Luke 5:1-11
The Rev. Peter Faass

So, this is an odd scenario.  Simon Peter and the fishermen have been out on the water all night fishing.  And they have come up empty.  Jesus then tells Simon Peter, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch." Simon answered, "Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets."  And so, they do and the next thing you know there is such an abundant haul that the nets begin to break from the weight of the fish, and the boat begins to sink.

Of course, Jesus always knows where we only see despair and hopelessness, he sees possibility. Yet instead of seeing the hope of a financial boon in the abundant fish, Peter is struck with fear.  He falls to his knees – an interesting maneuver as he had to kneel on some slippery fish covering the bottom of the boat – and declares himself to be a, “sinful man.”

And here is what makes this scenario so odd: Jesus replies, “"Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people." Does Jesus think that Peter is fearful of having to catch fish versus people? Is he implying that people are easier to catch – read evangelism – than a net full of fish?  If so, and it certainly reads like that, this is to be the only time in Christian history that anyone has made a statement implying that catching people will be easier than catching fish!  That evangelism of humans is easier than fishing, or anything else for that matter. Good heavens, I know people who would rather walk across hot coals barefoot than ask anyone to come to church. Episcopalian’s approach to church growth is a bit more laid, back, reticent, if you will.
 
I saw a cartoon recently by Episcopal cartoonist, Jay Sidebotham that captures perfectly our reticent approach.  There’s an aquarium set up by the ocean’s edge. An Episcopal Church Welcomes You sign is planted next to it in the sand. The caption states, “Any fish from the ocean are invited to jump into the aquarium if they happen to be passing by and feel like it.”

Yep, that’s us.  Our church is the aquarium in the sand.  Warrensville Center Rd. is the ocean.  Any fish passing – or more likely, driving - by are invited to jump on in . . . if they feel like it.

Now if they do. . . well, we do quite well with those fish. Newcomers repeatedly tell me that one of the things that attracted them to Christ Church is the authentic and warm hospitality they experienced when they came here . . . once they jumped into our aquarium.  I have seldom heard anyone say they experienced a warm invitation to come to Christ Church when they were out doing breast-strokes in the big wide ocean. In other words, we like our humans caught, and in the net, before we engage them in our faith community. Caught fish may have caused Peter to be afraid, but they give us our highest confidence.

Yet, we have so much to offer. So much good news to share. I am not going to list all of those reasons now. You already pretty much know them. And if you are unsure, I invite you to reflect on what attracts you here. What about Christ Church enriches your life, drawing you into closer relationship with God in Jesus?

Peter was compelled to reflect on that very question, repeatedly. What about God in Jesus attracted him to a closer relationship with Jesus? To want to be a part of that community of disciples that followed him, to the point of dropping everything to do so?  But being a bit of a cheese head, it took a while for the epiphanies Jesus and God presented him, for the reasons to do so to sink in.

You see that net and its myriad of abundant fish made a critical statement about God and the reign of God Jesus came to proclaim. It was an epiphany.  There were all kinds of fish in the net that morning. The three most prevalent fish in the Sea of Gennesaret are a flat white fish, commonly known as St. Peter’s fish, carp, and catfish.  Interestingly the first two are fine for Jews to eat as they have scales and fins. Catfish on the other hand do not and therefore are not kosher. In Leviticus we read, “Everything in the waters that has fins and scales, whether in the seas or in the streams—such you may eat. But anything in the seas or the streams that does not have fins and scales, of the swarming creatures in the waters and among all the other living creatures that are in the waters—they are detestable to you and detestable they shall remain.” (Lev. 11:9b-11a)

Yet all these different types of fish are in the net.  By the way, the fish do not represent fish. To paraphrase W.C. Fields, sometimes a fish is not just a fish. For the purposes of this story the myriad of fish represents people from all iterations of humanity: Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female.  The inclusion of all types of fish in that net informs us that the salvation Jesus brings is for all, not just for a few, This message gets powerfully bookended for Peter in the book of Acts (which Luke is also the author of) in the story of Peter’s revelatory vision. Another epiphany.  This vision occurs during a great controversy in the early church about who can be a Christian and who can’t; who’s in and who’s out. Peter adhered to the official church policy that in order to become a Christian one needed to convert to Judaism first, as the early church believed it was a sect of Judaism.  The two central issues debated were the necessity of male circumcision and following dietary laws; or keeping kosher.   

In the Acts story, Peter is invited to the home of a Roman centurion named Cornelius, who is a Gentile. And he goes. Now this is pretty brave as Jews were considered ritually impure if they stayed in the home of Gentile. While there he has a vision of, as the text says, something like a sheet coming down from heaven. “He saw the heaven opened and something like a large sheet coming down, being lowered to the ground by its four corners.  In it were all kinds of four-footed creatures and reptiles and birds of the air. Then he heard a voice saying, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.” But Peter said, “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.” The voice said to him again, a second time, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ This happened three times, and the thing was suddenly taken up to heaven.” (Acts 10:11-16)

Okay, think about it. “Something like a sheet” and a net are pretty similar. And both are filled with kosher and non-kosher critters. Like the fish in the net, the critters in the sheet represent humanity in all of its iterations. 

Peter’s vision is not primarily about eating non-kosher food, although it does help persuade the early church to give up its insistence that Gentile converts keep the dietary laws.
The message of the sheet – like the message of the breaking fishing nets – is that God’s reign will include all types of people, from every family, language, people, and nation, as one of our BCP prayers states.  

That’s an evangelical message that people are ready to hear, although they may be surprised to hear it. For too long they have been, like Peter, believers who thought that a whole lot of prerequisites were required to be a part of the faith community. And that a whole lot of people would never make the cut.  And many of those prerequisites were onerous and difficult and ended up driving people away instead of accepting them, embracing them all, just like Jesus did.  

Maybe we too have put a bunch of prerequisites up, some of them of our own creation, preventing us from telling people the good news about the Gospel. Maybe we do this because, like Peter,  we feel we are sinful people, or like Isaiah when he is called by God to be a prophet, that we are unworthy, “a [person] of unclean lips,” as Isaiah says as he tries to avoid doing what God called him to do. But God abjured from accepting that excuse and instead he cleanses Isaiah of his perceived unworthiness. Then God asks him again: "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" And [Isaiah] said, "Here am I; send me!"

Peter too eventually got the message . . . better late than never. He stopped seeing himself as a sinful man and heeded God’s call. He learned to embrace all people and worked to include them fully in the life of the church. Will we? 

There’s a lot of fish in the ocean. They swim by us all the time. We have a really nice aquarium at Christ Church. Will we go out into the ocean and tell all those wonder fish about us and invite them in? Or will be we content to wait to see if they jump in . . . if they feel like it.  Like Isaiah, let our response be, "Here am I; send me!"
​
Amen

The Rev. Rachel G. Hackenberg

​God be in our listening,
Christ forgive my speaking,
Spirit move through our living
so that together we might discern your redemption. Amen.
 
In the days of political turmoil, during a time when allegiances were easily swayed, in an ancient but-oh-so-familiar season when faith was greatly informed by fear, the word of the Holy One came to young Jeremiah, saying,
“From the time outside of time, I have always known you, Jeremiah,
and from the beginning, I have consecrated to be part of my work.”
 
And Jeremiah replied, saying,
“Oh wow, God, I don’t know. There’s really nothing about me to suggest that I’m the one you want, and the political landscape right now is kind of rocky for prophet work. [eee---whooooo-tsk-mmm] I don’t know.”
 
If he had had Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth at his disposal, Jeremiah might have said to God,
“I’m only a child. I speak like a child. I know only in part, so I’ll only be able to prophesy in part. Whatever I know, it’s only in a mirror dimly. I can’t possibly know fully.” 
 
As it turns out, saying “I don’t know” was precisely the response God was seeking.
“I will give you words,” God said.
“I will give you visions,” God said.
“You don’t need to know fully. The work to unfold is mine: I will pluck up and pull down, I will destroy and plant, I will overthrow and rebuild. You don’t need to know.”
In contrast, the Gospel of Luke offers a scene in which the people of Nazareth know everything they need to know about Jesus: he is Joseph’s son. These are the people who watched Jesus grow up after his family came back from Egypt. These are the same people who saw him fine-tune his carpentry skills alongside Joseph. These are his friends and childhood playmates who celebrated their faith together, who learned to read from the scrolls in synagogue when they were kids. They know Jesus…
 
…and they certainly know the political tensions in which they reside, living in a Jewish village within a Roman-occupied territory. What they know is that anyone suspected of revolt is still arrested. What they know is that poverty still shapes their lives. What they know is that a new king has not yet arrived to heal the sick, to bring sight to the blind, to make the lame walk again, to relieve them from systems of oppressions. The man they know without a doubt to be the son of Joseph has declared what they know to not be true: the ancient prophesies have not yet been filled, no matter what Jesus declared in the synagogue.
 
And enraged by all that they know, the friends of Jesus, the friends of his parents, the community that is most familiar with him, becomes violent toward him. Because of what they know.
 
Because they know where he’s from and who his family is. Because they know the same faith stories that he knows. Because they know that those stories are still unfulfilled. Because they know that Elijah saved a hungry widow at Zarephath and they are still waiting for Elijah to come to them too. Because they know that Elisha healed Naaman, a Syrian and a leper, and they are still waiting for healing to reach them too.
They are mad because they know…and they simply cannot make room for anything else to be possible, so they resort to violence.
 
Tell me: how do you react when someone disputes what you know to be true?
 
It could be as simple as your certainty that the cheapest gas station is in Bedford Heights, and you won’t hear a word from anyone who tries to tell you that there’s a cheaper and closer gas station in Highland Hills. It might be your perspective on government that someone challenges—perhaps you have always held that any injury or injustice within the government will right itself by the very nature of democracy, but someone challenges your certainty with an argument that change cannot occur without protest. Maybe you’ve always absolutely known that a friend, a community member, a family member, is an upstanding guy…but someone tells you that he has caused significant harm.
 
How do you react when someone contests what you know about Jesus, or challenges what you believe about how God works in the world? How do you respond when someone tells you that they know you, when their entire definition of you contradicts what you know about yourself?
 
Certainty can be a kind of violence when it disallows for possibility. Knowing can be a brutality when it obstructs the space someone needs to consider wonder or to ask questions. Conviction can look like rage when it is overwhelmed with the worry that something might be imaginable that we don’t know or understand.
 
The people of Nazareth knew that their hope for a new messiah had not yet been fulfilled because poverty still haunted them, because sickness and disease still threatened them, because the oppression of the Roman Empire still shaped their daily lives, because Jesus—bless his heart—hadn’t done anything in Nazareth to bring about the year of the Lord’s favor except maybe carve a few rocking horses for the kids. So when Jesus said something else was possible, and not only possible eventually but happening now, that the fulfillment of prophesies was taking hold now, the townspeople’s certainty welled up in rage and they drove him to the edge of a cliff.
 
Still the poor are cold at night, still the sick cannot access healing without great expense, still the diseases of racism and of gender violence eat away at our spirits, still governments overthrow other governments, still empires stockpile weapons, and Jesus—bless his heart—whispers to us from the text and shows up to us through others, saying, “the year of the Lord’s favor is fulfilled.”
 
And the invitation of faith is not to become certain. The invitation of faith is to join Jeremiah in confessing, “I don’t know, God. The world is full of evidence to the contrary…but I’m willing to admit that everything I know about the world and about myself and about you isn’t everything. I’m willing to wonder what else might be.” The invitation of faith is not to live with absolute certainty, but to live in—to participate in—the possibility.
 
In faith, not knowing is the start of personal imagination, community participation, and holy inspiration. When we confess “I don’t know,” what we begin to see more fully is what else might be—what else God might be about—through love.
 
What we know will come to an end: the certainty of poverty, the constancy of violence, the frenzy of politics. The ways of living that we established and ritualized for the sake of certainty in this all-too-predictable world will also come to an end. And when it all ends, the dim mirror of our certainty will end and everything we’ve never known and everything we’ve only dreamed will be revealed face-to-face.
 
Until then, we continue to practice the possibilities of love.
 
What we do not know
“Love never ends.
There is always faith to plant,
there is always hope to share,
there is always love to dwell within and between you.”
And for centuries we have
 
1 Cor 13 suggest that confessing our “dim mirrors” makes way for knowing more fully the endurance of love, the pervasive spirit of hope, the stubbornness of faith. (sidebar: same descript of hope and faith)

1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
The Rev. Peter Faass

In an op-ed this past Friday, New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote of two great American philosophers who lived at the turn of the last century and worked at Harvard.  One was named William James and the other Josiah Royce.

Brooks describes these men’s over-arching philosophical viewpoints this way: “James was pragmatic and tough-minded, looking for empirical truth. Royce was more idealistic and tender-minded, more spiritual and abstract.”

He goes on to say that James’ philosophy took root and holds sway in our culture these days, but that based on the condition of our nation and society, it is Royce’s philosophical ethos we need to reclaim.
Here is segment of Brooks column where he explains why:

“James’s emphasis was on tolerance. We live in a pluralistic society and we each know only a fragment of the truth. People should give one another enough social space so they can be themselves. For Royce the good life meant tightly binding yourself to others — giving yourself away with others for the sake of a noble cause. Tolerance is not enough.

James’s influence is now enormous — deservedly so. Royce is almost entirely forgotten. And yet I would say that Royce is the philosopher we need today. In an age of division, fragmentation and isolation, Royce is the philosopher we don’t know we have. He is the philosopher of binding and connection.
 
Royce argued that meaningful lives are marked, above all, by loyalty. Out on the frontier, he had seen the chaos and anarchy that ensues when it’s every man for himself, when society is just a bunch of individuals searching for gain. He concluded that people make themselves miserable when they pursue nothing more than their “fleeting, capricious and insatiable” desires.

So, for him the good human life meant loyalty, “the willing and practical and thoroughgoing devotion of a person to a cause.”

A person doesn’t have to invent a cause, or find it deep within herself. You are born into a world of causes, which existed before you were born and will be there after you die. You just have to become gripped by one, to give yourself away to it realizing that the cause is more important than your individual pleasure or pain . . .
 
Loyalty is not just emotion. It is action. “The loyal man serves. That is, he does not merely follow his own impulses. He looks to his cause for guidance. This cause tells him what to do,” Royce wrote in “The Philosophy of Loyalty. The cause gives unity and consistency to life. The cause gives fellowship, because there are always others serving the same cause.”

As I reflected about Royce and his philosophy of loyalty and devotion to a cause that is binding and gives connection to human life, one person to another, I could not help but think of today’s first letter of Paul to the Corinthians: “Just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body--Jews or Greeks, slaves or free--and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.”

Paul’s letter is written to a church community where there were great divisions based on class and wealth.  A sense of entitlement and superiority had overcome some members of the Corinthian church, over those who had less resources or were of lower social status. Their loyalties were not to the cause of the Gospel but to their own needs. They felt that those different from themselves were not worthy of their concerns. To quote Royce, people had made themselves miserable pursuing nothing more than their “fleeting, capricious and insatiable” desires.

Paul admonishes this attitude in a decidedly Royceian way.
 
“Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot would say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear would say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you," nor again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you." On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.”

Just as Royse was the philosopher of binding and connection to the cause of a healthy society, so Paul is the apostle of binding and connection to the cause of the body of Christ.

In our fragmented, divisive, me first society, the message of Paul and Royce need to be lifted up and embraced. To paraphrase Royce, “The loyal person serves. That is, she does not merely follow her own impulses. She looks to her cause for guidance. This cause tells her what to do.”

As followers of Jesus our cause is the body of Christ; a body that calls us to total interdependence, respect and mutual care. Our loyalty is to make our song this Gospel truth that regardless of who or what we are, we are all worthy, children made in the image of a loving God.  We are called to sing that in that body there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, rich or poor, black or white, gay or straight, for we are all one in Christ Jesus. That is our cause. That is where our loyalty lies. And the world is more than ready to hear the healing good news of that cause, and to be made whole by it.
​
Amen 

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
The Rev. Peter Faass
 
Eighteen years have passed since the last time we heard about Jesus in the Gospel of Luke and today’s story about his appearing at the River Jordan to be baptized by John.  Eighteen years earlier Jesus was twelve years old and he and his parents had gone to the Jerusalem Temple for Passover.  Eighteen years since he engaged with the rabbis at the Temple in deep theological conversations.  
 
And now he is a thirty-year old man, ready to embark on his life’s mission to bring the word of God’s salvation to the world.

What happened in those intervening years?  Biblical scholars speculate. Did he remain in Nazareth taking up the family trade of carpentry?  Did he travel to India and learn the mystical ways of eastern religions? Whatever he did, he was sure to have engaged – as all young people do – in thinking about his life, who he was called to be, and of what worth he had in the world. And as a thoughtful and reflective person, he had most likely arrived at the realization that he was unique, made in the image of a loving God, and that that he was to honor that uniqueness by living out who he actually was, in gratitude to the One who made him.  

He also must have known that at some point he needed to leave the protections of his family and their village of Nazareth. He had grown from being a youth into adulthood.  It was time to go out into the wider world to live out his realities – the truth he had discerned - of his own life.

Jesus had grown closer to God in those eighteen years, and when John the Baptist appeared, “proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” and people were flocking to John to be baptized, Jesus knew that there was a movement toward God taking place. It was a movement propelled by people’s desire to be whole and healthy, in a renewed relationship with God.  For Jesus, John’s emergence was God’s call to him to do likewise: To be who he was called to be and in so doing be whole and healthy. To be, as they say, true to oneself.

In that moment when he emerges from the baptismal waters God affirms what Jesus had realized when he tells him: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased." The voice of God comes to him, acknowledging that he has made the right decision.

How that must have resonated with Jesus.  God his father affirming his decision to be who he was, to be true to himself. While Jesus knew the path ahead would be fraught with perils, with people saying he was a phony, an apostate, a danger, he had God’s approbation – God’s love to sustain him - and that was enough. It was more than enough.

When I was twelve years old I came to understand there was something different about me.  While other boys began dating girls and talking about the fascinating mysteries of the female sex, I became poignantly aware that I did not share this attraction. I was very aware that men were fascinating and of interest to me. But it was also crystal clear that this attraction was not to be shared with others.

My then church community, was clear from the pulpit, in Sunday School, and in general conversations, in conveying that my attractions were wrong, sinful, and not condoned by God.  Much of the negative things the church and family and society say how being gay gets deeply embedded in our psyche. And we begin to believe them.   These beliefs are hard to shake and cause self-doubt.  They make you question your worth as a person.

In the ensuing years, as I grew older and reflected on my sexual orientation, I had few places to turn. But I did reflect and pray on this issue often . . . a lot . . . every day. Often this reflection was conflicted.  For a while I joined a charismatic Christian group in high school, desiring to pray away the gay. My fervent prayers at the time were for God to heal me and make me “normal.” After about a year of that and no discernable reply from the Almighty, I gave up on the attempt. 

In retrospect the lack of response was actually the response. In time I came to understand that.  We don’t always recognize our epiphanies in the moment. While I can’t pinpoint an exact moment, I know that as I entered college an epiphany came over me and I heard the voice of God saying to me, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased. Be who I have made you to be. Be true to yourself, and all will be well.” That approbation from God has come to mean everything for me.
I spent another ten to twelve years maturing into that truth. Interestingly enough – and by no intentional design - it was at the age of thirty that I came back to my practice of faith, albeit in the Episcopal Church and not my old denomination. 

The path forward through those years has sometimes been fraught with peril.  People have called me a phony Christian, an apostate, a danger, and some way less savory things as well.  But that epiphany of God’s approbation – God’s love - has sustained me and that was enough. In fact, it has been more than enough.

Regretfully that approbation of who I was, was not so quick in coming from my mother. But time and patience and the power of motherly love eventually brought her around as well.  When in 1992 I told her that I felt a call from God toward ordained ministry, she did not rue my giving up a good paying career, and what I knew she believed to be a successful life. She didn’t say gay people would have a tough time in ministry. Rather she became my greatest supporter and cheerleader. She knew the road before me would be fraught with perils, but she sustained me on my journey with her love. Her love was a manifestation of  God’s presence in my life and in that presence I once again heard the words, "You are my son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased."

We all parent in various ways: As biological and adoptive parents, as grandparents, teachers, extended family, clergy, as the church community.  And we all know young people who struggle with issues of identity and self-worth; about what value their lives have.  Some are LGBTQ, others struggle with issues like body imaging, race, religion, class. They all carry heavy burdens in the guilt and shame baggage that society often heaps upon them in their struggles.  Our responsibility as faithful Christians is to nurture their being thoughtful and reflective people.  God calls us to help guide them so they arrive at the realization that they are unique, wonderful people, made in the image of a loving God, and that that like Jesus and all of us, they are to honor their uniqueness as children of God, living their lives with integrity and in gratitude to the One who made them. 

In a nutshell, we are to be the voice of God telling them, "You are [a child of God], [you are] beloved; with you I am well pleased."

We do this for many reasons.   There are many in society who tell them otherwise, including religious communities.  There are many who bully and harass them. There are many who shame them and rob them of their human dignity.  There are many who disown them and throw them into the streets to fend for themselves.  And there are many who believe they can change them and make them “better.” 
A recent writer of a letter to the editor on Cleveland.com bemoaned the growing number of state legislatures that were passing laws prohibiting so called “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ people.  They wrote that, “the goal in [conversion] therapy is not conversion but healing.”  They went on to say that legislation should be written to, “guard licensed therapists from limitations on their healing art.” 

The reality is that “conversion therapy” is pseudo-science; a travesty that is discredited by all legitimate medical associations. It is not healing, it is not art.  It is profoundly damaging, a form of torture that wreaks havoc emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and often, physically on those compelled to engage in it. I have never meet anyone who has been successfully “converted” from being gay into a straight person.  I have met plenty who have suffered terribly and unnecessarily as they were hounded into denying their authentic selves.

In a few moments we will renew our Baptismal vows. These vows are not just a bunch of hollow words that the clergy are compelled by the Book of Common Prayer to have us recite on certain feast days on the liturgical calendar. They are our holy vows to heal the brokenness of this world, just as Jesus did.  They are the foundation of our faith in Jesus, because they reflect the values he incarnated for us. These vows are meant to be a plumb line hanging in our lives, guiding us into right behavior toward all:  Seeking and serving Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves.  Striving for justice and peace among all people. Respecting the dignity of every human being.  This is our work as followers of Jesus: loving people for who and where they are. All the time. To all we encounter. No exceptions. Ever.
​
These holy vows are what allow us to proclaim to all God’s children: "You are my [child], [you are] beloved; with you I am well pleased."                                                                           Amen. 

Ephesians 3:1-12; Matthew 2:1-12
The Rev. Peter Faass
 
As we see 2018 fade behind us in the rearview mirror, we find ourselves in the midst of the season of resolutions.

Resolutions are commitments to make an amendment of life, turning from bad toward good behaviors. Resolution is the secular sister term for the theological word, repentance. 

We tend to view resolutions as being an individual effort.   People think, “I’ll give up smoking and be healthier,” or “I’ll lose fifteen pounds by a change in my diet and exercise.” And most resolutions have as their end goal a healthier state of being, either physically, mentally, relationally, emotionally or spiritually.

But resolutions can be taken on by groups and institutions as well.  And actually, they should be because we all – individually and corporately - need to have our goal be a healthier state of being.

I read an article this week written by Mark Wingfield, an American Baptist minister, where he stated his hope for the church in 2019 is that our resolution will be saying three simple words: “we were wrong.”

​We were wrong.

That’s a serious challenge to the church, and may be the most difficult thing we, as an institution, will ever be asked to do!  After-all we are the institution that always gets it right, no? And admitting error about anything we have said or done will not fall easily from the lips of people who expect others to confess their sins, not themselves.

But Wingfield says, the church in fact has had gotten it wrong, still gets it wrong, and persists in doing wrong in many ways:

We were wrong on race, trying to prove a Biblical warrant for making Blacks inferior. We were wrong, and continue to get it grotesquely wrong, on protecting sexual predators. We were wrong about women not being co-equally made in the image of God. We were wrong on excluding people from the Eucharist and ordination due to their sexual identity. We were wrong to demand right belief for participation in the life of the church, forgoing the actual call of Jesus to engage in right practice.
 
So much of the church’s being wrong is rooted in its desire for control and power.  Being wrong is often actually nurtured by the church, which stokes human fear and insecurity, thereby allowing the institution to engage in absolutism and certainty,  versus encouraging people to live into Divine mystery. All too often the church trains us to worship the Bible as it has been interpreted through the lens of those who have an agenda based on control and power and of institutional preservation, rather than reading the scripture through the overarching narrative of love embodied in the gospel of Jesus.  Through this lens the Bible becomes the inerrant word of God - albeit cherry picked words to meet the needs of the institutional – but to the detriment of Jesus being the Word made flesh.

Jesus was highly critical of this approach to the scriptures.  In Matthew he tells the religious authorities, “So, for the sake of your tradition, you make void the word of God. You hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied rightly about you when he said:

‘This people honors me with their lips,
    but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
    teaching human precepts as doctrines.’”  (Matthew 15:6-9)

Today is Epiphany; the day we celebrate the arrival of the Three Kings at the manger in Bethlehem to pay homage to the Messiah.  This story is all about how the institutional religion at the time of Jesus’ birth got it wrong. And like us, they got it really wrong.

At the time of Jesus’ birth, it was the belief of institutional Judaism that salvation was for Jews – faithful Jews – only.  That as the chosen people they alone were entitled to the salvation of God. Now this belief , while based on cherry-picked scripture passages - contravened what had been proclaimed by many of the prophets, which was God’s plan was for universal salvation.  Isaiah particularly undergirds the inclusion of the Gentiles in God’s plan. Note that whenever the words nation or nations are used in scripture it is a reference to the Gentiles. Here are a few examples of Isaiah’s inclusivity of the nations:  

“In days to come
    the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
    and shall be raised above the hills;
all the nations shall stream to it. (Is 2:2)
 
“I will give you as a light to the nations,
    that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” (Is. 49:6)
 
“On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. (Is. 25:6)

In these passages it is unambiguous that God’s plan is for all peoples to receive the light of God’s saving grace. 

Yet the institutional religion of the time chose to ignore that message, rather proclaiming a more exclusivist access to God.  And in so doing they got it wrong. 

And then along comes Jesus, the Messiah – the Word of God incarnate. And who are among the first people who come to witness to his Messiahship and pay him homage?  Three Gentiles from Persia!

“When they [the Wise men] saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.”

The Wise Men were over-whelmed with joy!  I can imagine as they peered into the face of this child who came down from heaven for us – for all of us – and for our salvation, that this profound good news is what caused their joy.  And all of a sudden – in that moment - what had been very wrong was made oh, so very right. Because God will not let wrongs persist. Because God will always right every wrong. And in Jesus we have the revelation of God at work doing just that. 

Paul expounds on this truth in his letter to the Ephesians.

“This is the reason that I Paul am a prisoner for Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles,” he writes. [Through Jesus] “the Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.”

Paul of course was the apostle to the Gentiles, and he relentlessly battled with the early church in Jerusalem who had defaulted to the old ways of exclusivism, and were getting it wrong when it came to living into the wide embrace of Jesus’ love for all God’s people. But Paul’s persistence made the institutional church in Jerusalem see the error of its wrongness and he compelled them to make those wrongs right.  His most well- known summation of this effort is captured in his letter to the Galatians: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 3:28)

Wingfield writes, “There is a day of reckoning coming – hopefully soon – when the church will have to give account not only for its hypocrisy” [in ignoring the Gospel] “but also for its silence” [in the face of the wrongs that have been perpetrated.]

“If the church of Jesus Christ is to be relevant in our mission, if we are to be agents of God’s reconciling love, we’ve got to take a hard look in the mirror . . . It’s time to say we were wrong.
And that’s just the beginning.”

It is Epiphany, a season when we lift up God’s revelations of new things that are intended to change us in some way for the better.  In this season of revelations and resolutions my prayer is that the entire church universal look in the mirror and admit we were wrong. And more pointedly that we – you and I -as followers of Jesus, and as a community of faith here in the heart of the Van Aken district, we will take a hard look in the mirrors of our lives as well. And that in so doing we will have the integrity to say that we have been wrong.  Those will be epiphany moments: moments revealing the radical, inclusive love of God in Jesus for all people. May the joy of that moment be the same joy of the Magi as they peered into Jesus’ face. And may that joy propel us to be agents of God’s reconciling love to all we encounter.   That will be the beginning of a better way of life for all of us . . . but it will not be the end.        Amen.

Luke 2:1-20
The Rev. Peter Faass 
 
No matter how many times I hear the familiar Luke’s Nativity story, it still gives me goosebumps. I will confess though that Linus’s rendition in A Charlie Brown Christmas is my favorite. The purity of Linus’s young heart and his honest, straight forward delivery, not only brings goosebumps, but tears. It is exquisite.
 
But sometimes the familiarity of this story causes us to overlook some details that should give us pause and to ask some serious theological questions. For me, as I read this scripture for the umpteenth time, the question that popped out at me is this:  Why was there no room at the inn – or presumably anywhere else - for Joseph and Mary, in Joseph’s hometown of Bethlehem?
 
The commonly held belief is that the town was full-up with people coming home due to the census, decreed by the Emperor Augustus.  And Mary and Joseph, traveling slowly due to her advanced pregnancy, arrived in Bethlehem too late to find any accommodations.  Taken at face value that seems reasonable.  But on closer reflection, it isn’t.

One of the foundation ethical values of middle eastern cultures is to show hospitality to the stranger.  This requirement of hospitality demands providing shelter, safety, and food to those who show up at your door, regardless of the cost; whether that be a financial or an ethical cost.
 
Jesus’ parables frequently speak of this type of hospitality.  Think of the Good Samaritan, the Great Banquet, the Prodigal Son, the Rich Man and Lazarus, the man in bed when a friend knocks at his door at midnight.  All are about providing radical hospitality. 
 
When Jesus sends his disciples out two by two, he tells them, “But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’ I tell you, on that day it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for that town.” (Luke 10:10-12.)  Jesus’ marching orders to the disciples are about the hospitality the disciples should expect when they travel . . . and their response when it is not offered them.
 
With this understanding, it begs the question: in a society that valued hospitality, it is – to say the least - peculiar that there would be no room either at the inn for Joseph and Mary, or with his extended family in Bethlehem. And that is worth pondering as it violates that bedrock ethical value.
Why is the Holy Family not accommodated in some way, especially under the circumstances of Mary’s advanced pregnancy?
 
Had the townsfolk heard rumors of Mary’s premarital pregnancy, and not wanted to be considered a party to her circumstances? It’s possible.  People in the huge caravans traversing the main routes of Palestine would have learned that she was engaged, but not married. They would have heard her story of the Archangel Gabriel telling Mary that it was the Holy Spirit that would impregnate her.  Most likely that news would have been met with disbelief, rolling eyes, and more than a few snickers. People in the ancient world would have gossiped about this, just as we would. And as less burdened travelers reached Bethlehem before Mary and Joseph, they would have told their juicy gossip to the townsfolk.  And all the old prejudices and hatreds would have kicked in. We can imagine it, right?

“Oh, the Holy Spirit did this. Well, that’s a new one!”
“That Joseph is a fool to stay with her. Doesn’t he know he’s been cuckolded?”
“What a tramp she is. And really, getting pregnant when she’s already engaged. I wonder who the real father is?”

“How dare they sully the family name and come here. What an embarrassment!”
I suspect that the residents of Bethlehem were well-aware of what Joseph and Mary were all about, and that it was their disdain that caused them to hang “No Vacancy” signs in their hearts, as the Holy Family came knocking.

Yet, I will also speculate that as the innkeeper said, “we’re full up” to the anxious Mary and Joseph at his door, that the look of desperation on their faces pierced his hard heart, - that he had a moment of compassion - which caused him to say, “Well, there is the stable out back. You can stay there.” 

Now the donkey heard this he probably thought, “Ca-ching!  A five-star hotel!” as he relished the hay, the trough of water, the warmth and the companionship of other animals.

But for a pregnant woman about to deliver, and her weary spouse-to-be, it was hardly ideal. Yet the bigotry of the people prevented anything better, even if that meant violating the critical cultural tenant of hospitality.  No un-wed, pregnant woman and her foolish fiance, were sleeping in a warm bed under anyone’s roof that night. After all, what would the neighbors say?

But God was not to be denied that night. God breaks in, regardless of our bigotry.
God’s breaking in is what caused the innkeeper to relent and provide shelter in the stable to Mary and Joseph. God broke into his hard heart. Even if just a little. And like the innkeeper’s, God will break into all our hard hearts, as well. God will heal the sin-sickness of our broken lives. It is God’s purpose. It is why God gave us Jesus.

In the Magnificat Mary sang: “The lowly will be lifted up.” That is how God incarnates God’s purpose: Lifting up the lowly and bringing low the proud in their conceit.  This is the clarion message in Luke. The mighty and proud are brought down from their prejudices and hatreds, and the lowly are given their rightful dignity.
 
What is our hospitality to the lowly, in all the various iterations we can perceive people to be lowly, like?  Do we make room for them in the inn of our lives; find a place for them at our tables? What person in our relationships, this very holy night, are we denying hospitality and dignity too because we hold deeply held prejudices against them? So our prejudices compel us to gossip and rumor-monger.  When God works to break in to our conscience, do we do the right thing, or do we parse our response because we fear what the neighbors will say?
 
The experience of the Holy Family that first Christmas in Bethlehem tells us that God looks after the lowly, the vulnerable, the despised. And the witness of the innkeeper tells us that God will break into our hardened hearts, and will not relent doing so until every heart not only fully welcomes Jesus, but loves and follows him as well.

The Incarnation of God in the babe of Bethlehem witnesses to the profound truth that God will not be denied. By no one, or by anything.  The mighty, the arrogant, the hateful will all be brought low, and the lowly, the downtrodden, the burdened, and the despised will be lifted up. In so doing God breaks in. And Jesus the Savior is born.
 
Oh, holy night! The stars are brightly shining
It is the night of the dear Savior's birth
Long lay the world in sin and error pining
Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn
 
Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angel voices
Oh, night divine
Oh, night when Christ was born
Oh, night divine.
Oh, night. Oh holy night divine. 

Luke 1:39-45(46-55)
The Rev. Peter Faass
 
I recently read a commentary on the classic holiday television program, Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer, that referred to Rudolf as the “savior figure” in the story. That piqued my interest.  I don’t normally think of reindeer as having savior potential.  But on reflection Rudolf clearly is the savior in the story. It certainly isn’t Santa who’s about as prejudiced as they come when he rejects Rudolf due to his shiny nose. And it’s not the reindeer flying coach who tells Rudolf’s friends to reject him because he’s different; which they do enthusiastically. It isn’t Donner, Rudolf’s father, who is so humiliated by his son’s difference he tries to make him into something he’s not.
 
Such is the level of prejudice and mockery Rudolf experiences it compels him to flee the North Pole.  During his journey he discovers his self-worth, as he is befriended by others who have also been rejected for who they are.  They become a band of mis-fits. In their travels they land on the Island of Misfit Toys; a place for toys considered not suitable gifts - like a Charlie in the Box, or a choo-choo train with square wheels - because they too are different, Rudolf commits to try and get Santa to see the misfit toys worthy of being gifts and loved by some girl or boy. When he goes back to the North Pole a terrible blizzard occurs; it so bad it compels Santa to cancel Christmas. But then Rudolf saves the day as he guides Santa’s sleigh through the blizzard with his glowing red nose, and he saves Christmas. But this is not his real savior role. He is the true savior figure in the show because he saves the misfit toys from their lack of self-worth and loneliness, and maybe most importantly, he saves the bigoted souls of those who initially hated him, including Santa Claus. Rudolf is clearly a savior figure. But he’s not the Savior.
 
On this fourth Sunday of Advent, we hear the glorious Magnificat, that song of God’s redemptive love that Mary proclaims after the Annunciation. She sings:
 
            "My soul magnifies the Lord,
                        and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”
 
In that phrase, Mary makes a profound theological statement: God is our Savior. No one or nothing else is our Savior, that role belongs to God alone. To confess God as Savior means we will not look to some other power for salvation from the chaos of the world.  Not to money, not to politicians or religious leaders, not to technology, not to gaining material possessions, or social progress, or education, not to the legislative process. Not even to Rudolf. None of these will deliver us, in and of themselves, from leading meaningless lives, or amoral secularism, or ignoring our Baptismal Covenant, and other forms of degradation rampant in our society.

To turn to any of these as being our savior is to engage in idolatry; which is one of the most egregious sins in the Bible. Now God, our true savior, may USE any of these items or processes – like God did Rudolf - to help achieve God’s reign, but the ultimate basis of our trust, hope and commitment should be clear: God is our Savior.
 
Proclaiming God as Savior is evidence of our authentic need of One greater than ourselves or our idols. It reminds us there is nothing we can do to obtain our salvation. That is God’s alone give.
​
We Christians call Jesus savior. But the truth is the term applies to God who we come to know more fully through Jesus. All that Jesus does in the Gospels to affect our salvation – calling for repentance, forgiving sinners, healing the sick, casting out demons, eating with outcasts, and dying a redemptive death – he does according to God’s purpose and intent. In Jesus the role and intent of God as Savior is made transparent.
 
Mary, proclaiming God as Savior is another of Luke’s counter-cultural statements.  In that time idolatry and pagan worship were common. Romans were big practitioners of idolatry.  And the Jews were always lured to it.  It was a constant temptation that turned them away from God as their Savior, and to which the prophets consistently railed against.   Mary’s statement stands in opposition to that idolatry.

We too are lured by idolatrous things. Money, possessions, status, power, class, education, our bigotries and prejudices. All these seductively try to convince us they can save us. Michael Cohen was clearly seduced by the allure of the false saviors of money, power and access to beautiful women that surrounded his client. That was idolatry that came to a bad end; as does all idolatry.

Whenever we believe that our idols have the power to save us, we stop practicing the authentic ways of salvation made transparent in Jesus.  We stop following Jesus. And we effectively deny that God is our Savior.

Because it’s Christmas time, let me address a particular idolatry of the season: The alleged war on Christmas.  This supposed war is promoted by those who believe that this holiday is under assault by the forces of the anti-Christ. They insist on only saying Merry Christmas as being acceptable, not Happy Holidays or Seasons Greetings. They demand creche’s be displayed on public property, while denying other people’s religious symbols to be there. They demand that coffee cups be red and green with stars, evergreen trees, and reindeer emblazoned on them.  To them doing these things is somehow salvific, indicative of authentic Christian belief and behavior. They are not. They are idolatry.   People who believe these things stop practicing the ways of Christmas revealed to us in the Christ-child. They forget, or even deny that God, and God alone, is Savior.

The idolatrous alleged war on Christmas is a distraction, preventing us from fighting the real war on Christmas.  The real war on Christmas can be seen in our treatment of all those Jose's, Maria's and Jesuses on our borders, fleeing certain starvation, or death from gang violence in their homelands. They are the Holy Families of our time.  Denying them safety, warmth, food, shelter, and love is a war on Christmas.  Ripping children from their mothers’ arms and caging them is a war on Christmas.  Sending thousands of troops to our border with Mexico – stationing them away from family and friends during the holidays – for purely political reasons, is a war on Christmas.  These practices show that we are the Herod’s of our day; murderous idolaters who deny God’s ways of salvation.  They are the real war on Christmas.
 
The antidote to this war and all the idolatries of our lives is the child of Bethlehem, whose birth we are on the portal of celebrating. In him God has revealed God’s self as the only true Savior. As we prepare our hearts to receive that babe of Bethlehem once again, let our song be Mary’s song. “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”

And then let that truth be incarnated in our hearts, minds and souls. Only then will we know the true meaning of Christmas and the incomparable gift of our salvation.
 
Amen.

Mark 13: 1-18
The Rev. Peter Faass

​You can tell we are approaching the season of Advent by the apocalyptic stories in Daniel and Mark. Daniel was written during the brutal persecution of the Jewish people by the Seleucid emperor Antiochus Epiphanies during the second century BCE. In this passage, the Archangel Michael tells the people, “There shall be a time of anguish, such as has never occurred since nations first came into existence.”
 
In Mark, the writer reflects on the Jewish revolt against Rome in the seventh decade, CE. Jesus says, “For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines.”
 
Well, I say, let the good times roll!
 
As we enter the holiday season and want to sing about Glad Tidings of Great Joy, the mid-November scriptures talk about famine, war, earthquakes, and a time of unprecedented anguish. Between Syria, California, Indonesia, global warming, and our nation’s political dysfunction, Daniel and Mark have pretty much described our own time. Maybe we are in an apocalyptic era.
 
Perspective, though, is important when we consider that possibility. Every age has experienced events that were thought to be the end-of-time apocalypse. Christian millenarianism – the belief that the tumultuous, chaotic end, preceding Christ’s second coming, would occur at a century or thousand-year mark, has frequently come in and out of vogue. Yet despite how awful world events have been, we’re still here.
 
Remember Y2K on New Year’s Eve in 1999? Y2K (“Year 2000 Bug”) was the belief that computer technology could not handle the switch into a new millennium. Experts feared that all computer systems would crash, sending the world into chaos. That wasn’t a potential theological apocalypse, although the way computers have become gods to us, we might have thought so. We were terrified of the potential havoc Y2K would bring to our world. And we’re still here.
 
Currently, we have a right to be worried, even fearful. Many feel a sense of despair and hopeless. Things are not good.
 
A few of our Wednesday morning Bible Study participants felt that the way the Gospel ends by saying, “This is but the beginning of the birthpangs” exacerbated those feelings. The phrase seems to indicate eternal labor with no resolve in a baby’s birth. I have never delivered a baby, but I suspect women who have will attest that the prospect of eternal birth pangs is a pretty awful thing to contemplate.
 
When this passage is compared to other sayings of Jesus, as well as other Christian Testament texts, this is not what the passage intends. It is not a hopeless ending.
 
Mark’s text reflects the social upheaval and civil strife that engulfed Judea during the Jewish revolt against Rome. That included that insurrection’s eventual defeat and the subsequent diaspora of the Jewish population. It also included the total destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, whose grandeur the disciples fawned over a few verses earlier.
 
In response to their awe of the Temple, Jesus says: “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” No matter how grand, secure and indestructible buildings or institutions may appear, they can all be overthrown, they all can come tumbling down.
 
This is not necessarily a bad thing. Buildings and institutions often outlive their usefulness, at least in their current iteration. How many of us thought that the venerable American institution Sears would ever go bankrupt?  
 
Sometimes institutions become corrupt, even evil, serving their self-interests over people. They need to go. This was the case with the Temple. Jesus repeatedly condemned the self-serving religious institutionalists who manipulated religious laws to their own benefit, but to the detriment of the people they served. The Temple and the religious leaders became corrupt. Jesus knew the Temple will fall as a result, and he told the disciples this. I’m sure they were astonished. How could the massive and influential Temple complex ever come down?
 
Yet, systems that become evil must be torn town. This even includes our religious, government and business institutions.
 
While the Temple’s destruction was seen as an apocalyptic disaster that made the Jewish people feel hopeless, it released the Jews. It especially released those of the lower castes from the abusive system that corrupted the Temple. It was an evil system that needed to come down. Looking back on history, we see that this is often true.
 
In John Meacham’s “The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels,” does this brilliantly. He examines the various apocalyptic times in American history, like the Civil War. For many that war was a time of hopelessness. Yet, Meacham shows how the tearing down of corrupt, immoral systems, ideas and institutions – like slavery – created new opportunities for a better way of life. Doing so always resulted in a more hopeful and salvific future.
 
With the Civil War, America moved from slavery to emancipation, because growing numbers of American people realized how evil slavery was. They made a choice in the face of an apocalyptic time to do something about it. While full equality and civil rights were not achieved in that moment, it was a significant move forward in resolving injustice.
 
Meacham quotes Eleanor Roosevelt: “The course of history is directed by the choices we make and our choices grow out of the ideas, the beliefs, the values, the dreams of the people.”
Christians can chose the values and beliefs of Jesus, or the values of empire. We can choose between hope or hopelessness.
 
In the moment, apocalyptic events seem as if they will be endless. Yet, it is critical to remember that the Bible tells us God is redemptive, even when it does not appear so in the moment or this life. We dimly see through a mirror. Hope in the midst of despair can be hard to see. Yet, it’s there. We must hold fast to it and make choices.
 
In Daniel, despite the Archangel Michael’s prophesy that there would be anguish like has never been experienced, he also says that in time, “your people shall be delivered.” That’s God’s message of redemption in a time of hopelessness.
 
That redemption is a tenant of our faith, which will get us through the worst of any apocalyptic time. That knowledge may not completely mollify the pain or fear, but it invites a wider, more divine understanding of that pain and fear in our lives and world. That’s what we profess happened in the crucifixion.
 
In the crucifixion, the pain was unbearable.To the witnesses who observed it, it all seemed utterly hopeless for Jesus and his disciples. It was a moment of intense apocalyptic disaster.
 
But then Resurrection happened. Hope rose from the ashes of destruction. Death itself – that most fearsome and hopeless of all apocalypses – was trampled down. A new, better way of life came into being. Both the Daniel and Mark passages invite us to hold fast to the redemptive promises of God in the midst of our own apocalyptic trials at the micro and macro levels.
 
We are called to be faithful and trusting disciples during apocalyptic times tp proclaim the Gospel of hope. The apocalyptic times are not the end. In fact, if we choose wisely, they are the beginning of something new and better.
 
Amen 

The Rev. Peter Faass
 
Have you ever heard someone’s name mentioned and you exclaimed, “Oh, they’re a saint!” You say this because you know the positive character of that person, a character that seems saint-like to you.
 
Maybe you’re having a conversation with someone and they offer to do something for you, and you say to them “What a saint you are!” In this context, the person offers something that eases your burden. Grace Taylor, Nancy Morrow and Sarah Gage almost always put the bagged sandwich lunches together for me the week that I am scheduled for St. Herman’s. All I have to do is deliver the lunches. These women ease my burden, and I often tell them they are saints!
 
Our understanding of saintliness and of who is (and who isn’t) a saint has changed significantly over the years. Dare I say, it has evolved. At one time, sainthood was reserved for the iconic great past figures of the church: Peter, Paul, Mary, and Francis. These were the ones we lifted up on All Saints Day as we remembered their extraordinary lives: Lives of fealty to God and Christ-like behavior. They were also lives that we believed were beyond our own capacity to live - or at least their perceived extraordinary lives.
 
Many of these saints had done less than saintly things at one time or another. Some were even downright scoundrels! Paul was a murderer. Peter denied Jesus. Francis was a spoiled, indulgent little rich boy who liked to party. Mary, well, she was pretty close to perfect. But remember she could be a bit of a maternal nudge (remember the wedding at Cana). On the other hand, she was a Jewish mother, so she was just living her role. All these folks got redeemed one way or another, which is good news!
 
All the faithful departed – those ordinary people like you and me – were relegated and remembered on All Souls Day November 2. We had a day for commemorating the Christian superheroes on All Saints Day, and All Souls day for everyone else. It was a two-tier form of honoring people; the greater and the lesser.
 
This two-tier system is kind of a hard sell when you have another theology that says we have all been made equal by a loving God. All equal but two tiered, evokes the flawed policy called separate-but-equal. In God’s reign, separate-but-equal, like all two-tiered systems that divide people, is an oxymoron. I think this contradiction is what moved the church to reconsider who was and was not a saint.
 
Today, the understanding is that we are all saints – or at least we all have the potential to be. This theology of universal sainthood is writ large in that perennial favorite All Saints Day hymn, I Sing A Song of the Saints of God. with its litany of everyday folks who are saints: a doctor, a queen, a shepherdess, a soldier, a priest. The universality of the ordinary people who are saints is captured in the closing lyrics, “You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea, in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea; for the saints of God are just folk like me, and I mean to be one too.”
 
That’s a paradigm shift in the theology of saints and sainthood. These days, we honor specific folks for exemplary Christian lives, by commemorating them with special days on our liturgical calendar. But this is not an elevation of status above the rest of us, but rather highlighting lives of Christ-like behavior, which we are called to emulate.
 
The psalmist this evening expresses this universality. He asks,
"Who can ascend the hill of the Lord? " *
and who can stand in his holy place?"
4 "Those who have clean hands and a pure heart, *
who have not pledged themselves to falsehood,
nor sworn by what is a fraud.
5 They shall receive a blessing from the Lord *
and a just reward from the God of their salvation."
(Ps. 24: 3-5)
 
The psalmist is describing an entry festive procession into the Jerusalem Temple. According to the Law, one was required to be fastidiously and ritually pure to do so. The psalmist asks who really is pure enough that they can face God in God’s Temple and be a part of this procession?
The reply is those with clean hands, pure hearts, who do not engage in falsehood and do not commit fraud, are the acceptable ones.
 
In that reply, the psalmist deconstructs what was formerly required for entry into the Temple, which was an elaborate, involved, and often cumbersome set of rituals and behaviors to be acceptable to do so. You had to be super-pure; be a super-saint. It was a two-tiered system.
 
Now, there is a paradigm shift: Those who try to live good lives are allowed to process and enter the Temple. What was a two-tiered system (those who were ritually super pure and those who were ritually less-than-pure) has been eradicated. As long as you worked to lead a decent life, all are welcome. All are the same before God.

The Book of the Revelation to John further eradicates tiers; the tier between God, who is up in heaven, and we mortals, below on earth. The scene described is of the end of time when all things that God intends for Creation, come to fruition.  We call this the reign of God. This is not some far off, distant time. Jesus told his disciples when they asked about God’s reign that, “the kingdom of God is among you.” (Lk 17:21) In eschatological terms, we live in an already, not yet, state of being. The reign of God is coming, but it also already exists.
 
John indicates this truth as he tells of seeing God descend from heaven to earth:
“See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them as their God;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away."
 
What had been a two-tiered separation between us and God is now gone. God desires to be with us, not far off. God’s strongest desire is to walk life’s journey with us. To comfort and console us. To take away all the pain, loneliness and grief that we experience.
 
This eradication of tiers is one of filling every valley, making low the mountains, of making the crooked paths straight and the rough places plain. It is God’s desire for us and Creation. We humans created the tiers, the differences, and the things that keep us apart, not God.
 
So, dear saints of God, on this All Saints Day, know that you are saints and that eradicating the tiers and the differences is holy, saintly work. We may be imperfect at it, but that’s okay, because God is with us. On this day, remember that God dwells with you as you do this saintly work. On this All Saints Day and every day, God is well-pleased when you mean to be one too.
 
Amen.

Mark 10:46-52
Rev. Dean Myers

46 They came to Jericho. As [Jesus] and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. 47When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’ 48Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’ 49Jesus stood still and said, ‘Call him here.’ And they called the blind man, saying to him, ‘Take heart; get up, he is calling you.’ 50So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. 51Then Jesus said to him, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ The blind man said to him, ‘My teacher, let me see again.’ 52Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your faith has made you well.’ Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.
 
I want you to know that I considered changing my sermon plans this morning to address the acts of violence and near-violence that dominated the news during the week just ended. I decided not to do that, in part because I suspect I would be preaching to the choir. I believe we are all horrified not only by what happened and nearly happened, frustrated by our unwillingness to address gun violence, disturbed by the spirit of acrimony, hatred, and division that is running wild in our land, encouraged at the very least indirectly by the attitudes and words of many in positions of authority.
 
I hope you will hear in what I have prepared an invitation to a renewed commitment to a more perfect way, the way of Jesus, the way of love.
 
What do you want Jesus to do for you?
 
I mean for you…you, right here, right now…worshipping God in Christ Episcopal Church, Shaker Heights, Ohio, on Sunday, October 28, 2018.
 
And I mean Jesus…what do you want Jesus to do for you?
 
My question to you and me this morning is a variation on the very question Jesus himself asks of the blind beggar Bartimaeus in Mark 10: What do you want me [Jesus] to do for you [Bartimaeus].”
 
As we take a closer look at the event itself, I hope you will be able to hold that question in your consciousness during my sermon, through our celebration of the Eucharist, and into the world as you leave the sanctuary. For it is, perhaps, the most important question you can ever ask.
 
What do you want Jesus to do for you?
 
On the surface, Mark’s story of the restoration of Bartimaeus’s sight looks like so many of the other healing stories in the gospels that we are tempted not to give it close attention. You know, you hear one healing story, you hear them all. I admit, that’s what I first thought when I realized it was the gospel text for today. We’ve heard so many such stories in recent weeks, what’s one more?
 
Our Wednesday morning Bible study group discovered that there’s far more going on than is immediately apparent, and some of it must surely be quite intentional on Mark’s part. I’ll try to give you a brief rundown…but don’t forget the question I’ve asked you to remember! And please, feel free to look at the text of Mark 10 printed in your Sunday bulletin as I speak about it. I will not suspect you of nodding off to sleep!
 
First off, the core words of dialogue in this story appear in all three of the synoptic gospels; that is, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In each of the three, this is the last healing Jesus performs before his triumphal entry into Jerusalem on what the church calls Palm Sunday. Palm Sunday begins the final and decisive week of Jesus’s earthly ministry, the week of his death leading to his resurrection on the first day of the following week, on Easter Sunday.
 
In addition, in Matthew and Mark the story of Bartimaeus is the last recorded event of any kind before Palm Sunday. Although Luke inserts the story of Zacchaeus and the parable of the talents between the two events, it is clear that this healing occupies a special place in the minds of the gospel writers.
 
Mark offers another clue to the story’s significance in a choice of words, a choice that is obscured by the Revised Standard Version of the Bible and many other translations and versions. Verse 46 says that blind Bartimaeus “was sitting by the roadside,” calling for mercy from Jesus. Verse 52 tells us that seeing Bartimaeus “followed Jesus on the way.” “Roadside” in verse 46 and “way” in verse 52 are the same Greek word. Mark’s telling of the healing of Bartimaeus is bracketed between two appearances of the single word.
 
That is significant, because the earliest followers of Jesus were sometimes called “people of the way.” They were seen as people who followed Jesus on his way, speaking, acting and living according to his example. Followers were not “believers” only–in the sense of someone willing to give intellectual assent of some kind about Jesus–but they were doers. They walked as he walked, in his way. And the story of Bartimaeus, which begins with him, poor and blind, sitting by the way, concludes with him sighted, and apparently up and about, following Jesus on the way.
II
 
Those things in mind–the place of the story just before Palm Sunday, and the dual use of the word for “way”–let’s run through the story itself, remembering that the question for us today is the one Jesus asks Bartimaeus: What do you want me to do for you?
 
Jesus and his disciples are leaving Jericho accompanied by a large crowd. The blind beggar, Bartimaeus, knowing Jesus has been in town, sits by the road shouting, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” This may be his last chance. He is so desperate that he ignores those who tell him to shut up and cries out ever more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”
 
Bartimaeus is using one of the most exalted titles available to identify Jesus. The “Son of David” is the heir to the throne of David, Israel’s greatest king. He is to return to earth and lead an army to restore Israel to its rightful dominant place among the nations. From such a powerful and commanding king one like Bartimaeus can only beg for mercy.
 
Jesus hears Bartimaeus’s cry for mercy, and asks someone to call him. Someone from the crowd that had been trying to silence him apparently sees an opportunity here for Bartimaeus, and urges him to “take heart”–to have courage–because Jesus is willing to meet him. Bartimaeus excitedly throws off his cloak, springs up, and makes his way to Jesus, probably knocking over things and bumping into people along the path.
 
And then, before Jesus himself, he must answer one question from Jesus, “What do you want me to do for you?”
 
Stop here. What would you have said?
 
Our answer may seem obvious because we know how Bartimaeus answered. But what if we didn’t know that? I confess some broad contours of the kinds of things I might have said: Thank you for asking, Jesus. Please make people who pass by me more generous in their giving to me. (Better yet, give me a large inheritance from great aunt Sarah!) Please make people pay attention to me, and not always silence and ignore me. Help my muscles not get so stiff and sore from sitting on the side of the road all day. Please provide white canes and service dogs for blind folks right now; we shouldn’t have to wait thousands of years for such things, should we?
 
I think I’d have been too polite to ask Jesus for what I really lacked and wanted. After all, it would put him to the test, in front of his admiring crowd. Jesus might not think restoring sight to a guy like me was worth his effort; he might treat me like the fool I don’t ever want to seem to be…a fool for asking, a fool for believing, and a fool for trusting.
 
Besides, what would I do if I did get my sight back? If I were suddenly able to fend for myself, and not be dependent as I am now on others? I’d have to get a job, be productive, make a difference, and maybe care for someone else. I am not sure I want to go there and do that! I kind of like my personal Egypt, after all; it’s comfortable, it’s known.
 
When Jesus asks us, “What do you want me to do for you?” we better be ready to give an honest answer, a courageous answer, an answer from the heart.
 
The blind man says, “My teacher, let me see again.”
 
“Son of David” has become “my teacher.” Bartimaeus’s new title for Jesus seems to make the playing field they are both on a little more even. The exalted king has become, somehow in his mind, a personal instructor, mentor, teacher, trainer. Bartimaeus casts himself as Jesus’s disciple, his follower. He is a disciple, at least a would-be one, even as he asks Jesus for his sight!
 
Bartimaeus simply asks his teacher that he see again. Jesus invites Bartimaeus to go, for his faith has made him well. Bartimaeus own faith in Jesus his teacher gives him sight, and though Jesus bids him to leave, he instead follows Jesus “on the way.”
 
Bartimaeus’s request in response to Jesus’s question is specific, it is clear, it is verifiable. So, let me see again risks failure, risks change, risks disappointment. It is a request that does not wander into theories, get lost in abstractions, or wallow in what-ifs and maybes.
 
Jesus does exactly what Bartimaeus has asked, freeing the once-blind man to see and to choose to follow him. The story of the restoration of Bartimaeus’s sight is a story of his initiation into Jesus’ discipleship.
 
Which will have its ups and downs, and they will begin at once. The “big up” of Palm Sunday will be followed by the deep down of Good Friday will be followed by the really “big up” of Easter Sunday. All along the way, there will be opposition, danger, and resistance. Discipleship is not easy, and we have no knowledge of how long or how faithfully Bartimaeus followed Jesus’s way. We just know he made a start; we all know that making a start is the first thing we must be willing to do.
 
Is a positive response a sure thing when we ask Jesus directly for what we want and need? I wish I could promise that. Is a positive response such as Bartimaeus got from Jesus necessary in order to be a faithful disciple of Jesus? I hope that is not the case. Do we have to get exactly what we want if we are to follow him?
 
Although there is no instance in the gospels in which Jesus does not heal when asked, we know that, going back as far as Paul and his “thorn in the flesh,” not all approaches to Jesus for healing since then have come out as hoped. In fact, many have not.
 
Here is a take on the problem of unfulfilled expectations, of unanswered prayers, based on the example of Bartimaeus: Ask of Jesus what you truly want and need, but make every request in the context of your desire to follow him and to travel his way, knowing his way may not be your way.
 
We may pray to win the lottery if we want (and perhaps we will win!) but the more important question is, How will I employ whatever resources I have to walk the way of Jesus? And surely pray to Jesus for healing from illness or release from pain, but hold this question in your heart as well, Whether or not I receive the exact response I want, am I determined to live as Jesus lived for as long as I am able.
 
When we look beyond our seemingly immediate needs and wants to our desire to live the way of Jesus, our understanding of what we need will be modified, and however our wants are addressed, we will be satisfied. We will know we are traveling the way of Jesus, and that his way is the way of life, even in the face of death and disappointment.
 
This morning, in the face of horrible bloodshed in a house of worship and violence threatened and real throughout our land, we affirm again that the way of Jesus is the way of peace, of compassion, of healing, of forgiveness, and of change achieved by non-violent and respectful means. The way he did it.
 
What do you want Jesus to do for you?
 
However we answer that question in this community today, may we answer it in the full assurance that we are and desire forever to be Jesus’s faithful disciples. We are always walking his way…the way that Bartimaeus saw to walk.
 
Amen.