversation in our Gospel! 

Nathanael is skeptical about Jesus because he’s from Nazareth. But he comes with his friend to meet him. Jesus says, Here comes an Israelite who never tells a lie! Nathanael says, We’ve never met. How do you know me? Jesus says, I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you. And Nathanael says, Rabbi, you are the Son of God! 

Was Nathanael just impressed by Jesus’ ability to see – to see a man sitting under a tree, far out of his sight; to see into the heart of a man he hasn’t met before? Or is there more here? Is the fig tree – or whatever happened under it – significant? Is Jesus telling Nathanael that he knows the best – or the worst – about him? There’s lots of speculation out there, but we’ll never know. All we know is that Nathanael – like David, like Eli – balks a bit at being so thoroughly seen, but then accepts it with awe and gratitude. 

The past months have told us, collectively, a lot of hard truths about ourselves. The rampant spread of the pandemic has shown us how little we understand our interconnectedness, or truly value our neighbor’s lives. The broad-daylight murder of George Floyd by a police officer forced some of us to face the systemic violence against black and brown bodies that is woven into the fabric of our national life. The riot at the US Capitol last week showed us how easily violent words can become violent actions. So many of us are weary and heartsick from months of seeing with painful clarity the brokenness of our common life – on top of dealing with the logistical and emotional and financial impacts of it all. 

Hard truths are hard. But all our church’s practices of confession and repentance – individual or collective – begin with being able to name what’s amiss, what’s broken, burdensome or binding. With being able to name with some specificity how what author Francis Spufford calls the Human Propensity to Mess Things Up (or HPtFtU) is at work in my life, the life of my community, and the place where my life intersects with the life of my community. 

Being able to flee from harsh realities, to hide bitter truths in a closet, only sounds like mercy. The true mercy is in being seen, and known, with love. Spufford writes, “A consolation you could believe in would be one that … didn’t depend on some more or less tacky fantasy about ourselves… A consolation you could trust would be one that acknowledged the difficult stuff rather than being in flight from it, and then found you grounds for hope in spite of it.”

Later in his book, Unapologetic, Spufford talks about church. About worship. About prayer. And he talks about – in worship, in prayer – knowing himself seen and known by God. By a Presence that “takes no account, at all, of my illusions about myself… It knows where my kindness comes checkered with secret cruelties… It knows where my love comes with reservations .It knows where I hate, and fear, and despise. It knows what I indulge in… It knows the best of me, which may well be not what I am proud of, and the worst of me, which is not what it has occurred to me to be ashamed of… It knows all this, and it shines at me.” 

He goes on, “I can’t bear, for very long at once, to be seen like that. To be seen like that is judgment in itself…. Only, to be seen like that is forgiveness too – or at any rate, the essential beginning of forgiveness.”

After such an encounter with that gentle shining, that profound knowing, Spufford asks, “Do I feel better? It depends what you mean by ‘better’…. I don’t feel cuddled, soothed, flattered; I don’t feel distracted or entertained.… I have not been administered a cosmic antidepressant. I have not had my HPtFtU removed by magic…. Instead, I have been shown the authentic bad news about myself, in a perspective that is so different from the tight focus of my desperation that it is good news in itself; I have been shown that though I may see myself in the grim optics of sorrow and self-dislike, I am being seen all the while, if I can bring myself to believe it, with a generosity wider than oceans.” 

Believe it or not, Lent starts one month from today. (Our nation begins a new season even sooner – a season that will continue to call for our attention, our commitment, our yearning for better.) Lent is a season when the Church invites people into reflection, self-examination, repentance and amendment of life. 

Friends, it is not too early to begin thinking prayerfully about whether there is some fast or discipline, some new practice or new learning that you feel called to take on, this Lent. If the idea of keeping Lent is new to you, or if you’d welcome a conversation to think about a Lenten discipline in a fresh way, let me know – or ask a church friend to meet and talk! 

Maybe Lent in the year of our Lord 2021 is an apt season to think about – to wonder, to discern – what repentance and amendment of life might look like not just in my life, but the life of my community, and the place where my life intersects with the life of my community. 

I often think of an evocative image from the letter of James – he says: Don’t be like someone who looks in the mirror, then walks away and immediately forgets what they look like. 

Don’t look in that mirror, then walk away and forget what you look like. 

We have looked in some hard mirrors as a nation this year, dear ones. May we not look away. May we not forget. May we feel that that boundless generosity, that gentle shining, beside us – beneath, above, behind, before us – as we allow ourselves to see, and to be seen. May truth give us courage. May love give us hope. 

Sermon, Jan. 10

We receive today’s Genesis text at the Easter vigil every year and sometimes in the Sunday lectionary as well – it’s a fairly familiar story. But today I want to dwell deeply with the first few verses. Let’s look at them together in a few versions.  

1. New Revised Standard Version (the Episcopal Church’s usual translation): 

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.

2. Robert Alter’s translation: 

When God began to create heaven and earth, and the earth then was welter and waste and darkness over the deep and God’s breath hovering over the waters, God said, Let there be light. And there was light. 

3. Everett Fox’s translation: 

At the beginning of God’s creating of the heavens and the earth, when the earth was wild and waste, darkness over the face of Ocean, rushing-spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters – God said: Let there be light! And there was light. 

I want to spend a little time with some of the most interesting words here. First, “the Deep” – translated variously as Ocean, Waters, Abyss. The Hebrew word is tehom. The waters before Creation. An image that makes me think of finding fossils in Door County – fossils from the Silurian period, 400 million years ago, when living things were just starting to take forms complex enough to be preserved in stone. An image that makes me think, too, of the watery darkness of the womb. 

This idea of “the deep” is part of ancient cosmology – how the ancient Hebrews, and other peoples as well, thought of the world. There were the waters above the dome of the sky; the waters here on the surface with us; and the waters under the earth. 

Sometimes tehom simply means subterranean water, an important resource in a dry land, like in Deuteronomy 8: “The Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters [tehom] welling up in valleys and hills…” In the great flood in Genesis, it’s not just the endless rain that causes the flood; it’s also that “the great deep” bursts open. The waters under the earth rise up and overflow.

The Red Sea – which the people Israel cross as they flee bondage in Egypt to begin a new life as God’s people – the Red Sea is described using the word Tehom, in the song of triumph after the crossing and in Psalm 106, re-telling that sacred history centuries later: “God rebuked the Red Sea, and it became dry; God led them through the Deep as through a desert.”

Tehom is also used in many texts talking about the scope of God’s power and wisdom. In the Book of Job God asks Job how he dares to challenge God’s judgment, when God knows the very mysteries of Creation: “Have you entered into the springs of the sea, or walked in the recesses of the deep?” (Job 38:16)

Tehom shows up a LOT in the Psalms; here’s an example from Psalm 33:  “By your word, O God, were the heavens made…You gather up the waters of the ocean as in a water-skin and store up the depths of the sea.”

So the Deep, Tehom, is both ecological and mythological… there’s mystery and power here, and danger. The deeps are something only God has the power to comprehend and contain. 

Let’s turn to the next evocative phrase – formless void, “welter and waste” – in Hebrew, tohu vebohu, tohu and Bohu. The Complete Jewish Bible renders it as: “Astonishingly empty.” One translation of the Septuagint has: “Unsightly and unfurnished” – like a poorly-maintained apartment… 

The word tohu is used other places in the Bible, and variously translated as formless, waste (as in both wasteland and wasteful), futile, vain, useless, empty, wild, chaos, meaningless, desolate, confusion. “Bohu” is not really a word on its own. It would be like saying “turvy” without also saying “topsy.” 

This exact phrase, tohu veboho, tohu and boho, appears three times in the Old Testament. The second and third times are both intentional allusions to this, Genesis 1, the first time. In Isaiah 34, the phrase shows up in an oracle against the land of Edom, a neighboring nation who who collaborated with Babylon in the conquest of Judea: “From generation to generation it shall lie waste; no one shall pass through it for ever and ever. But the hawk and the hedgehog shall possess it; the owl and the raven shall live in it. God shall stretch over it the line of welter, the weight-stones of waste.”

The prophet foresees – and/or hopes – that this enemy nation will be given over to the creatures of the wilderness, and returned to primordial waste. Just a few verses later comes a beautiful text we sometimes read in Advent: The wilderness shall rejoice and blossom… there shall be streams in the desert. 

Then, in the book of the prophet Jeremiah, a similar word is spoken to Judea herself. Jeremiah is the prophet of the conquest of Judea and Jerusalem. He spent decades crying out that God’s people, and especially their leaders, had gone wrong in fundamental and destructive ways, and that doom was coming unless they turned back to God and to righteousness. In chapter 4 the prophet speaks: “Your ways and your doings have brought this upon you…Disaster overtakes disaster, the whole land is laid waste…. I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light. I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were quaking, and all the hills moved to and fro. I looked, and lo, there was no human there, and all the birds of the air had fled.”

God creates humanity… but in Jeremiah’s vision, there are no humans left. God speaks light into being… but in Jeremiah’s vision, all is dark. God creates out of waste and void… and in Jeremiah’s vision, collective human willfulness and wrong turns the earth back to waste and void. Tohu and bohu. 

That passage concludes, “For thus says the Lord: The whole land shall be a desolation; yet I will not make a full end.” We know – because we have 26 centuries of hindsight – that Judea and Jerusalem were destroyed by the armies of Babylon. It was unspeakably terrible. And yet God did not make a full end. There was, eventually, renewal and restoration. And God’s people learned new things about God and about faithfulness during their time of exile and grief.

The Deep, Tehom, and the empty wasteland of Tohu and Bohu, are distinct, but alike. Fearful yet fruitful. Beyond comprehension, yet full of potential. In many ancient myths, Creation involves violent mastery of some primeval chaotic force. Some god or hero fights and defeats the monster of the abyss, and gains the power to make the world. 

There is no violence in our creation story. God simply invites the light into being…. Let there be light! And everything else, after it. Genesis and Jeremiah tell us that God’s ongoing creation of the world involves continually inviting tehom and tohu, all that is wild and strange, without form or meaning, into purpose and life and growth. 

But it’s a delicate balance. There’s a temptation to read this as Order versus Chaos. But it’s nowhere near that simple. There are hints in Job and Isaiah and elsewhere that the wilderness and the creatures who live there delight God, even as they terrify humans. Chaos can be fruitful, and order can be evil. The Babylonian army, for example, was VERY organized. So was the Third Reich. Order is a core value of fascism. 

Andre and Mary-Anne Rabe write this about the first verses of Genesis: “[God] is more than what is known and ordered. This God is present too in the unknown, the unordered, the unformed, the unexplained…  The kind of order in which chaos is an enemy, becomes oppressive, manipulating and ever more rigid… 

The only way in which order can retain its beauty is by embracing chaos as a friend… It is in nurturing this playful relationship that new meaning, new beauty, and renewed order is possible. … The tohu wa-bohu is more than the opposite of order – it’s a different kind of order. It is more than nothing, it’s the possibility of everything…”

My friend, Rabbi Betsy Forester, introduced me to a story from the Babylonian Talmud, a holy text of the Jewish people that comments on and expands the Hebrew Bible. On a recent Sunday we had a reading about King David’s desire to build a house for God, a great temple, in Jerusalem. Well, the Talmud says that David got as far as digging the foundations for the Temple. But he dug down so far that he allowed the Deep – Tehom – to rise up and threaten to flood the world. 

David quickly wrote the Name of God on a potsherd and threw it into the Deep… which dropped down again, sixteen thousand cubits. The very name of the Holy One had the power to contain those chaotic waters. 

BUT – then David realized that the Deep had dropped too far. Those primeval, mysterious waters have to be close to the surface of the earth in order to provide water for springs and wells. So David composed a set of songs, known as the Psalms of Ascent, and the Deep rose up fifteen thousand cubits –

to settle just one thousand cubits below the surface of the land. Where those mysterious, threatening yet life-giving waters could continue to nourish life. 

(Source: https://thelehrhaus.com/scholarship/rabbinic-creativity-and-the-waters-that-would-consume-the-world/)

Which brings us to baptism. 

John is a prophet, in the grand Old Testament tradition. Wearing funny clothes, living in a funny place, telling people that big change is coming and if they’re smart, they’ll change themselves NOW and beat the rush. This practice of baptism he introduces – dunking people in the Jordan River, as an outward sign of their repentance and commitment to turn away from sin – it’s most likely an adaptation of some Jewish customs of ritual washing, which were also ways to set yourself right with God.

Christian baptism builds on this foundation – baptism as we practice it, and to the extent that we understand it, is about repentance and cleansing; it’s also about passing through Christ’s death and into his risen life, being named as part of God’s great family, and indelibly marked by the Holy Spirit. 

Placing these verses from Genesis alongside the baptism of Jesus calls forward a connection that’s there in Scripture but that’s easy for us to miss. John and Jesus both choose to spend time in the wilderness, a wild, desolate, empty place – a tohu place. And when people come to John for baptism, he wades out into the river with them, puts his hands on their head, and pushes them down under the water. Into the deep. 

The Biblical text doesn’t use that word there but our baptismal liturgy explicitly connects the waters of baptism with the Deeps before Creation and the Deeps of the Exodus from Egypt: “We thank you, Almighty God, for the gift of water. Over it the Holy Spirit moved in the beginning of creation. Through it you led the children of Israel out of their bondage in Egypt into the land of promise. In it your Son Jesus received the baptism of John and was anointed by the Holy Spirit as the Messiah, the Christ.” 

Placing these verses from Genesis alongside the baptism of Jesus invites us to reflect on baptism – our baptism, which Jesus’ baptism foreshadows – as an encounter with chaos, void, primordial winds and waters.. through which God carries us safely.  

What we actually *do* in a baptism is not frightening. It’s calm and contained. Very little water is involved. (Although I am VERY ready to do a baptism in Lake Mendota or the body of water of your choice!) 

But just as in the Eucharist a bit of bread and a sip of wine are in some way beyond our perception also consuming the body and blood of Jesus Christ, 

given for us as a sign of complete self-giving love – so in baptism a little water poured upon someone’s head is in some mystical sense our journey into the Deep, a dive down into the rich and terrifying depths of Tehom. 

It is our sojourn in the wilderness, wild, empty, and unformed. And it is our journey back to the land of the living, enriched and transformed by those strange and holy primeval energies which offer us the possibility of everything.

With all that in our hearts, minds, and spirits, let us renew our baptismal vows.

Andre & Mary-Anne Rabe’s essay: https://alwaysloved.net/2020/03/30/tohu-wa-bohu-gods-relationship-to-chaos/

Sermon, Aug. 16

Read the Gospel here: Mt 15:1, 7, 10-11, 16-28 

I know this is a Gospel story – especially that second part – that some have strong feelings about. 

Jesus is being pretty snippy, frankly, for somebody who’s up on his high horse about what comes out of your mouth. 

Maybe we should just take it as a given that he is exhausted and overwhelmed. If we read what comes before this passage, we find that Jesus keeps trying to get away by himself to rest and pray, and he keeps being found – by crowds of desperate people seeking healing, or by antagonists who want to argue with him. 

I’m not going to tell you how I think YOU should read this text – but I am going to suggest how I think MATTHEW, the author of this Gospel, understands what happens here. 

Matthew gets this passage from Mark, the earliest of the Gospels. While Matthew and Mark don’t always tell things in the same order, these two pieces are together in both texts – Jesus’ little diatribe about what really makes someone unclean, and then this reluctant healing. But Matthew does tell things a little bit differently. (I encourage you to set them side by side & compare – that’s often pretty interesting! The Mark version is in chapter 7.)  

This month we are giving some attention to the ways we read, reflect on, and seek meaning in the Bible. Reading a passage out loud in different ways is a great tool; so is looking at a text side by side with a related passage from elsewhere in the Bible. Sometimes just reading a text closely and slowly makes you notice new things, too, even in a familiar story. We’ve found that with our Scripture reflections at Compline. And with some help from Bible scholar Richard Swanson, it happened for me with this Gospel – with the word Canaanite. 

Canaanite. When Mark tells this story, he says the woman is a Gentile – a non-Jew – and a Syro-Phoenecian. A descendant of one of the great empires that marched through Judea in ages past. But Matthew says this woman is a Canaanite.

Canaanite is a very old-fashioned word. The Canaanites were Israel’s great enemies in the time of Joshua and Judges over a thousand years ago. I had never paused on the word before because it’s a Biblical word; it’s familiar. But this is the only time this word is used in the New Testament… and for that matter, the last 2/3 of the Old Testament. The Canaanites mostly aren’t mentioned after the book of Judges – except when people are re-telling Israel’s early history, remembering how God brought them to the land of Canaan and said, This is for you; kill everyone who lives here and then move in and settle down. 

Calling this woman a Canaanite is like saying she’s a Redcoat. It’s recognizable as a term for an enemy we used to have – but it’s been a while since those were the bad guys. 

Why call this woman a Canaanite? The Canaanites were the peoples who lived in the land where the Israelites wanted to live. (Or – as archaeologists and Biblical scholars increasingly believe – they were the ancestors of the Israelites, whom the Israelites wanted to separate themselves from as they developed a new faith and way of life.) So this woman is a non-Jew who lives in a neighboring territory. Sure, call her a Canaanite. It’s not necessarily wrong; it’s just odd.  

Matthew isn’t making a mistake. He means something by using this archaic term. But what? 

Matthew is sometimes described as the most Jewish of the Gospels – the most grounded in the history and heritage of Judaism. Matthew believes, with the apostle Paul (Romans 11), that non-Jewish Christians should hold their faith with humility, knowing that they have been grafted onto a vine that was planted long ago;  that our life and vitality come from the deep roots and resilient growth of that vine. 

Matthew’s Gospel begins with a genealogy that doubles as a capsule history of Israel. He frequently shapes his narrative to present Jesus as a second Moses. In that light, Matthew’s use of the word “Canaanite” means to throw us back into the history of the Jewish people. He wants to evoke the time of Joshua and Judges, when the Canaanites were Israel’s despised neighbors, a constant cultural, religious, and military threat, to be resisted and, when possible, exterminated. 

Matthew’s deep commitment to Judaism may seem like it’s in tension with Jesus’ hostility towards the scribes and the Pharisees, Jewish religious scholars, in today’s Gospel. 

I’m sure Matthew is re-telling Jesus’ words here – potty humor and all. Jesus clearly had kind of a “frenemy” relationship with the Pharisees during his life. 

Matthew’s Gospel may lean into that antagonism because those tensions had become stronger in the decades after Jesus. 

Matthew is writing his Gospel, based on Mark and some other texts and memories and stories he’s gathered, around the year 75, give or take. 

It’s not long after the destruction of Jerusalem following a failed revolt against Roman colonial rule. 

Different Jewish groups are all trying to work out what faithful living looks like in this new time, after all that struggle and loss. The Pharisees are seeking the survival of their way of faith by calling people to daily observance of the ancient ways of Judaism. 

In contrast, Christians (at this point still a weird movement within Judaism) are seeking survival of their way of faith by cutting back on required practices, emphasizing heart and soul instead, and becoming a faith that actively evangelizes non-Jews. 

So these kinds of questions about what kind of life puts you right with God, and who Jesus’ mission and ministry were for, may have felt even more pressing and weighty as Matthew wrote down his Gospel than they did during Jesus’ life. 

I want us to notice that there’s a penny waiting to drop, between the end of Jesus’ diatribe against the Pharisees and the moment of his softening towards the Canaanite woman. 

He has just pushed back strongly on the idea that worthiness, holiness, rightness-with-God can be earned or kept through particular practices, things you do. 

He’s said, more or less, that his mission is not to restore Judaism as the Pharisees understand it.

But he apparently still thinks his mission is focused on Judaism, on the lost sheep of the house of Israel. On those descendants of Abraham who are hurting, hungry, helpless or hopeless.  

But then. 

I want to take a moment to honor this woman, this fierce mama whose fear for her child makes her fearless. She does something very familiar here – something that women in sexist systems and marginalized folk of all kinds sometimes have to do. She accepts the demeaning terms that are offered her, and makes her case anyway. Jesus says this flat-out racist thing, calls her a dog, and she says, Yes, sir. But you know, the thing about dogs is, when the kids are eating, the dogs are going to end up getting something. 

There are many little hints that make me think Matthew thinks Jesus’ heart changes, in this moment. It’s not just that Jesus is swayed by her feistiness and decides to make an exception, just this once. It’s that penny finally drops and the fully-human part of Jesus gets a little bit closer to understanding what the fully-God part of Jesus is up to. 

But right now I just want to circle back to that word, Canaanite. Remember that the Canaanites were Israel’s ancient enemy, to avoid and/or destroy. That a touchstone of their history is the story about God bringing them the land of Canaan, and telling them: This is for you; now, kill everyone who already lives here. 

Because Matthew calls this woman a Canaanite, suddenly this Gospel story is in conversation with Joshua and Judges. It’s not just that Jesus suddenly sees that his mission is to and for the Gentiles too. It’s that Jesus’ work and teaching, life and death and rising, are meant to mend and redeem a history of hatred, suspicion, and violence. 

By the way: Joshua – the great general of the campaign against Canaan –  and Jesus are the same name in Hebrew: Yeshua. Matthew knows this.

Richard Swanson writes,”The storyteller is staging a remembrance of the slaughter carried out by Joshua when [the Israelites] invaded the land [of Canaan].  This is not idly done. This remembrance makes this [Gospel story] a scene of historic repentance: the Canaanites are shown to be capable of real faithfulness… The argument for [the] slaughter [of the Canaanites] – that they will lead you away from true faithfulness – is revealed to be false.” 

This is a pivot point in Matthew’s Gospel. It’s in chapter 15, close to the halfway point of Matthew’s 28 chapters. In chapter 16, Jesus starts warning his disciples about what’s going to happen to him.* And chapter 17 contains the Transfiguration, the literal mountaintop moment that turns the Gospel story towards the cross. 

I think Matthew sees this moment as the fulcrum – the point on which the story pivots. On which Jesus’ understanding of his mission pivots. From seeking and saving the lost sheep of the house of Israel, to breaking down the walls that divide us, making whole what has long been broken. and embracing all those of any nation who seek God’s healing, redemption, and grace. 

Thanks be to God. 

Online Vacation Bible School 2020: The Story of Joseph!

Our annual August intergenerational Vacation Bible School is online! We’ll do it “live” over Zoom on Sunday, August 9, though Thursday,  August 13, from 6 – 7PM every evening. (Feel free to join over dinner!) To get the Zoom link, email Rev. Miranda at or join our Facebook group.

Kids, youth and adults are all welcome! We can’t break up by age group online the same way we usually do in person, but we’ll do our best to listen, wonder, and learn together across age groups.

We’ll also make the videos & reflection materials available online for those who’d like to participate at their own pace, or have to miss a day. The materials for each day  will be added as new links below.

The Story of Joseph, Day 1: Video on Vimeo

The Story of Joseph Day 1 At-Home Reflection Materials

The Story of Joseph, Day 2: Video on Vimeo

The Story of Joseph Day 2 At-Home Reflection Materials

The Story of Joseph, Day 3: Video on Vimeo

The Story of Joseph Day 3 At-Home Reflection Materials

The Story of Joseph, Day 4: Video on Vimeo

The Story of Joseph Day 4 At-Home Reflection Materials

The Story of Joseph, Day 5: Video on Vimeo 

The Story of Joseph Day 5 At-Home Reflection Materials 

Sermon, June 21

This speech by Matthew’s Jesus is a tough text. I looked back in my sermon files and I seem to have avoided preaching on it, like, EVER. …. Better late than never?

Before we even listen to the text, I want to start by placing it in the narrative of Matthew’s Gospel. It’s part of a long speech – the whole of chapter 10 – which begins with Jesus calling the twelve disciples and sending them out to heal the sick, cast out demons, and preach the good news that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. 

We have the story of Jesus in four Gospels, which tell the same story (more or less) through different lenses. It’s often informative to look at them side by side. Mark is the oldest and shortest; Luke and Matthew both use Mark as a source, in addition to other sources and to what seem to be their own distinctive understandings. (John has fewer overlaps and does not have a parallel to this story.) But Mark and Luke do. 

In Mark, Jesus sends out the Twelve, tells them to take nothing for their journey but rely on the hospitality of those they meet, and don’t waste their time in places that don’t receive them. The Twelve go out, and heal and preach and cast out demons. Then they return to Jesus and tell him all about it. In Luke, Jesus sends out seventy appointed disciples, not just twelve, and his instructions to them are a bit more of a speech – he speaks about the doom that awaits the towns who reject the good news. Then the disciples go out and return with joy, having had great success with casting out demons. 

In Matthew, this chapter begins the same way: the Twelve are named and sent out, advised to take nothing with them and to rely on hospitality, and when a town doesn’t welcome them, to shake the dust from their feet and move on. But then we get this passage. I’ve tweaked the lectionary to give us what seems to me to be a complete thought. Listen now…. 

Gospel Reading: Matthew 10:16-39 (NRSV)

Jesus said to his disciples, ‘See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of people, for they will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues; and you will be dragged before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them and the Gentiles. When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you at that time; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; and you will be hated by all because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next; for truly I tell you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.

‘A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like the master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household!

‘So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground unperceived by your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

‘Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.

‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;  and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.’

Now, parts of that speech are also in Luke, and some fragments in Mark as well; it’s not all unique to Matthew. But big chunks of it are unique to Matthew – and even the bits he shares with other texts, he’s put into a particular context here. And the context is a warning to his followers about what is going to happen to them AFTER he’s gone. In Mark and Luke, Jesus’ advice to his disciples is for their work in this moment, though it may guide them in the future. Matthew’s Jesus looks ahead to the persecution, dissension, violence and loss that the first couple of generations of Christians will have to live through, and tells them, It’s going to be really rough, in ways you can’t begin to imagine. Stick with it anyway. Unlike Mark and Luke, Matthew never describes the disciples’ return – another clue that he’s speaking beyond the present moment within the text. 

Let’s hear the speech again in the Message Bible paraphrase – abbreviated somewhat, but I think this version may help us hear the text. Would someone like to read this aloud? …

Matthew 10, selected verses, The Message, alt. 

“Stay alert. This is hazardous work I’m assigning you. You’re going to be like sheep running through a wolf pack, so don’t call attention to yourselves. Be as cunning as a snake, and inoffensive as a dove. 

Don’t be upset when they haul you before the civil authorities. They’ve given you a platform for preaching the kingdom! And don’t worry about what you’ll say or how you’ll say it. The Spirit of your Father will supply the words.

People are going to turn on you, even people in your own family. But don’t cave in. Focus on survival. And remember: a student doesn’t get a better desk than her teacher. A laborer doesn’t make more money than his boss. Be content to get the same treatment I get. If they call me, the Master, a demon, then what do you think they’ll call you, my servants? … 

Don’t be intimidated. Eventually everything is going to be out in the open, so don’t hesitate to go public now. Even if the worst happens to your body, there’s nothing anyone can do to your soul. God cares about what happens to a sparrow – so don’t you think God is paying attention to what happens to you? So don’t be afraid of those who threaten you. You’re worth more than a million sparrows. 

Don’t think I’ve come to make life cozy. I’ve come to cut through your family ties and free you for God. Well-meaning family members can be your worst enemies. If you choose father or mother over me, you don’t deserve me. If you choose son or daughter over me, you don’t deserve me. If you don’t go all the way with me, through thick and thin, you don’t deserve me… 

If your first concern is to look after yourself, you’ll never find yourself. But if you forget about yourself and look to me, you’ll find both yourself and me.”

Last fall I preached about the book of the prophet Jeremiah as a text of trauma – a text that reflects a community’s experience of terrible, violent overwhelming events. For Jeremiah, that event was the conquest of Jerusalem, the destruction of the Temple, the violent deaths of thousands of his people.

Matthew experienced the same thing, six hundred years later. In the year 66, some Jews in Judea began to revolt against Roman rule and taxation. Repression by the Romans drew more Judeans to the cause and things escalated into a full-on rebellion. The rebels had some early successes – but they never had a chance against Rome’s machinery of war. In the year 70, Roman armies breached the walls of Jerusalem, having already re-conquered the countryside. The city was reclaimed, and the second Great Temple was torn down. 

The violent quashing of the Jewish revolt marks many early Christian texts, but it seems likely that the voice we know as Matthew was a first-hand witness. We see it in the distinctive violence of some of the stories and imagery in this Gospel. We see it in the urgent yearning for revenge upon enemies, and those who fell away from the truth. If you read a Gospel text that talks about someone being cast into outermost darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, it’s from Matthew.

And we see it in this speech, in which Matthew’s Jesus tells his followers, Terrible times are coming. You may lose EVERYTHING. Everyone you love. Even your life. But if you stay true to me through all of it, at least you will not lose your soul. 

You will have noticed the focus on family division, in this text. Matthew’s Jesus speaks about straining – breaking – family ties TWICE in these 23 verses. This is shocking for us, and would have been MORE shocking to the original audience. Family loyalty is a central value in Jewish faith and law.  Richard Swanson writes, “Torah observance means many things, but one thing it surely means is that there is a dance done by parents and children that acts out the stable and orderly love of God so that people grow up knowing in their DNA that God is good and loving. This holds the world together.” (Provoking the Gospel of Matthew, p. 156) Jesus’ insistence that people must choose him over parent, spouse, child, is incredibly jarring. Why would he say that? … 

I don’t think we know much about what was going on inside of families, in those difficult first-century decades, beyond hints like this. But it’s not that hard to project. People joining the Way would have caused tensions within families right from the start. The autobiography of the apostle Paul is informative on that front. Paul was a fiercely faithful Jew who thought that Christianity was an affront to his religion, and eagerly worked to identify and round up Christians, to have them arrested and even killed. Paul didn’t have a family of his own. But imagine if he had. Imagine if his son or wife had become a Christian before he did. 

So the new faith itself created strains within families. Then you add the layer of rising political unrest. The revolt in 66 did not come out of the blue. The census of Judea under Quirinius around the time of Jesus’ birth was widely resented; people had to be forced to comply. Other episodes over the decades increased resentment and mistrust. When things started to break open, thirty years or so after Jesus’ death and resurrection, it probably started with the young men (and a few of the young women) – feeling helpless and hopeless, furious at the forces that held them down and made a mockery of their lives and dreams. 

Some of their elders would say, You are absolutely not going out to a protest; you’re going to get yourself killed. Some would say, Violence in the streets won’t help anything; let’s start a letter-writing campaign instead. Some would say, This is foolishness; Rome keeps order in the streets. We’d have chaos if they weren’t in charge. And some elders, of course, would join the young folks in the streets. 

All of those rising tension and fears would only increase the strains within families. How those new factors intersected with existing tensions between Jews and Christians isn’t very clear, historically – but we know that new stressors tend to exacerbate old ones. So, says Matthew’s Jesus: You expect your family to be your anchor, the thing that defines you and protects you, no matter what. Stop expecting that. Now. 

I’ve been using the phrase “Matthew’s Jesus.” What do I mean by that? 

The Jesus of the four Gospels is discernibly the same guy. But those four texts do remember him differently. They give him somewhat different tones and agendas. That’s not surprising, given what we know about human beings and historical texts. If the Gospels were more alike, I’d be more suspicious that someone made the whole thing up. But it does leave us as faithful readers sometimes wondering what to make of the differences.

When Matthew’s Jesus has something to say – as he does here – that is somewhat different from anything in the other Gospels, we can wonder about that. We can wonder whether Matthew had a source that remembered some things Jesus said that the other Gospels don’t reflect. 

Or – we can wonder whether Matthew received the same words of Jesus that are reflected in the other gospels – and reads them through the lens of the trauma he has witnessed. In that case, this speech of Jesus’ might be a mix of Jesus’ voice and Matthew’s voice – which doesn’t make it less gospel. There are lots of hints in all the gospels that Jesus anticipated violence and chaos in the coming decades. One way to read Matthew is as the gospel that leans into that aspect of Jesus’ message – just as Luke is the gospel that leans into Jesus’ outreach to the marginalized, as Mark is the gospel that leans into the urgency of the call to transformation of life, as John is the gospel that leans into the cosmic nature of Jesus’ redemptive work. 

All right. Enough context. What do we make of these words of Jesus? 

Richard Swanson writes about this passage, “If the raw demands of this scene are reduced to bland encouragements to love God a lot, then we might as well stop trying to read, interpret, and honor the Bible and the old strange stories that peek out of it. We ought to admit publicly that we really intend only to interpret the messages written in uplifting greeting cards. Of course, you might be stuck with a commitment to the Bible that is stronger than your commitment to greeting cards. How inconvenient…. Just for a moment, imagine that the Bible is more substantial and interesting than a greeting card. Imagine that biblical stories are more challenging than uplifting, that they give life by provoking their audiences out of their dogmatic slumbers.”

Then, Swanson challenges us, imagine this scene with people who “feel the sharp edge of the sword” when Jesus speaks of coming to bring division. It’s too easy to set the stage with people of courage who choose Jesus, and people of cowardice who don’t. Imagine people of integrity and honor who choose their families, no matter what. Imagine people who abandon their families all too readily – who were, perhaps, just waiting for an excuse. This is not an easy word to receive, then or now, and we should not pretend otherwise. 

One thing I often wonder about, when I’m struggling with difficult words of Jesus, is how he said them. The Biblical text only rarely gives us hints about mood or tone. Let’s listen to a few verses of this text again, read in three different ways. And as we listen, ask yourself: What do you hear? What do you notice? Is Jesus speaking to you? … 

The first reading will be in the voice of the Historian. Perhaps this is Matthew’s voice: Matthew using Jesus to talk about what actually happened, what Matthew experienced and witnessed in those tumultuous years.  I need someone who can read this without much emotion. You’re just telling us what happened. (This is also how we usually read stuff in church!…)

Mt 10: 21-22, 34-36

“Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; and you will be hated by all because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved… Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.” 

The second reading is in the voice of Angry Jesus. This is the Jesus who yells at someone for wanting to bury his father before he becomes a disciple. This Jesus thinks his followers are a bunch of fair-weather Christians who don’t understand what the Way will really cost you.This Jesus says, You think it’s all sweetness and light! You think Nice is the same as Good! You have NO idea of the real stakes!! Who feels like they could read that Jesus? …. 

Mt 10: 21-22, 34-36 again

The third reading is in the voice of Compassionate Jesus. This is the Jesus who weeps over stubborn Jerusalem, who sees struggle and cataclysm on the horizon and knows there is nothing he can do except try to prepare the few who will listen. He knows the same simmering resentments that will drive his execution will soon flare up into consuming violence. And he knows that following the Way will lead his followers into persecution by authorities and divisions within their families.  He is warning them, with an open and aching heart, how it’s going to go. Who feels like they could read that Jesus? … 

Mt 10: 21-22, 34-36 again

What did you notice? ….