Preaching and Teaching

A sermon by Carol Howard Merritt
Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, DC

13 May 2012

Text: Exodus 15:1–21

Sadly, I only have a couple of sermons left to preach in this pulpit. I have been thinking about the things that I have left unsaid and the questions I have left unanswered. One of the questions that I’m asked most often is… who is Miriam? We house Miriam’s Kitchen, where we feed over 200 homeless guests for breakfast and dinner. It is a space for guests to receive medical care, learn art, get haircuts, and find all sorts of resources. It’s a place where they can provide some housing support. And it’s a place where homeless men and women can advocate for their needs politically, so we are not just providing a bandage on a deep wound, but also working for lasting change.

In light of all this, people want to know, who is Miriam? Was she some sort of fabulous cook? Was she a donor who gave a lot of money to start the feeding program? Who is Miriam? We talk about her so much, but we don’t always explain whom she is.

We hear a snippet of Miriam’s story in Old Testament lesson as we heard how the women danced that day. The mothers’ hearts leapt with their feet. Their souls soared with their songs. And Miriam led them.

Miriam. Most of us know how Moses led the people out of the bonds of slavery into the Promised Land. Moses partnered with the saving work of God and led God’s people to freedom. But we often forget about Miriam. The Bible is scant when it comes to these stories, but it doesn’t take much imagination to fill in the narratives in a bit.

I can imagine Miriam, as a little girl, placing her head on her mother’s shrinking lap, just so that she could put her ear on that bloated belly. On the days when her mother was exhausted from working in an Egyptian family’s home, taking care of somebody else’s children, she sat down with her swollen ankles and aching back. Miriam cuddled next to her mother and felt the growing womb, hoping to sense the soft movement of a head or a tiny elbow. On some days, Miriam even noticed a kick, and imagined the child who would be born.

Her mother smiled down at her sweet Miriam, but she could not share the excitement. She dared not. In fact, sometimes Miriam’s mother seemed filled with dread and cried at the mere thought of the birth. Her mother worried about what kind of world she would be bringing her child into—a world where her child would be enslaved—and that would be the luckiest of fates.

When Miriam became overwhelmed with confusion and concern at her mother’s tears, her mother finally whispered to her what could happen.

If the child were a girl, Miriam would have a sister. If the child were a boy, then Miriam’s brother would be killed. The Pharaoh had become so suspicious and paranoid that he not only kept the offspring of Abraham and Sarah in brutal slavery, but he said that any boy who was born, would be taken away from his mother’s breast to be murdered.

So the women, the offspring of Abraham and Sarah would watch their bellies swell for nine months, and their emotions would grow along with their skin. They felt the kicks of the child growing within them, while realizing that the child could be stolen away in an instant.

They began to predict whether the child would be a girl or a boy, by the way the mother reacted to certain foods, or how she carried herself. The analyzed the position of her belly, the posture of the mother. All of these things became careful clues for the child’s fate. And when the mother heard the cry of her child’s first breath, she clung to her bedclothes with trembling and fear, knowing that if the child were a boy, he would be killed.

Even the misery of putting the bandages on your husbands’ bleeding back could not compare with the suffering of going through nine months, giving birth, and losing the baby to the hands of the oppressors.

When the story was whispered to Miriam, the mother and daughter devised a plan. They would not let the baby die. If the baby turned out to be a boy, they would weave a basket, put tar around the basket, and place him in the river. Miriam would look after the infant. She would hide in the bulrushes, and run after the basket as it made its way down the river.

They did just as they planned. And when the baby grew hungry in the basket, he began to cry. Miriam felt helpless until a woman came to the baby’s rescue. The Pharoah’s daughter found the basket and became determined to keep the child.

Miriam must not have had the difficulty that Moses would have in speaking to powerful people, because the little girl went up and asked the princess if she could get a wet nurse for the child. Then she ran and got her mother. The planned worked better than it did in their wildest dreams. Moses grew up in the palace, with his real mother as his nurse.

And when he grew to be a man, it took miracles, plagues, thievery, threats, and even the death of more children, but his people were eventually freed. The Pharaoh ordered that they could go, and the slaves ran, until they hit the shores of the sea. They were a rag-tag bunch of servants without armor and weapons. They had the sea before them and an army coming up behind them. Then Moses lifted his staff, and the waters parted, and the slaves moved to the other sea on dry land. Then when the army came, the waters moved back on them, the weapons, the chariots, and the armor—all of those things that were supposed to protect them—ended up weighing them down. And they drowned.

In the passage we read, we meet up with Miriam, at the other side of the waters. The chariots are drowning. And the women danced in their freedom. Howled in their liberation.

The women’s pockets were heavy from the gold that they had stolen from the families they had served. The jewelry jangled along with their tambourines. They were freed from a land in which their children were enslaved. They had been liberated from a tyranny where their husbands would be whipped when they could not do impossible work. And they were freed from the brutality of having their babies killed.

There would be great trials ahead of them—they would wander in the desert for another forty years. Sometimes they would need water; sometimes they would need food. The power of nostalgia would be so fierce that they would look back, wishing that they could be in Egypt. They do not quite understand what it will be like to give birth while walking in a circuitous route to the Promised Land. But all that will come. During this passage, they are enjoying their first breaths of freedom.

Miriam was a prophet among the people. Prophets had a particular ability to act as the mouthpiece of God. They were wise and they sometimes told the future. They were different than the priests, who were administrators of the tabernacle. They made sure that the sacrifices were made, and that the rituals took place according to tradition.

Miriam was the first of seven women prophets recorded in the Bible. She rose up from among the people with that particular gift.

But that was not the reason why they named the kitchen after her. It was not because she made sure that Moses was safe, it was not because she led the women in victory and song, it was not even because she was a prophet. It was because of another story.

Miriam became annoyed and jealous of her little brother, Moses. And in an act of sibling rivalry, she began to complain about him with her other brother Aaron.

And so, the story goes, that God punished Miriam. Her skin grew white as ash with leprosy. She was quarantined, sent outside of the encampment, where she must have sat scraping her skin with shards of pottery. And the nomadic people did not move. Even though they travelled for forty years, throughout all kinds of hardship, they stayed in one place for that week. And after seven days, just as the leprosy appeared, the sores vanished. Miriam was welcomed back into the community.

That was why the original founders of the kitchen named it after Miriam. There was a Rabbi from the Hillel student group, who thought that the name should reflect the story of a woman who was not only the savior of a people, a mouthpiece of God, but someone who knew what it was like to be an outcast, aching, and broken. And someone who found her way back into the community.

Miriam would remind us of God’s saving work. Miriam partnered with God for the life of Moses, for the liberation of the sons and daughters of Abraham and Sarah. She danced with the women when she knew that mothers could hold their children without the fear that they would be enslaved or killed. Miriam would work to imagine a land of milk and honey, and help to lead people there.

In the same way, we are to imagine a community where we can partner alongside God’s saving work. As the theologian Rebecca Chopp reminds us, the church does not exist for itself, but for the other. It is impossible for church to mean concrete walls, because being church means that we partner in God’s liberating work—that we exist for others.

And another theologian, Sallie McFague takes that work even farther, because she says that we need to create communities that are not only concerned for the liberation of other people, but that we should embody concern for every life form. Concern for all of God’s creation.

Whether we are giving someone healthy, nourishing food for breakfast, or we are providing housing, or we are advocating on behalf the homeless, we are partnering in God’s saving work. And we do it, not only because it is what God would tell us to do, but it is because this congregation exists for the other.

To the glory of God our Creator, God our Liberator, and God our Sustainer. Amen.

a sermon by John W. Wimberly, Jr.
Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
May 6, 2012

Text: John 15:1–11

When I did my doctoral studies in systematic theology at Catholic University, I chose to immerse myself in two of the most intense intellectual environments one can imagine. The first milieu was the Catholic Church. The graduate students and professors of theology were mostly priests and nuns who were devoting their entire lives to their studies. As such, they possessed layers upon layers of knowledge about the church’s teachings over the past two thousand years. The commitment of these women and men to learning was inspiring and provided me with incredible role models for ministry.

The second and larger milieu in which I found myself was the history of Christian thought. The church has thought long and hard, deep and wide about who God is and who we are, the purpose and direction of history, the intersection of belief and behavior, and so many other incredibly fascinating subject matters. Millions upon millions of books, billions of hours of study mark the Church’s intellectual life over two millennia. Over the past forty years, it has been an honor to swim in those invigorating waters.

One of the challenges we face in the Presbyterian church today is sustaining our historical commitment to intellectual vigor. The education at most Presbyterian seminaries today is anything but demanding. The number of books assigned as required reading for a class is embarrassingly small. Likewise, most of our doctor of ministry programs give students a skim coat of theological training. The days when a pastor truly had or needed a “study” have almost disappeared.

And yet, despite the intense learning ethic imbedded in the Christian experience, we must always acknowledge that Christianity is, first and foremost, not a matter of the head but the heart. It is not about what we know but what we feel, namely that God is present, loving and forgiving. If Jesus made anything clear, he clarified that the basic building stone for a healthy faith is a heart committed to loving God and neighbors. It is a spiritual requirement that anyone can keep, no matter how much or little education a person may possess.

Paul wrote that God has placed the law in each of our hearts. Therefore, he said, no one has any excuses about our choices. We don’t have to open a book to know what is right and wrong. We are created, he said, with an innate sensibility as to what constitutes the right thing.

Everybody here this morning can describe a fabulous person leading a Godly life who has little or no education. These folks don’t lead a Godly life by reading great theologians, biblical scholars or ethicists. They lead a Godly life by following their hearts.

Our Gospel lesson this morning describes an organic, not intellectual, understanding of our relationship with God. We are branches growing out of the vine God is. Our fruitfulness as humans flows from the health of that relationship, from our attachment to God.

I have often wondered about the question we ask new members when they join the church. We ask, “Do you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?” As conceptualized by Presbyterians, it is usually a question aimed at the head, not the heart. Potential new members oftentimes ask me to explain what the words Lord and Savior mean and imply. There is a temptation to unpack the words by referencing all the theological debates within the church over the centuries regarding the personhood and authority of Jesus. But is this where most of us need to go on our spiritual journey? I don’t think so.

What if we asked new members: Do you understand yourself as a branch of the vine God is? Do you see your life as dependent on God as the life a branch is dependent on the vine out of which it grows? These questions speak to the relational aspect of being a Christian. It is not so much about what we believe as about the relationship we have and seek to grow with God.

Friedrich Schleiermacher was one of the greatest theologians in the history of the church. With a name like Schleiermacher, he had to be a great theologian. Can we imagine hearing, “A shot and a goal by Friedrich Schleiermacher” or “Schleiermacher shoes—don’t walk anywhere without them.”? Nope. Young Friedrich was born to be a theologian.

Schleiermacher is generally viewed as the founder of what became liberal Protestant theology. He insisted that the essence of religion is feeling not dogma. “Religion,” he wrote, “is the miracle of direct relationship with the infinite.” Each of us has a feeling that we are dependent on something beyond us; that our fate is tied to something bigger than us. That something, said Schleiermacher, is God. Follow the feeling and we realize that we are in God’s presence.

Dogma is a necessary and inevitable reflection on this feeling/relationship. As we attempt to understand intellectually the feeling and the One to whom it leads, we necessarily and appropriately create the doctrines of the church. A classic example is the Trinity. We experience or feel God as Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer. We don’t know how the three become One but think about it long enough and logic dictates that they are One even as they are Three. So our feelings and experiences of God generate the doctrine of the Trinity.

Too often, the church has, in effect, reversed the relationship between dogma and feeling. We don’t start by helping people identify and probe the feeling of a direct relationship with God. We start by asking them to assent to a set of dogmatic beliefs. “Do you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?”

The incorrect ordering of feeling and dogma is not unique to Christianity. Just as Jesus sought to reassert feeling as the driving force within Judaism, reformers in Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism have sought to do the same thing in their faith communities. It is a constant battle to keep feeling, rather than dogma, in the driver’s seat of religious faith.

Neither Jesus nor Schleiermacher denied the importance of dogma. As humans, we necessarily reflect on our powerful feelings. It is important to understand them. Unconsidered feelings can run amok and lead us to bad places. However, when the cart is placed before the horse, when dogma comes before feeling, we have reversed the natural order of things, God’s order of things.

Jesus did not place a set of beliefs or dogmas in the middle of the church. Jesus placed us around a table/a meal with the simple command to “love one another.” Both the meal and the commandment are relational rather than intellectual. They bring us into relation with each other and the One who calls us together. It is no accident that our sacraments are sensory, not cerebral; about touching and tasting, not thinking and ideas.

I started this sermon by talking about my own, our denomination’s and Christianity’s commitment to the intellectual aspects of our faith. I did so because some Christians get very agitated when I suggest that Christianity is not first and foremost an intellectual endeavor. They immediately want to place the head and heart in opposition to each other.

We do not have to negate the significance of our minds to highlight the importance of our hearts. As Schleiermacher rightly noted, the feeling that motivates all religious experience obliterates the thesis and antithesis. It leads us beyond competing ideas to One God who is the source of every idea, thing and creature. To speak of the primacy of feeling is merely to put first things first. It doesn’t excuse us from pursuing the intellectual implications of our feelings.

So as we approach this Table, we put aside our doctrines and theories for a moment. We stop dividing up the world into competing ideas and people. Instead, we allow the feeling of God to bring us together and envelop us, opening our hearts to realities words cannot adequately capture—realities such as goodness, love, grace, and peace.

Let us pray: God of our hearts, help us to feel, sense, and experience that we are all branches of the same divine vine; that we are forgiven; that we are good; that we are blessed; that we are one with ourselves, others and our God. All this we pray in your Holy Name. Amen.

A sermon by Carol Howard Merritt
Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, DC
29 April 2012

Text: John 15:1-8

I’m hunched over my laptop, savoring a rare couple of hours of no interruptions, no Internet, and no email on my flight. I’m getting some writing done and politely ignoring the man next to me. Then the familiar bell rings synthetically overhead, the stewardess reminds us that we have begun our descent, and we need to turn off all of our electronic devices. I press the power button on my laptop, look at the floating clouds, and my distraction encourages the man next to me to attempt a bit of small talk. “So, you flying home?” he asks.

“No, I’m from D.C.” I answer.

“What’re you doin’ in Texas?” He persists with the obligatory flight questions.

“I’ve got a work conference.”

“What kind of work do you do?”

“It’s a church thing,” I answer. That’s usually enough to stop any airplane conversation, but he looks confused.

“You work at a church?”

“Yes. I’m a pastor. And I write books and lead conferences.”

“Really?” He rapidly takes inventory of me, and from his expression, I don’t think he had ever see a five-foot-tall woman pastor wearing a sweater and jeans. From there, our conversation deepens quickly. He tells me about his religious background, and within moments I get all caught up in the pain in his voice.

“My parents were in the military,” he explains, “so we would go from one Navy chapel to the next. We weren’t really a part of a denomination. When I was a teenager, we had this chaplain who preached against homosexuality every week.”

I did some calculations in my head and figured that it was probably around the time that President Clinton was introducing “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

“Every week.” He repeated with the gravity of someone reliving a traumatic event. “I was a teenager. I knew I was gay. There was no denying it,” he fell silent until he admitted, “I did deny it though. I didn’t want to be rejected by my parents or by God. So for all those years, I rejected myself.

“Can I be honest?” he looks at my face, reading it to see if he can go on, “I hate Christianity. I. Hate. Christianity. Christianity took away my family. Christianity almost made me destroy myself. But you know what? Even after all of that, I know that unless I make peace with Christianity, I’ll never have any peace.”

He flushes and looks down at his hands, “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to offend you. It’s just that I’ve been wanting to talk about this and I thought you’d understand.”

“I understand,” I say.

With a deep breath, he continues, explaining how he shifted from feeling guilt because of his sexual orientation to shame that he could ever have been a Christian. He severed his past from his present, cutting off his Christian upbringing from his life as a gay man. It was the only way he knew to save himself. But over the years he found that wasn’t the answer either. Christianity wasn’t an appendage he could simply discard. Being a Christian was as much a part of him as being gay.

As he speaks, I imagine. I start to see shattered pieces appear on the floor of the plane—the glistening fragments of his life. The beliefs, relationships, and yearnings that make up this man are sparkling shards that no longer adhere. And yet, each piece is beautiful and I long put them together, carefully and delicately. I want to embrace him, surround him, and forge him into something whole. But I can’t do it. We’re strangers on a plane.

I, of course, tell him that I was sorry for what he had to go through as a young man. I let him know that there are many congregations that are open and affirming to gays and lesbians. There are Christians and clergy who struggle and fight for marriage equality. But I really can’t talk that much. Mostly, I can just pray.

 Shalom. Shalom. Shalom.

I plead with God silently. The Hebrew blessing means “peace” as well as “wholeness,” and the meditation seems the most important thing I can offer him.

As we touch down, the intensity of the conversation turns toward the mundane details of exiting the plane. I heave my bag from the overhead compartment, while trying not to bruise the head of the businessman in the seat under it, the wisdom of the stranger lingers in my thoughts.

Many of us have been in the situation where Christianity has brought pain. For him, Christianity contributed to a bullying culture that eventually made his family shun him when he came out of the closet. It made him questions God’s love, and it made him want to end his own life.

For me, it had to do with my gender. I grew up in a very conservative church, where women were not allowed to teach or be in leadership positions. I was taught, from an early age, that a woman must submit to a man. And even if a wife is being abused, she had to stay with him, because that was God’s will.

For others, it is the pain of hearing that their loved ones will go to hell, because they believe in a different religion. Or it has to do with warriors echoing crusade language, and soldiers destroying Korans. Or, it has to do with been sexually abused within the church. Or, a woman hears that she is contributing to the downfall of society, because she uses contraception.

Lately, I’ve been feeling a bruising pain, as I read about the nuns who have stood up to the bishops, and now the Vatican has condemned them for their “radical feminism.” The nuns supported the compromise on the issue of birth control mandates in employers’ health care programs. They have not been outspoken enough on gay marriage and abortion.

As a religious woman, I have been inspired and intellectually nurtured by many of the nuns who are going through this mandated reform. My gut wrenches as I see how they are being treated.

I struggle with it. Christianity is an ancient stream. Some currents in those are life giving. Others are toxic.

In the midst of all of this, I read the passages the Good Shepherd. Jesus often told stories that common people could relate to, and tending sheep seems to be something that people can understand, even in our modern culture, we can imagine what it was like. This passage has given me many important lessons.

In so many situations in our lives, we can take comfort in the fact that someone is leading us. When our life feels overwhelmed with decisions, and we do not know which path to take, we have comfort in the thought that someone is guiding us in the way that we ought to go.

Think about that. This morning, you are in the very spot where God wants you to be. No matter what sort of striving and scheming, and plotting, and jealousies, and hopes we might have for the future, you can understand that God has led you to this place at this moment. Whether you feel like you’ll never have a chance to get a “real” job or whether you’re facing retirement and you don’t know what that will bring. You can know that you are in exactly the place where you are supposed to be.

When we look at our past, and we feel overcome with regret, and we consumed with wanting to replay our histories in our minds over and over again, we can breath deep, knowing that we have been led here, to this place.

When we are overwhelmed with busy-ness, and we can never quite keep our work at work, and our email notifications buzz in our pockets constantly, and there is always an emergency situation going on, we can think about how our Good shepherd leads us by still waters. We can connect to that rest which restores our souls.

When we do not know how we are going to pay the rent, our debt and student loans feel like they will strangle us, we can remind ourselves that we will be fed. One way or another, when we open ourselves to receiving the help that we need in whatever form that it comes, our shepherd will supply our needs.

When I sit with women who have been raped or hit. When we have been victimized, abused, or suffered a grave injustice, there is a promise of vindication here. A reminder that the Good Shepherd will set up a banquet before your enemies.

I’ve heard liberal Christians try to clean this part up. I’ve heard one preacher say that he thought it sounded mean and cruel. I wondered at the man. He was a person of privilege, no doubt. But I wondered if he was so wrapped up in his position, that he could not relate to those who had been victimized. Did he have no sense of justice?

Can we look at George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin and say that it is cruel to imagine justice for our enemies? There is systemic and personal injustice. Christians don’t officially believe in Karma, but we do have this image that God will set up a banquet before you, in the presence of your enemies.

And, whenever a person is at the end of his or her days, I always pray that the Good Shepherd will lead them through the valley of the shadow of death. It seems that one of the most difficult things about dying is that most of us do not know the way. But the shepherd knows the way. The shepherd will be a guide.

For the fifteen years that I have been preaching and providing pastoral care to congregations, the Good Shepherd has been a powerful image in so many phases in our journey.

It has a different meaning for me this time around. As I pick up the newspaper and I read about leaders in a religious tradition who fight against marriage equality, who silence women, who work against health of women, who hide abuse, I imagine Jesus, with his staff, trying to keep the wolves out.

Yes, there are things that destroy—vicious things that are alive and well. There is no denying that. We are wary of wolves. There are things that will kill and steal.

And yet, there is also the gathering. The enfolding. And I suppose that’s the image of the Good Shepherd that I cling to the most at this moment. God is calling that stranger who was sitting next to me in the airplane, back into the fold. God is chasing after the women who have been silenced. God is calling you back. Wherever you might be—in your hopes, in your anxieties, in your regrets, in your hardships, and even in your hope for justice. God is calling us all.

Sister Julie Vieira, a member of Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary reminds us of the importance of hearing that voice. When asked about the latest scandal, she said “Our vow of obedience applies to God… it doesn’t reside in a bishop, a body of bishops or even the pope. For us, that sense of obedience has to do with listening deeply to the call of the Spirit.”

As we go out, may we do the same. To the glory of God our Creator, God our Liberator, and God our Sustainer. Amen.

Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
April 22, 2012

Text: Luke 24:36b–48

If a friend or family member is gambling away his life savings or destroying her career by not showing up for work regularly or allowing his house to deteriorate and become unsafe, we feel compelled to say something. This is one of the things true friends and family members do for each other. We warn each other when our behavior becomes self-destructive.

However, when a friend or family member is eating himself to death, failing to get any meaningful exercise, allowing blood pressure to spin out of control or not taking prescribed medications, what do most of us do? Nothing. Too many of us sit by and watch our loved ones destroy themselves. It is really quite mystifying.

While there are many very positive improvements in the U.S. regarding heart disease and cancer, the stats related to weight and exercise are depressing. 58 million Americans are overweight. 40 million are obese. 78% of Americans don’t get the minimum amount of recommended physical exercise. As a result, in the past twenty years, there has been a 76% increase in diabetes in the 30 to 40-year-old demographic. We don’t have to get into a debate as to whether or not sugar is a toxic substance as some contend. Because we can say, without question, that eating 90 pounds of sugar annually, as the average American does, is damaging our health. As a nation and as Christians in the 21^st century, our primary health problems are directly related to weight and lack of activity.

Let me say up front, there are valid reasons why some people are overweight or out of shape. First and foremost, some folks have medical conditions that keep them from staying in shape. But for most of us, such is not the case. We are out of shape and overweight because we choose to be so. We don’t do the basic things required to preserve the gift from God our bodies are.

My goal in preaching is not to make people feel guilty. Preaching is supposed to be a catalyst for change. So when I talk about the plague of guns that has settled on us as a nation, I’m not trying to make an individual gun owner feel guilty. I am asking that person to think about why and if they need to own a gun. When I talk about the growing economic inequity in our nation, my point is not to make those of us who are affluent feel guilty. I am asking those of us who are affluent to be more proactive in reducing income inequality.

So the appropriate response to today’s sermon or any sermon, for that matter, is not to feel guilty. It is to change our behavior and attitudes. I should also say that this is also my last sermon totally devoted to this topic before I retire. Since most preachers don’t talk about personal health issues, my guess is that you won’t be subjected to another sermon like this for quite a while.

You know, it is more than a bit revelatory that I can preach about controversial subjects like guns, Israel/Palestine, or government budgets and not get a lot of criticism. But when I preach about taking care of our bodies, about staying fit and in shape, I really irritate people. Why is that?

I think the topic is irritating because we each know that, in fact, we don’t eat and drink the right stuff or exercise enough. We are well aware what we are doing to ourselves. We have given up trying to change because we feel powerless.

The lack of power intrigues me, especially when it comes to Christians. Jesus taught us that we have the power to move mountains, to heal sick people, to challenge injustice, to be gentle and tender. We can heal the sick but can’t heal ourselves? We can move mountains named segregation and sexism but not put down a chocolate chip cookie? Really.

In our Gospel lesson this morning, we get another version of last week’s Thomas story. Jesus again appears to the disciples and, again, they aren’t sure who he is. He invites them to touch his body. “I am flesh and bones,” he says. In the midst of this dramatic encounter, in a humorous tangent, Jesus pauses and says, “By the way, does anyone have anything to eat?” It is as if he suddenly realized he hadn’t eaten for three or four days.

Like the Thomas story, the issue of Jesus being flesh and bones was a problem for those Jesus encountered. It blew up into a major controversy in the early church. Some Christian Gnostics believed Jesus was a divine apparition, not a human with a real body. Jesus appeared to be flesh and bones but he wasn’t, they contended. “Why would God want to become flesh?” they asked. The Gnostics, like the Greeks, viewed the human body as a prison for the spirit. They longed for the day when they would be liberated from their flesh for a life totally in the spirit.

The church fought long and hard against this belief. In fact, many scholars contend that the introduction to John’s Gospel is a direct shot across the bow of Gnosticism. You will remember John’s famous beginning, “And the word became flesh, and lived among us….” They are so comforting and familiar to us today. However, to the Gnostics in the early church, they were fighting words, an offense to their beliefs about the way the human body limits our spiritual journey.

I contend that our 21^st century attitudes regarding our bodies are a modern day form of Gnosticism. Many of us think something in life supercedes, is more important than, flesh and blood life. So, I have a friend who tells me, “I don’t have time to work out. I am too busy creating low income housing. I have more important things to do than walk on a treadmill.” Or another friend who says, “I don’t have time to eat the right food. I am working long hours at my law firm. If I have to survive on pizza at 8:00 p.m. to succeed, so be it.” I’ve used those kinds of excuses. Many of you have done the same. We have decided that some form of life, other than the life in our bodies, is more important. We are willing to sacrifice our bodies for a supposedly higher goal.

Since my doctor scared me straight three years ago, I have become convinced that taking care of our bodies is an essential part of being faithful. It is as important to Christian discipleship as praying and reading Scripture. Eating right and exercising isn’t about looking or feeling good. It is about taking care of a vessel, our bodies, God created and through which God works to redeem the world. If we don’t care for our bodies, ultimately we cannot serve God by caring for others. By not being good stewards of our bodies, we take years off our lives and dramatically reduce the productivity of the years we spend on earth. Serving God and taking care of others are inseparably linked to taking care of ourselves.

I say my doctor scared me straight because he did. I went in for my annual physical in 2009. Looking at all the numbers he said, “John, if you want to be a diabetic, you are doing everything perfect. Just keep it up. Your blood sugar number is a little higher every year. Soon you will officially have accomplished what you clearly intend to do.” He told me I faced a simple choice. I could lose 45 pounds or soon I could start taking the medications for diabetes.

As I walked back to the church, I made a decision. I decided to reframe my health. The idea of framing and reframing issues became trendy about 20 years ago in the marketing industry. Simply described, when you reframe an issue, you look at it from a different angle. For example, instead of talking about buying a Prius to drive to work, you talk about making a purchase that will help the environment. Same outcome. Different motivation.

For my health, the reframing was to stop thinking about dieting and exercising. Instead, I began to think about being a good steward of my body. As a Christian, I am committed to being a good steward of the resources with which God entrusts me. I am a pretty good steward of my marriage and family, my physical possessions and money. But I have been a lousy steward of my body. Yes, I have been a gym rat since my early thirties. But I was a gym rat who ate too much and the wrong food. I enjoyed bars with good burgers, not salad bars.

By making a transition to health as stewardship, I stopped thinking about me and started thinking about God. If eating a few pieces of lemon meringue pie, ok, if eating an entire lemon meringue pie is just about me, I’m going for it. If eating the pie is about my ability to serve God, I am going to put on the brakes. Because I try to place a higher priority on serving God than what I want to do.

Robert Griffin III, the Redskin’s next quarterback (may God have mercy on his soul), is known for taking excellent care of his body through disciplined nutrition and exercise. This week he went to a sports science center hoping to improve his already healthy diet. He said, “Not everyone thinks about nutrition, what you put into you body. That’s a big part of how you perform. If you fuel yourself the right way, you can perform at a high level.”

RG3 is absolutely right. If we eat better, we will perform better as parents, partners, employees, bosses, neighbors, church members, you name it. In other words, if we eat better, we can better serve God and others. As a bonus side effect, we will also feel a whole lot better. Viewing our bodies through a spiritual, not societal, lens, we realize that God gave us our bodies for enjoyment as well as productivity. The way we feel after a good workout or good sex is a gift from God. They are more than pleasure. They are a blessing. Why are we so afraid to link physical pleasure with God’s intentions? If God didn’t want us to enjoy the things our bodies enable us to enjoy, God would have created us differently. Now that we have taken homosexuality out of the closet, it would be good for the church to take sexuality out of the closet!

In several encounters after his resurrection, the Risen Jesus drilled home the point that our bodies are crucial to who we are. He said, “Look at my body. Touch me. It is me.” Jesus equated himself with his body. Why don’t we? Too many of us disconnect our self-image from our bodies. We say, “I’m not this person who is taking years off my life with my behavior. No, I’m the person who is feeding the hungry and visiting the imprisoned.” Fact of the matter is, we are both. And if we will change our behavior, we will be feeding the hungry for years longer than if we don’t. We will be a force in the lives of our grandchildren. We will be able to care for our partners as we both age.

I learned a long time ago what attentive people in the helping professions learn. Namely, we can only help people who want to be helped. This is why Jesus repeatedly said, “Let those who have ears hear and those who have eyes see.” He knew that a lot of people with ears don’t listen. Therefore, I have no illusions that a sermon like this sermon will change a lot of behavior. But even if one person has ears, it is worth the effort.

As a preacher on this subject, I can do a couple of things. First, I can remind each of us, including myself, that we are not powerless. God has given us all the power we need to live the way we should live. Health is not a matter of destiny or even genes. For the most part, it is a matter of choices. We have the power to choose health. Second, as a preacher, I can help people, including myself, to think about our health not as a matter of personal appearance but as a matter of Christian stewardship.

Frankly, I have huge regrets that I didn’t understand these things decades ago. I would have led a healthier life. A few people who listened to my preaching might have made healthier choices. But like guilt, regrets don’t change anything. Change alters the future. If we change today, tomorrow will be a better day.

Our bodies are gifts God has entrusted to us. As such, let us enjoy and care for them. May all who have ears listen.

Let us pray: God of our bodies, help us to take better care of ourselves. If we can’t, we diminish our ability to care for others. May each of us assume personal responsibility to live life to its fullest by living life in healthy and holy ways today. All this we pray in the name of One who embraced the flesh of which we are all made, Jesus of Nazareth. Amen.

Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
April 15, 2012

Text: John 20:19–31

Since Jesus and his followers were Jews who grew up and lived in a Jewish culture, it is difficult to understand them if we don’t know a little something about Jews and Judaism. This morning’s famous story about “doubting Thomas” is a case in point. Some contend Thomas displayed a lack of faith when he demanded that Jesus prove he was Jesus. However, anyone making such an argument doesn’t know the questioning approach many Jews bring to faith and life. In asking uncomfortable questions, Thomas was acting like the good Jew he was.

At the Jewish Community Center here in D.C., Theatre J recently produced an outstanding play about the trial of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza. In 17^th century Amsterdam, Spinoza was espousing ideas that generated a lot of criticism within the city’s Christian community. Feeling a need to appease the Christian leaders, the Jewish leaders conducted a formal inquiry.

There is a delightful scene in the play where Spinoza asserts something and a Christian witness at the trial says, “His views are totally contrary to Jewish dogma.” The head rabbi who was cross-examining Spinoza stopped, turned to the Christian and said, “There is no Jewish dogma, only Jewish bickering.” Such is the appreciation within Judaism for differing opinions, open-ended intellectual disputes and the fine art of debate.

As the church moved out of the Middle East into Europe, as we became less Middle Eastern and more Western in our cultural ethos, our appreciation for dissent diminished. The church increasingly came to view questions not as a sign of healthy debate but rather as schismatic and even heretical.

The earliest councils of the church were not unlike the trial of Spinoza. They were lively, contentious, intellectual battles. The councils didn’t always end up with a fair or logical conclusion. But the process was transparent.

The first major Council took place in 325 at Nicea, called by the Emperor Constantine to deal with the teaching of Arius. Arius, a Libyan who became a prominent Christian theologian in Alexandria, Egypt, contended that Jesus was not coeternal with God. In other words, God created the Christ just as God created you and me. Arius asserted that the Christ was created by God at the beginning of time and all things were subsequently created through him. By today’s standards, it feels like a pretty exalted Christology. By fourth century standards, it was viewed as reducing the status of the Christ within the Godhead, transforming the Christ from the Creator into a creature.

Ultimately, the Council arrived at a consensus, declaring Arius’ teaching to be false. They reached their consensus by painfully and methodically thrashing through all the questions asked by the proponents of Arius as well as his opponents, especially the sharp questions of Arius’ chief critic, Athanasius.

Unfortunately, the church didn’t learn a lesson from its process at Nicea. Rather than continuing to encourage an open, sometimes heated debate going forward, they declared Christological doctrine to be closed. Arius was wrong; Athanasius was right; and that was that. Future questions on the subject were ruled unnecessary and deemed heretical. Instead of adopting the philosophy that “there is no Jewish dogma, only Jewish bickering,” the early church declared, “there is Christian dogma and there will be no bickering about it.” To this day, the Nicean consensus rules as orthodoxy, despite the continuing questions many of us have about its validity.

The idea that a church Council could end the questions of faithful people was a fool’s dream. When we are talking about God, human nature, and just about everything else in life, there are going to be huge differences of opinion, bickering, if you will. One cannot waive a wand and make everyone think alike. And who would want to? Oh, yes, I forgot, the church has wanted just that, at times.

Churches are named after Thomas because he dared to ask the questions that needed to be asked. What the other disciples accepted uncritically, he wanted proved. “Was the figure you encountered really Jesus?” he asked his friends. “Personally, I need to see the marks in his hands.”

We usually overlook Jesus’ reaction to Thomas’ questions. The Risen One didn’t get huffy or insulted. Jesus calmly replied, “Go ahead. Touch me. Feel the wounds for yourself.” However, Thomas didn’t do it. Jesus’ willingness to honor his questions was all he needed to hear. Instantly, Thomas confessed, “My Lord. My God.”

Here at Western over the next couple of years, people will have lots of questions. Times of change and transition always generate questions. They will range from broad, crucial questions such as “Why do we worship the way we do?” and “Why do we have the staffing plan we have?” down to details that may seem irrelevant to many such as “Who filters what goes into the Monday morning emails?”

How the congregation and your leadership respond to the questions will help shape the interim period. If questions are honored, it will be a time of growth and renewal. If questions are discouraged as divisive and irritating, it will be a challenging time.

During my thirty years here, we have debated everything from the role of the LGBT community in our congregation’s leadership to the type of food served at congregational dinners; from how to use the financial resources our endowment generates to how best to use the garage. As we have done so, we have avoided assigning spurious or seditious intent to the questioners. Instead, we have said, “Let’s talk about it.”

As a pastor, one of my primary roles has been to referee and moderate the debates. When someone gets too hostile or turns a debate about issues into a debate about personalities, I call a time out and have a talk with the person. But the number of times I have had to call a time out in thirty years are not many. We inherited a respectful tone of debate from our predecessors here at Western. I am sure it will continue into the future.

A classic example of the type of issues we have debated is our endowment. When we first set it up, we had questions at several congregational meetings about the nature of our investments. What stocks did we own and how much of the money was in stocks, bonds and cash? After hearing the questions repeatedly, I suggested that we put the information in a folder in the main office. We invited anyone to look portfolio at anytime.

You can probably guess what happened next. No one came and asked for the folder. As it was with Jesus and Thomas, merely respecting the question was enough to satisfy the questioners.

Will there be some seemingly ridiculous questions asked in a congregation? Of course. We are humans. At times, we ask ridiculous questions. But we ignore or dismiss them at our own risk. After all, the questions Spinoza was asking were deemed ridiculous. However, they changed the intellectual development of Western society forever.

All questions, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant have to be addressed. One of the reasons I am so excited about you all going through a new strategic planning process is the fact that it creates a framework for questions to be asked, massaged and perhaps answered. No one will be able to say, “I was never asked what I thought!”

Of course, some questions cannot be fully answered in a neat and tidy way. How do we educate our kids? Are we being responsive enough to the world? Is our worship fulfilling? These are questions that cannot and should not be answered once and for all. They are necessarily open-ended.

As a nation, we are going through an interesting time when it comes to questions and answers. As has every generation of Americans, we face challenging problems. I’m not so sure our problems are more difficult than those of our ancestors. But they are our problems so they seem more difficult. Some people think they have already figured out the answers to our problems and don’t want to hear new and old questions about them.

For example, I support the Palestinian drive for nationhood and an end to the occupation of the West Bank. I also support Israel’s right to and need for security in an environment where neighbors such as Hamas and Hezbollah vow to wipe Israel off the face of the map. However, when I raise questions about Israel’s security in many progressive circles I get trashed by some people as being anti-Palestinian. When I raise questions about injustice of the West Bank occupation with some pro-Israel activists, I can get angry responses. In both groups, the answers are clear, the questions closed—or so they seem to these folks.

We see the same dynamics at work in a family. Some families have questions that are off the table. They can’t be asked. No one can ask, “Doesn’t it seem like Dad is drinking too much?” or “Aren’t we spending more money than we are making?” or “Why do we spend more time at work than together as a family?” People who dare to ask these types of questions get labeled as troublemakers, sewing seeds of dissent within the family system. In fact, it is silence, the lack of questioning that sews the seeds of trouble in any system.

As I understand family systems, nothing should be beyond question. A healthy family system embraces tough questions, dissenting views, alternative lifestyles. One of the reasons I love teenagers is their willingness to ask the questions others refuse to ask. I have had too many parents to count come into my office saying, “There is something wrong with my teenager. Listen to what he is asking us.” By the time they leave, some of them figure out that there is nothing wrong with the teenager but something is wrong with the family.

If we look back at Jesus ministry, we witness him creating a very healthy family of followers. It had amazing diversity—everyone from a despised tax collector to a woman who supposedly had a dubious past to Peter who asked irritating questions to disciples who argued about which one of them should be first in heaven. This diversity created incredible debates about who Jesus was, who God is and issues ranging from personal wealth to divorce. Within his leadership core, Jesus insisted on an openness to differences and questions that marked the life of the early church for centuries.

What the church lost after Nicea is a willingness to ask the tough questions. As a result, when the tough questions get asked, some people leave the family. When the discussion moves to same-sex marriage, as it has today, we see a number of congregations leaving our denomination.

Presbyterians tend to forget that we were formed by people who asked tough questions no one else dared to ask. Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and others asked questions Rome didn’t want to hear. It wasn’t so much that the Reformers left the church as the church tossed them out. In January, 1521, Luther was excommunicated and the Protestant denominations began to form. In fairness to the Pope at the time, Leo X, I should note that Luther was excommunicated only after he set fire to a papal edict criticizing his beliefs! But, you know, if you’re going to be Pope, you really need to be able to process criticism!!

As Christians, it seems to me that we have several key responsibilities that flow from Thomas questioning Jesus. First, we need to ask the questions no one else is willing to ask. You just know that the other disciples were aghast when Thomas dared to press Jesus about his identity. Second, we need to support those who ask tough questions. It is no fun playing that role. People need to be supported. Third, we need to take seriously those who question us. After all, they just may be right.

Questions and questioners—of such come a faithful life.

Let us pray: Gracious God, to help us grow and mature, you probe us with questions—profound, persistent, irritating questions. Help us to listen to them carefully. In response to your questions, empower us to ask our own tough questions—of you, ourselves and society. All this we ask in the name of the Risen One, Jesus the Christ. Amen.

Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
April 8, 2012 Easter Sunday

Text: Matthew 27:57–28:10

Since we have been following Matthew’s Gospel for more than a month, I decided to use his version of the resurrection story today. Matthew’s rendition has more limited details about the resurrection than John and Luke. Unlike John, Matthew has no touching story of Jesus approaching Mary who was weeping outside the empty tomb, certain that his enemies had stolen Jesus’ body or a frantic footrace to the tomb by the disciples who find only the linen burial shroud neatly folded in a corner. There is no story, as in Luke, of women going to the tomb with spices to treat Jesus’ body and being asked by two mysterious men, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”

Matthew’s account is far shorter but transmits a sense of urgency to Jesus’ first resurrected moments that the other Gospels lack. Matthew describes the Risen Jesus emerging from the tomb ready to roll. Jesus said, “Tell the others to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” In today’s jargon, it would be, “Look, I can’t talk right now. Gotta go. See you in Galilee.”

My guess is that Matthew captured the spirit of that amazing moment perfectly. After all, Jesus’ brief but intense ministry was filled with frenetic, fierce, fervent activity. Why wouldn’t it continue when Jesus emerged from the tomb with a second lease on life?

Those who attempt to portray Jesus as a tranquil Buddha-like figure simply haven’t read the Gospels from front to back. A serene individual doesn’t get into shouting matches with his opponents, calling some of them a “brood of vipers,” or get so irritated with a protégé that he calls him “Satan,” or march into a Temple and start turning over tables. Yes, Jesus had a contemplative side. He regularly needed to get away from the maddening crowd to pray to God and reflect on his life.

But first and foremost, Jesus was a person of action. He healed, taught, debated, organized, led, fed, comforted and challenged people from sunrise to sunset, from one end of Israel to the other. He was a motivator, mover and shaker, not a mystic.

Indeed, at the beginning of his ministry, after spending forty days and nights in a retreat of sorts, Jesus came out of the desert on fire. As Mark tells it, in a matter of hours, Jesus recruited Andrew, Simon, James and John to his leadership team. He took them to a synagogue where he astonished everyone with the intelligence and integrity of his teaching. From there he went to the home of Simon’s mother-in-law who was sick and healed her. At sundown, the new disciples brought him more sick people whom he healed. All of that, according to Mark, was accomplished in Jesus’ first day!

From those first days in Galilee to his last days in Jerusalem, Jesus never slowed down. If anything, the intensity and pace of his life escalated. He was almost crushed to death by crowds seeking to touch him, preached to crowds large and small, healed nonstop and fed thousands of people who came to hear him preach, never allowing himself to be distracted by the disconcerting rumors that he had attracted the attention of the dangerous Herod and Pilate. He traveled in boats across stormy waters, walked on roads notorious for the bandits who haunted them, and hiked across dangerous deserts and rocky terrain.

Given the level of intensity Jesus’ brought to his days on this earth, his energy, enthusiasm, imagination and love, is it any wonder that he came out of the tomb fired up and ready to go. “Sorry, got stuff to do,” he said. “See you in Galilee.” It is perfect.

Jesus’ life before and after the resurrection raises a profound question for you and me, doesn’t it? What kind of intensity are we bringing to life? What risks are we taking to serve God? Are we milking the most life has to offer out of every minute of every day? Do we live, not work but live, from sunrise to sunset with the kind of vision, concentration and drive Jesus exhibited?

When I am teaching my church management seminars, there is a story I sometimes share to drive home a point. Some of you may have heard me tell it. It came from an experience of Mary O’Dwyer Flynn, a gifted therapist here in D.C. She nurtured a huge number of people, including me, as we pieced together the puzzle our lives are.

In her fifties, Mary decided to visit Ireland to explore her Irish roots. Landing in Dublin, she rented a car at the airport and headed downtown to a hotel. Unfortunately, her rental car broke down at one of the busiest intersections in Dublin. Sitting there helplessly, she watched the light change from red to yellow to green and back to red again. Meanwhile, in the rearview mirror, she saw the traffic piling up behind her with faces of the drivers turning not yellow or green but only bright red.

After a few minutes, a large fellow driving a beer delivery truck stuck in the traffic, climbed down from his cab and walked toward Mary’s stalled car. A bit alarmed, she locked the doors and rolled her window up until there was only a small crack for an opening. The big guy leaned down and said through the crack, “Darlin’, are you waitin’ for a particular shade of green?”

Every morning, not every Easter, but every morning, God asks us the exact same question. “People,” God inquires, “are you waiting for a particular shade of green before you start living life to its fullest? Are you waiting for a particular job or lover, city or salary before you go after life with the unbridled gusto and sense of purpose I showed you in Jesus?”

As I think about the nation into which I was born in 1947 and the nation in which we all live in 2012, over those six decades, I sense that our enthusiasm for life has diminished significantly. When I was growing up, there was a bullishness about life, in this nation, that would have made Teddy Roosevelt proud. One could literally feel the energy and enthusiasm; the passion and purpose. You wanted to be a part of it.

I’m not trying to paint a totally rosy picture of the last half of the twentieth century. It was also a time of incredible sexism, racism and homophobia. Women, people of color and the LGBT community faced discrimination and even hatred that was simply horrific. In addition, we lived under a constant threat of nuclear obliteration that placed an unsettling fear in our hearts. So it was no bed of roses. But it was a time of incredible entrepreneurial, innovative, risk-taking activity. Around the beginning of the twenty-first century, the fruits of that innovative period were picked and the results have changed forever the way we live.

Entrepreneurs and innovators are people who see life as an opportunity, an occasion to create and be creative. In the last half of the twentieth century, everyone from Steve Jobs to megachurches to the Beatles to our own Miriam’s Kitchen experimented with new ways of doing things that generated new life. Risk-taking, creative people started everything from Doctors without Borders to Starbucks, Race for the Cure to ipads.

It is this optimistic, almost foolish embrace and pursuit of new life, new beginnings, and new challenges that feels diminished and in decline in our society today. Rather than taking the risks required to be creative, too many of us are playing life safe. Rather than looking for opportunities, we are looking for security.

Let me be clear. I’m not talking about the younger generations when I describe our tepid, wary, play-it-safe attitude. It is pervasive in us all. And, at the risk of irritating everyone over the age of 40, as I see it, it is folks under the age of 40 who seem to have a more adventuresome, fearless approach to life these days. If they keep it, our future is good.

As a people, we are inventing something: self-restraints that we treat as givens. We say, “I can’t follow my dreams because of this. I can’t follow my dreams because of that.” We build lives for ourselves within arbitrarily limited specifications. Or, we compliantly allow others to place arbitrary limits upon us. In either case, our God, the source of all creativity is wondering, “Where is the imagination, the determination, the drive, the willingness to take a risk?”

As a people, we have burst bubbles of bigotry, overturned old, sexist roles for women and men; refused to fall in love only with people who look, think or pray like us; rethought the essentials of Christianity . We did so proclaiming, “This is a new day. A resurrected day. A day our God has made for all to enjoy.”

What happened to that Spirit? Why have we become so pessimistic, cynical and worried about our possibilities? Life hasn’t changed. God hasn’t changed. We have changed.

Instead of being a nation of risk-takers, people who head out for lands unknown, who decide to take a walk on the moon, who work hard to eliminate injustice and inequities, we have become a nation that yearns for an imaginary past that never was, a stability that isn’t in the cards, and a certainty that never will be.

We are playing it safe. And yet, ironically, there is nothing more dangerous in life than playing it safe. Because life isn’t safe.

Jesus teaches us that life is about being faithful, not safe—going for it no matter the costs of discipleship. Reach out to the lepers, beggars and Gentiles. Care for them even if we are criticized for it. Refuse to accept that people must remain lame, slowly bleed to death or be blind. Find a way to heal them. Challenge the orthodoxies of our day, even if the purveyors of orthodoxy slap us down. This is the Way Jesus urged us to travel. This is the way he traveled.

Think about the people we hold high as role models: activists such as Rosa Parks and Caesar Chavez, artists such as Adrienne Rich and Pablo Picasso, human rights leaders such as Dr. King and Aung San Suu Kyi, religious leaders such as Archbishop Tutu and Sojourner Truth, scientists such as Marie Curie and Jonas Salk. These are not people who played it safe. They are not people who said, “I’m not sure I’m up to it. ” or “People just won’t let me do this.” These women and men threw themselves into life with the same passion and energy we saw Jesus throw himself into the problems and possibilities of his generation. What others assumed was impossible, they deemed possible. They said to themselves, “If I try this, the worst thing that can happen is that I will fail. If I don’t try this, I will spend the rest of my life wondering what would have happened had I made the effort.”

The resurrection of Jesus is at the heart of our faith because it shouts out to all of history, to each and every one of us: Nothing can keep the irrepressible, creative, loving power of God trapped in a tomb. Nothing can kill it. Nothing can control it. Nothing can stop it. And since God works through us, ultimately, nothing can control or stop us—except our own lack of determination, our own unwillingness to take some risks.

Our foremothers/fathers understood this when they packed up their belongings and headed for America. They came from Africa and Asia, Europe and the Americas. Immigrants coming to this nation today bring exactly the same spirit. It is why immigrants are the lifeblood of our nation.

And by the way, you don’t need to be a Christian to understand the importance of resurrection in life. Jews understood the power of new life when they shook off the ashes of the holocaust and headed for Israel, determined to create a healthy future for themselves and their offspring. They were not about to let the Nazis bury them in a tomb. Muslims on the Palestinian West Bank refuse to be buried in the tomb of the occupation. So they keep working for a reborn Palestinian state where they can create their own future. You don’t have to be a Christian to believe in resurrections.

Jesus could not have rolled away the stone from the entrance of that tomb with his own two hands. He wasn’t physically strong enough. But unlike so many of us, Jesus never limited himself by relying solely on his own power. He always looked to the power of God to remove the barriers that stood between him and his destiny. So must we.

At one point in his ministry, Jesus captured the truth of his ministry and life. He told his followers, “For God, all things are possible.” These words should be inscribed over the door through which we pass as we head out each morning to start a new day. Jesus was able to do what he did because Jesus knew that walking with God, all things are possible. He never stopped dreaming. He never stopped taking risks. Because, “for God, all things are possible.”

You and I have not even scratched the surface of who we can be and what we can do. We haven’t scratched it as individuals. We haven’t scratched it collectively. It is time for us to walk out of the tombs we have either created ourselves or someone has created for us. It is time to stop telling ourselves what we can’t do and start realizing that, with God, all things are possible.

New Life does not await us after death. New life awaits us this morning and every day we are blessed to wake up and get out of bed. Jesus Christ is risen. Let us rise with him and go to Galilee to do the work God has prepared for us!

Let us pray: Resurrecting God, we let our own fears, or fears the world instills within us, to control us. We settle for less than life offers. We tap a tiny portion of our human potential. On this Easter morn, hear us as each of us recommit to living life to its fullest—to taking the risks and reaping the rewards that come with a faithful life. In the Risen Christ’s name we pray. Amen.

a Good Friday Meditation
Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
April 6, 2012

Text: Matthew 26:57–27:66

During Lent, we have followed Matthew’s description of events that led up to and include Jesus’ execution on a cross. It is a grim, tragic story with an amazing plot and numerous intriguing subplots. The story is a foundation block for many of the basic doctrinal tenets of our faith.

Given our increased knowledge of the history of first century Israel-Palestine and our ever improving understanding of the biblical texts, we have finally put to rest the theory that Jesus was killed by the Jewish people. For two thousand years, it has been a theory easy for the church to endorse. Too easy. One merely needs to read John’s Gospel uncritically and even, to a lesser degree, the three synoptic Gospels to put the blame on Jews. There are plenty of times the text reads “the Jews” did this or that leading to Jesus’ death, as though the entire Jewish nation was acting in concert to kill Jesus.

However, in fact, the Jewish leaders had no authority to kill Jesus. Pilate did. It was Rome, not the Jewish people, who nailed Jesus to a cross and stood guard to make sure he died.

With the “who killed Jesus?” question resolved, we can turn to the larger question of why was Jesus killed? In almost any murder case, the causes are multiple and complicated. For example, we know who killed Trayvon Martin. Even the killer, George Zimmerman, admits his actions. The much more important question is why Martin died. The teenager’s death has reopened a conversation that gets closed prematurely, every time a person of color is killed in a manner that attracts media attention. Once the media disappears, the search for root causes disappears as well—until another person of color is killed in a way that attracts attention.

The causes of Martin’s death are clearly rooted in the racism and classism of our society. But they are also linked to our tolerance of violence, in particular gun violence. They flow as well from the increasing tendency to turn our neighborhoods into fortresses, patrolled by private security. Our society is unwilling to examine all these causes and, where possible, deal with them so we can avoid such tragic deaths in the future. In like manner, we need to examine the multiple causes of Jesus’ death. As we identify them, we can work to avoid repeating them today.

While it is wrong to blame Jesus’ death on the Jews, certainly some Jews had a role in Jesus’ death—Caiaphas and Judas, for example. But acknowledging the relatively small causal role of a few Jews in Jesus’ death is a far cry from blaming all the Jews then or now for Jesus’ death.

It is also a bit simplistic to lay Jesus’ death totally on Pilate. The causes for Jesus murder run far deeper. He was a threat to an imperial power. As such, he would have been killed had he been born under the boot of the Emperors of China, the heavy hand of the Pharaohs or the oppressive regimes of the Aztecs. If such had been the case, we wouldn’t be talking about the Jews killing Jesus. We would have to debunk the idea that the Chinese, Egyptians or Mexicans killed Jesus.

Fact of the matter is, Jesus’ universal message was and is a universal threat to any and all rulers who seek to oppress God’s people. But it is almost always a mistake to draw a direct correlation between the behavior of oppressive ruling elites and the people as a whole.

Beyond these causes for Jesus crucifixion, Jesus’ death raises the issue about how we all relate to goodness. We say we love it and seek to be good and respect those who are good. But too often, when goodness appears in our midst, we ignore, abuse or even kill it. We are not comforted by the presence of good. We are threatened by it. We think it makes us look bad. We see it as judging rather than loving us.

When we look at the good, too often, we look at ourselves in comparison and feel inadequate. We wonder: Why can’t I love people the gentle way the Dali Lama does? Why can’t I pursue justice with the relentlessness of a Sojourner Truth? Looking at people who manifest goodness, we really only have two options. Either we join and work with them or we turn on them and try to destroy them. Too frequently, our feelings of inadequacy cause us to do the latter.

Second, people who are incarnations of the good threaten us with their call for us to love our enemies. It is something we just don’t want to do. We say we do but we don’t. We would rather do just about anything than love our enemies. “Damn our enemies” is what we say to ourselves. Not wanting to hear that we should love our enemies, we attempt to silence the voices of those who call for reconciliation and forgiveness.

Dr. King spent a lot of his time trying to convince people in the civil rights movement not to hate their enemies. He talked about the basic goodness within each and every person—even the goodness within the most diehard racists, such as Sheriff Jim Clark in Selma. When Dr. King would talk about loving our enemies in civil rights rallies, there were as many people standing silent as those saying “Amen” in support of him. It was the single most controversial part of his ministry.

Third, people who are incarnations of good force us to see our own hypocrisy. They don’t necessarily name our hypocrisy. In fact, they usually don’t. They reveal it. Seeing our hypocrisy in the mirror of their integrity, we want to destroy them, eliminate the contrast, rather than change our behavior.

God does not place good people in our midst to make us feel inadequate, hypocritical, or less than committed. God places them in our midst to show us what is possible. Good women and men are God’s constant reminders of who we can be, what we can do, if we will only allow our own basic goodness to surface in our actions and words.

Finally, to me, the saddest thing about Jesus is not that he died. Given all the things I have enumerated today and more, his death was inevitable. What saddens me is that he died alone. He should have died surrounded by his disciples on those adjacent crosses, not by a couple strangers he had never met. The disciples should have told Pilate, “If you kill him, you will have to kill us,” even though Rome would have gladly agreed to nail them to crosses. As Jesus was being tried and killed, the streets of Jerusalem should have been filling up with protestors. The revolution against Rome that the Zealots sought should have started right then and there.

I can’t be as good as some my heroes. Maybe that is an excuse or justification for my own inadequacies. But it is the way I feel. Nonetheless, I am convinced that I can help, support and encourage those who are living incarnations of the good in our time. I can be there for them in the way the disciples were not there for Jesus. I can help organize others to join the struggle for justice. I can use my writing skills to get the word out. I can contribute money where it is needed. I can do all kinds of little tasks that no one else wants to do.

In other words, I can align myself with the good. As I align myself with those who are good, I become part of God’s goodness. So, the issue isn’t really whether you or I are good. The issue is whether we will work for the good, with the good. If we will, we will manifest God’s goodness.

Indeed, even those individuals we proclaim to be good aren’t pure goodness. Only Jesus was a pure incarnation of the Good. Dr. King had his personal weaknesses. Mother Teresa had her flaws.

What is surprising about that news? People are flawed. Having no alternative, God has always used flawed people. David was certainly no paradigm of moral virtue. Paul had more than a few personality issues. Discounting and disregarding good people because they have personality flaws is yet another wonderful excuse for us doing nothing.

Today, as we contemplate Jesus’ death, let us ask ourselves: Where are the good on trial today? Why am I not taking a stand with them? As long as we allow the forces of oppression to pick off the Good, one good person at a time, the oppressors will prevail, in the short term. However, as we intentionally stand together with those who are good, stand with God, we are able to push back the darkness and expand the realm of light and life. When we stand together, the goodness of each of us becomes an insurmountable force.

Let us pray: Gracious God, why are we afraid to express our goodness? Why are we constantly tearing down folks who are good? Help us to work through these troubling questions. As we do so, may we gain the courage and confidence to be the good people you created us to be. All this we pray in the name of the Crucified One, Jesus of Nazareth. Amen.

Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
March 25, 2012

Text: Matthew 27:27–66

Whether sitting at home or reading it aloud in worship, the crucifixion is a story I still have great difficulty reading. To me personally, Jesus is a family member, a best friend, my mentor, my window into the heart and mind of God and so much more. To see him demonized, brutalized, and trivialized is almost as challenging as seeing him murdered. The story makes me angry, depressed, and mystified. However, if we are to understand who we are, who Jesus was, who God is, it is a story we must read over and over and over again.

After two trials, only one of which, before Pilate, mattered, Jesus was turned over to the elite corps of soldiers who guarded the praetorium, the living residence of the Roman governor, and dragged before a full battalion, some 600 in number. While many of the soldiers watched, a few of the guards began to have fun with Jesus the way an animal bats around a prey it has wounded and is about to kill. To ridicule the idea that he was a king of the Jews, they dressed Jesus in royal garb. They spit on him, whipped him and finally stripped him down to clothing that covered only his private parts.

Knowing that they needed to complete the crucifixion before the Passover began, the soldiers finally went to work, dragging Jesus out of the Praetorium into the squalid streets of Jerusalem. Not wanting to carry the heavy cross themselves, the soldiers pulled a man named Simon from Cyrene out of the crowd. Biblical scholars speculate that we know his name because, watching Jesus die, Simon converted to Christianity and became a revered figure in the early church.

The praetorium guards led Jesus to a killing field called Golgotha where, prior to driving nails through his hands and feet, they offered him a drink mixed with gall, a substance used like morphine to numb people from pain. Jesus refused to drink it. He wanted to be fully alert in his final moments of life. After dividing Jesus’ garments for future sale, the guards sat down to wait for their charge to die. They brought along some sour wine to drink. Matthew tells of many different types of people mocking Jesus as he hung nailed in excruciating pain to the cross. Even the two criminals, also being crucified, reviled him.

After six hours of torture, darkness swept across the land swallowing up the afternoon sky over Jerusalem. Three hours later, Jesus hit a wall. In pain, both physically and spiritually, he cried out in a loud voice, “God, why have you forsaken me?” They are words that have flowed from the lips of cancer patients and parents with starving children in Africa; from soldiers in the heat of battle and couples in the heat of a divorce. If there is anything we understand about and to which we relate in Jesus’ journey, we understand these words. At one point or another, many of us have felt abandoned by the One to whom we pray.

One bystander couldn’t stand watching any more as the innocent man cried out in agony. He ran toward Jesus, grabbed a sponge, filled it with sour wine and extended it to the suffering servant of God. The fellow thought he saw a small smile of gratitude cross Jesus’ parched lips. And then, Jesus cried out again. This time it was a guttural, rasping, incomprehensible cry. He was too far gone to form words. With that, says Matthew, “(Jesus) breathed his last.”

Prior to the beginning of the Passover night, it was the tradition of the Jewish faith to have all bodies removed from the hundreds of crosses lining the roads leading away from Jerusalem. As sundown approached, the women, who had stood with Jesus while he died, wondered who would help them with Jesus’ body. They were shocked when a prominent member of the Sanhedrin, Joseph of Arimathea, approached them and offered to help. But then they remembered that, in the glory days of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee, Joseph had expressed interest in Jesus’ teaching. During Jesus’ trial, rumor had it that he even dared to argue for Jesus’ innocence.

While Jesus was dying on the cross, the powerful Pharisee had paid Pilate a visit. He asked for and received permission to bury the Galilean in his own personal tomb. Joseph didn’t bring servants to Golgotha. Instead, he personally picked up Jesus’ body and carried it to a tomb he had ordered built for himself, a tomb worthy of a notable man such as himself. Inside the tomb, Joseph carefully wrapped Jesus’ dead body in a clean linen shroud.

As Joseph rolled the large, hand-hewn stone into its final place, sealing the tomb from grave robbers and other nefarious people, Jesus’ mother and Mary Magdalene sat across from the tomb and watched—stunned, silent, disbelieving. Mary flashed back to remembrances of the beautiful baby she held in her arms in the stable in Bethlehem, the teenage Jesus who could debate the meaning of the Torah with rabbis. Mary Magdalene remembered Jesus as a man who respected her and, in the process, gave her grounds to respect herself. We don’t know how long the two women sat there, hoping that death could be undone. But at some point, they acceded to reality and headed back to the city.

The next day, Jesus’ hardcore enemies approached Pilate and expressed concerns that the dead man’s disciples might fake a resurrection by stealing the body. Acknowledging the danger of such a plot, Pilate stationed a guard of soldiers at the tomb. That would put an end to the Jesus narrative. Or so they thought.

If you have been attending Western for a while, you know that I do not believe God planned Jesus death. God did not send Jesus to earth to die to balance out all the human sins we have committed, as orthodoxy usually teaches. No, as the sun set after his death, Jesus had not died for us. He died because of us. He died because humans can be so threatened by the good that we kill incarnations of the good.

Yes, Jesus knew there was a high likelihood he would be killed; just as Martin Luther King, Jr. knew he might be killed; and Gandhi knew he might be killed. Those who speak God’s Word; who reach out to the untouchables of the world; who cross the cultural, racial, ethnic and religious boundaries the world uses to divide and conquer us; these courageous women and men knowingly and willingly put their lives at risk. But to think that a parent would design a child’s death, that God would design Jesus’ death, does not match the portrait Jesus gave us of God or the image of God we find in the rest of Scripture.

Nonetheless, as Paul wrote, “God works for good in all things.” So God is able to take even an act as heinous and violent as the crucifixion of Jesus and turn it into something good. God is able to use Jesus’ death to redeem the world. However, we need to be very careful not to lay the blame for Jesus’ death on God. The blame is on us—the human race.

We kill the dreamers, prophets and peacemakers. We conduct the kangaroo courts. We torture people; even we the people of these United States torture people today.

The fact that we do these things doesn’t make us innately evil people, originally sinful. But our deeds clearly reveal us as fearful people, distrustful, and yes, sinners. Like Pilate, we are perfectly capable of doing what is politically expedient rather than what is right. Like Peter, we are capable of betraying our best friends when we perceive our own safety is in danger. Like Caiaphas, we are capable of using religion to kill rather than redeem people. Like the soldiers, we can follow orders even when they cause the innocent to suffer.

However, and it is a huge “however,” a “however” only God can create, there is a wonderfully subversive subplot at work in the story of Jesus’ crucifixion. Written by God, it is a subplot describing acts of inspiring courage and amazing grace. The characters in the subplot rarely receive the attention given to Caiaphas, Pilate and Peter. But these characters are where we see God at work in the story of Jesus’ death.

Simon of Cyrene. When the Romans pointed to Simon and ordered, “Pick up the cross,” he could have run for it and melt into the back of the crowd. The Romans didn’t have the time or need to chase him. They could have quickly conscripted someone else. So I don’t see Simon of Cyrene responding to an order to pick up the cross. Rather, I see him willingly picking up Jesus’ burden. I envision him as a physically strong, robust man who knew he could help this bleeding, beaten down wreck of a man who could barely move his feet because of the weight of the chains.

Joseph of Arimathea. Aligning yourself with a person Caiaphas, Herod and Pilate have declared a threat to Rome was dangerous business. When he asked Pilate for permission to bury Jesus, the Pharisee knew that Pilate might well say, “You like this guy? Well then, you can join him on a cross.” When Joseph donated his expensive tomb as a burial spot for Jesus, he knew that Caiaphas would mock and taunt him about it forever in meetings of the Sanhedrin. But Joseph wasn’t intimidated. He wasn’t fearful. He did what needed to be done. He did the decent, honorable thing.

The man at the cross. There were lots of people watching Jesus die. They all knew he needed some liquid. But either filled with fear of the Roman guards or having been sucked into the madness of the mob, they did nothing. They stood and watched another human being suffer unto death. But this fellow, whose name we do not know, could stand and watch for only so long. Finally, he grabbed a stick, dipped it in the sour wine popular among Roman troops and pushed it toward Jesus. It was the last human act of compassion toward Jesus. It was a brave, daring deed by this nameless, faceless man from the crowd.

The women. Although the men abandoned Jesus during his ordeal, the women stuck with him. As the trials took place, I have this image of them glaring in defiance at Caiaphas, Pilate and the others. As the bloodied Jesus walked toward Golgotha, I envision them shouting words of encouragement and love to Jesus. We all picture them crying as they stood by Jesus during his suffering and death on the Cross.

Simon of Cyrene, Joseph of Arimathea, a man in the crowd, female family and friends—they are the subplot of grace woven into this most incredible story. It is through people like them that God redeems the world.

We are fascinated by charismatic presidents and eloquent preachers, powerful business leaders and brilliant academics. Surely, God works through them at times. But for the most part, God’s will is accomplished by nameless individuals like the guy who gave Jesus sour wine; like Joseph who used his wealth and position not to help himself but to help God; like Simon of Cyrene who might not have been the brightest bulb in the house but was physically strong and could carry a cross for someone who couldn’t; like the two Mary’s whose loving presence at the Cross helped give Jesus the strength he needed to get through those brutal final hours.

Nature and evolution are great teachers of how God works in the world. The dinosaurs are no longer here. But the squirrels that dodged their massive footsteps are. The survivors of evolution are not the powerful. They are the adaptable. Ironically, the more powerful one is, the less adaptable one is. It is the subplot that governs evolution. To find God at work, look for the inconspicuous almost invisible things.

Both in nature and history, God works in ways that, at times, are imperceptible and always humble. Today, in places such as the Horn of Africa and Syria, in humanitarian non-profits and intensive care units, women and men like Simon, Joseph, and Mary are playing out roles that lead to the ultimate victory of God in the world, that result in resurrections and new life. Using humble people in almost undetectable ways, God’s methods are subversive, subterranean and devastatingly effective.

If we want to play a role in God’s redemptive drama, I suggest that we not look for starring roles or even roles with speaking parts. Most of us will find our place in the chorus. Simon of Cyrene, Joseph, the man who gave Jesus sour wine and two Mary’s emerged from the chorus. At the right moment, they all stepped out, stepped up and we are still talking about them two thousand years later.

If we focus solely on the brutality of Jesus’ death, we may become depressed at humanity’s willingness to kill the dreamers, to assassinate the good. But if we pay attention to the details of the story, we will see a depiction of humanity that portrays us at our best, portraying us as noble and good—being compassionate, decent and just. Both parts of the story are true. The story is only false if we leave out one dimension of who we are.

Let us pray: Loving God, you see something in us, we oftentimes don’t see in ourselves. You forgive us our sins in hopes that we will live into our goodness. May we use the story of Jesus’ death to grow our goodness, to step out of the chorus and help you create peace, justice and love in the world. All this we pray in the name of One who died loving you and us, Jesus the Christ. Amen.

Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, DC
18 March 2012

Matthew 27:1–1

During Lent, John and I have been following the texts that we usually save for Good Friday. The story is called the Passion narrative—and it depicts the last supper, the first trial, the second trial, and the crucifixion of Jesus. On the Friday before Easter, we typically recount the whole story as we commemorate the day in which Jesus was crucified, and during part of that service, we read the long passage of Jesus’s death.

Over the years, a lot of pastors have noticed that most people don’t have the opportunity to attend a Good Friday service, but the story is important to hear. It’s dramatic, it’s rich, and so much of the gospels lead up to this moment. It feels like we’re cheating, as if we’re cutting out the height of the plot and skipping to the last page each year.

Pastors deal with this in different ways—some take Palm Sunday, the week before Easter, cut the celebration short and move through the Palm and Passion narrative in one Sunday. John and I decided to focus on the passion narrative during Lent. This week, we’re looking at the second trial of Jesus. Last week, we learned how Jesus was brought before the Jewish leaders, and this week we read how he was brought before the Roman government.

In this section of the story, three major things occur: Judas kills himself, Jesus is on trial before Pilate, and Pilate sentences him.

Before I go on, I have to admit something. I had dental surgery on Friday, so I was still drugged up yesterday, the day I had reserved for writing my sermon. I was feeling okay, except when I tried to get up, then I would run out of energy and get dizzy. So much of the preparation for the service this morning took place by talking through the sermon with my 11-year-old daughter, Calla. And after conversing with her, I’m pretty sure that she would have written a much better sermon.

Calla just finished reading the Hunger Games, a popular novel for teenaged girls that depicts the brutal killings of more than a dozen children, under an oppressive government, so I figured she was old enough for some of the more gruesome details of the crucifixion story. I told her about the first movement of this passage, how Judas betrayed Jesus, how Judas tried to give away the pieces of silver that he was given, and then how Judas killed himself.

She responded, “So are you going to talk about MacBeth in your sermon?”

I didn’t understand the correlations right away. She has to explain them to me.

Hearing the torments of Judas reminded Calla of Shakespeare’s famous play, MacBeth, because the character was not a worn-out two-dimensional Sunday school figure or even a Lady Gaga song. Judas was a tortured soul, anguished with his own betrayal.

As we thought about what it must have felt like for Judas to hand over his friend to be arrested and killed, we talked about the overwhelming guilt-induced hallucinations that came to visit MacBeth at his dinner party. When Judas wanted to rid himself of the blood money, it reminded Calla of how the sleepwalking Lady MacBeth wanted to purge herself from the imaginary blood that haunted her. And as Pilate washes his hands, trying to remove the responsibility of the death of Jesus, it reminded us of how Lady MacBeth compulsively washes her hands. The spots never come out, until she meets the same death that Judas does—one that is violent and self-induced.

As Calla took apart the stories of the second trial and compared them to MacBeth, it reminded me of how dramatic these narratives are. Each year when we come to them, I hear something different.

This year, my kept focusing on a character in the second movement in this narrative: Pilate’s wife. I suppose I’ve never focused on her before, because she’s only mentioned in the Matthew version of the account, and we typically read the gospel of John’s narrative.

From all accounts, Pilate is a treacherous man. He is an official for the Roman government, and the historian Josephus writes that Pilate is known for his cruelty. The Roman government is ruling the Jewish people at this time, and the government itself is particularly brutal.

Think about it. I’m cautious of my daughter reading gruesome parts of this story. Each week, Emma, our Christian Educator, wrestles with how she is going to tell the story to our children. But imagine a typical Jewish child in that time, walking along the road. There were people alongside the path hanging on crosses, reminding the children and their parents what happens to those who step out of line.

If Pilate was known for his cruelty in that sort of environment, what was he like? Pilate should be weighing the evidence against Jesus and sentencing him according to the evidence. Yet, when Pilate interrogates Jesus, he cannot find anything wrong in what Jesus has done. Jesus is an innocent man and Pilate has every right and duty to let Jesus go. There is no legal case against Jesus.

Pilate is still trying to make up his mind, when he gets a message from his wife. I wonder how this happens. Surely the governor’s wife does not normally have an opinion on the verdict of his prisoners. And if Pilate is known for his ruthlessness, then an average woman might have been frightened of standing up to her husband. So either Pilate’s wife is incredibly courageous or terribly haunted. Or maybe both.

Pilate’s wife sends word to Pilate. The message is blunt, demanding, and mysterious: “Have nothing to do with that innocent man, for I have suffered a great deal because of a dream about him.”

What was the dream? Why did it haunt her so much that she had to send a message to her husband? She seems to have much more fortitude than her husband because she is able to point out that Jesus is legally innocent, and there is something more to him. Something mystical about him. In fact, that word she uses doesn’t just mean “innocence,” but it points to something deeper, it also means “righteous.”

So Pilate, who is supposed to be governing the land, cannot find anything wrong with Jesus on a legal basis, he gets a message from his wife telling him to have nothing to do with Jesus, because he’s innocent, and there is something so deeply wrong about the situation that she is haunted by it in her dreams.

Pilate attempts to deflect the crowd by displaying Barabas, a notorious criminal, before them, but that doesn’t work.

Pilate cannot bring himself to let Jesus go, because he’s afraid of a riot. The crowd is worked up. Perhaps Pilate doesn’t want to go home, so he is trying to make sure that his wife is not angry with him, since she apparently has the resolve that Pilate lacks, so he comes up with a plan, which leads us to the third part of this story.

Pilate concocts a dramatic gesture of washing his hands before the crowd, cleansing his hands of Jesus blood. But it’s an act. Pilate commits a stunning betrayal of justice. He does not do his job. He sways to popular opinion and condemns an innocent man to torture, beatings, and an execution.

And this is where the second trials ends. We are left with a cast of characters—the guilt-ridden friend, the cruel governor, the wise wife, and the innocent man. And yet through it, there is something redeeming about it all. Throughout history, when people have been tortured, when they have been brutalized, when they have been oppressed, when they have been unjustly condemned, they have taken comfort and strength in the life of Jesus.

Historically, people have said that the saving act of Jesus is in the death of Jesus, that he was a sacrifice. Others have said that the saving act of Jesus is in the fact that he is resurrected, and therefore claims victory over death.

But I know that many people, in their guilt, in their injustice, and in their innocence have taken strength in the fact that Jesus is God-with-us. He is with us in our friendships, in our community, in our shared love, and Jesus is with us in our suffering and our trials.

May we go out this week, on the edge of this drama, knowing that no matter what we might face, God is with us.

Through the glory of God our Creator, God our Liberator, and God our Sustainer. Amen.

Part Two of a sermon series on Jesus’ journey to the Cross
Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
March 11, 2012

Text: Matthew 26:57-75

When talking about the trials and execution of Jesus, we need to be very careful that we don’t fall into old myths that have fueled violent anti-Semitism for two thousand years. Recently, I was stunned to see something posted on the website of a reputable Presbyterian organization that advocates justice for the Palestinian people. Somebody posted a very legitimate complaint about an action by Israel’s military. Another person responded, “What do you expect? The Jews also killed Jesus.” It is an example of how hard it is to eradicate malicious myths.

With our rich knowledge of first century history, we can say with certainty that it was the Romans, not the Jews, who crucified Jesus. Evidence of this fact is found in this morning’s Gospel lesson. We will see more evidence next week when we hear about the trial before Pontius Pilate.

Today, we read about Jesus’ first trial, conducted before the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin consisted of 71 individuals who acted as the Supreme Court of Israel. While they had wide-ranging powers over the affairs of Israel, it is important to know that their decisions were totally conditional on the approval of Rome. They could only do what Rome liked.

It is difficult to discern if the Gospels describe a meeting of the full Sanhedrin. Given that the meeting with Jesus was located in the house of the high priest, it is hard to imagine that the entire Sanhedrin was squeezed into that home. Therefore, it was probably a smaller group, officially called the Lesser Sanhedrin, that met with Jesus.

At the time of Jesus’ arrest, the leader of the Sandhedrin was Caiaphas. Caiaphas was not a person beloved among Jews. While he was the high priest, he was appointed and controlled by the Roman authorities. Because of his dependency on the Romans, Caiaphas was looked upon with suspicion by most Jews and despised by many. Caiaphas was appointed by the Roman Procurator Valerius Gratus in 18 AD. Corrupt and ineffective, he was removed from office 18 years later by Procurator Vitellius, a few years after Jesus’ death. By the way, much of what I am telling you we know as the result of the meticulous scholarship and record-keeping of Josephus, a Jewish historian of first century Israel and Rome who was also a Roman citizen.

That Caiaphas was doing Rome’s dirty work is obvious in his strategy before the Lesser Sanhedrin. In his examination of Jesus, Caiaphas did not focus on Jesus as a potential heretic. Rather, he attempted to portray Jesus as a political subversive. His was a political, not a theological charge. If the high priest could prove Jesus was attempting to reinstate the Davidic Kingship, Caiaphas could hand Jesus over to Rome which, for obvious reasons, didn’t deal kindly with anyone claiming to be a king.

Despite Caiaphas’ efforts to jam through a guilty verdict, the text reveals a certain integrity by the Lesser Sanhedrin. Verses 59 and 60 say that despite many false witnesses coming forth, the leaders wouldn’t find Jesus guilty. Unconvinced by what they were hearing, the judges remained undecided. Caiaphas needed better liars.

Finally, the high priest produced a couple of fellows who recalled Jesus saying something about tearing down and rebuilding the Temple in three days. Clearly, Jesus had been speaking metaphorically about such an action. But their remembrance gave Caiaphas what he needed. He jumped on the accusation asking the Galilean, “What did you mean by that? Answer me.” Jesus refused to answer Caiaphas.

Enraged by Jesus’ silence and sensing that he had the charismatic preacher on the defensive, Caiaphas demanded, “Are you the Messiah or not?” Jesus responded, “You have said so.” Jesus’ comment set off a histrionic show by Caiaphas in which the high priest ripped off his clothes and screamed, “He claims to be the Messiah. You heard it. All of you, you heard him. What are we going to do? We know what we have to do.” With that, the group decided Jesus deserved a death sentence. Reaching a conclusion that Jesus deserved a death sentence was as far as they could go. Josephus tells us that the first century Sanhedrin did not have the authority to issue or carry out a death sentence.

Far from “the Jews killing Jesus,” what we observe in this story is a Roman appointed and controlled official, Caiaphas, manipulating a process to get Jesus labeled as a threat to Rome. The Sanhedrin didn’t sentence Jesus to death. They didn’t order his death. The “trial” was stylistic, not substantive.

Of course, the examination allowed Caiaphas to boast to Pilate that he had prevented a possible rebellion, thus feathering his own bed. It also allowed the other leaders to go to bed. According to Josephus, it was a kangaroo court reenacted regularly during Caiaphas’ tenure.

There is no direct cause and effect between what the Sanhedrin may have recommended and what Pilate ultimately did. Pilate needed no reason or judicial process to execute Jesus. Pilate could crucify Jesus because he was having a bad day. Historians of Rome teach us that Roman officials in the provinces were basically their own law. They did as they pleased.

One part of the story is especially fascinating. Why did Jesus basically choose to remain silent before, first, the Sanhedrin and, second, in some versions of the story, Pilate? It seems to me that a passage we read a few weeks ago provides a key. On a mountaintop in the Sinai Desert, God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” With his silence, Jesus was saying exactly the same thing to his critics. In effect, he responded, “I am who I am. I have done what I have done. So you name me. You say who you think I am.”

Standing before the Sanhedrin and Pilate with a body of work that included healings of paralytics and blind people, embracing lepers and healing the children of Gentiles, Jesus appeared to be more than comfortable allowing his life to speak for itself. He was who he was. To respond to questions about being the Messiah would have devolved into a debate over what type of Messiah he was and a zillion irrelevant theological tangents. Throughout his ministry, Jesus showed no interest in such debates; debates, by the way, that have consumed a large part of the past two thousand years of the Church’s time and continue to rage today. On the contrary, Jesus asked followers not to discuss publicly whether or not he was the Messiah.

In an absolutely brilliant literary stroke, the Gospel authors end the story with a contrast between Jesus’ courage in the face of the Sanhedrin and Peter’s cowardice. As Jesus stood up for himself and his faith, they portray Peter denying his best friend—not once but thrice. In the hands of these skilled authors, it is impossible to miss the message.

However, preachers are paid to state the obvious. So, are you and I, like Jesus, nervously but steadfastly standing up for what we believe in our workplaces, communities and families? Or are we, like Peter and the rest of the disciples, boasting of our courage when nothing is at stake but running for cover when everything hits the fan? For most of us, I would wager, it isn’t quite that stark a contrast.

Few people are either heroic figures or cowards. We are somewhere in-between. In fact, Peter was no different. Yes, he ran for the bushes when Jesus was arrested. However, he recovered from that ignominious act to become a courageous and bold spokesperson for God in the world. We believe he was crucified in Rome by Rome, on the orders of none other than Emperor Nero.

We all know the story of Arthur Schindler, a corrupt, degenerate German businessman during the Nazi regime. At some point, something clicked and he managed to help more than 1000 Jews escape the Nazi death machine. Was he the corrupt coward or the hero? He was both. Whistle blowers are usually individuals who have engaged in or stood by silently and watched the corruption they ultimately expose. They can be both dishonest and honest. So while it is easy to contrast Jesus and Peter as two end points on a moral continuum, most of us, including Peter, are somewhere in between those polarities, occasionally swinging wildly from one place to the next.

The take-away from the story of Jesus’ first trial is not to decide whether we are a saint or sinner—Jesus or Peter. The point is what happens when our moment of truth arrives. Will we rely on our words in an attempt to survive the moment or will we, like Jesus, let our lives make our case? Will we let a faithful life, our faithful lives speak for themselves?

The essence of Jesus is not to be found in his words. The Sermon on the Mount is incredible. The parables are amazing. But they aren’t as revelatory of who Jesus was as Jesus going into a leper colony or including women in the heart of his leadership team or regularly eating in the homes of renowned sinners or holding up a Gentile Samaritan as a good person. Jesus’ transcendence was revealed through the totality of his life, not his words.

If you and I want to be convincing in our workplaces, communities, churches and homes, we will do so by leading convincing lives, not by uttering well-phrased words. We don’t call Nelson Mandela great because of his speeches. We call him great because he turned his prison into a university, teaching both the inmates and his jailers the importance of justice and love.

Aung San Suu Kyi. Can anyone here quote anything she ever said? Probably not. But we do remember her confronting armed troops with love; refusing to leave Burma even when it would have meant her personal freedom; standing by people who had never had anyone stand up for them.

Does anyone in this sanctuary remember anything Rosa Parks ever said? I doubt it. But we all know that she had the courage and commitment to sit down in the white section of a segregated bus?

In our moments of truth, our trials, we will not convince people with words. We will convince people by who we are, with our lives. If we have led lives of integrity, done the things we are supposed to do, people will listen to us. If we have not, they will not listen, nor should they. And if they won’t listen to us based on the integrity of our deeds, they most certainly will never listen to us because of the eloquence of our words.

I have to say that I view Jesus’ trials somewhat differently than I did when I was younger. Then I saw him as defiant and combative in these trials. Now I see him as simply clear and resolved.

This evolving understanding of how Jesus handled challenges has changed how I handle my challenges. Weeks from my 65^th birthday, I am no longer really interested in arguing with people the way I was years and decades ago. I am who I am. I believe what I believe. I have done what I have done. People can and should make their decisions about me based on those realities, not something I may say in the midst of a great debate.

Yes, we can and must continue to change and evolve. We have to be able to admit when we are wrong and be open to new ideas. We will be advocates for the causes we think are important. But I am who I am. And you are who you are.

What Jesus’ trials reveal is that the point of life is not to win an argument. It isn’t even to be found innocent in a trial. The point of life is to live a consistently, persistently faithful life. Our job is to do what God calls on us to do. That done, let the world judge us as it will.

After all, ultimately, we stand not before the judgement of the courts of this world. In the end, we stand before the one and only Person who counts: Almighty God.

Let us pray: God of our lives, help us to focus on what is important—the decisions we make every day, decisions that can result in faithful, loving and holy lives. We will make mistakes and choose the wrong options. When we do, guide us back to the Way, the Way of Jesus Christ. For as we walk in Christ’s Way, we walk with You. Amen.