Sermon: "Justification on a Spaceship! or, St. Paul Comes to Call (A Homiletic Drama)"

"Justification on a Spaceship!  or, St. Paul Comes to Call (A Homiletic Drama)"

-St. Paul and the Very Foolish Galatians Part 3/6-

Preached/Performed at South Wedge Mission

Rochester, New York

16 June 2013

Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Text: Galatians 2.15-3.1

CAST OF CHARACTERS:

Regular Text: Pastor Matthew, portrayed on Sunday by Pastor Matthew

Bold Text: St. Paul, portrayed on Sunday by Alex Koroleski

~

-Grace, mercy and peace is yours from the Triune God (amen).

OK, so as those of you who’ve been following along at home know, we’ve been doing a “sermon series” on St. Paul and his letter to the Galatians. This week. we’re going to hit up a topic much beloved to Lutherans: Justification by faith.  Now, it’s pretty complicated, so...

(wooshing TARDIS sound)

What the...what’s going on?

(St. Paul walks on stage via the sacristy)

-Grace and peace brothers and sisters in Christ.  

-Um, holy s-h-i-t.  You’re...

-Paul (bracket saint apparently!), prisoner of the Lord, proclaimer of the Gospel, et cetera et cetera.  At your service.

-Um, right.  But you’re...St. Paul.  What exactly are you doing here in Rochester of all places?  Aren’t you supposed to be, well, two thousand years ago?

-Well, yes.  I was getting ready to write a particularly scathing third letter to some obstinate Corinthians, when suddenly, I heard a whooshing, and out of thin air, why, a blue box appeared!  A man stepped out, wearing what he called a “bowtie,” which he said was “cool.”  Then he told me I was needed somewhere.  We went inside the box (it was much bigger on the inside!), and next thing I knew, here I am.  

-A blue box.  A bow-tie wearing man.  And what was his name?

-He just said “the Doctor.”

-Doctor?  Doctor Who?

-Exactly.  But that’s besides the point.  Look, he told me this sermon’s only supposed to be 13 minutes or so, so let’s not waste time on petty details.  I’m here now, and we’ve got work to do.  

-Um, ok, I was just introducing the sermon.  It’s on your letter to the Galatians.  Chapter 2, on justification by faith!  

-Let me guess: you’re going to say some version of how no matter what we try to do, we end up being self-deceived sinners who can’t escape their own idolatry.  But luckily, Jesus loves us anyway and does for us what we cannot do for ourselves.  And then end with some vague ethical precept about what we get to do now that we are under grace.  Sound right?

-Wow, you’re good.  How’d you guess?

-You’re a Lutheran.  What else would you preach on?

-How do you know what a Lutheran is?  And anyway, what’s wrong with that sermon?  Isn’t that what the Gospel’s all about?  Isn’t that justification?

-Well, sure.  It’s good stuff.  But sometimes, I get really concerned for all of you people.  Sometimes, you’re not much better than those foolish Galatians.  You make it all so...complicated.

-Complicated?  What do you mean?

-Well, first off, how exactly were you going to explain the whole justification by faith thing?

-Well, I wanted to share with them how your Greek was pretty ambiguous.  That no one’s really sure if you meant to write “by faith in Christ,” or “by the faithfulness of Christ,” or even “by faith, comma, in Christ.”  No offense, but between the five-page long run on sentences, your poor use of the genitive, and your generally cantankerous tone, it’s not exactly like reading the Gospels.

-Oh, and I suppose you never ramble aimlessly in your stuff?  But again, we digress.  Look, that’s all really interesting.  I’m sure some seminarians somewhere are spending their lives writing dissertations on it, along with commentary on my use of the comma.  Really interesting stuff.  But it’s also a lesson in missing the point.  Let me explain.

-OK, go for it.  

-Well, first, regarding justification, y’all western Christians have really made way too much of all it.  “How do I find a gracious God,” “how am I saved,” “how do I know if I’m a good person or not,” etc.  It’s all so...German.  Existential.  Self-obsessed.  Which, by the way, is exactly what sin is really all about.  Self-obsession.  Taking perfectly wonderful things like the Gospel, or food, or sex, or whatever, and making it all about yourself.  As if you’re God or something.  

Oh, we’re good at that too.  Making God all about us.  As if every line in Scripture was about us and our own personal story and salvation.  No offense, but it’s kind of narcissistic.

-Totally!  Like all those people who spend all their lives on Facebook trying to get people to notice what they ate for breakfast, or how smart they are, or how cute their son is, or what a great hiking trip they just took.  Our whole culture feels like its geared towards, well, ourselves.!  

-Sure.  And it’s just all those “other people” Matthew?

-Er, right...touche.  Please continue.

-The way I see it, culture and context change all the time.  But sin, far from being something “original,” is actually quite constant.  Narcissism this.  All about me that.  Look how good I am.  Look at the god I made today.  I’m still waiting for some actual original sin.  So much of it is really just “unoriginal.” 

And look, that whole line about “justification by faith in Christ,” that was just the set up line here.  Seriously.  It’s like, throughout the history of Christianity, people keep stopping at verse 16, hear an opportunity to be self-obsessed, and stop reading what comes after.

-OK.  What does come after Mr. Smarty Pants?

-A lot.  Skip ahead a few verses.  To 19 and 20.  Listen up: 

“I have been crucified with Christ;  and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.  I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.   You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?”

Dang I’m good!  That’s one of my favorite things I ever wrote.  And probably most important too.  

-OK, it is really powerful.  I’ll bite.  Say more.

-Well, check it.  First off, it’s not all about us.  It’s about Jesus.  What Jesus has done.  The faithfulness of God in Jesus to us.  Not about our faith, or what we do or didn’t do or how sinful we are or aren’t.  It’s basically just a description of what Jesus is doing for us in the cross.

-But it does mention us a lot in there...

-OK, sure.  But back it up.  This is really important for all of you to get right.  See, most of the time, with God, we start from ourselves.  Our own experience.  Our own opinions.  And work our way forward to the scripture.  Like when we say, “man, something’s not right, I need a gracious God, who can make me feel better?”

But in reality, we need to start with the cross.  See, we wouldn’t even know we were sinners without Jesus having died first.  It’s not, “we had this problem with sin, and so therefore, logically, Jesus had to die.”  That’s an us-centered logic.  

No, it’s more insulting to our pride than that.  More like, “whoa.  God died on the cross for sin.  Which means, regardless of what we think, we must have needed the cross.  Which means, regardless of how we understand sin, we were in a bad place.  We can’t do this ourselves.  God said so.”  See how we start with God, rather than us?  You don’t even really get to choose your own sin!

-OK, sure.  I mean, it does set the whole thing up differently...

-Sure.  But see, here’s the rub.  Because not only do we set up sin starting with us.  We also set up “salvation” in the same way.  Starting with us.  What we think we need to be whole.  And so, inevitably, we almost always end up with a smaller picture of the Gospel, of Good News, than what God intends.

-You’re saying there’s a bigger Gospel here.  Not just “Jesus died for our sins and we get to go to heaven?”

-Definitely.  First off, it’s way more difficult than you thought.  Being “crucified with Jesus.”  That’s the first part of the Good News.

-Um...what?

-Yes.  Work with me here.  See, as much as we love our sin, it’s actually - newsflash - not good for us.  Our hearts are made in the image of God.  We have this infinite capacity for desire, to desire God and to be in loving communion with all creation.  That’s good.  But our hearts are like collapsed stars, like black holes.  They are damaged.  Sucking all of the goodness in the world into themselves, trying to make everything about us.  And then crushing and compressing them into coal.  Idols.  It’s this eternal itch that as mortal creatures, we can’t help but scratch.  But can never satisfy.

-That’s grim.

-Yes.  So when we are crucified with Christ, it means that on the cross, Jesus took our human nature, and the black hole and all that, and destroyed it.  Sealed it up.  Closed the gap.  Reversed the flow.  It’s not so much a payment for sin as it is a repairing of the breach.  Jesus’ life and death literally destroy the sin.

-Sounds like Doctor Who talking.

-Right.  See, we do people a serious disservice when we tell them that becoming Christian is this easy happy thing.  It’s painful as hell.  A crucifixion.  Because we have to have our the black hole, the ego, systematically destroyed and removed.

-That’s good news?

-Yes! God in Christ does for us what we cannot do for ourselves, but long to have done.  Ask an alcoholic or an addict; they can explain it better to you than I can.  But it’s God’s gift to us.  

-So Jesus saves me, only to put me through an excruciating journey of self-deconstruction and self-recovery?  

-Partly.  That mess is our contribution to things.  And don’t say it’s not there ruining our life, and the Gospel.  It is.   And we know it needs to get gone.  And it’s hard.  But God is doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

-So is that the Good News then?  

-No.  Read the next part: “it’s not longer me but Christ who lives in me!” I meant that literally, believe it or not.  It’s something that Western Christians seem to have grossly neglected.  The gift of salvation is not just getting saved or going to heaven.  The gift of salvation is: Jesus.  Living.  In your heart.  Indwelling us.  Alive in us.  Making us new.

-Jesus living in our hearts? Isn’t that kind of...supernatural?  

-Bingo homes.  It’s not just some mythological existentialism.  How else do you think you’re able to actually go about having faith - being faithful to God - in the first place?

-I just believe, right?  I mean, that’s what they always told me.  “Believe in Jesus and accept him into your heart” and all that?  It’s free will to choose Jesus.

-And I thought you were a Lutheran!  It’s not free will.  It’s GOD’S WILL.  It’s NOT ABOUT US!  God literally gives us God’s will in our hearts.  Makes us into new creations, new creatures.  God doesn’t just put a stint in the black hole of our heart to keep it from getting worse.  God puts God’s own Spirit in there.  Like installing a brand new star, a supernova, a new source of power and life, right in our very souls!

-Dude, kind of like in Iron Man, when Tony Stark gets that new heart core energy thing, and then he can fly and power his ironman suit and fight crime and all that!

-And you watch too much television.  But yes.  God’s not just trying to polish us up, tell us we’re ok and accepted just as we are.  That’s what WE want God to say.  It’s so much easier on us.  

But God wants to do radical heart surgery on us.  Take out all the cancer of sin, remove the black hole.  Make us healthy and whole.  Salvation, after all, comes from the word “salve,” which means “health.”  And then, God wants to make us new.  Give us a new heart.  A heart capable of really loving God, and loving each other.  A heart that we were given when we were created.  The heart we destroyed by turning it into a black-hole of self-centeredness and violence.  

-That sounds trippy.  Is that what Orthodox people mean when they say we are “divinized?”

-Yes!  See, that’s a Gospel!  That God loves us so much that God sent God’s Son to die, to repair the breach that has disrupted relationships and ruined the image of God in us.  And God isn’t just “saying” we are good.  God is making us good.  Making us even better than good.  Making us God’s.  Transfiguring us.  And giving us this intimate, divine union with Christ in our hearts.  It’s about this deep relationship with God that’s now made possible.  We are literally made one with Jesus.  With God.  With the source of all being and light and love and grace.

-Whoa.  That’s pretty huge.  Like you said, it’s a much bigger Gospel when we stop making it about us.  Like that blue box you flew in on.  Much bigger on the inside if we just let go of our preconceptions and step inside.

-There you go.  That’s why I’m so ticked at these foolish Galatians!  Not because of what they are doing wrong, necessarily.  But because they are not seeing just how big and how awesome and how beautiful this picture of Jesus’ salvation is!  They’re limiting God, and so limiting their community too!  

-Right.  So there’s that word salvation again.  Are you saying there’s nothing “personal” about it?  Since, you know, it’s not about us?

-Um, no.  Like I said, we START with Jesus and God.  But THEN, we absolutely need to claim this for ourselves.  Look at what I wrote.  It’s Christ who lives IN ME.  Christ died FOR ME.  Christ loved ME.  

-And how exactly is that not narcissistic?

-It’s not narcissistic or selfish to accept a gift.  In fact, it’s more prideful NOT to accept it.  To only want it on our own terms.  But that’s a huge part of the gift.  It is communal AND personal.  It’s not just a theory.  It’s something God is giving to particular, individual people.  God is not far off.  God is so close to us, as St. Augustine once wrote, closer to us than we are to ourselves! We can’t pass this gift off. 

-I can anticipate my people (who are here, by the way, listening to us) wondering: that’s all great and good, but how does knowing all this good stuff about God actually matter for us?  How is supernatural divination actually practical?

-Fair question.  I think you started to hit the nail on the head when you were talking about the iron man.  We’re given the gift to use it, to live into it, to experience a full and abundant life.  It’s first and foremost about living in freedom, and in service to others. 

-Freedom AND service?  I’m lost.

-OK, look.  The rest of the letter is about the practical stuff.  What it looks like.  How to live it.  There’s plenty of “to-dos” coming up.  But for now, I think the practical application is this: ITS NOT ABOUT YOU.  CHRIST IS DOING FOR YOU WHAT YOU CANNOT DO FOR YOURSELF.  I think most times, we need to start with being reminded about who God is and who we are in God, before turning on to being instructed in what to DO or BELIEVE.  

See, the Gospel, I think it’s a lens to look at our selves and our reality and to ask: am I making this about me?  Or am I seeing it through this Good News in Christ?  As a paranoid and prideful narcissist?  Or as a beloved, divinized co-creator?  Which power will we choose? Whose promises will we trust?

-Power?  Choice?  Wait, isn’t that just getting back into, you know, doing stuff?

-Look, if you’re not using it, you’re losing it.  Like playing an instrument and never practicing.  You can’t get better at something if you don’t play.  The difference is, you’re no longer self-obsessed.  No longer required to look at whether you get it right, or how you look doing it, or whether other people like it.  You are free from having to justify yourself.  You don’t have to make salvation happen!  

-What if I don’t feel free?

-You are.  You are perfectly and completely free.  It’s not an option.  The challenge now is, do we live like free people, empowered and indwellt and intimately loved by the God of the universe?  Or do we continue to live under the tyranny of our own way of doing things?  Of us at the middle?

-Got a metaphor or something?  I’m still lost.   

OK, look, it’s kind of like this.  Let’s say you’re in a sailboat, in the middle of a lake.  You can’t move it on your own, but you know it’s supposed to be sailing.  It’s no fun without the movement.  Suddenly, a wind blows.  You can still sit there and say, “oo, a wind, what does it have to do with me?”  Or, you can raise your sail, man the rudder, and let the wind move you on to adventure.  You aren’t the one powering or moving the boat - but because of the wind, you’re able to start practicing your skills.  So it is with the indwelling of Christ’s faithfulness, giving life to our faith.  It can be intimate and gentle, like a soft breeze brushing our cheek.  Or it can be terrifying, like a tsumani kicking up waves that just begs us to risk a thrill ride on a surfboard.  

-Dang, you’re good.  I like that.  

-Good.  So, I think a better question is: where do you sense the Spirit blowing in your own life?  Where do YOU feel it crucifying pride and self-centeredness?  Where do you see it leading you into new creation, even at great risk and uncertainty, calling you to cling to the promises of the Spirit?

-Wow, that’s a great question.  Maybe I should ponder it during our Open Space time.  I mean, I have so many places I put myself first.  So many places I make excuses to try to justify myself, or put myself above others...

-Good idea.  Especially since I think we’re out of time.  But before I go, can you tell me what you heard me say today?  

-Right.  Um, so I think I heard you saying that if all we do is obsess about us (how we are saved, justified, what faith looks like, etc), we end up falling into the trap of narcissism, making it all about us.  Which is bad, since we don’t actually have the capacity to satisfy our infinite cravings and desires.  But, if we start with God in Christ, we discover that not only is God offering the gift of removing our defects - God is also giving us a Tony Stark heart, which is actually Christ, the lover, coming to live in our hearts.  And so we’re free to use this power in faith, clinging to God and depending on Christ.  Sailboat analogy to close.

-My work here is done.  Now it’s up to you to figure out what it means in your own life.  I’ve gotta get back to the blue box before, what did the Doctor say. before all of space and time collapses...

-Um, ok, but, you know, could you maybe come back next week? It’s kind of a doosy - you talk about how there’s neither male nor female, slave for free, Greek nor Jew...it’s kind of intimidating.

-Believe it or not, this is supposed to BE next week.  But he landed us wrong.  If I come again, like I said, space and time collapsing and all.

-Sure, I get it.  Well, Paul, er, St. Paul...thanks.  This is all pretty confusing to me still.  I know it’s meant to be as simple as clinging to Jesus.  And I appreciate hearing just how much Jesus is offering us and all.  I guess it’s us who complicate things.

-Yeah.  It’s really as simple as keeping the focus on Christ.  Not listening to idols or any voice other than the one that is dwelling in you and making you new.  It’s the other voices - especially our own - that make it complicated.  But all of them, they’re just trying to justify themselves too.  And we already know how that ends.

-Right.  Sure you can’t stay for Open Space?

-Bye Matthew.

-Bye Paul.  And thanks.

(Paul exits, wooshing sound re-commences).

Introducing southwedgemission.org!

Hi friends!  As many of you may know, we've been back in Rochester, New York since September trying to gather folks to bake a neighborhood church from scratch in the South Wedge area here.  We're really excited to launch our webpage, which was assembled via volunteer efforts and collaborations.

Here's the link:
www.southwedgemission.org 

If you know anyone interested in emergent church, new monasticism, mission, or especially someone who lives in or near Rochester and is looking for a community, please please please share it with them. We'd also deeply appreciate any shout outs on your blogs, whether in the links section or in a post!

Thanks for your prayers, support, and of course, for reading the stuff I post here.  Grace and peace, and happy missioning!

Sermon: "Story, Gospel, Art, Mission: Introducing St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians" (Part 1/6 - St. Paul and the Very Foolish Galatians)

"Story, Gospel, Art, Mission: Introducing St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians"

Preached at South Wedge Mission
Rochester, New York
2 June 2013
Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Text: Galatians 1.1-24

Note: For the next six weeks, SWM will be using the lectionary's second lesson focus on Galatians as an opportunity to engage in a study of the epistle.  Because we are a new community, and a weekly Bible study is not possible at this time, I have modified the readings to include more of Galatians, and will be posting on this blog and in our SWM facebook group.  

The first in this series is longer, being an overall introduction to a basic hermeneutic of the epistle, basic historical background, and Luther's discerned theme of Gospel contra idolatry.  I've added artificial section headers to help guide intrepid readers.  Thanks to Saby Davis for transcribing this manuscript from the live audio (I had my hand smashed in a window and was unable to do further editing).  

~

-Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God our father, and from our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ.

-That opening invocation that we use every week is actually the same wording that St. Paul uses either to open his letters or close his letters. Ah, St. Paul.  To some, an ass kicker.  To others, a major asshole.   

I. Why Paul? Letters as Story

-Now, since we’ve begun as a community, we’ve been focusing almost exclusively on Jesus -- his life, his death, and resurrection -- and now, post-Easter, he’s gone. And we’re kind of left, as the Church, trying to figure out what the heck to do. 

-And see, one of the main records we have of what the Church did -- and, unfortunately, what the church did wasn’t always great -- is through these letters, these epistles, of Paul.  I and the letters of Paul are really great, I think, but only when we read them, not as rulebooks, as they’re often cited, or as absolute statements of eternal doctrine, where, because he wrote this to one community, every community in every place and every time has to follow exactly what he’s saying. I don’t find that a very helpful approach. 

-Because, while Paul’s message is always constant about the gospel of Jesus Christ, he faces all these different situations between the Corinthians and the Romans and the Galatians and the Thessalonians and the Ephesians and the Colossians and all sorts of other people. And he has to tailor his message and responses to their particular issues, their particular gifts, and their particular questions.

-And so it’s helpful to see the Letters of Paul not so much as individual statements of theology, but as snapshots. As a whole, almost like a book written in letter form. If you’ve ever read Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther or Gilead by Marilyn Robinson, the Letters of Paul are written in a similar diary/letter form of storytelling. So you can think of them as stories within The Story. 

-Of course, it’s kind of frustrating because we only get the one side of the story. We get to see what Paul’s telling them -- well, basically, what they should do. But we don’t get to see what they wrote to him initially, and we don’t necessarily get to see what they wrote back to him.

-My favorite interpretation of this comes from a comedian named Eddie Izzard who does a schtick where the Corinthians write back to Paul and tell him to piss off. Because they’re so tired of him telling them what to do and giving them all these rules. It’s so arrogant, they say, that he thinks he should write to the entire town, and ‘who decided to be his penpal anyway?’ I would show you the video, but unfortunately the language prevents me from doing so. But you should definitely YouTube it. It’s really good -- and, I think, pretty accurate. 

-So the point is, Paul is not necessarily always a nice guy. Sometimes he gets really mad. In the Letter to the Galatians, especially, it’s kind of like you can envision Paul’s ‘angry dance’ like in the movie Footloose. This is his angry letter. He’s really mad. He calls them “foolish Galatians.” At one point, he says, “I wish that the people preaching you a different gospel would just castrate themselves. The ones trying to tell you to circumcise should just circumcise themselves.” Ouch all around.

-And it would very easy to see Paul as a big a-hole as a result. He says that “I wish you would become like me, and therefore follow the Gospel.” It sounds like he’s trying to promote himself and his way of seeing things. Certainly, lots of interpreters -- modern ones especially -- want to spin Paul as the creator of Christianity, where it’s really Paul imposing all this doctrine on top of Jesus. And maybe that’s kind of true. 

II. The Centrality of the Gospel

-But I think a charitable reading of Paul -- actually reading what Paul said and what Paul’s all about, especially when taking the letter as a whole -- yields a very different picture. Sure, Paul’s claiming divine revelation, as we heard today. He’s claiming that he didn’t learn this gospel from tradition. He’s like a hipster saying “I knew the gospel way back in the day, before I talked to Peter.” And then he goes to talk to Peter, James and John just to make sure they have the same story. He presents himself as if he’s got this original knowledge, this deep, fiery conviction that this is the truth. 

-But notice what the truth is that he proclaims, almost from the start of the letter: the good news of Jesus Christ, who was given as a sacrifice for our sins, and has redeemed us into a new creation.  All of reality is different -- it’s a new state of being. That’s what “gospel” meant in the ancient world: the gospel was this proclamation of good news. Like when the emperor conquered someplace, the herald would ride into town and say “Announcing the Gospel of Caesar: you are now under Roman control. Yaaaaay!” And everyone was (unenthused), like “Oh... yay.”
  
-So what Paul is essentially doing is being the herald for Jesus.  He walks right into Galatia, which is a big region in Northern Turkey, shouting “God has claimed you. The Kingdom of God is here. You are now under control of the Spirit. You are no longer slaves to the elemental powers of the world, to the Pagan deities, to yourselves, or to any other human authority. But you are slaves of Christ -- and therefore free before the world. You’ve been liberated. You’ve been liberated for a new life because of God’s action, because of what God has done for you.”

-So everything that Paul does, in fact, points back to Christ, and to this new creation, the destruction of the old Matrix of sin and death.  Of course, sometimes Paul gets in the way of his own revolution, because Paul can be a big personality. He’s charismatic, he’s obviously very fiery and sure of himself in that way that converts and zealous people often are. But he’s trying to use that, even in spite of himself, to point back to the reality of Jesus -- not to point back to himself. He even says, “if we preach a different gospel to you that’s different than that original message of salvation through Christ by the Cross, then you should not listen to us -- you shouldn’t even listen to an angel who says something different to you.” It’s pretty strong language. But Paul’s central concern is not the Gospel of Paul but the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

III. The Art of Law and Gospel

-One of the reasons that Martin Luther was so big on the Book of Galatians back in the day was that he thought it was one of the most useful books for learning to discern between what he called “law” and “gospel.” He said, “The whole art of reading scripture is really about discerning the law from the gospel -- finding the good news in every passage and distinguishing it from the law.” 

-We’ll get into a little bit more in the coming weeks, about what law and gospel actually are as we go through this.  But I want to say from the beginning that “law” is not necessarily rules. It can be, but it’s more a referral to the way we use things for ourselves - for our own selfish gain.  Or -- as a good Jew might say -- it’s another term for the dynamics of idolatry.  Saint Paul, as Luther observed, is more concerned about discovering the ways that we deceive each other in ourselves. By putting things -- whether it’s actions, beliefs, systems or objects -- and putting them in the place of God and making them all about ourselves: self-serving, self-promoting, self-justifying. 

-So Paul is very concerned that we see our human efforts to try to reach God, or to try to talk for God, or to try to somehow understand God on our own terms and understand that that will always end up as idolatry. Or -- as another Reformational guy that Lutherans don’t like very much, John Calvin, once said: “The heart is an idol factory.” It’s always finding things to use for its own aims, to stack the deck in its own favor, and then to use those same things to control other people in an effort to make safe its own delusions.   

-Calvin saw the Gospel as a set of spectacles that you put on to see creation rightly.  But see, Paul is trying to teach these Galatians the art of seeing rightly, sinking it deep into their flesh and bones, once and for all.  As if to say, "here is the Gospel. Learn how to recognize the truth -- the truth that will set you free, the truth that has liberated you, the truth of how things really are -- and distinguish the truth from these false teachings of these people who really just want to use you or try to get you to use yourself, to make yourself the center instead of Christ.  Oh, and its an art - not an equation."  

IV. Idol Jealousy

-Now, that’s kind of a tall order from some guy who for the most part spends the first chapter of his letter talking about himself, right? I mean, most of this chapter is a story, and it’s about Paul and how he got this original revelation. And -- again, like I said -- he has this tone of “even Peter and James, the original Apostles, agree with me!” And so it would be very easy to say, again, that Paul is a self-centered, arrogant jerk. But Paul is very intent on putting his story in the message because, for him, this is not just a theory. It’s not just some knowledge he picked up out of a book. It’s not something he bought at Barnes & Noble.  

-But it’s deeper than that.  Paul is in love with God.  He has zeal for God.  And see, “Zeal” in the Bible actually means jealousy. When God says “I am jealous for my people,” it means He’s passionately in love with them and doesn’t want anybody else to have a go at them.  Likewise, Paul wants to make sure that the name of God is glorified. And, as any good Jew knows, the most problematic thing in terms of trying to know God -- throughout the history of Judaism and the whole world -- is the temptation of idolatry. The temptation to set up other gods other than the one who the Israelites called YHWH - a name so holy you shouldn’t even dare to pronounce it.  

-But that’s the point: the creator, the one who claimed Israel and said “You are my people. Now tell everybody how I created the world. And how I intended good for the world, and how I am a god for all nations.” Versus, say, the Pagan gods, who often were not the creators and were very fickle and were arguing with each other and required all these sacrifices -- sometimes child sacrifices -- and required you to do all sorts of embarrassing things in order to maybe win their favor. Paul, in his letter later, calls them “the elemental powers of the world.” 

-In Galatia in particular, idolatry was a huge problem, because Galatia was a conquered province. The Galatians really wanted to show the Romans that they were cool, that they weren’t rebelling, that they were all-in. And so they worshipped the emperor hardcore there. Emperor worship was huge. Every time you went into the marketplace, you sprinkled a little incense by the statue of the emperor in order to gain entrance; all the coinage had the emperor’s picture on it; and you were pretty much required to give a pledge of allegiance to the Gospel of the Emperor. 

-So, to become a Christian in this environment, to oppose this kind of nationalistic idolatry, meant that you put yourself at risk. It meant that you identified as someone who not only couldn’t participate in the regular economy and commerce of the life and culture around you, but you were also seen as a threat. Because, as much as the emperor wants to seem like he loves everyone, he actually wants to kill anybody who doesn’t listen to him. So, when you say “Jesus is God and Caesar is not” it’s kind of like saying “I’m not gonna pay my taxes to the IRS. I’m not gonna listen to the mayor. I’m not going to pay into the power grid, like the Amish.” It was really setting yourself apart and setting yourself up -- not for happiness and prosperity, but for a lot of pain. And a lot of conflict. 

-And so, when this new faction comes along - these Judaizers, these Jewish Christians who want to teach people to get circumcised -- it was a pretty convenient thing for the people of Galatia. Because it meant that if they got circumcised, they got in on the Jewish exemption.  Because Jews were allowed to not worship the emperor - because the emperor kind of liked them. They were this kind of quirky, quaint little people on the margins. 

-So what’s really going on here is not this idea that ‘circumcision is really good’; instead, it’s actually more just a case of using doctrine in the service of another kind of idolatry and compromise. And Paul is saying to them: “Look, it might seem really easy.  But I birthed you” -- throughout the letter, Paul uses this very feminine language of childbirth and cultivating -- “I brought you up; I formed you; I created you.” You’d think Paul would want to protect them and say “Yeah, go ahead and get circumcized. I’m a good Jew. Be like me, and at the same time spare yourself from getting killed.” 

-But Paul is more concerned about defending and promoting and preaching the true Gospel -- even it costs him and his followers so much culturally. He’s concerned that they know this, because if you start worshipping the emperor, if you start believing that it’s your own action that somehow wins you favor with God, then it not only puts you in a tough bind -- because as soon as the emperor doesn’t like you anymore, then you’re dead; or, if you stop being obedient, then you’re in trouble. But also, if you follow one of these idols and you follow their ‘idol promises,’ you’re going to get let down. Because a piece of wood can’t keep its promise. And neither does an emperor. Paul wants you to follow the one true God, the one who created the world, who has the power to save you, and who has acted on your behalf through Jesus Christ -- very different gospels. One is completely capricious and dependent on human endeavor and human promises that can be broken. The other comes from God.

V. Broken Lives Trump Pretty Lies

-Paul uses his story to drive this home.  His story of having gone from being very zealous and very religious and very convicted -- he had everything right, in his eyes --  and using that power and that conviction to kill and destroy the Church.  As a good Jew, he sees somebody and says “He thinks he’s God; that’s no good; I’m gonna kill him.” But Paul tells the story of how he was wrong, how he got it wrong because he was more concerned with protecting traditions than discovering the revelation of the living God entering into his midst and liberating him. 

-And it’s striking to me that when Paul tells the story of trying to counteract idolatry, he tells the story of his biggest character flaw: “I murdered people; I systematically tried to destroy the Church; I was a bad dude. And that -- that transformation that God worked in me, that liberation from being a murderous person, that liberation from being a jerk -- that’s how God is using me to spread the Gospel.” 

-See, God destroys idolatry not by giving us a better theory or a new practice, but by transforming our lives by entering into our midst and destroying the idols that keep us from God. And by opening us up to this whole new way of being. And he does it, not by teaching us things that we can hold over other people, but by leveling us, so that we may no longer think that we are God or have any claim to set up idols in God’s place. 

-It’s kind of a raw deal, right? I mean, let’s say that becoming Christian means you don’t get to shop at the mall anymore, you get persecuted and potentially killed, and you have to have all of your self-delusions and self-importance and idols and everything else you care about destroyed too boot. That’s not exactly a promise of prosperity, power and hope! And yet, that’s the Gospel -- that’s why Paul is so convicted about it. That’s why he gets so angry. Because as our Message translation says, “They’re selling you a non-Gospel, an empty lie about God” -- the lie that God doesn’t demand everything of us, that God doesn’t want our whole being, our whole heart, mind, and soul; and that God’s okay when we kind of take time for ourselves and start acting more selfishly towards one another. Or when we start giving all of our time and attention to the Facebook gods or to the TV gods or to our own ideas of justice or of what being progressive or being conservative means to us. 

-Or even being a good Lutheran. God does not care about that as much as God cares about the heart. And God will continue to demolish idols and calls us to be people who are willing to demolish idols -- not with violence, not with force, not even with argument and convincing, but by looking within our own hearts, our own story. By talking about our own struggles and proclaiming and testifying to the ways that God has made us a new creation too. 

VI. So What?

-Now maybe some of us -- myself included -- have not yet fully lived into what it means to be a new creation. Maybe you’re here thinking “What’s all this Jesus-Gospel-exclusive stuff? I thought we were going to talk about God.” Or “I’m spiritual but not religious.” And that’s totally cool.  I’m responsible for what you hear, not what you believe.  

-But one of the things that I think Paul is concerned with, and one of the things that I want to be exploring during this time of studying Galatians, is how we can see where God might be trying to be break into our lives in our own stories -- sometimes in beautiful ways. Maybe there’s this moment of epiphany, where the world is gorgeous and you’re just so convicted of the presence of a God. And it leads you to ask the question, “Who is this God who has created me and is doing amazing things?” 

-Or, maybe you’ve been a Christian for a long time like me, and God has kind of become something you take for granted, a kind of rote tradition. And you’re wondering, “How can I go deeper into this story and make it my own and start living out of it? Maybe I can start taking some risks by withdrawing from some of the idols and cultural practices and things that ensnare me or lead me astray.” 

-Or maybe you just don’t know what to think. And you’re just going to fall on your knees and say, “God, show me my next step. I need a higher power because I can’t do this on my own.” But regardless, what gives me comfort in this scripture about Paul’s letters is not just that Paul is a badass and kind of an asshole who became a badass, but also that the very letter itself is included in the Bible -- the fact that the Bible includes these letters where Paul is wrestling and arguing with people... It’s not perfect. He doesn’t just say, “Let me tell you how perfect you are, and here’s all the good things you did,” which would put us sinners in quite a bind. 

-But the Bible itself is the testimony of people wrestling together, asking questions, making mistakes, seeking God -- sometimes compromising, sometimes doing a great job -- but always wrestling with this central gospel: this central claim that there is one God, that this God is the creator, and that -- to us -- God has acted in the person of Christ in order to liberate us, to liberate all people, and to bring us into a new creation where we can live fully and -- most importantly -- live as free children of God who are liberated to love one another. 

VII. Story, Art, Gospel, Mission

-So, over the next couple of weeks, we’re going to unpack that. We’re going to slow it down and go through some of the aspects of this story that I’ve spun out today. Again, we always take a little longer at the beginning to kind of set the table. 

-But, again and again, I think the point of studying and wrestling with scripture and with one another is less to come to some sort of rational knowledge of facts and doctrines. It’s more like listening to music.  Learning to know the sound and the style of the truth.  So much that we can recognize it being played, not just in Scripture, but in the world around us, in others’ stories, and in our own.  

-This art, this way of listening to the music of the Gospel, is to continually ask of the scripture and let the scripture teach us: what is really the Gospel? What are ways I’m using the world, using people -- maybe even using the Bible -- as an idol to justify myself? How do we discern God’s work in the world? How do we see where the Gospel is breaking through? How do we discover where God is happening? How can we tell the story of reality correctly - and our own stories too?  And how do we recognize where we and other people are ensnared in systems that say “Somehow, you need to do something to be valuable to God,” when in actuality God has already made you infinitely valuable, and has called you, claimed you, and is leading you into this mission that we share. 

-I was thinking that it would be good to do a study on mission or something, but what I realize with the South Wedge Mission is that, to be a mission, we need to understand who we are in God, who God is for us, and what God is calling us to do around the Gospel. The mission will follow. But for now, it’s enough to continue to ask ourselves, “Where is God happening? Where do we see idolatry? Where do we see signs of God exploding all of our preconceptions?”  

-Because mission, in the end, may just be this kind of learning - learning the art of seeing and hearing the Gospel in the world around us, and witnessing to what it's up to in the stories and lives and vocations and arts all around us.  

-And, if we follow humbly and with much trust and faith, we will find mystery and magic and adventure and mission -- and the unbreakable, undying eternal promise of God in Christ Jesus.  St. Paul would have been pleased with nothing less.   

-Amen.  

Sermon: "(NOT AN) Accidental Christian"

"(NOT AN) Accidental Christian"

Preached at: South Wedge Mission
Rochester, New York
Third Sunday in Easter
14 April 2013

Day Texts: Acts 9.1-20
Psalm 30
Revelation 5.11-14
Luke 21.1-19

-This is one of those week’s I’m really thankful that the Bible is not just a rule book, or a formula for being “a good person.”  Because just think of the absurdities that would come of it!  “If you want a really good fish fry with Jesus, then do the following: 

1. Stay up all night fishing and utterly fail to catch anything.  
2. Perform A) while naked with your friends.  
3. Get dressed before swimming to shore when Jesus shows up.”

-Yikes.  Incidentally, I’m totally intrigued by the fact that Peter starts off naked, but then, strangely, puts his clothes back on in order to swim to shore.  And then he totally goes into Beast Mode.  Swimming all the way to shore - in his clothes! - and then, when the boat arrives, he somehow hauls ashore a net filled with large fish.  By himself.  A net that the others couldn’t budge together.  

-This is the same Peter who, as you may recall, who earlier in his career as disciple-least-likely-to-succeed, tries walking on water.  And sinks.  The same Peter who is told “get behind me Satan!”  The same Peter who, only days earlier, had betrayed his Lord and friend, not once or twice, but three times.  

-Maybe the truly offensive thing about taking this passage as a formula for redemption would run more like this:

1. Utterly fail.
2. Be completely unworthy.
3. Be called again by Jesus to feed His sheep.

-That’s far more offensive than a little nudity on the sea.  As offensive as our other star today, St. Paul, being called as the apostle to the Gentiles.  In spite of being a mass murdering jihadist for the Jewish authorities.  In spite of being, well, kind of an asshole, even after he is blinded and restored to sight.  

-But see, that’s the God we have.  And that’s the Church God’s called.  Murderers like Paul.  Cowards like Peter.  Doubters like Thomas.  Power-mongers like the Sons of Zebedee.  This little boat of fishers is a veritable rogues gallery of rejects.  This little boat is the first in God’s fishing fleet, the church.

-That’s offensive.  And so often, we are right to take offense at this completely insane experiment called “church.”  Because even a cursory glimpse at even the most favorable volume of church history reveals a deeply troubling prospect.  We don’t need to - nor could we - recount the vast litany of utter depravity and horrible attrocities committed by the sheep of Jesus and Peter.  The sex abuse scandals.  Murder of heretics.  Interdenominational warfare, whether physical or theological.  Exclusion, enslavement, exploitation, subjugation and violence.  Makes people’s claims today that the church is “hypocritical” kind of look like little foibles comparatively. 

-There is no denying that the church is messed up.  And let me be clear: none of this is right.  The church needs to be held accountable.  WE need to be held accountable.  And the church needs to repent and be saved.  The gates of hell may never prevail against it.  But they sure as hell seem to have scaled the walls and set fire the peasant villages.

-And yet, I’m kind of tired of apologizing for the church.  I’m tired of hearing sermons that start out with promises like, “we all know that THOSE OTHER Christians (usually conservative and evangelical) are hateful, but WE are not like them,” or, “unlike some OTHER liberals, WE are biblical and orthodox;” or “if only THEY knew how to be open and accepting and progressive.  Just like US.”

-See, I’m tired of Christians acting like, somehow, we’re any better than Peter and Paul.  Sick of somehow trying to distance ourselves from people who do really awful things.  Because, if we’re honest with ourselves, we aren’t that different.  We may not have the power or influence to cause damage on such massive scales.  But last time I checked, we were all sinners.  Last time I checked, that’s what makes it the church.

-Last time I checked, Jesus calls complete assholes, like Peter, and Paul, because Christ came to save sinners.  And too often, we set ourselves up as somehow distinct and separate from our brothers and sisters in Christ, almost always, based on some standard we have invented.  We read a few issues of Sojourners or Brian McLaren, and suddenly, we are experts on who is not socially active enough, or who is more judgmental than we are.  We go to a few Bible studies, and suddenly, we know that our conservative or liberal opponents somehow are way off, and that only WE have the right answer.

-In our rush to somehow maintain an image of the church or of ourselves that makes us look “not like those people,” I think we miss out on so much more. We miss out on the Gospel.  And on our brothers and sisters in Christ.  Even if their names are Fred Phelps, or Julius II, or Ted Haggard.  Or Matthew Nickoloff.  Or you.

-See, it makes me think of that recent country song by Brad Paisley that’s caused such a stir lately.  It’s called “Accidental Racist,” and in it, Paisley sings a duet with rap artist LL Cool J, trying to convince his black conversation partner that, no matter what his confederate flag t-shirt meant a century ago, today, it’s just a sign of southern pride.  Absurdly, Cool J responds, “if you forgive my gold chains, I’ll forgive the iron chains.”  Pretty good deal for Paisley.

-But the song is about distancing.  Paisley can distance himself, not only from facing his own racism, but also from the failures of his family and people in the past, claiming, “I’m not THAT kind of Southerner.  If my t-shirt makes you feel oppressed, it’s your problem. I’m only accidentally racist.”

-And see, whether we admit or not, I think the church is like that too.  “We’re only ‘accidentally‘ church, but forgive us for having crappy ancestors, and we’ll let you off the hook of the Gospel.”  Or, "we're not that kind of Christian.  We love Jesus, but we're only accidentally associated with his followers."    

-But brothers and sisters, we are not accidentally Christian, anymore than we are not accidentally racist, hypocritical, bloodthirsty, or, in a word, sinners.  This is the Church.  Love him or hate him, Fred Phelps and his bigoted Kansas posse are our brothers and sisters.  We cannot say “we’re not THAT kind of church.”  We are.  There is only one church.  And it is the communion of saints.  Who also happen to be lousy sinners.

-We would not be here tonight if you were not a lousy sinner too.  If we weren’t aware, at some level, of our deep need for a word of grace and forgiveness, for a force bigger than ourselves to save us from ourselves.  Trust me, I wouldn’t be here, and neither would you, on this little ship of fools, taking us to the island of misfit toys, unless I was eff’d up.  Unless I was like Peter.  Or Paul.  Or Freddie.

-But Peter, and Paul, and Fred Phelps too, are the reason Christ has come.  Christ lived among them, making them his friends.  Christ died, at their hands and by their failures, and Christ died, descended into hell, and rose again, in order to call them to receive the promise and the truth. The truth that, as Paul would later write in Romans, that “Christ died to save sinners.”  And to make us into something new.

-I’m not ashamed of the church, though often, I am ashamed of her actions.  But the only way the Gospel of Jesus Christ truly is good news is if the church is in fact made up, not of those who have by their own efforts and virtue achieved some form of enlightenment.  It only works if its the church of Peter and Paul.  If its a church of sinners.  But sinners in the hands of a gracious God.

-And just look at what this God can do.  He can take the murderer, Paul, and take someone bent on ethnic cleansing and purification, and use him to be the chief apostle to the Gentiles, the outsiders, and as passionate an advocate for radical inclusion as has ever been seen.  

-And God can take Peter.  Let’s hear Peter’s story again.  Peter is naked on the boat.  And he hear’s Jesus voice.  And he realizes he is naked.  Sound familiar?  Like that first man, that first sinner, Adam, God’s call makes him aware of his vulnerability and imperfection.  Yet, this time, Peter is not ashamed or afraid.  Yes, he still gets dressed to swim ashore, but this time, when God calls, Peter responds.  Urgently, eagerly.  The barrier of shame between God and humanity is slipping away.

-And remember, the last time Peter jumped in the water after Jesus, he sank.  Now he is an olympic caliber swimmer.  The failures that terrified and embarassed Peter are gone.  This is a new man, no longer in need of miracles or looking to impress Jesus and the others.  He just swims.  Enters the waters.  All the way to Jesus.

-And then, of course, the end of the story.  When Jesus asks Peter three times to profess his love.  Mirroring three times of denial.  Restoring Peter to relationship.  Not ignoring the failures and the faults of the past.  But, it almost seems, stripping him naked spiritually, so that, facing his failures and faults so un-judged and named and then transformed, Peter is recognized as fit to feed the sheep.  Because, as my mentor Nadia preached at my ordination, “only a forgiven sinner can preach the Gospel.”  And care for broken too.

-That’s who we are.  Peter’s story is our story.  Sinners, lost on the waters, called in spite of our utter unworthiness, to face the Love of Jesus, and so be made fit to feed the lambs of the world.  The church may never live up to its billing if we are waiting for it to become perfect.  But if we are looking for it to be a place where broken things are being made new, well, then its good news.  Then grace is true.  Then, we can have hope.

-So go.  Be sinners.  Let us face our nakedness and shame and failures.  And yes, let us claim even the most horrific bastards in God’s family and the greatest brokenness we’ve perpetrated.  Let us not accept them as the final word.  But let us see them as the promise that, indeed, none of us, no human being, is accidentally beloved of God.  

-That’s the church we have.  You are that kind of Christian.  That’s the naked, offensive truth.  And that’s hard.  But it’s also really, very, truly, Good News.   

-Amen.  

Sermon: "The End of the Binge, or, Jesus is My Time-Lord and Savior"

"The End of the Binge, or, Jesus is My Time-Lord and Savior"

Preached at South Wedge Mission
Rochester, New York
Fifth Sunday of Easter
28 April 2013

Day Texts: Psalm 148
Revelation 21.1-6
John 13.31-35

"The end of the binge is the beginning of the story." -Jonathan Franzen

~

Caveat: I understand the irony in a sermon about time being the longest I've written in awhile.  During service it clocked in at 15:30.  That being said, the following is a transcription of that proclamation, which seemed to be the most well-received in awhile.  So there it is.  Enjoy it.  You've got time:)  

-SO. Here’s a phrase I bet you’ve never, ever, EVER heard, here in Rochester, or anywhere else.  Here goes: “Well, you know, I’d love to get together, but you know, I’m just so busy right now.”  Ever heard it?  It’s like the communal chorus of our collective life here, the theme that carries us all along day in and day out.  

-”It’s so busy right now.”  Even when we’re not actually doing anything, it feels like we’re still compelled to say “I’m just so busy,” if only because we so often feel busy.  All the time.  Even sitting still.  Even with so much going on in our heads.  So much information entering our lives.  So much happening.  And so we feel a sense of urgency, even anxiety.  Even when we’re just chillin’ - we’re busy.  

-But how fitting, at least, in light of today’s text from the Apocalypse of John.  When we hear that Jesus is the “Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End.”  Jesus is related inextricably with time.  He is the master of time.  Perhaps there’s a sense in which we could even call him a...TIME LORD?  

-For those of you who aren’t Doctor Who geeks, that’s what the time-traveling do-gooder bow-tie sporting hero of the show is.  And so is Christ.  Jesus is our Time Lord and Savior.  The Crucified Lamb is also the ruler and the God of Time.

-Now don’t worry, we’re saving a “Doctor Who-charist” for November, when the 50th Anniversary special comes out.  But Jesus-as-Time-Lord - its really not a category I think about very much.  Jesus is the beginning and the end.  He holds all of space and all of time in his scarred hands.

-Now, in troubled times like ours - times of bombings and explosions and rumors of wars and of church closings, like our predecessors Peace Lutheran did this morning - I do hear quite a lot of talk about Jesus as the hope of new beginnings.  Before he unveils his Time Lord nature, Jesus says, “Behold I am making all things new!”  And in an age of unprecedented technological progress and unspeakable horrors, it’s natural to long for the newness resurrection promises.  To move on from past atrocities.  

-Novelty’s like this way of life for us now; new experiences, moving every couple years, fresh starts, new jobs, the latest Apple products, the most recent episode.  A new church perhaps.  Or a new cause, to help make the world, and ourselves, better.  Jesus as Alpha is welcome news indeed.  And not just to those of us in Rochester hoping that this the week the Spring sticks around.

-But what of Jesus as Omega?  Jesus is the End.  Not just the beginning.  But the final note.  See, God in Christ Jesus through the Spirit did not only shape the world and create human beings in God’s image and breathe into them the breath of life.  God in Christ Jesus also brings the story to its conclusion.  Before we get “a new heaven and a new earth and a new Jerusalem,” we face the hard truth that “everything old has passed away.”  That Jesus is also an Ending.

-And that’s hard to face, right?  I mean, even Doctor Who struggles with ending.  Often when he’s about to regenerate and get a brand new life, the version of the Doctor who’s about to die really laments having to pass away.  He has to go through a painful transformation to become someone new, as well as to continue on as somehow the same.  There is a sense of loss and grief.

-And if we’re honest with ourselves, I wonder if we too share this deeply paradoxical relationship to endings.  Yes, we want newness.  But we also struggle with how to stop.  How to end.  We don’t just watch an episode.  We binge and mainline them, five or six at a time, only stopping when our retinas spontaneously combust.  We drink craft beer after craft beer, as if the fact that we are drinking good beer from our basement or brewery instead of Labatt’s somehow makes it less of a precursor to alcoholism.  So we just have one more, and it’s ok.  Or, we keep signing and signing up for cause after cause, because Metro Justice, and St. Joe’s, and South Wedge Mission, and Grow Green, etc etc are all so worthy, and in spite of how many times we save the world...we have this urge to save it again, lest we stop feeling useful or needed.  

-And at least for me, and maybe you too, its so hard to draw a boundary.  A limit.  To accept an ending.  And suddenly, we are so busy with compulsions, addictions, and schedules so full of doing things we ultimately don’t want to do, that we find we are without the time we so deeply crave to pursue the things that we do want.  Connection.  Intimacy.  And relationship.  A sense of place and settledness.

-See, I wonder if, in our basic human fear of endings, and of missing out, I wonder if we’ve forgotten how to embrace endings.  Perhaps our constant questing after novelty has led us to fear losing something new, while also avoiding ending that old thing that’s keeping us from the new thing.  Which, if we’re honest, is actually, usually, something quite old.  Something lasting.  And important.  And real.

-In this networked reality of compulsions and addictive thought processes and nihilisms and proxies, eroding our minds and stunting our spirits - well, that’s where, for me, Jesus as Omega - Jesus as Ending - that sounds like really good news to me.

-This past weekend, I had the privilege to worship at one of our sister mission starts, another Lutheran church in Brooklyn started by my friend Ben.  It’s called Parables, (they’re the ones we stole the idea to do the art night with Bogs during Lent).  The purpose of the event on Friday was to communally create folk hymns for use during worship.  Pretty awesome. 

-As we talked about music and reflected on this text from Revelation, one of the musicians in the group noted how important it was to have beginnings and endings.  Music is as much knowing when to stop as it is to start; as much about intentional silence as it is improvised notes.  Its the ending of a song that makes it a song.  Makes it something we can then remember, and hold on to, and cherish, and sing, and share, and pass on.  Endings give form.  Endings make singing possible.

-We’ve all heard a speech, or a story, or even a sermon where we’re thinking “if only that had ended five minutes ago, I might have remembered the good stuff he said?”  Right?  Never here, of course!  It’s the limits, the boundaries, that enable us to recognize, to consider, to enjoy.  To realize that pauses, and silence, and ending, are as much an art as saying, playing, and starting.  That’s what gives shape to songs, and poems, and even relationships.  Knowing where I end and you begin.  Suddenly we have something to share, rather than it all blending together.  

-And see, Jesus the Omega, Jesus the Time Lord, Jesus teaches us how to end.  He points us, in fact, to our truest and best end.  And that end is not us, or our compulsions or our desires.  It is Himself.  And through Him, to God.  And to one another.  

-And the means to achieving these ends is not a mediating technology.  It’s relationship.  It’s that great commandment at the end of our Gospel today.  “Love one another.”  And love God.

-Jesus is the ending, the Omega, first of all, because in the cross of Christ, Jesus has shown us the ending of all human endeavors to avoid endings.  The holes driven into his hands and feet by the nails are like periods, declaring, “it is finished.”  It’s not an option people.  When you avoid ending - when you try to prolong yourself or your desires or pleasure or power beyond their endings, it ends like this.  With death.  And, when you face human sinfulness, human fear, human scarcity, human idolatry, human complusion - all of these are here forth done.  This where they end.  With me.  And the cross.  

-But Jesus also shows us THE Ending.  Of the story.  Of the world.  The true end towards which we’re all traveling.  Towards a new heaven.  And a new earth.  The Ending which is also a true Beginning.  The Omega which is truly and forever Alpha. 

-See, in this ending, everything passes away.  The Old Jerusalem and its temple, the divine center of the universe, is gone.  These structures which mediate our relationships and our experiences that we thought were eternal and inevitable?  Gone. The old earth, with all of its beauties and wonders and all of its warfare and damage, is gone.  Even the old heaven, with all of our old hopes and dreams, is gone.  It is ended.  And Jesus, not any effort of human progress, no loaded schedule, no networking, brings it about.

-But notice what does remain.  What remains are the people of God.  And the trees that are for the healing and reconciliation of all the peoples together.  And the Time Lord, standing among his countless companions of every age.  What remains, in the end, to begin the new creation, are relationships. The people.  Our being-with God.  Our being-with each other.  Our being-with our enemies.

-And if what remains in the end are our relationships. and not how many hours we’ve logged on facebook, or volunteering, or playing Halo, or even watching Doctor Who - if our Omega is the Alpha, a new beginning freed of the old compulsions, centered on Jesus, a time when every tear will be wiped away and reconciliation, not distraction, is the name of the game, then I wonder: how does this challenge us today?  

-If God is truly shaping a reality in which “God will dwell with God’s people,” and people and relationships are the everlasting center, then what, in this time between Alpha and Omega, needs to die in our every day lives?  What might Jesus be declaring an Ending over, what is he begging and inviting us to stop, so that we might receive the gift of time to live for what is truly beloved in God’s heart?

-See, one thing I think Jesus has promised is that there will always be time for faithfulness.  And in particular, Jesus, the Lord of Time, will always give us enough space between the Alpha and the Omega to fulfill His commandment: “love one another.”  

-Because when we are loving only ourselves, time seems to disappear, seems to become scarce.  There is never enough.  But when we endeavor, trusting the promises and commandments of God, to place people at the center of our lives, to say NO to that which enslaves us and YES to that which is eternal, then we will discover, again and again, that life suddenly becomes very long, very fecund, very abundant, very real.  Because we are drawn into loving those things that Jesus loves. 

-And maybe you’ve had a taste of that.  That time when you unplug and step back.  Or you take time to have breakfast for a friend.  Or to pray and sit in silence in the midst of an urgent time - take time to be present to how God is busy in the world, and not just ourselves.  And suddenly it feels like those five short minutes of stillness stretch into an almost unbearable eternity.  Or that short conversation you tried to sneak in finds its ending two hours later.  And so much life has happened - life can be so long and full, when we follow faithfully.  

-God promises: there will always be enough time for the things that God loves.  And who God ultimate loves...is you.  And me.  And people.  And the creation.  God loves people so much that God is willing to end even the heavens and the temple, so that relationship may last forever.  

-And it will feel like an Omega.  An Ending.  A loss.  The old heaven and earth, the promise of infinite information, endless stimulation, and excessive intimacy, will have to go.  We will have to say no to certain things in order to say yes to others.  And we’re gonna need each other to make ourselves actually do it.  To be courageous enough to accept God’s gift.

-But as author Jonathan Franzen once wrote, “the end of the binge is the beginning of the story.”  The Omega of the old creation is also the Alpha of the new.  We will discover new depths of space and new dimensions of time, within ourselves, our world, and our God.  God has given us all the time in the world for one another.  God is making God’s home here, among us, among mortals.  Among people.  It’s there we’ll find the time, the intimacy and the love for which we long.

-See, that’s the song worth singing.  The ending worth accepting.  The beginning worth pursuing.  We will live fully in this presence, where the world, our place in it, and our time, will be truly occupied.  In a way that is worth cherishing.  In a way worth committing to.  In a way that can only be a gift.  And the best is yet to come.   

-Amen.