Mark 1:14-20; Jonah 3:1-5, 10; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31
Mark begins like an alarm clock, persistently declaring the time and demanding a response.(1) “The beginning of the good news,” Mark declares: Jesus fulfills the prophecy. Then there is the new Elijah – John the Baptist – announcing not himself but the one who was coming. Like Elijah castigating Ahab, Jezebel, and their minions, John calls out everyone in Judea and Jerusalem to confess their sins and be baptized, not just into repentance but also into the hope of the one who was coming.
Then there is the time when heaven is split open and the Spirit descends on Jesus, who hears the voice of divine affirmation: “You are my Son, whom I dearly love; in you I find happiness.” That is followed with the forty-day time in the wilderness as the Spirit and the Adversary spar over Jesus.
We are thrust forward to a time after John had been arrested. The preparation he announced was over before it was scarcely understood. The Spirit-anointed, Adversary-tested Jesus comes out of the shadows: “Now is the time! Here comes God’s kingdom!” Jesus doesn’t just announce the time, he fulfills it in person, in word, in deed.
It’s no wonder that as the days passed neighbors, family members, and religious professionals were transfixed and aghast that so common a man, so ordinary an individual whom many of them had known since toddlerhood, could speak truth with a story-teller’s skillful use of familiar images, and do it with mind-stretching authority.
His announcement wasn’t a question of going somewhere and doing something, an exercise which could be fended off with excuses galore, like the neighbors did when invited to the banquet in one of Jesus’ parables. Jesus was literally “in your face,” demanding an immediate response. When I was a child we used to suddenly snap our fingers or clap our hands in someone’s face, while saying, “Think fast.” Jesus’ encountering of anyone was a “think fast” moment.
“Repent,” “believe,” “follow,” “fish” – these aren’t timeless ethical imperatives. Repenting, believing, following, fishing are “think fast” responses to the fullness of God’s time intersecting the emptiness of human time.
There is a set order to what Jesus announces. Yet so often congregations and individuals reverse the order. Congregations are often more interested in filling the empty seats, so they blindly and erratically fish. Too often the baited hooks come back empty.
Then when they actually get someone to follow, they lay out the method: We’ve always done it this way so don’t rock the boat. And they so drum that ideology into their catch that finally the newbies believe it and repent of having had any wild and crazy ideas that church could be done in any other way. It doesn’t make much sense, but then again, we’ve always done it that way.
But that’s not the way that Jesus laid out ministry. He said: Repent, believe, follow, fish. We can’t fish unless we know the one we are following. We can’t follow unless we believe the purpose for which he was sent and the one who sent him. We can’t believe unless we repent of every belief, every system, every self-deluding idea that we are the centers of our universes.
We do not repent in order to usher in the time of redemption, because that time is already here. We do not become fishers in order to meet some monthly quota as if we were salespeople on commission, as if meeting that quota will unlock the reign of God. The reign of God is already here. We do not follow Jesus in hopes that one day we might find him, because he has already come and found us. God takes the initiative. The reign of God is not the product of discipleship, it’s the precondition for it.(2)
Repent, believe, follow, fish. That’s the sequence. Whether you realized it or not, that’s the sequence we follow every week. When the prelude starts, when the call to worship is spoken, that is the announcement that God’s reign has already arrived, that it is in our midst and that we are in the middle of it in this time and space.
After recognizing the kingdom’s presence, we repent. Our confession sweeps over a wide variety of sins – corporate and personal, deeds committed and words spoken, deeds and words omitted. We recognize that when we assuage our consciences with some minuscule response to another’s overt or ignorant sin, we affirm and enlarge, not mitigate, our complicity in such wrongful personal and societal behavior. Repentance is something that needs constant renewal. We do it every week.
Repentance is like spring cleaning. It is moving out the old and worthless (no matter how much worth we have accorded it) and making room for the new. Repentance is jettisoning unbelief and mis-directed belief to make room for true belief. Following repentance, pardon, and thanksgiving for God’s grace lavished on us, we turn to belief as it is nurtured in scripture and exposition.
The purpose of sermons is not to confirm narrow belief and to comfort us in small belief. The Word is read and proclaimed to stretch and expand and enlarge belief, to inspire us in our following, to fit us for the hard work of being God’s people in a culture for which God is either a under-inflated concept or a “four-letter” word.
Repenting, believing, following. We follow in prayer, in serving each other, in providing for the needs of Christ in the world far away, the world near at hand – our community, and the world of God’s people gathered in this place. We follow Jesus as he roamed through neighborhoods of immigrants and foreigners, as he walked the back alleys of his own native settlements, as he ate with tax collectors, prostitutes, people in broken relationships, people neglected, ostracized, segregated, and debased by supposedly God-fearing people. We follow Jesus by walking where Jesus walked.
And finally we fish. “Go out into the world in peace; be courageous; hold on to what is good; return no one evil for evil; strengthen the fainthearted; support the weak, and help the suffering; honor all people; love and serve the Lord, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit.”
When Jesus called the first disciples, when he called any disciples, the call came out of the announcement of the in-breaking of God’s reign. Discipleship was not another task to burden already overworked people. Jesus called them to new ways of being.
When Simon and Andrew left their nets, they left a way of life. James and John not only left their nets, but also their father. These four, and the ones who would come after them, left behind a whole complex matrix of work, family, and place into order to take up a new identity.(3)
The words seem simple: “I will show you how to fish for people.” Notice the subtlety of the language. Not “make you fish for people” – another activity to enter into the date book (“How about the every third Thursday? Does that fit everyone’s schedule?”) Jesus will show us how to fish for people. It is a new identity, a new career, a whole new life a cosmic career change.
The irony is that Jesus doesn’t ask us to bait hooks in order to catch unsuspecting people and reel them into the church. The new identity, the new career is really one of being the bait. By living a life in the here and now of God’s reign, of repenting any and every aspect of our thinking and living that denies God, by believing the good news of salvation made alive in the flesh and blood of Christ and confirmed in his resurrection, and by going into the same kinds of neighborhoods, life situations, and relationships that Jesus did, we become living examples of life that people are hungering for. “Tell me about what makes you tick.” “Why do you respond to all that life throws at you the way you do?” “Why are you so hope-filled when there is nothing around you to support it?” These kinds of questions open us ways of speaking from the heart about Christ’s presence and power in our lives.
The disciples experienced a cosmic career change. They could no longer fish for fish. They had forgotten how. In one post-resurrection appearance, Jesus had to tell the disciples which side of the boat to fish out of (John 21:5-6).
Friends, Now is the time. The reign of God is here. Repent, believe, follow, fish. It’s a cosmic career change that will change your life forever.
(1) Ted A. Smith “Mark 1:14-20 – Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), Year B, vol. 1, p. 285.
(2) Ibid.
(3) Ibid.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Sunday, January 25, 2015
Sunday, January 11, 2015
Our Brokenness Is Mended
Acts 19:1-7; Genesis 1:1-5; Mark 1:4-11
Your remember the nursery rhyme:
My mother loved decorative porcelain pieces, especially flowers. When I studied in Scotland I found a wonderful Royal Crown Staffordshire bouquet of bright flowers in a small bowl. The sales assistant packed it securely and I personally carried the box on the flight home. It got home safely and Mom enjoyed it. After her death, I took it back and we had it for a number of years. One day it was sitting – safely we thought – on top of the filing cabinet. One of our cats got on the cabinet, misstepped, and the flowers hit the floor. Several of the flower stems broke and while some of the petals were irreparable, I thought I could glue the stems back together to make the more or less arrangement whole again. I tried one thing and another, but nothing worked. It couldn’t be mended, not by me anyway. I put it in the closet for years. It was not longer beautiful and the memory was too painful. I finally threw it out.
Lives get broken. We can’t mend ourselves. As counselors tell us, we are never cured but always in recovery, whether from an addiction that eats away at our body or mind or from a trauma which causes what is now diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder.
Only a few chapters after the Genesis creation story the wholeness of life was broken by envy, disobedience, lying, blaming, betraying, and murder. Life was broken and it would never be the same. The rest of the Bible is about trying to mend the brokenness of human life.
The Japanese have an art form that not only repairs shattered pottery, it also enhances and illuminates the cracks with a lacquer laced with gold. The artists do this when a precious piece of pottery has been broken. After mixing lacquer resin with powdered gold, they use the resin to put the broken pieces together. What they end up with is a pot with cracks in it, but the cracks are filled with gold.
They call it kintsukuroi (keen-tsoo-koo-roy). Golden repair.
Such restoration creates a gorgeous piece of art and makes a philosophical statement as well. Kintsukuroi asserts that breakage and repair is part of the unique history of an object, rather than something to deny or disguise.
Each of us needs more golden repair in our lives, because we so often hide our brokenness. A friend hurts us deeply, and we retreat inside ourselves. We lose a job or suffer a pay cut, and pretend like everything is really okay. A spouse abuses us, but we never speak up. We sense that we have a drinking problem, but feel too embarrassed to ask for help. A marriage begins with intimacy and anticipation, and ends with alienation and anger. Add your own life breakages to the list.
Life breaks us, in a variety of painful ways. And unfortunately we often deny it. We would rather disguise our cracks than undergo golden repair. We would rather put ourselves in a closet, like I did with the broken porcelain flowers. Only our closet is constructed of denial, fear or shame. We would rather do that than admit our helplessness and our need for golden repair, God’s repair. God practices “kintsukuroi Christianity.”
In Acts, the apostle Paul traveled to Ephesus in Asia Minor – modern-day Turkey. He found twelve disciples there, and asked them if they had received the Holy Spirit when they became believers. They replied, “We’ve not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”
These disciples might not be broken, but they clearly have some cracks. Not only had they not received the Holy Spirit, they didn't even know that it existed!
Paul was perplexed. He asked, “What baptism did you receive, then?” They answered, “John’s baptism.” Paul then understood that they needed some golden repair, some “kintsukuroi Christianity.”
Paul told them that John’s baptism was for repentance to get ready for the one who was to come after him, that is, Jesus. Paul knew that John baptized with water, while Jesus baptized “with the Holy Spirit and fire” (Luke 3:16).
The disciples were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, and when Paul laid hands on them the Holy Spirit entered them. Immediately, they spoke in tongues and prophesied, just like the first Christians on the day of Pentecost.
The gift of the Holy Spirit – that’s pure gold! Suddenly, the gaps in the lives of these disciples were filled, and they were made whole as disciples of Jesus. But notice that there was no attempt to deny or disguise their deficiencies. Instead, God filled their cracks with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, making them stronger and more beautiful in the broken places. That's golden repair. Kintsukuroi Christianity.
In the book Flickwerk: The Aesthetics of Mended Japanese Ceramics, Christy Bartlett writes that “not only is there no attempt to hide the damage, but the repair is literally illuminated.”(1) Not hidden. Not disguised. Illuminated.
Everyone has gaps and breaks in their lives – everyone has been shattered by some destructive experience, whether we brought it on ourselves or it happened to us while we were minding our own business. Mended Japanese ceramics inspire us to show compassionate sensitivity to the broken people around us, and compassionate sensitivity to ourselves as well.
Kintsukuroi Christianity can be defined this way: Whenever I am weak, then I am strong. Whenever I invite Christ to fill my breaks and cracks, then he works powerfully through me. When I am broken, Christ makes me whole.
Paul might express it in different words: When I am weak, I find strength in the presence of Christ. I know that he is making me stronger and more beautiful through his ongoing work of golden repair.
Several decades ago, just ten days after his son was killed in a car accident, the Reverend William Sloane Coffin delivered a sermon to his congregation at Riverside Church in New York City. He said, “As almost all of you know, a week ago last Monday night, driving in a terrible storm ... my 24-year-old son Alexander, who enjoyed beating his old man at every game and in every race, beat his father to the grave.
“Among the healing flood of letters that followed his death was one carrying this wonderful quote from the end of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms: ‘The world breaks everyone, then some become strong at the broken places.’ ”(2)
Friends, this font around which we gather every week, into which we pour simple water, over which we say the words, “In Jesus Christ, we are forgiven,” is the place where God affects the golden repair, kintsukuroi Christianity. It is here that the gaps between the pieces of our lives are filled with Holy Spirit, with hope, with illuminating radiance. Our brokenness is mended by God and our enhanced beauty is made visible.
Paul wrote the following to the Corinthian believers:
General Resource: “Kintsukuroi Christianity,” Homiletics, January 2015
(1) Bartlett, Christy, “A tearoom full of mended ceramics.” Flickwerk: The Aesthetics of Mended Japanese Ceramics, 2008, bachmaneckenstein.com.
(2) Coffin, William Sloane, “Eulogy for Alex.” NOW, pbs.org.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Your remember the nursery rhyme:
“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.Things get broken in life and they can’t be repaired.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s men and all the king’s horses
couldn’t put Humpty together again.”
My mother loved decorative porcelain pieces, especially flowers. When I studied in Scotland I found a wonderful Royal Crown Staffordshire bouquet of bright flowers in a small bowl. The sales assistant packed it securely and I personally carried the box on the flight home. It got home safely and Mom enjoyed it. After her death, I took it back and we had it for a number of years. One day it was sitting – safely we thought – on top of the filing cabinet. One of our cats got on the cabinet, misstepped, and the flowers hit the floor. Several of the flower stems broke and while some of the petals were irreparable, I thought I could glue the stems back together to make the more or less arrangement whole again. I tried one thing and another, but nothing worked. It couldn’t be mended, not by me anyway. I put it in the closet for years. It was not longer beautiful and the memory was too painful. I finally threw it out.
Lives get broken. We can’t mend ourselves. As counselors tell us, we are never cured but always in recovery, whether from an addiction that eats away at our body or mind or from a trauma which causes what is now diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder.
Only a few chapters after the Genesis creation story the wholeness of life was broken by envy, disobedience, lying, blaming, betraying, and murder. Life was broken and it would never be the same. The rest of the Bible is about trying to mend the brokenness of human life.
The Japanese have an art form that not only repairs shattered pottery, it also enhances and illuminates the cracks with a lacquer laced with gold. The artists do this when a precious piece of pottery has been broken. After mixing lacquer resin with powdered gold, they use the resin to put the broken pieces together. What they end up with is a pot with cracks in it, but the cracks are filled with gold.
They call it kintsukuroi (keen-tsoo-koo-roy). Golden repair.
Such restoration creates a gorgeous piece of art and makes a philosophical statement as well. Kintsukuroi asserts that breakage and repair is part of the unique history of an object, rather than something to deny or disguise.
Each of us needs more golden repair in our lives, because we so often hide our brokenness. A friend hurts us deeply, and we retreat inside ourselves. We lose a job or suffer a pay cut, and pretend like everything is really okay. A spouse abuses us, but we never speak up. We sense that we have a drinking problem, but feel too embarrassed to ask for help. A marriage begins with intimacy and anticipation, and ends with alienation and anger. Add your own life breakages to the list.
Life breaks us, in a variety of painful ways. And unfortunately we often deny it. We would rather disguise our cracks than undergo golden repair. We would rather put ourselves in a closet, like I did with the broken porcelain flowers. Only our closet is constructed of denial, fear or shame. We would rather do that than admit our helplessness and our need for golden repair, God’s repair. God practices “kintsukuroi Christianity.”
In Acts, the apostle Paul traveled to Ephesus in Asia Minor – modern-day Turkey. He found twelve disciples there, and asked them if they had received the Holy Spirit when they became believers. They replied, “We’ve not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”
These disciples might not be broken, but they clearly have some cracks. Not only had they not received the Holy Spirit, they didn't even know that it existed!
Paul was perplexed. He asked, “What baptism did you receive, then?” They answered, “John’s baptism.” Paul then understood that they needed some golden repair, some “kintsukuroi Christianity.”
Paul told them that John’s baptism was for repentance to get ready for the one who was to come after him, that is, Jesus. Paul knew that John baptized with water, while Jesus baptized “with the Holy Spirit and fire” (Luke 3:16).
The disciples were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, and when Paul laid hands on them the Holy Spirit entered them. Immediately, they spoke in tongues and prophesied, just like the first Christians on the day of Pentecost.
The gift of the Holy Spirit – that’s pure gold! Suddenly, the gaps in the lives of these disciples were filled, and they were made whole as disciples of Jesus. But notice that there was no attempt to deny or disguise their deficiencies. Instead, God filled their cracks with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, making them stronger and more beautiful in the broken places. That's golden repair. Kintsukuroi Christianity.
In the book Flickwerk: The Aesthetics of Mended Japanese Ceramics, Christy Bartlett writes that “not only is there no attempt to hide the damage, but the repair is literally illuminated.”(1) Not hidden. Not disguised. Illuminated.
Everyone has gaps and breaks in their lives – everyone has been shattered by some destructive experience, whether we brought it on ourselves or it happened to us while we were minding our own business. Mended Japanese ceramics inspire us to show compassionate sensitivity to the broken people around us, and compassionate sensitivity to ourselves as well.
Kintsukuroi Christianity can be defined this way: Whenever I am weak, then I am strong. Whenever I invite Christ to fill my breaks and cracks, then he works powerfully through me. When I am broken, Christ makes me whole.
Paul might express it in different words: When I am weak, I find strength in the presence of Christ. I know that he is making me stronger and more beautiful through his ongoing work of golden repair.
Several decades ago, just ten days after his son was killed in a car accident, the Reverend William Sloane Coffin delivered a sermon to his congregation at Riverside Church in New York City. He said, “As almost all of you know, a week ago last Monday night, driving in a terrible storm ... my 24-year-old son Alexander, who enjoyed beating his old man at every game and in every race, beat his father to the grave.
“Among the healing flood of letters that followed his death was one carrying this wonderful quote from the end of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms: ‘The world breaks everyone, then some become strong at the broken places.’ ”(2)
Friends, this font around which we gather every week, into which we pour simple water, over which we say the words, “In Jesus Christ, we are forgiven,” is the place where God affects the golden repair, kintsukuroi Christianity. It is here that the gaps between the pieces of our lives are filled with Holy Spirit, with hope, with illuminating radiance. Our brokenness is mended by God and our enhanced beauty is made visible.
Paul wrote the following to the Corinthian believers:
“God said that light should shine out of the darkness. He is the same one who shone in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in clay pots so that the awesome power belongs to God and doesn’t come from us. We are experiencing all kinds of trouble, but we aren’t crushed. We are confused, but we aren’t depressed. We are harassed, but we aren’t abandoned. We are knocked down, but we aren’t knocked out.” (2 Corinthians 4:6-9)Friends, all who yearn for their brokenness to be mended, all who long for the gaps between the pieces of their lives to be filled with God’s golden repair, all who desire the power of the Holy Spirit to fill their weakness, all who thirst for the life which Christ offers, come to the water.
General Resource: “Kintsukuroi Christianity,” Homiletics, January 2015
(1) Bartlett, Christy, “A tearoom full of mended ceramics.” Flickwerk: The Aesthetics of Mended Japanese Ceramics, 2008, bachmaneckenstein.com.
(2) Coffin, William Sloane, “Eulogy for Alex.” NOW, pbs.org.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Sunday, January 4, 2015
Incarnated Disruption
John1:1-4, 10-18; Psalm 14712-20; Ephesians 1:9-14
Lots of people make New Year’s resolutions. Most lists of resolutions are more like wish lists than bucket lists. That is, they are hopes and dreams rather than things that will actually get accomplished. Most of us would be more honest if we were to say, for example, I hope to lose weight, or I hope to exercise more. A vast majority of those who make those wishes never accomplish them, for a variety of reasons.
In the vein of wishing, we often wish a lot for the new year. We wish for quiet, for strength, for peace, for goodwill. After all, that was a significant part of the message that the celestial chorus sang to the shepherds. Unfortunately, wishing won’t make it so.
An editorial cartoon this past week showed the traditional aged 2014 and the newborn 2015. 2014 says to 2015, “You’ll need a hazmat suit, riot gear, a gas mask, a bulletproof vest, Valium, antacid, aspirin....” As much as we hate to spoil all the promise of Christmas, the cartoon speaks the reality of living.
The gospel writer Matthew saw this reality, at least in the community he was associated with. Only his gospel records Jesus being openly provocative about his mission in the world. In the midst of a chapter-long disciple commissioning speech in Matthew 10, Jesus says to the disciples, “Don’t think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I haven’t come to bring peace but a sword” (vs. 34). That sword will force believers to choose between the comforts of the status quo, represented by family, and the challenge of untethered life in Christ. Will believers choose between a smooth life or a disrupted life?
In his own way, the gospel writer John, who eschewed angels, shepherds, mangers, and magi, sees the incarnation – the birth – of Jesus Christ in much the same way as Matthew. Everything that Jesus did wields a disruptive sword. The gospel of John, chapter by chapter, documents the disruption incarnated in Christ. This incarnated disruption is complete and it is contemporary.
“The word became flesh” (John 1:14). All creation is disrupted by the presence of Jesus. There had always been a safe divide between the divine and the human. The only intersection had been the annual entry into the holy of holies by the high priest with the blood sacrifice for the sins of the people committed in ignorance (Hebrews 9:3-7). God was always at a distance from the people behind a veil. Jesus disrupted the order of creation, bringing God into the midst of humanity.
After the wedding at Cana, Jesus went to Jerusalem for the Passover. There he “found in the temple those who were selling cattle, sheep, and doves, as well as those involved in exchanging currency” (v. 2:14). Jesus chased them all out of the temple, scattered the coins and overturned the tables. He disrupted the salvation economy by chastising those who, in the guise of convenience, took excessive advantage of those already burdened with travel, with occupation troops and laws, with fear of government and fear of God. Jesus wanted people to worship God, not the sacrifices which held God at arms’s length. Jesus disrupted the economy of the kingdom of God.
Nicodemus (ch. 3) came to Jesus in the dead of night seeking truth only to have his faith disrupted because he could not understand the difference between natural birth and spiritual birth – being born anew, from above. Faith had been grounded in what could be seen. God’s kingdom could only be seen by faith eyes, not human eyes.
Jesus left Judea (ch. 4) and wandered through Galilee and the surrounding countryside, some of it Gentile or Samaritan. He encountered a woman ostracized for a variety of reasons. He spoke with her, healed her downtrodden spirit, and disrupted the matter-of-fact norms of gender and race. She was a child of God on equal footing with every other child of God, regardless of origin, geography, or other form of social segregation and censure.
John spends chapter 5 recounting Jesus at the Bethsaida pool healing the man who had been chronically ill for thirty-eight years. This healing incensed the religious leaders because it was done on the Sabbath. The man had been ill for so long, why couldn’t the healing have waited for a weekday. Jesus disrupted the prevailing sense of justice, for justice delayed was justice denied. And to further disrupt justice, Jesus declared that it was his father, God, who was working through him. “As the Father raises the dead and gives life, so too does the Son give life to whomever he chooses” (v. 5:21). Justice is defined by God not human beings. “I assure you that whoever hears my word and believes in the one who sent me has eternal life” (v. 24).
Back in the country again, Jesus disrupted the traditional forms of planning and preparation when he told his disciples to sit the 5,000 person crowd down and feed them with the five barley loaves and two fish supplied by a youth (v. 6:9). When the disciples later asked what they had to do to accomplish what God required, Jesus responded, “Believe in him whom God sent” (v. 29). Belief cannot be planned or prepared for. Belief either is or isn’t.
On his next festival trip to Jerusalem (ch. 7), Jesus spent time teaching in the temple, astonishing the religious leaders who wondered how he had mastered the Law. Jesus did not claim the teaching as his own, but said it came from the one who sent him – God. “Those who speak in their own seek glory for themselves. Those who seek the glory of him who sent me are people of truth” (v. 18). Jesus disrupted the understood ways of education.
When the religious leaders sought to discredit Jesus by presenting an adulterous woman to him for judgment (v. 8:3), he disrupted the received morality of the time by directing that only those without sin could pass judgment on her. As that sank in, the crowd slithered away, guilty publicly and privately.
In chapter 9, Jesus encountered a man blind from birth. Jesus healed the man. Neighbors, strangers, and religious leaders all disputed the healing. Challenged by the religious leaders, the man declared, “I don’t know whether he [Jesus] is a sinner. Here’s what I do know: I was blind and now I see” (9:25). By healing the man Jesus disrupted an entire understanding of health care. Disease and disability did not come from sin, and healing did come from God: “If this man wasn’t from God, he couldn’t do this” (v. 33).
Jesus met the man following his expulsion from the faith community and the man declared his belief. Jesus said that he came “to exercise judgment so that those who don’t see can see and those who see will become blind” (v.39). Jesus then preached to the scoffing religious leaders about his being the sheepgate (v. 10:7) and the good shepherd (v. 11) who puts his own health on the line for the health of all of God’s children. Jesus disrupted their understanding of leadership.
Jesus then disrupted death by raising Lazarus from death. “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me will live, even though they die” (v. 11:25). Death will not have the last word, for the word made flesh will destroy death, disrupting not only notions of death, but also of life itself.
John records a lengthy, five chapter, departure discourse of Jesus, much of it in the form of a prayer. In some ways it is a lot like the lengthy speech that Moses gave before his death. But unlike Moses’ final words, which were history, commission and encouragement, Jesus words and images disrupted the whole notion of identity. He was not some itinerant teacher. He was in the Father and the Father was in him (v. 14:11). Identity is community. “Whoever loves me will keep my word” (v. 23). “The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I told you” (v. 26). “I am the true vine; you are the branches....Without me you can’t do anything” (v. 15:5). Jesus disrupted the longstanding idea of community, connection, responsibility, authority, and identity as children of God.
Finally, through his trial, crucifixion, and resurrection, Jesus disrupted all the expectations which generations had gathered about the role, the function, the activity of the Messiah. Even after seeing the empty tomb, the disciples “didn’t yet understand the scripture that Jesus must rise from the dead” (v. 20:9). Only when confronted with disbelief could Thomas give utterance to belief: “My Lord and my God!” (v. 28). Then Jesus welcomed Peter back into ministry and commissioned him to service. To the last Jesus disrupted expectations.
Christmas is the birth of disruption. And I don’t mean rearranging the house for the tree and gifts and guests. Jesus’ birth ushers in cosmic disruption, changing the perceived course of eternity, changing the interaction of divine and human, changing every life.
The season of Christmas ends with Epiphany on Tuesday. The last of the seasonal decorations will be gone. But Jesus’ disruption will continue. Thank God for that. Life in Christ is not business as usual. How will Christ disrupt you life this year? Will it be your understanding of creation, economy, gender/race/ethnicity, justice, planning, education, morality, healing, leadership, death, life, identity, expectations, eternal life? Will you be able to cope with Jesus’ disruptions and say with Thomas, “My Lord and my God!”?
May Christ gloriously disrupt your life for his sake this year. Amen.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Lots of people make New Year’s resolutions. Most lists of resolutions are more like wish lists than bucket lists. That is, they are hopes and dreams rather than things that will actually get accomplished. Most of us would be more honest if we were to say, for example, I hope to lose weight, or I hope to exercise more. A vast majority of those who make those wishes never accomplish them, for a variety of reasons.
In the vein of wishing, we often wish a lot for the new year. We wish for quiet, for strength, for peace, for goodwill. After all, that was a significant part of the message that the celestial chorus sang to the shepherds. Unfortunately, wishing won’t make it so.
An editorial cartoon this past week showed the traditional aged 2014 and the newborn 2015. 2014 says to 2015, “You’ll need a hazmat suit, riot gear, a gas mask, a bulletproof vest, Valium, antacid, aspirin....” As much as we hate to spoil all the promise of Christmas, the cartoon speaks the reality of living.
The gospel writer Matthew saw this reality, at least in the community he was associated with. Only his gospel records Jesus being openly provocative about his mission in the world. In the midst of a chapter-long disciple commissioning speech in Matthew 10, Jesus says to the disciples, “Don’t think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I haven’t come to bring peace but a sword” (vs. 34). That sword will force believers to choose between the comforts of the status quo, represented by family, and the challenge of untethered life in Christ. Will believers choose between a smooth life or a disrupted life?
In his own way, the gospel writer John, who eschewed angels, shepherds, mangers, and magi, sees the incarnation – the birth – of Jesus Christ in much the same way as Matthew. Everything that Jesus did wields a disruptive sword. The gospel of John, chapter by chapter, documents the disruption incarnated in Christ. This incarnated disruption is complete and it is contemporary.
“The word became flesh” (John 1:14). All creation is disrupted by the presence of Jesus. There had always been a safe divide between the divine and the human. The only intersection had been the annual entry into the holy of holies by the high priest with the blood sacrifice for the sins of the people committed in ignorance (Hebrews 9:3-7). God was always at a distance from the people behind a veil. Jesus disrupted the order of creation, bringing God into the midst of humanity.
After the wedding at Cana, Jesus went to Jerusalem for the Passover. There he “found in the temple those who were selling cattle, sheep, and doves, as well as those involved in exchanging currency” (v. 2:14). Jesus chased them all out of the temple, scattered the coins and overturned the tables. He disrupted the salvation economy by chastising those who, in the guise of convenience, took excessive advantage of those already burdened with travel, with occupation troops and laws, with fear of government and fear of God. Jesus wanted people to worship God, not the sacrifices which held God at arms’s length. Jesus disrupted the economy of the kingdom of God.
Nicodemus (ch. 3) came to Jesus in the dead of night seeking truth only to have his faith disrupted because he could not understand the difference between natural birth and spiritual birth – being born anew, from above. Faith had been grounded in what could be seen. God’s kingdom could only be seen by faith eyes, not human eyes.
Jesus left Judea (ch. 4) and wandered through Galilee and the surrounding countryside, some of it Gentile or Samaritan. He encountered a woman ostracized for a variety of reasons. He spoke with her, healed her downtrodden spirit, and disrupted the matter-of-fact norms of gender and race. She was a child of God on equal footing with every other child of God, regardless of origin, geography, or other form of social segregation and censure.
John spends chapter 5 recounting Jesus at the Bethsaida pool healing the man who had been chronically ill for thirty-eight years. This healing incensed the religious leaders because it was done on the Sabbath. The man had been ill for so long, why couldn’t the healing have waited for a weekday. Jesus disrupted the prevailing sense of justice, for justice delayed was justice denied. And to further disrupt justice, Jesus declared that it was his father, God, who was working through him. “As the Father raises the dead and gives life, so too does the Son give life to whomever he chooses” (v. 5:21). Justice is defined by God not human beings. “I assure you that whoever hears my word and believes in the one who sent me has eternal life” (v. 24).
Back in the country again, Jesus disrupted the traditional forms of planning and preparation when he told his disciples to sit the 5,000 person crowd down and feed them with the five barley loaves and two fish supplied by a youth (v. 6:9). When the disciples later asked what they had to do to accomplish what God required, Jesus responded, “Believe in him whom God sent” (v. 29). Belief cannot be planned or prepared for. Belief either is or isn’t.
On his next festival trip to Jerusalem (ch. 7), Jesus spent time teaching in the temple, astonishing the religious leaders who wondered how he had mastered the Law. Jesus did not claim the teaching as his own, but said it came from the one who sent him – God. “Those who speak in their own seek glory for themselves. Those who seek the glory of him who sent me are people of truth” (v. 18). Jesus disrupted the understood ways of education.
When the religious leaders sought to discredit Jesus by presenting an adulterous woman to him for judgment (v. 8:3), he disrupted the received morality of the time by directing that only those without sin could pass judgment on her. As that sank in, the crowd slithered away, guilty publicly and privately.
In chapter 9, Jesus encountered a man blind from birth. Jesus healed the man. Neighbors, strangers, and religious leaders all disputed the healing. Challenged by the religious leaders, the man declared, “I don’t know whether he [Jesus] is a sinner. Here’s what I do know: I was blind and now I see” (9:25). By healing the man Jesus disrupted an entire understanding of health care. Disease and disability did not come from sin, and healing did come from God: “If this man wasn’t from God, he couldn’t do this” (v. 33).
Jesus met the man following his expulsion from the faith community and the man declared his belief. Jesus said that he came “to exercise judgment so that those who don’t see can see and those who see will become blind” (v.39). Jesus then preached to the scoffing religious leaders about his being the sheepgate (v. 10:7) and the good shepherd (v. 11) who puts his own health on the line for the health of all of God’s children. Jesus disrupted their understanding of leadership.
Jesus then disrupted death by raising Lazarus from death. “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me will live, even though they die” (v. 11:25). Death will not have the last word, for the word made flesh will destroy death, disrupting not only notions of death, but also of life itself.
John records a lengthy, five chapter, departure discourse of Jesus, much of it in the form of a prayer. In some ways it is a lot like the lengthy speech that Moses gave before his death. But unlike Moses’ final words, which were history, commission and encouragement, Jesus words and images disrupted the whole notion of identity. He was not some itinerant teacher. He was in the Father and the Father was in him (v. 14:11). Identity is community. “Whoever loves me will keep my word” (v. 23). “The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I told you” (v. 26). “I am the true vine; you are the branches....Without me you can’t do anything” (v. 15:5). Jesus disrupted the longstanding idea of community, connection, responsibility, authority, and identity as children of God.
Finally, through his trial, crucifixion, and resurrection, Jesus disrupted all the expectations which generations had gathered about the role, the function, the activity of the Messiah. Even after seeing the empty tomb, the disciples “didn’t yet understand the scripture that Jesus must rise from the dead” (v. 20:9). Only when confronted with disbelief could Thomas give utterance to belief: “My Lord and my God!” (v. 28). Then Jesus welcomed Peter back into ministry and commissioned him to service. To the last Jesus disrupted expectations.
Christmas is the birth of disruption. And I don’t mean rearranging the house for the tree and gifts and guests. Jesus’ birth ushers in cosmic disruption, changing the perceived course of eternity, changing the interaction of divine and human, changing every life.
The season of Christmas ends with Epiphany on Tuesday. The last of the seasonal decorations will be gone. But Jesus’ disruption will continue. Thank God for that. Life in Christ is not business as usual. How will Christ disrupt you life this year? Will it be your understanding of creation, economy, gender/race/ethnicity, justice, planning, education, morality, healing, leadership, death, life, identity, expectations, eternal life? Will you be able to cope with Jesus’ disruptions and say with Thomas, “My Lord and my God!”?
May Christ gloriously disrupt your life for his sake this year. Amen.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
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