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Sometimes, you just need to be at home.
It is still Easter. For us, it’s still Easter season, for six more weeks. For the disciples in our story, it is still Easter day. But they don’t yet know what that means.
And so two of them set out from Jerusalem for a long walk home, seven miles. And Jesus comes alongside them, to walk with them.
But they don’t know it’s Jesus…
Jesus shared meals with his friends, Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. He stayed with them. He loved them. But now, one of them was ill. And—the logical thing was to go, right away, wouldn’t you think? But Jesus, especially Jesus as we meet him in John’s gospel, has other purposes that are even higher than being with the people he loved. Jesus was intent on showing the glory and the power of God.
I probably should have given up Twitter for Lent.
It’s an interesting website, and I find that it’s a good spot for breaking news—often reported, which is to say, tweeted, by the individuals who are making the news. But it’s not a great place in times of turmoil and anxiety. It tends to take anxiety and multiplies it exponentially.
But every so often you find real beauty there.
Image: JESUS MAFA. The Sermon on the Mount, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48284 [retrieved March 11, 2020]. Original source: http://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr (contact page: https://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr/contact).
Here, in the midst of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is imparting to us his best recommendation for our prayers.
He is not telling us to set aside an hour, or even a half hour each morning.
He is not telling us to purchase a lovely leather-bound prayer book.
He is not telling us to take a class on prayer, or even, to listen to a sermon.
He gives us… this. Such a small prayer—only 58 words in the original Greek (69 words in English)![i] So few words. Jesus says, pray like this.
Image: Prayer Emoji. Raube.
Each of us, at some point in our lives, will find ourselves in a wilderness. We will find ourselves isolated—by sickness or sorrow; by oppression or depression; by time or distance. And there in that wilderness we will probably find out who we are.
Imagine this wilderness: You are a twelve-year-old girl. You are an African American slave, held by a wealthy plantation owner. You have none of the rights enshrined in our Bill of Rights—no right to free speech, or religion, or liberty, or justice. You don’t have the right to your own life. Even your parents have no rights were you are concerned (unless, of course, your father happens to be your owner).
Imagine that wilderness…
As we begin our Lenten journey together this Ash Wednesday, we hear a familiar passage from Matthew’s gospel about three of those activities we think of as “the Lenten disciplines”: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. In a few minutes, we’ll be asked to take those on, along with self-examination and meditating on scripture. Finally, we will be asked to receive ashes, a sign that we understand what the human condition is: frail, vulnerable, not permanent—at least, not in a physical sense—and entirely dependent on others.
Ashes are a sign, among other things, that we need one another. We need each other like a baby hippo needs a 130-year-old tortoise.
It seems we need a Sunday to act as a hinge for us, between two great and beautiful and important seasons. One season is Epiphany, the season of the light of Christ shining for us, the stories of his baptism and early ministry still bathed in the glow of a shining star. The other season is Lent, when we join Jesus on a six-week-long journey towards the cross. During Lent, everything Jesus says and does is seen in the light of that journey.
So we need a hinge Sunday, a step away from Epiphany, and a step towards Lent.
This is that Sunday, and it’s good to be here.
Image: MAFA Jesus, Cameroon. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Folks, I know Jesus talks about four different things in this morning’s passage from the Sermon on the Mount—he talks about Anger, Adultery, Divorce, and Oaths.
And, if I could give you a sweeping observation on how he talks about them, I believe he goes straight to the relationships that undergird the law, that are its foundation—our relationships with God and with one another.
But today, we’re going to focus on anger, because I believe we must. As children of God living in the year 2020, anger is the toxic cultural stew we are all swimming in. It seems, everyone is angry. Somehow, we must come to terms with that.
Image: Supuni, Amos. Reconciliation, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57340 [retrieved February 7, 2020]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Reconciliation_Amos_Supuni_Woerden.jpg.
’d like to begin by reminding us that we are tuning in, for the second Sunday in a row, to a sermon Jesus preached, one Matthew calls the Sermon on the Mount.
Now, I know no one there had their iPhone out, recording it. So, maybe this is a pretty faithful transcript of a single sermon. Or maybe those who listened to Jesus in many times and places heard that he kept coming back to certain themes, repeating them. Maybe that’s what we have here.
It’s possible. United Methodist bishop and preacher William Willimon likes to say that every preacher preaches one, two, maybe three sermons, over and over, in slightly different forms. He says his are: 1. “God is large, mysterious, and there is no way I could explain it to someone like you. 2. “Life is a mess, and there is no way I could explain it to someone like you.” 3. “Christianity is weird, odd, peculiar. I can’t believe you people actually want to be Christians.”
Maybe the Sermon on the Mount is a mixtape of Jesus’ favorites points, his greatest hits, the themes he returns to, like Preacher Willimon, over and over again…
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Image: Moyers, Mike. Shine, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57144 [retrieved February 7, 2020]. Original source: Mike Moyers, https://www.mikemoyersfineart.com/.
Presbyterian curmudgeon Frederick Buechner famously said that “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” In addition to their specific skillsets, I think Jesus saw in these men a deep hunger for something beyond themselves. It is a powerful thing to be seen, truly seen and known for who you are. If I were to guess why they left their nets and never looked back? That’s it. The experience of being seen, being known, being understood. That’s where everyone’s capacity for gladness begins.
Image: Duccio, di Buoninsegna, d. 1319. Christ Calling the Apostles Peter and Andrew, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl…
One day John was in the middle of a long, rambling treatise on trees, and whether they were sound or not, and when was the right time to cut them down and burn them in the fire. As he spoke, a man approached, walking right toward him, very purposeful. And John stopped abruptly, and went kind of pale. After a breath he held out one emaciated arm, and pointed at the man, and declared:
“Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”
Image: John and disciples acknowledge Jesus as the Lamb of God, Chartres Cathedral, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56616
And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” ~ Matthew 3:13-17
Bazile, Castera. Baptism of Jesus, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.
You know how it goes—Christmas is over, and now the stores are full of red hearts. The rest of the world has moved on to Valentine’s Day.
But not us. Not here. Here, we’re sticking with a church tradition going back nearly fifteen hundred years, which tells us it is still Christmas—the 12th day of Christmas, to be exact. But today’s celebration is no longer focused on shepherds and angels. Today, in our ongoing telling of the story, a heavenly body takes center stage, as well as a truly terrible king. The old king is frightened, and you know how it goes: when the powerful are frightened, their fear spreads like a contagion, and they act to preserve their power at all costs. But the old king is an ancillary character for now: this part of the story focuses on travelers: foreigners from afar whose study of the stars has convinced them: there is a new king.
Image: Visit of the Magi, MAFA Jesus, Cameroon, courtesy of Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.
In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. ~ Luke 2:8-11
Image: Angels Singing and Playing Musical Instruments, by Tilman Riemenschneider workshop, c. 1505, Bode Museum. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
