Provision

A sermon for Sunday, August 18, 2019

Would you pray with me?

Creator God, Gardener of us all, be with us here today. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

Last week, we talked about passages from the books of Hebrews and Isaiah, about how reading different passages in the Bible can cause us to challenge our definitions, and about what we mean when we talk about faith. We talked about how both patience and endurance, and accountability and action, are faithful responses to the world we live in. We did a lot of work understanding the context of the biblical scriptures, and how that changes how we read them.

Today, we’re still in Hebrews and Isaiah, so we won’t need to talk context as much for each of the scriptures. This means that we can talk a little more about our context. See, I follow three basic steps as I learn about what the Bible is telling me:

1.     I learn about the context of the passage.

2.     I figure out who I am in the passage.

3.     I discern how to apply the passage to my context.

It’s a context sandwich. It’s also a lot like a conversation: I figure out who’s talking to me, who they think I am, and what I should do with the information they’re sharing with me. This method is how I actively listen to what God is saying to me through scripture, in the same way that I actively listen to those around me. Because when you engage in conversation with another, it’s not enough to just listen to the words that are being spoken. You have to pay attention to who is saying them and what your relationship is with them before you can decide how to respond.

In many conversations, the work of listening is pretty easy. It’s come with practice. If you’re talking to a friend, a family member, a significant other, or someone you’re close to, you already know who they are and who they think you are. You know whether someone’s just teasing you about your tendency to be fifteen minutes late to everything or whether they’re actually concerned and you need to make a change.

A similar thing happens with the Bible. We feel like we know Jesus and we know that Jesus is talking to us in love when he tells us to remove the plank from our own eye before getting the speck out of our neighbor’s. There are some verses in the Bible that have a pretty clear application for our context.

But if we want to learn, and be pushed, and grow, then we have to reach out beyond familiar conversations and easy listening, in life and in the Bible. We have to listen to the stories of people who are different from us, either by talking to the people we encounter in our day-to-day life or by seeking out books, music, movies, and articles by people who don’t share the same background that we have. We grow by seeking out these interactions.

And we grow by digging into unfamiliar texts in the Bible, or by reading familiar texts with fresh eyes. This is when I apply my context sandwich, my three steps: I learn about the biblical context, I find my place in the passage, and I discern how to apply it to my context.

For me, this makes the Bible come alive. It’s no longer a book written primarily by men who lived a long time ago far away from me. It’s a whole library of stories and sermons and poetry and history and prophecy written by different people in different times, yes, but who still have something to say to me today, even though I’m separated by continents and centuries from them. I can sit down with Hagar or Rahab or Deborah or Tamar or Bathsheba or Phoebe or any of the Mary’s and learn from them, hear my story reflected in theirs and be encouraged or challenged by what they have to say to me. I can struggle alongside Cain or Jacob or Joseph or Jonathan or Nathan or Peter or Paul or Jesus. I can listen in wonder to what Isaiah or those who followed him had to say. I can weep along with Jeremiah. I can pray and praise and mourn and rebel and sing along with any of the psalmists. But I only get to experience these things if I listen to where the biblical writers are coming from, figure out who I’m most like in their stories, and then discern how what they’re saying applies to me today.

So, with all that in mind, let’s turn to Isaiah and see what he has for us this morning.

As we know from last week, Isaiah is a prophet in a nation on the brink of crisis. He’s seen the Assyrians conquer Israel and he’s worried that the Babylonians are coming for Judah. When he speaks a word from the Lord, he’s speaking it to those in power, those who have the capacity to turn things around. And this morning, he speaks a love song.

This is actually a common tactic among prophets, starting off with a story that draws the listeners in with pathos. Nathan does this with David. Amos does this with the entire nation of Israel. And Jesus actually does it, most notably in the parable of the Good Samaritan. And we, like Isaiah’s listeners, are drawn into this story. A man has planted a vineyard and he has done everything he should do: he picks the perfect place with the perfect soil, he clears away the stones that would inhibit growth, he even sets up a watchtower, so no one can come and raid his vineyard. He hews out a wine vat, so that he can press his wine on-site. He’s ready for this vineyard to yield. He’s invested in it.

And then, the bottom drops out. The grapes aren’t useable. They’re wild. The Hebrew here is בְּאֻשִׁים (be-oo-sheem), which can also mean stinking, worthless things. It’s not just that these are grapes that aren’t cultivated (after all, you can eat wild grapes if you find them out hiking, as long as you don’t confuse them for moonseed); it’s that they’re stinking, rotten on the vine.

The man pleads his case before the gathered listeners. “What am I to do?” the man says. “I did everything I could and yet my grapes are worthless.”

We, as the hearers in the court of public opinion, are meant to shake our heads. Must have had some bad seeds, we’re meant to say. You did everything right. Time to tear out that old growth and plant something new.

And the man reacts to that anticipated response. “I’ll tear this whole vineyard down!” the man says. “I’ll make it a waste. I won’t care for it at all. In fact, I’ll command the clouds not to rain on it!”

This is when you’re meant to start squirming in your seat. Who is this person, who says that he can command the rain? Maybe this isn’t the simple story we thought it was.

Isaiah comes out and says it. “For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting.”

Oh. Oh no.

The Lord has cared for Israel and Judah and they have not yielded what they were meant to. The Lord looked for מִשְׁפָּט֙ (mispat, justice) but got מִשְׂפָּ֔ח (mispah, oppression); The Lord looked for צְדָקָ֖ה (ts’dah’qah, righteousness) but heard instead צְעָקָֽה׃ (ts’a’quah, a cry for help).

Isaiah, in telling this story, is doing all he can to get his hearers to understand that they have not done what the Lord has asked them to do. He’s told them this heart-wrenching story. He’s even made a catchy saying, playing on words so people will remember them. He’s got a slogan. Mispat, justice, not mispah, oppression. Ts’dah’qah, righteousness, not ts’a’quah, a cry for help. It’s a speech that’s meant to send his listeners away with sorrowful hearts, hearts ready for change.

And now comes the difficult part for us. Who are we in Isaiah’s tale? Are we the planter? No, that’s God. Are we the storyteller? Well, not unless we’re feeling pretty prophetic. No, in this story, we’re meant to be the grapes. God planted us. God provided for us. And yet, we have not grown the fruit God needs. We participate in oppression, not justice. We drive people to need, not to righteousness. We were cultivated and cared for and we still grew up wild.

“No, no,” you might say. “I’ve been a Christian all my life. I can show you good fruit from my ministries. I’m not the one God wants to uproot. Isaiah’s talking to someone else.”

And this could be true. It could very much be that you, in your life, have earned your place among the cloud of witnesses that Hebrews talks about. God has made a different provision for you than what Isaiah is talking about. God has seen your faithful work and God will see to it in the eschaton, in the world to come.

But friends, today, I invite you not to rest in the assurance that you are already among the saints of God (not least of all because the writer of Hebrews tells us that even they do not receive their promise in this world). No, I invite you to sit in the uncomfortable knowledge that you have the potential to be wild grapes.

I know that there are parts of my life where God intended to grow goodness but God’s intentions weren’t cultivated in me. For many years of my life, God planted friendships, but I grew emotional distance instead. God planted patience, but I grew demanding. God planted justice, but I grew anxiety. God planted joy and endurance, but I grew despair.

It is up to you to figure out what God has planted in you that hasn’t grown. As people who live together in a community, a state, a nation, and a world, it is up to all of us to figure out what God planted in us that didn’t grow, and to change our ways accordingly. The story of the vineyard is a story of repentance, but repentance can only come when we’re aware of the problem. Our first reaction to hearing Isaiah’s prophetic words should be introspection. We have to look inside ourselves and see where what we have grown is outside of God’s desires for us. What grows in us that stops either ourselves or another from life and life abundant?

Now, it may also be that I’ve misread who you are in Isaiah’s story. You might not be the grapes planted that did not grow. You might be the people that suffered because the grapes didn’t grow. You might be the workers that didn’t get paid. You might be the wine seller who had nothing to sell. You might be the spouse or the children of those who could not provide for their houses because the grapes grew up wild. That is, of course, part of Isaiah’s story. Isaiah is raging at the leaders because there is suffering in the land, and suffering leads to weakness, and to being conquered, which only leads to more suffering. You might be the off-stage person that Isaiah is sticking up for.

There are many sides to every story.

But if you are, then the passage from Hebrews is especially for you, even if it broadly applies to all of us. Take encouragement that God has been faithful to others in the past, even as they have been faithful to God.

We can all take the message of Hebrews to heart, even as we investigate where we have not grown as God intended. No matter what, we are not alone. God never leaves us alone. Just as the saints who have gone before us, who have endured more than we ever hope to endure, God is with us. Not only that, but we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, including some who have charted the way from wild grapes to flourishing vineyard. It is up to us to listen to them, learn from them, and allow God to change our lives.

Amen.

By Faith

A sermon for Sunday, August 11, 2019

Would you pray with me?

God who is with us before, during, and after the great changes in our lives, thank you for bringing us to this time and this place. Be with us here today. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

These first few verses from Hebrews are astounding, aren’t they? “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

“Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval.

“By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.

“By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going.”

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. And we should have faith, the writer of Hebrews argues, because faith is how our ancestors in faith received approval from God. If we want to live life as God would have us live it, we need to have faith. Faith that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, that in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Faith that there is something more to this universe than the things that are seen. And faith like Abraham, who obeyed God’s call and who, because of his faithfulness, received an inheritance. It’s a powerful text, one that is challenging and dense with meaning.

As a student of physics, I love dense and challenging things. I am trained to break complicated things down into understandable pieces. Give me the parameters for a rocket launch and I will break that bad boy down into propulsion, air resistance, gravitational drag, wind speed, and orbital velocity. What I mean is that if you tell me where you want a rocket to go, I’ll look at every single thing affecting the rocket in order to make sure I understand what it will encounter along its journey. Not only that, but give me enough data and I’ll work on a theory that explains how every rocket launches.

So this dense and challenging passage from Hebrews fascinates me, especially since it falls in the same week in the lectionary as the Isaiah passage, one that contrasts it so completely. It brings up three questions for me:

·        What does the writer of Hebrews really mean when he or she talks about faith?

·        How can we break that down to find a definition of faith that works for both Hebrews and Isaiah?

·        What does it really look like for us to have faith here today, in the world that we live in, in 2019?

I’d like to tackle these three questions this morning because I think that, if we get through them, we’ll have not only a better idea of what faith means but also what we’re doing when we read the Bible. We’ll explore more about how we read the Bible in next week’s sermon and in the week after that, where we’ll continue to look at some contrasting passages in the lectionary.

So. What does the writer of Hebrews really mean when he or she talks about faith?

Well, the first thing to recognize is that Hebrews, even though we call it a letter, is actually a sermon. It’s not like the letters of Paul, where he writes to address specific issues or situations in specific churches, like the church in Rome or Corinth or Philippi or Ephesus. Hebrews is meant to be a single theological argument about what it means to be a Jewish Christian living in Jerusalem, someone who has a deep connection to the Jewish scriptures and also believes that Jesus is the Christ, the anointed one. The church in Jerusalem was being persecuted, as many of the early churches were, and the sermon is meant to encourage them to maintain their belief in Jesus.

Hebrews 11 and 12 is the climax of the sermon. It’s what we in the business call the Come to Jesus Moment. The author has built up an argument about how Jesus mediates between us and God, as a priest might, and that though Christ is no longer with us, we can still have faith in him and in our continued relationship with God. Faith, after all, is the conviction of things unseen.

And we know that we can have faith because we have seen what faith looks like in the lives of those who have gone before us. The writer of Hebrews leans into the story of Abraham and Sarah, and the other patriarchs and matriarchs, to show them as exemplars of what it means to have faith in things unseen. And it’s hard to find a better example than Abraham, who followed a God he could not see into a country he did not know in hopes of forming a family he didn’t think was possible. In all things, Abraham believed in what he had not seen, but what he hoped for.

Now, the writer of Hebrews is using rhetoric here to make a point. They’re telling part of a well-known story in order to get others to follow along with their point. The writer of Hebrews, writing to a persecuted community on the verge of losing faith, asks them to remember a hero of their faith.

But Abraham, as we all know, wasn’t always a paragon of faith. He trusts that God will give him an heir through his wife, Sarah, all the way until their journey led them to Egypt, where Abraham traded Sarah to pharaoh in exchange for his safety. (Genesis 12) He trusts that God will give him an heir through Sarah until Sarah reminds him that she is unable to have children and gives him her slave, Hagar, to make heirs with in her stead. (Genesis 16) Abraham trusts that God will give him an heir through Sarah until God asks him to kill Isaac, his son with Sarah. (Genesis 22) Abraham over and over again through his saga, fails to believe that God is faithful to fulfil promises and instead takes things into his own hands. Sure, in the end, he trusts God and, in the end, the promise is fulfilled, but along the way, Abraham’s faith falters, and Sarah, Hagar, and Isaac are hurt because of it.

Still, Abraham does have his moments and the promise does come through in the end, and so the writer of Hebrews uses him as an example. Abraham hopes in a promise that will be fulfilled, even if that promise has no evidential proof, and that, for the author of Hebrews, is faith.

Hoping in a promise without physical proof is a fine enough definition of faith, but the writer of Hebrews adds another stipulation into our theory of faith: We know our faith is true because it is confirmed with the faith of those who have gone before us.

Now, an easy way to test a theory is to push it toward its edges. We do this in physics by seeing how a model trends as it approaches infinity or zero. If there are problems with your equations or how you've conceptualized, how you've thought about, the problem, they might show up when you push a theory to its limits. And out of our lectionary texts this week, Hebrews and Isaiah are at opposite edges. Hebrews is meant to exhort people who are going through a difficult time into continued faith by making a dense theological argument. Isaiah is... yelling at the people with power because it's clear they're not doing what they're supposed to do.

Isaiah was written during one of the most crucial and chaotic periods in the history of Israel: the Babylonian Exile. The whole book is actually likely by three different authors, with the first writing before the Exile, the second during, and the third after the return from exile.

Now, how many of you have heard of the Babylonian Exile before?

I didn't hear about it until I took a Hebrew Bible class in college, but it's deeply important for understanding the Old Testament. A quick history:

·        King David unites all the disparate tribes in Israel into one kingdom. That lasts through his son Solomon's rule, and then Israel splits into the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah.

·        All is fine, more or less, until the northern kingdom of Israel is taken over by the Assyrian Empire but the southern kingdom of Judah still stands.

·        However, having just seen Israel conquered, people in Judah are able to see the signs of history repeating itself, only this time with the Babylonian Empire instead of the Assyrians. (This is where our passage comes in today.)

·        Judah ends up conquered by the Babylonians and the elite are taken into exile in Babylon. Most of the Old Testament is written, organized, or rewritten during the Exile.

·        Eventually, the Persian Empire comes in, defeats the Babylonians, and allows the exiles to return to Israel.

(For a full timeline, with links to descriptions of some of these events, click here.)

The Babylonian Exile is a tragedy that affects the whole Old Testament. It'll come up again and again as we seek to understand the biblical authors, which is why we’re talking about it now. But our passage this morning comes from before the Exile, as Isaiah is seeing the signs that tragedy might happen again.

And so, Isaiah speaks a word from the Lord to the people in charge: don't think you're comfortable because you have the faith of those before you to rely on. The living faith that Abraham had is, in the time of Isaiah, reduced to ceremonies at the Temple in Jerusalem. The most vulnerable amongst them, the orphan and the widow, aren't being cared for. And Isaiah tells those in power that God is weary of what they’re doing. God despises it.

Here's the thing about Isaiah: in Isaiah’s tine, they have the land. They have the inheritance. The promise that Abraham was holding onto faith for, it's completely fulfilled on their time. And Isaiah thinks they're squandering it.

For Isaiah, it's not just enough to "keep the faith" of those who went before. It's not enough to do the right things in the ceremony. (As a pastor who just preached for a month on liturgy and how we do our ceremonies, I feel convicted right now.) You can't just believe right and worship in the temple right: you have to live right.

Our definition from Hebrews needs some refining. Our faith is not only hope in things unseen, confirmed by our having faith like Abraham. We must have that hope and work to make it a reality.

See, Isaiah still has a hope for things unseen. Isaiah is speaking by faith about faith for his time, just as the author of Hebrews is for theirs. In Hebrews, the author tells her or his audience to have faith, that they might see what it's like when God reign is on earth as it is in heaven. Isaiah is hoping for that same kind of future, where God's peace reigns over all creation and all promises are fulfilled. For Isaiah, though, we don't have to wait for those promises to be fulfilled. We don't have to wait for anymore restoration. We can choose to live now as if God's reign were already here.

(To be totally fair to the writer of Hebrews, he or she also believes that our actions matter, but there are other, more immediate concerns for that community.)

So, then, faith is believing in things not seen, specially trusting God to fulfil God's promises. The faith we have is the type of faith evidenced by those who came before us in the faith and lived out in our lives. By faith, we play a part in God’s promises coming to life. 

Where does that leave us, here today?

Well, I think it opens some doors for us to look our lives and the lives of others in a more complicated way. Our theory is more robust, we might say. Because we expanded our definition, it can apply to a wider variety of situations in order to help us understand them. We can see other Christians living out their faith differently than we do and still trust that they have the same faith we do.

Sometimes, faith looks like clinging to promises. Sometimes that's all we can do. When life is overwhelming, when the world has taken more than it gave us, we hope for and trust in God's promises as we endure, as the early church in Jerusalem did.

But sometimes, faith looks like action. By faith, Abraham went. By faith, Abraham followed God to a land of promise, not just for him, but for the people who came after him. And no, he didn't always get it right. He wasn't always as faithful as we would hope that he would be. But he acted. And, if we're listening to Isaiah, action looks like caring for the least and calling for leaders to do the same.

Both are faithful paths. Sometimes God comforts us and sometimes God challenges us. But the paths are faithful to God only when the thing unseen that we are hoping for is the reign of God, where justice, goodness, and wholeness are the order of the day. Centuries apart from one another, Isaiah and Hebrews look toward that same future, when no one can claim domination or supremacy over another, when all are restored to their promised inheritance, and when everyone loves God, their neighbor, and themselves. They respond to their faith in that future however they can, either simply in hope because of their need or in action because of their ability.

There will come a day when, as Julian of Norwich says, “All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.” It is not here yet, but we have faith in it, hoping for this thing unseen, working for the day that it will be visible to all.

Amen.

Bread and Cup

A sermon for Sunday, August 4, 2019

Would you pray with me?

Living God, we trust that you meet us here and now. Be with us as we come to find you in light, word, water, bread, and cup. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

We have arrived at our final sermon in our series on the five symbols we use in worship. We’ve talked about light, word, and water, and today’s a two-fer: bread and cup. We’ve talked about why we light candles in worship, why we keep Bibles around, why we use water, and today, we’ll talk about why we set a table and eat during church.

Now, I love communion. That’s why I saved bread and cup for last. But it wasn’t always this way. I still remember the look on my college pastor's face when I told him that I thought communion was pointless. "Baptism I get," I told him, "but I don't understand why we waste our time on communion." He was flabbergasted, to say the least. 

Now, I've been raised a Methodist my whole life, baptized and confirmed, but for a long time, communion was mostly an inconvenience for me. It was the Sunday once a quarter where church went over by at least 15 minutes, and when I did my usual move of sneaking out at the beginning of the last hymn to tell my mother in the nursery that it was time to get the kids ready for pickup, I would walk into a chaos. In those extra 15 minutes, the toddlers' pent up energy would bubble over and they would tear up the place. Communion Sunday for me meant dozens of extra toys to pick up and a late lunch. 

Now, when I went to college, communion started to mean something a little different because I started to volunteer as a communion server. I liked being useful for the communion part of the ceremony. I even learned--and this is important-- that if someone drops their bread in the cup, you don't go fishing after it, only to have to hold a grape-juice soaked bread in your hand while the rest of the line cycles by. Nope, you just let that bread float and get them a new piece of Jesus. 

But even after years of helping with communion, I still didn't understand why we had a snack during the service. I mean, I knew that we did it to remember Jesus, because he told us to, but outside of that, I didn't see much point to it. We remember Jesus every Sunday. It's kinda hard to forget him when we've got these big crosses up everywhere. Why waste time and money on grape juice and bakery bread?

Well, I could give you a long, theologically-dense and nuanced answer or I could give you the "mom" version of the answer ("Because Jesus told us to, that's why"), but what I really want to do is give you a few ways to understand the bread, cup, and what happens during communion. I want to talk about the bread of life, the cup of promise, and the presence of Christ. Some of it may sound new to you and some of it may fit right in with how you think about communion, but your job during the sermon this morning is to expand your idea of what communion might mean to you, whether you delight in coming forward to receive or whether you, like me, don’t really know why we do this.

So. Bread and cup are our symbols for this morning, but I think it’s important that we look at them separately, because that’s how Jesus’ first followers would have seen them. Let’s start with the bread.

Jesus’ last supper with the disciples was a Passover meal, the meal that Jewish people use to remember the flight from Egypt, when the angel of death, the bringer of the tenth and final plague, passed over the houses of the Hebrews who were enslaved in Egypt. (We find this story in Exodus 12.)

Now, meals are a much more fundamental part of Jewish ritual than they are for us Christians, I think. Don’t get me wrong, Methodists put on a good potluck and our community dinners here at Whittier are a sight to see, but as Christians, we don’t celebrate shabbat dinners together on Friday nights. We don’t feast together as a Christian community on our feast days.  We know how to gather over food, but we don’t understand why our gathering is sacred.

And so, we miss part of what Jesus means when he offers the bread and the cup after the meal. Because it was always understood that bread, when it’s mentioned in the Bible, means life. Bread is one of the simplest ways we as humans have learned to sustain ourselves. Nearly every culture has some form of bread that it’s developed over time, especially if it’s agrarian, if it’s learned how to farm. It might look different, but it’s there. And bread is a hearty food. It’s simple carbs, energy in a basic form, to give our bodies what we need to sustain work throughout the day.

That’s why the Hebrew people used unleavened bread on the night of the Passover. They already had bread in the making for the next day, because it was what they needed to survive the work they would be put through, but they didn’t have time to let it rise. The cycle of breadmaking was interrupted, the cycle of life was interrupted, on the day of the last plague in Egypt. When Jesus raises bread and breaks it, he is giving us the bread of interrupted life, the bread of life on the verge of freedom. When we eat this bread, we too are partaking in the bread of life interrupted, the bread of new life.

When we receive the bread, we’re receiving new life. We’re receiving what we need to in order to do the work that we’re called to do as Christians. This bread is the body of Christ, broken for us and for our salvation, yes, but it is also life-giving for us, broken so that we can share it. Jesus breaks into our lives, interrupts into our lives, and calls us to live differently. This is what we see over and over again in the gospels. Jesus doesn’t just leave us alone. He’s not a prophet with a word for us to follow but no way to follow it. Jesus gives us the bread of life interrupted, the bread of new life, so that we can be fed for the road ahead of us. And Jesus breaks the bread, that we might share it.

This is Jesus’ body, broken for you and for many. Take it. Eat it. Receive the sustenance, the new life, that you need so that you can give to others.

Bread of life, cup of promise.

The cup, in a way, is a little more straightforward, or, at least, our liturgy makes it feel straightforward. Jesus tells us that the wine in the cup is his blood, the blood of a new covenant, and we’re all pretty familiar with the history of blood and covenants.

Covenants are legally-binding agreements. What we find in Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Numbers are a series of terms on which God agrees to interact with Israel. Honor me, God says, above everything else that you want to put your trust in. Your own power, your own smarts, your own wealth, your alliances. None of those matter as much as me, God says. Don’t get caught up with the lies those peddling false idols will sell you. Money, Riches, Fame, Security, none of those idols compare to being in relationship with the living God. (Exodus 20:1-4) Honor those who came before you. (Exodus 20:12) Don’t murder, don’t misuse people for sex, don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t covet. (Exodus 20:13-17) Don’t let your rage overpower you—take only an eye for an eye, not a life, as the other people around you do. (Leviticus 24:19-21)

This is how the people of Israel covenanted to live with the Almighty as their God.

Covenants are sealed with blood. Covenants, when they’re broken, are mended with blood.

And so, the Church over the centuries has understood Jesus’ death on the cross as the beginning of a new covenant, sealed with his blood. The Church understands that Jesus brings us into another way of being with God, another set of promises between us and God.

God promises us life and life abundant.

God promises us freedom and power to resist all that’s wrong in this world.

God promises us community.

God promises to bring together people from all over this world who seek to live as Jesus taught us to live, people who want to love God and love their neighbors as themselves, people who have an unlimited idea of who their neighbor is and seek to be a neighbor to everyone who crosses their path.

In receiving the cup, we receive these promises from God. Not only that, but we renew our promise to live as Jesus taught us to live. That’s part of why we confess our sins before we come forward to receive, so that we can come with a clean slate to take part in God’s promise.

This is Jesus’ blood, the blood of the new covenant, poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of the things we have done that have broken our covenant. Receive it. Receive God’s new promises to you and in return, give your promises to God.

Bread of life, cup of promise, presence of Jesus.

Now, this part does get theological. Not apologizing, just giving you a heads up. We Methodists, despite having gotten used to doing communion once a quarter, actually have a lovely theology about communion. We don’t get into the weeds of the debate over whether the bread and cup become the actual body and blood of Christ, as the Catholics believe, or whether Christ is above and below and in front of behind and to the left and right and in the bread and cup, as Lutherans do. We don’t do transubstantiation or consubstantiation. We believe in real presence. (Read more by clicking here.)

Real presence means that when we have communion, Jesus shows up.  

When we receive the bread of life and the cup of promise, Jesus is here in a way that we don’t experience at any other time. Communion is where we meet Jesus. Jesus meets us in the bread and in the cup.

That is what I was missing when I sassed off to my college pastor ten years ago. I did not know that Jesus was just as present here as he is in the sunlight of a beautiful morning or the story of the woman who reaches out for the hem of his cloak or the water of the mountain’s bending rivers. I did not know that just as we can be reminded of God in a visceral way through light, word, and water, Jesus meets us here, in bread and cup, in the promise and sustenance of new life.

This too is why we repent before we come to the table. Who wants to meet Jesus when they’re holding a grudge against their sibling in Christ? Who wants to meet Jesus with regrets on their hearts? Who wants to come meet Jesus while still dragging the guilt of their mistakes and the harm they’ve caused others behind them? This is what Paul is arguing against when he talks to the Corinthians. Don’t gather together as if one sibling in Christ doesn’t matter to you. Instead, join together and let there be no excuse for bad blood between you, for in this meal, you meet Christ.

More than that, this is when we get to interact with the other members of the Body of Christ, not just those who are here with us this morning but also those who are far from us and those who have gone on before. Those saints who led you to faith join you each time you come to the table. More than that, those who will one day think of you as saints meet you here as well. The Body of Christ gathers at the table, before being broken once again to be sent back out into the world, blessed by covenant of God’s grace.

And I believe that this is true. I believe that when I receive communion, I am not only connected to my savior, but I’m connected to the twelve who followed him, to the women who supported him and told about him, to Paul and the early generations who spread the gospel, to the saints throughout the centuries, even to the present day. I’m connected to my first-grade Sunday School teacher, who died last week, and to the kids that I picked up after in the nursery. I’m connected to my grandmother and grandfather who did all they could to raise three powerful women who had families of their own and I’m connected to families that I haven’t even met yet. I’m connected to my college pastor who opened my eyes to new ways of understanding the faith and I’m connected to those who I hope to speak a new word to in the days to come. I’m connected to you all this morning and to every new soul who will walk into this church and experience Christ through the love and care that y’all give. In receiving the bread and the cup, I am connected to the Body of Christ in a real and powerful way. And so are you.

The body of Christ, the bread of life interrupted, the bread of new life.

The blood of Christ, the cup of new promises.  

The presence of Jesus and all who are gathered with him.

I want you to remember these things when you come forward in a few minutes. Because what happens at the table is not some esoteric theological debate. It is the gift of life that gives you the strength you need to live as Christ calls you to live. It is the promise God will be with you and that you will seek to be with God. It is the presence of the living God and all who Christ has touched.

It is new life and all you need to live it.

Amen.

Water

A sermon for Sunday, July 28, 2019

Would you pray with me?

God, giver of life, thank you for bringing us to this time and this place. Be with us here today. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

We are entering the home stretch on our sermon series about the symbols we use in worship. If you remember, we’ve talked about light and word and now we’re on to water, before we tackle bread and cup next week.

When you think of water in worship, you immediately think of baptism, right? A friend of mine, who works at an Episcopal Church, sent me this picture this week, with the comment, “At least we know the bug is in heaven now.”

Photo by Grace Kreher

If you look, you can see it had gotten into the baptismal font and died, making it a holy bug, if a dead one.

Now, that’s not what we, as United Methodists, actually believe about baptism. It’s not your ticket to heaven. There’s nothing magical about the water we use or the place we keep the water. It’s important, don’t get me wrong, but not magic.

We believe the sacraments, baptism and communion, are outward signs of an inward grace. Augustine said that first, in the early centuries of the church, and it’s stuck around since. What we do in baptism and communion, how we use our symbols of water, bread, and cup, don’t fundamentally change the water, bread, or cup, but it does remind us of a change that God has brought about in us.

And in light of that, water is the perfect symbol to remind us of the new life God is shaping and forming in us. When we think of water, we tend to think of the water that is outside of us: rivers, lakes, creeks, streams, oceans, the rain. We sometimes forget that we’re made of water too. Just as there is water out in the world, shaping and forming landscapes, enabling life, there is also water inside of us, essential to our lives. And just as water works outside and inside of us, so does God.

Water is essential for life as we know it. When we look for planets in other solar systems that might be capable of sustaining life, potentially habitable planets, we look for Earth-sized rocky planets in what we call the Goldilocks Zone—the range around a parent star where it’s not too hot and not too cold for liquid water. Venus and Mars are actually on the edge of the Goldilocks Zone in our solar system and that’s why evidence of water on Mars makes the news: where there’s water, there’s the potential for life. We think Mars may have had liquid water oceans until its atmosphere thinned and the water evaporated. There’s a chance that Mars was a watery planet for millions of years. It’s enough to get our imaginations going because we know that where there’s water, there’s a chance of life.

That’s something that the Biblical writers knew as well. We find the idea that water means life throughout the Old Testament and into the New, but it first makes its appearance in Genesis 1. “In the beginning when God began creating 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.” “The Spirit moved upon the face of the waters,” the King James says. The Hebrew word is actually closest to hovering or brooding, like a hen over her eggs. The Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters, where life is about to spark from.

Now that’s interesting, isn’t it? God hasn’t made anything yet. No light, no land, no life, but there are waters?

To find the answer to that, you actually have to look at the Babylonian creation story, the Enuma Elish. In it, the storm god Marduk defeats the water goddess of chaos, Tiamat, and uses her body to make the world.

The Hebrew word for deep, תְה֑וֹם (te-hom, or in the plural, תְּהֹמֹ֖ת (te-ho-mat)), is close enough to Tiamat that some scholars think the writer of Genesis 1 was making a point. See, Marduk, the Babylonian god, has to fight Tiamat and kill her. It’s a violent struggle for dominance. But here, in Genesis, all our God has to do is hover and speak and the chaotic waters obey. Our God doesn’t have to use violence to make the world. All our God needs is breath and the Word.

And then, creation begins.

It’s a beautiful story, even if it doesn’t pan out with how we understand the world. The Hebrew worldview is that water is primordial, before everything, but we know that the Sun and the Earth existed long before water cooled on the surface of the Earth. There’s also the business of the domes on the second day. The writer of Genesis tells us that there’s a dome above us, keeping waters above us at bay, and a dome below us, keeping waters below us down. When it rains, holes have opened up in the upper dome and when we draw up water from a well, that’s a hole in the bottom dome. The earth is held up by pillars. It’s a different picture than we’re used to, right?

Like I said a couple weeks ago, Genesis isn’t a science textbook, nor was it meant to be. Genesis 1 is actually a poem, with verses, stanzas, and a parallel structure to make it easier to memorize. It’s a story about what we understand God to do in the world. God speaks light into existence on the first day, then separates the waters into sky and sea on the second, then brings vegetation on the third. On the fourth, we’re back to light again, where God makes the Sun and the Moon, then on the fifth, the birds of the sky and the creatures of the sea, and on the sixth, we’re back to the land, where creatures begin to live on the land.

So what should we notice from this?

Well, what jumps out at me first is that the picture of God is not some warrior entrenched in a battle from time immemorial with evil. God is above that. And God has an order for creation. God sets the scene and then brings life into it. And third, God has the land and the waters and the sky participate in creation. We see in verses 20 and 21: “And God said, ‘Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.’ So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind.”

Where there is water, there is life.

And, lest we get too proud of our scientific knowledge, let’s remember that we know more about what’s in outer space than we do about the depths of our own oceans. I think Genesis 1 holds a truth for us. There is deep in our world, places where everything seems dark and chaotic, where creatures like the anglerfish are the norm. That is what te-hom is. That is what God hovers over at the beginning. But then, God brings light and life. God takes that which was formless and dangerous and lifeless and brings a world out of it, a world that continues to change and grow and evolve. And that world is entirely dependent on water, the substance that God transformed from chaos into life.

Of course, the Old Testament’s discussion of water doesn’t begin and end with Genesis 1. Rivers flow out of Eden in Genesis 2, the rivers that make the Fertile Crescent such a vibrant place for humans to thrive. There’s the cleansing waters of the flood, where the earth was given a new start. And every patriarch left and right is seen building a well. That’s even true for Hagar, the woman that Sarai had enslaved who bore Abraham’s child, Ishmael. Hagar is the only woman in the Old Testament to receive a theophany, an experience of God appearing to her, and it happens by a spring in the desert, which is later enshrined as a well.

Where there is water, there is life.

It makes sense, then, that we find Jesus sitting by a well in our lesson from John today. It’s actually a well that was dug by Jacob, one of the patriarchs I mentioned before. But here, we see the distinction between physical water that gives physical life and living water that gives eternal life. See, this woman comes to the well in the middle of the day, when it’s hottest. We don’t always pick up on that, because we have indoor plumbing and we don’t have to go draw the water we need to survive, but it was a task that had to be done every day and as such, you would typically do it in the morning. The fact that this woman comes in the middle of the day means that she’s avoiding other people. There’s something shameful about her existence.

And then Jesus names it for us. She’s had five husbands and the man she’s with right now isn’t her husband. I think we’ve been trained to think of her as a woman who can’t keep a husband, but think again about the times in which she lived. Men didn’t always make it to twenty, much less thirty or forty. Maybe she’s not a woman who struggles with faithfulness. Maybe she’s a widow five times over. And maybe the man who has taken her in wouldn’t marry her. After all that loss, she’s stuck living on whatever others will give her. Maybe this man won’t even give her the dignity of marriage, and the shame of that is what brings her to the well at the hottest part of the day.

And yet, this is the person who Jesus offers living water, new abundant life, to, the person who he reveals his messiahship to, a woman in desperate need of new life, of someone to see her as God had seen Hagar by a well all those years ago. Jesus sees this woman and knows who she is and offers her a new life as the one who would tell her entire village about Jesus. Jesus takes her from a tired woman, asking how it is that Jesus can change anything, to the first person to proclaim Jesus as the Messiah.

When we use water in worship, we use it with this double-meaning, as the water that gives our bodies life and the water that brings new life to our souls. Yes, it is a life-giving part of the creation we’ve been entrusted with but it also symbolizes for us our new life in Christ. Water cleans us and water revives us.

Now, I said before, there’s nothing magical about this water. It’s an outward sign of an inward grace. As United Methodists, we believe in a thing called prevenient grace, the grace which goes before us, the grace that works in our life to turn us toward God even before we know it. I think prevenient grace reaches us often through nature, through God’s general revelation to us. The joy and wonder we feel at creation can aim us back toward God. And since we believe that God is at work in our lives even before we know it, we baptize infants, trusting that God will work a new life in them throughout their lives. Baptism for us is a sign that God’s promise of new life is true and is working in us.

If we were baptized as babies, though, we have to claim that promise for ourselves as we grow up. That’s what confirmation is for, which I understand y’all just had a class go through. It’s claiming the promise of new life through Christ and understanding what that means. John the Baptist’s baptism was to clean people of their sins so that they would be prepared for the coming of the Lord, but the baptism that we Christians do is a sign not only that we are free from the things that keep us from God but also that God is working a new creation, new life in us.

In a minute, we’re going to turn to the renewal of baptism service. Martin Luther, when he found himself in the midst of a struggle, would say to himself, “Martin, remember that you are baptized!” and found that this assurance helped quell any of the damaging thoughts he was experiencing. Today, we’re going to remember our baptisms and the promises that were made for us, or that we made for ourselves, that we might remember the grace that God has given us to go through this world.

And it is astounding what God has given to us, considering that we’re made of water and dirt. We humans are mudpies that can walk and talk. But despite our limitations, despite our contingency, we are capable of marvelous things through the new life Christ draws for us. Baptism has always been a part of that new life for us Christians. I know that it’s been a large part of my life as a Christian, and my call to ministry.

If you weren’t baptized United Methodist or if you haven’t been baptized at all, I invite you follow along with the renewal service and speak what feels true to you, to see if these promises are ones that you want to keep as well. I think our baptismal promises take very seriously the harm we’re capable of and the freedom and power God gives us in the face of that harm. In baptism, God’s grace works within us and the waters of creation begin their work again, bringing newness in our lives in places that we thought were dark and lifeless. And that is a good and joyful thing. Amen? Amen.

Introduction to the Baptismal Renewal Service

We did a baptismal renewal service at Wesley, the seminary I went to, at the end of our orientation. We said words similar to what we’re about to say and at the end, there was the expectation that we would all go up and dip our fingers in the font and remember our baptism.

And I did. not. want. to go.

For me, in that moment, going up to the font meant admitting to all that God had been doing in my life since the pastor splashed me with entirely too much water when I was three, being baptized with both of my brothers. God had been shaping and forming me and quietly but insistently calling me toward ministry and I was teetering on the edge of not wanting any part of that. The church can be a challenging place to be, and though we love our siblings in Christ, we can also be agitated or angered or hurt by them, sometimes without any chance at reconciliation. Listening to God’s call to serve the church through ministry can be hard when the church is shouting so loudly about so many things that have nothing to do with our call to live gospel-guided lives.

I stood in the back at that baptismal renewal at Wesley, wondering if anyone would notice if I didn’t go up. Eventually, though, I got in line, shuffling my feet the entire time. As I approached the font, I felt all of my unsureness go away. I felt, for the first time in a long time, that God’s grace was actually working in my life and that this was a step toward the new life that God longed for for me. I didn’t dip my hands in the bowl; I splashed in it, spilling the water from the bowl onto the concrete of the courtyard. I went to receive a blessing from the faculty with my hands soaking and my heart full.

So I invite you, even if you’re unsure, even if you don’t think that even God can bring you joy to your life in this world, to come up to the font. You never know what God will do in your heart in the line on the way up. Where there is water, there is life, and I invite you to come a seek that life abundant for yourself this morning.