Communion Reflection (Numbers 21:4-9)

[PREFACE]

At my seminary, we have a weekly Wednesday communion service. The services are organized and led by students and this past week was my turn to work with a few other people to provide communion for the school. One of my jobs was to write up and deliver a brief homily, which I reworked slightly to make it work as a blog post.

[END PREFACE]

I want to talk briefly about symbols.

Our world is inundated with them. I think I’ve been more aware of them since moving to Seattle because back in Hawaii, there are laws that prohibit billboards and limit the size of business signage. I remember when I first got to Seattle, there were huge images everywhere – all over the place. And so in-your-face, begging to be seen, forcing themselves into your peripheral vision.

And yeah, on the one hand it’s kind of a bummer to have all of this extraneous imagery but on the other hand, sometimes it can be fun.

…because advertisers and the designers who work for them can be really inventive and clever with images and symbols.

Take a look at this Amazon logo. What’s up with that arrow – is it just a bit of visual flair or is it doing something more? Well, Amazon is all about delivering goods and so the arrow makes sense. And you could also see the arrow as a coy smile, highlighting the friendly nature of the company. Pretty obvious stuff right?

But can you see where the arrow goes? Notice it goes from A to Z, symbolizing how these days they sell everything from A to Z. It’s also a reference to the fact that they began as a bookseller – books composed by letters of the alphabet – A to Z.

Or here’s a more subtle one – one that most people don’t notice but I warn you, once you do see it, you can’t unsee it.

At first glance, it looks like a straightforward logo. I mean, there are different colors and the D is pressed right up against the E – nothing really special about that.

But there is something more.

Can you see it? Would you like to?

FedEx is a delivery company and to symbolize that, they’ve cleverly incorporated an arrow into their logo. Can you see it?

Take a look at the white space where the E and the X meet.

And then there’s this symbol. It’s called the Star of Life and you’ll find it on all ambulances. And that bit in the middle is called the Rod of Asclepius.

As an aside, always take sermon illustrations with a grain of salt. Sometimes a big grain.

Because here’s the thing. When I first started working on this reflection piece, I was going to talk about how the symbol at the center of the Star of Life came from this week’s lectionary reading in Numbers (21:4-9) – the story where the Israelites, out in the wilderness, on their way to the promised land, are complaining AGAIN. In this text, God gets upset, and sends a bunch of poisonous snakes on the plain and people start dying. Moses prays for them and God tells him to take one of these snakes and to put it up on a pole. And then every one who looked at that snake, that symbol lived.

And I had heard in some sermon somewhere in my past that this medical symbol came directly out of this passage… But then I started researching the symbol and found that it actually has Greek origins. That said, the history of how it actually got to be associated with the medical profession isn’t quite so clear. It might be related to the Numbers text, it might not.

All that to say, whether or not this symbol has direct ties to the Numbers passage, it certainly has resonances. And like the Amazon and the FedEx logo, it’s kind of fun to have the eyes to see something that’s out there in public, hiding in plain sight.

Later in our service we will participate in another symbol – something else that’s out in the wider world, something that looks ordinary at first glance but takes on deeper meaning once you have the eyes to see.

And I’m speaking, of course, about communion. Bread and wine that looks ordinary but for those with the eyes to see, it’s so much more.

(Classroom) Sermon on Mark 1:4-11

[PREFACE]

I know I just posted up a “sermon” a few days ago and here I am, putting up another one.

What can I say, it’s just what I’ve been doing in grad school lately.

This sermon was written for my homiletics (preaching) class.

One of the things we’ve been learning in the class is the importance of context. Not so much the biblical or historical context of the text one is preaching on (that’s been covered in other classes), but the context of the congregation. The sermon, if it is to be effective, must take into context the people to whom it is delivered.

The sermons we write for this class are written for our classmates.

I make a point of saying that because it really does shape where I go in the sermon and might help you make sense of some of the places I go in the message. (It also helps make sense of the odd paragraph breaks and the sentence fragments – they’re written in such a way to help me deliver the message. It’s hard to explain. When I write something that’s going to be read, I write one way. When I write something that I’m going to read, I write another way. This is an example of the latter.)

Our teacher tells us that sermons are for a particular people in a particular place at a particular time. Because of this, she frowns on reusing sermons. A part of me wonders what she’d think of me posting up this sermon – something written for grad students, in a classroom, a few days ago; rather than for a somewhat anonymous audience, on the internet, for whenever you happen to click on it – but here’s the thing. I’m posting this up because I want to reference it in another post I’m working on.

…and to be completely transparent with you all, I’m posting it because I really like it.

[END PREFACE]

Mark 1:4-11

(4)John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. (5)And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. (6)Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. (7)He proclaimed, ‘The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. (8)I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’

(9) In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. (10)And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. (11)And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’

Can we get this right out in the open, right at the beginning, and say that this is a strange text? For one thing, in Mark’s Gospel, John just appears out of nowhere. Poof! Preaching repentance and baptizing people out in the wilderness.

What’s going on here? I mean, if he’s out there in the wilderness, how did people find out about him? And why were they drawn to a message of repentance?

And it’d be one thing if there were just a few people out there, checking out this space oddity, but Mark tells us that people were coming from all over – “from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem.”

Can you picture the scene? A throng of people, the hot sun, a hot wind stirring up the dusty air? And at the center of it all, a man with an ugly, brown, camel hair tunic – bits of grasshopper and honey still clinging to his beard.

And what’s he saying?

“Repent! Be baptized! Be washed, be cleansed of your sins!”

And that’s striking enough because sins aren’t forgiven out in the desert, they’re forgiven in the temple. But in a way, it’s not so surprising because there have been eccentric teachers like this before preaching other wild and wooly messages.

No, it’s the next thing he says that really catches their attention.

He says, “Don’t look at me, there’s someone else, someone greater. I’m just getting you ready for him.”

Now this is really new. Previous wilderness “messiahs” have always pointed to themselves as the solution. But this guy? He’s pointing them towards something else, someONE else, something coming but not yet here.

Still, I’ll admit, I had a really hard time getting my head around this story, especially when it came to preaching on it – where’s the good news? I mean, Jesus hasn’t even begun his ministry yet, what is there to preach on? What on earth does it have to do with us today?

And then it came to me.

In a way, John was heading up the first Occupy movement – the Occupy Judaism movement.

Because what is the contemporary Occupy movement about? A bunch of people who see systemic injustice being done and want to do something about it. And so they take to the wilderness of the unsheltered urban streets – a wilderness starkly different than that of the Judean desert, but perhaps no less dangerous or uncomfortable.

And John didn’t actually come out of nowhere. Mark tells us that he came preaching, right out of the pages of prophecy – Isaiah 40:3, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” And what does that mean, to make straight paths? I think the larger context of the Isaiah text makes this clear.

“Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.”

A level playing field – the very message of the Occupy movement.

Because I wonder if a landscape strewn with valleys (people living lower than others) and mountains (people living high above) is a land that blocks out the light for far too many?

Is it inequality that Isaiah is concerned with here? Is this the message that John was bringing, the message that so many were attracted to?

John is out there in the wilderness, preaching repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And he’s calling forth a society where access to the grace of forgiveness is no longer controlled by the powerful few but available to all.

Back then, the only people who could forgive sins were the religious elite, those of the priestly clan. This was a system that was supposed to create community but somehow it had gotten corrupted. It became about power and prestige rather than holiness and blessing. And the people knew it and that’s, I suppose, one reason why they were drawn out in the wilderness to John – for free access to forgiveness.

And not just forgiveness.

Again, the oddity of John was not just his clothes and his diet. No, he was offering something even stranger: a hope – a hope not based in himself and not even in a distant, abstract, holy God, but in another person. And that seems obvious to us now, but imagine their surprise back then. Imagine the strange, hopeful mystery that John was inviting them into – to look and to wait for someone else.

Because it’s one thing to say, “I am the answer, I am the one to put your hopes in.” It’s another thing entirely to say, “I’m just the messenger telling you to buckle up because someone else is coming who’s going to take this world in an entirely different direction. And repentance? That’s getting you turned in the right direction so you don’t get whiplash when the change does come!”

Anyway, I suppose that’s one way to look at John the Baptist. But how does that speak to us today? What’s the message for us?

When I started working on this message, I complained a lot. I thought it was unfair to be given a text which, really, is prologue. Jesus’ formal ministry doesn’t begin until another four verses after my pericope. How do I preach on that?

And then it hit me. Maybe I have the easiest passage of them all. Because the parallel between then and now, that story and ours?

Divinity students at The Seattle School, most of us envisioning ourselves going into some sort of ministry informed by the Gospel of Jesus – we are John the Baptist.

We point to hope in a world desperate for some hope to cling to. More than that, we point to an embodied hope, a physical hope, a storied hope.

And in this increasingly secularized world, a world where we can hold a computer, disguised as a phone, in our hands. A world that can harness the atom to power (or to destroy) our cities. A world with flight and medicine and the internet which can simultaneously topple regimes and deliver pictures of cats with silly captions to make us laugh.

In a world like this, I wonder if we might look like John the Baptist. No, we might not dress in uncomfortable clothes or eat bugs, but the message we believe, the message we bring? Isn’t that just as odd if not more so?

For those of us in the Theories of Culture class, we are learning that lasting world change never happens in a vacuum. It requires a whole host of disparate elements to come together unpredictably, uncontrollably.

I don’t know, is it too grandiose to say that we’re living in just such a time today – a time when the world is pregnant with new possibilities, a time when change is in the air, a time when more and more people are becoming aware of the injustice of inequality – and, more importantly, are willing to do something about it?

A time when the air all around us is rich with the gospel message of hope and love and freedom.

John tapped into the change that was already in the air in his time – that’s what drew people to him. People were desperate for change, for hope, and for someone powerful who could get them out of the mess they were in. And there was John, getting them ready for and pointing them towards Jesus.

And that’s what we get to do.

But I don’t want to sugar coat our task. Yes, ours is a good, hopeful work in a world and time ripe for change, but we would do well to remember that ours will also be a difficult, messy, maybe even dangerous work. I mean, John got himself jailed and then beheaded.

But we also do well to remember that out on the banks of the Jordan River with John’s voice crying out in the wilderness – Jesus showed up for John.

Reflection on Micah 6:8

[PREFACE]

One of my classes this semester is called Essential Community. It’s goal is to introduce students to the need for and complexities of creating a community where people can gather to know and to be known.

That sounds like a simple task on the surface, but there’s a pretty big difference between a group of people in a room and a community. The former can be likened to a party – fun and social but not particularly deep. The latter can be though of as people who come together to bless and to be blessed, to teach and to learn, to give and to receive.

One of the final assignments for the class is to write and deliver a sermonette on the verse, Micah 6:8 – the theme verse for the class.

…and I like what I came up with and so I thought I’d share it here.

[END PREFACE]

Micah 6:8

8 He has shown all you people what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.

I love the verbs used in Micah 6:8: do, love, walk.

I love that the call is to DO justice – justice as a verb. Here, justice not an abstract principle or idea, but justice is something done, something put into practice. Cornel West says that “justice is what love looks like in public” – and I would add that it’s what love looks like in the commons. [We spent a lot of time on the idea of the commons in class.]

But we have to be careful here because the pursuit of justice can lead to the diminishing of one’s enemy, of the oppressor. It can dehumanize the person or group perpetrating injustice and when dehumanization happens, any manner of retaliation can be justified – justice-ified.

Which brings us to the second verb, “love.”

And how are we to love? Mercifully. This is not tough love. It’s the opposite of that. This is tough forgiveness. And what’s the difference? Tough love is tough on the other, often under the guise of justice. Tough forgiveness, however, is tough on the self for the sake of the other. Because forgiveness, true forgiveness, is always hard on the self.

We are wronged in some deep, dark way and we demand that things are made right – an eye for an eye, or a heart for a heart broken. And we want justice. But justice unfettered by love hurts all involved. We wound the other in retaliation and in doing so, we wound ourselves.

But justice, tempered by love expressed in mercy calls forth life.

Which brings us, finally, to the verb, “walk.” And how are we to move through this world? We are called to walk humbly. And as Jesus’ second greatest commandment will remind us, we are also called to walk humbly with our neighbor, through the commons, through life.

Three verbs: do, love, walk.

Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly.

It all sounds so simple doesn’t it. But our time in class and with the readings has shown me that these verbs are anything but easy. Not easy to understand, not easy to implement, and certainly not easy to live. And we can be left feeling powerless or lost.

But I wonder if there’s actually a fourth verb in there. What if we saw the word, “with,” not as a preposition, but as a verb? “With” as an action, an activity. We don’t do or love or walk alone. We do them with. I do them with you. You do them with me. And we do them together with God. Can you feel the activity embedded in the word – it bristles with life lived out together.

Which makes me wonder if perhaps the most important verb in this verse is the verb, “with.”

And so, what does the LORD require of us?

To do, to love, to walk, and to with.

Thoughts on Delivering My First Sermon

About a week ago, I got to preach my first actual sermon. Prior to this, I had been a part of a house church and I had co-led a small group Bible study for Quest Church, but I had never actually preached in front of an actual congregation, behind an actual pulpit.

Couple thoughts regarding the experience.

1. Sermon prep is HARD work!
   For one thing the text I had to preach on was pretty difficult:

   Matthew 5:10 (TNIV)
   Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
   for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

   I mean the plain sense of the text is pretty clear. Jesus is saying that people who get beat down for doing good (no good dead goes unpunished?) are blessed.

   But there’s a lot more going on beneath the surface.

   Read in the context of the Sermon on the Mount (SotM), Jesus is using this verse and the ones that follow (Matthew 5:11-12) to prepare his audience to hear the heart of the sermon – the idea of fulfilling the law (Matthew 5:17-20). What Jesus does in the whole of the SotM is a radical reconceptualization of what it means for Jews to follow the Jewish Law. In a way, this last part of the Beatitudes serves as a transition point between the blessings of the Beatitudes (sort of an appetizer) and the main course of the meal (fulfilling the Law).

   From a preaching standpoint, that’s a lot of material to unpack. But that’s just dealing with how the verse was heard in the time it was preached and that’s only part of what a good sermon does.

   The other part is tying the original message to a contemporary application and that was also difficult. Because while it’s easy to find present day examples of Christian persecution in the world, a lot of that persecution happens far outside of America. I wanted to find a way of talking about persecution much, much closer to home.

   In trying to communicate all of this (the historical context along with contemporary application), I went through a bunch of drafts, trying to cram all this information in. The first drafts were hopelessly academic and abstract – a reflection on all the research I had done. While that might have made for a nice essay for grad school, it did not communicate well to the intended audience.

   Thankfully, I have a mentor who’s helping me prepare for my eventual church plant and after reading one of my later drafts, he gave me some really great advice about how to boil my ideas down to their essence. The sermon you see above would have been a mess without his advice.

   Granted, this was my first sermon and I learned a lot in the process (both the prep and the preaching) but I gotta say, it was WAY harder and took WAY more time than I thought it would.

   But you know what? I loved it!

   Well, most of it, because…

2. Perspective – short term

   I’ll be totally transparent and honest here and admit that after preaching my sermon, I was left wondering how much good it did.

   Because here’s the thing. I thought about all the times that I’ve been in church and just let the sermon drift on by me. Take the average Sunday morning service. On the Monday after church, if you asked me what the sermon that Sunday had been about, probably two thirds of the time, I’d have a really hard time recollecting. And that’s assuming I stayed tuned in during that Sunday’s sermon.

   Preaching is an art – a kind of performance art. You do all this prep work beforehand and then you present what you’ve come up with and then it’s out of your hands. Once it’s out there, it belongs to the audience and they’re free to accept, reject, forget, or even completely misunderstand it.

   It’s quite a sobering experience.

3. Perspective – long term

   Despite those doubts about the actual effectiveness of my sermon, I realized something else.

   While any given congregant might not be impacted by any particular sermon, I was still struck by the awesome responsibility that preaching is.

   A moment ago, I likened preaching to an art, and that metaphor works here as well. The long term impact/influence of a great artist usually isn’t contained in any one piece – it’s recognized in the body of their work. But in order to have that impact, the artist must have a vision that they are trying to communicate – a vision large enough to encompass a lifetime of work.

   The thing that struck me about preaching is how important it is to have some larger vision about what the Bible (more specifically, the Gospel message of Jesus) is about. What is the grand narrative of the Bible into which the Christian life is lived?

   This should be a narrative that’s large enough to make sense of all that goes on in all areas of the universe – from individual tragedies that befall particular congregants, to societal upheavals, to local/national/global political dynamics, to discoveries in the area of science.

   It should make sense of ethical dilemmas both mundane (what to do when your co-worker keeps stealing your red stapler) and profound (how to weigh the benefits of stem-cell research with the need to respect the dignity of human life).

   It should also be accessible to the average congregant. It shouldn’t be some complicated theological construct that only Bible geeks can understand, but at the same time, it should be able to hold up to critique both from within the realm of Christian thought as well as from without (for example, it should be able to offer a compelling response to the New Atheism movement).

   One thing I want to make clear here. I’m not saying that every person who wants to go into full time pastoral ministry should have an understanding of the Gospel that can live up to all these standards (I know I don’t have that!) but tI think it is something to which pastors should aspire (I know I do) because, again, as with the artist, the larger the vision, the better the chances of long term impact.

   All that to say, the act of preaching drove home to me the enormity of the task that I’m taking on as I work towards planting a church after I’m done with grad school. Clearly, I have a lot of work to do.

4. Audience feedback

   For the bulk of my adult life, I’ve been involved in bands. From my mid-twenties to my late-thirties, I spent more time in bands than out of them. In fact, it was because of a band (Harrison, RIP) that I made the move out to Seattle almost five years ago.

   During all that time with a bunch of different bands, audience reaction was never a big deal for me. From a show where after playing our first song, only three kids remained (of the hundred or so that were there when we started the song) to playing in front of almost a thousand people opening up for My Chemical Romance way back in 2005, as long as I was having a good time on stage, it didn’t matter to me how the audience reacted. Of course it was nice to hear from people who said they enjoyed the show, but even when we got an icy reaction, I didn’t care.

   Preaching was a slightly different experience for me.

   I had to preach the sermon twice on Sunday morning and I’d say that the earlier service reacted better to my sermon than the later one. And I was surprised at how much that affected me. Now for the most part, I feel good about how I did at both services but I have to admit that for one of the first times in my life, I understood what musical artists mean when they say they feed off the energy of the audience.

   By the way they laughed and looked up at me, I got the sense from the earlier service that they were right there with me, and I gotta admit – it was a great feeling. I was able to relax and be a bit more spontaneous in my delivery. And I don’t want to suggest that the latter service was unengaged or hostile – far from it – but they didn’t laugh quite as loud and some of the expressions I saw weren’t as supportive as what I saw earlier. And I have to admit that it got me to question what I was communicating. Had I missed something in my research? Was my application completely off base? Was this the wrong message for this audience?

   I stuck to my outline (I didn’t really have a choice) and made it through the rest of the second service just fine, but I was struck by how much just a small bit off difference in audience reaction subtly changed the way I thought about and delivered the message.

   Because here the thing…

5. I delivered a challenging message

   The way this verse is usually preached, the people in the congregation are made to feel that they are among those who are being persecuted for righteousness – maybe they experience workplace ridicule because people know they’re Christians – and so they should take comfort in Jesus’ message that theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

   I took a different approach. I tried to say that the kind of righteousness that the world needs today is one that is based on relationship and reconciliation. And that’s a nice message, but I took it one step beyond. I made the case that if one really takes the task of working towards relationship and reconciliation seriously, it means that one WILL encounter persecution.

   The kind of relationship and reconciliation I was challenging Quest with is the kind that works across divides.

   Take a look at Matthew 5:43-44:

   “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…”

   There are two ways to pray for someone who’s persecuting you. One is to pray against them, the other is to pray on their behalf, for their benefit. Jesus’ admonition to love one’s enemy and the Greek word behind the word “for” both suggest the latter approach. And I would suggest that the only way to pray on behalf of someone who’s persecuting you is to understand why they’re doing so and that means stepping out of your own shoes and into those of your enemy even as they’re persecuting you. (Gosh, I wish I had used this bit in my sermon!)

   Quest is full of people who work hard against all kinds of injustices and violence on behalf of the victims of that injustice and violence. That’s already extremely challenging, difficult work but I was asking them to do more – to understand the oppressor and to pray FOR them. But how do you pray on behalf of an unjust system that traps people within cycles of homelessness? How do you pray on behalf of a perpetrator of human trafficking?

   I was asking Quest to step into the realm of the impossible for the sake of righteousness.

   Which brings me to my final observation.

6. The importance of conviction
   I started this post talking about how hard it was to do all the sermon prep, but the thing I now realize is, even though almost all the research I did on this text never made it in to the actual sermon, it did give me the confidence I needed to deliver a challenging message. So even though I knew I was delivering a message that some might not recieve well, I believed in it. I could back it up if challenged. I believed that this was God’s word for God’s people at this church at this point in time. And I couldn’t have gotten there without the time and the research.

All in all, the experience was a tiny glimpse into what I’m ultimately working towards – planting a church back in Hawaii.

It was a sobering look into a part of what I’m getting myself into and on the one hand, I’m beginning to realize all the work I have yet to do to really be ready. At the same time, I’m also realizing that as far as I still need to go, I know it’s something I can do. More importantly, it’s something I want to do. When it comes to preaching, I know I still have weak points in my preparation and my delivery but I want to get better.

In other words, despite all the difficulties, despite all the work, despite the long road ahead of me, I want to continue pressing forward. Although I normally don’t like speaking in such grandiose terms, I do feel like God has been preparing me for this. All the crazy randomness that I’ve lived through, all the seemingly meaningless dead ends and odd experiences, all the years of doubt and frustration – they’ve all led me to this pursuit that I never, ever would have chosen on my own.

God.

God really does work in mysterious ways.