“Mary sees dead people ... and you will, too”
John 20:1-18
Resurrection of our Lord
31 March 2013
Yes, it’s true … for those of you who keep track of such things, today we’ve got “the other Gospel reading” for the Resurrection of our Lord … from the Gospel of John.
It’s “the other reading” not because it’s less important or there’s something wrong with it … of course there’s not … but, usually, we have an Easter Gospel reading from the Gospel, in which we are spending that year.
Last year, it was Mark’s gospel … the one where the women find the empty tomb, but run away, for they were afraid. That’s it. A wholly unsatisfying ending … but a great beginning … to the story of Resurrection.
Next year, we’ll read from Matthew’s gospel … more exciting than Mark, that’s the one where the women are there at the tomb when there’s an earthquake, and the guards at the tomb faint dead away, and later get paid off by the religious leaders to say that Jesus wasn’t raised, his disciples came by and stole his body. It’s the spin of the day, trying to obscure the Truth that Jesus really is raised, and that he really appeared to the women at the tomb.
We could have gone with Luke’s gospel story of the resurrection this year … that’s the “default” setting for this Sunday, this year … in Luke’s telling, a whole bunch of women are there at the empty tomb, they go tell the disciples but only Peter runs to the tomb to see and believe for himself.
Ah, but today, this Resurrection of our Lord, this Easter Day … we are in John’s gospel.
Why?
Because sometimes … sometimes we need to see dead people. And speak with them. And hear them tell us that God brings life out of death.
I remember back to that first year after my dad died. And I would think I would see him … at the store, driving around, on the street … sometimes, sitting in the chair. The psychologist in me said, oh, that’s normal, he’s not really there, but your subconscious is just wishing he was ... for a conversation, wrapping up loose ends, an assurance that he was safe and well. Probably so. But, psychology or not, I still wanted to see him.
In John’s gospel account of that first Easter day, it’s only been three days, and Mary Magdalene’s seeing dead people. Well, actually, just one … she sees dead Jesus.
Early on the first day of the week … this Word is here at the beginning of our text to tell us that the first full mourning period for Jesus in his religion is ending … three days, seven days, one month, one year … and in this first century world, days are not twenty four hour days, but sunrise to sunset … Friday, Saturday, and now, here, after the sunrise of the third day, the dead person is most certainly dead, there’s no hope that it’s all just an illusion, a bad dream.
In John’s Gospel, the disciples have their own full, rich encounter with the risen Jesus later … ah, but the honor of being first to see and speak with him is not theirs. Peter and the ‘beloved disciple’ go in the tomb first … Mary Magdalene hangs around outside, and doesn’t notice what they see … the cloths which had covered Jesus, now lying unused, along with the linen wrappings which had shrouded his body when they had left it last. Peter sees, the beloved disciple sees, they believe that Jesus is gone, but they don’t know where … how … why. Maybe someone moved or stole the body. Neither of them sees dead people. So they go home to wait it out.
But Mary stays around. And in her staying around, she is rewarded. Mary sees angels. And then Mary sees dead Jesus.
And more … Mary hears dead Jesus.
Dead Jesus isn’t dead Jesus any more.
Something new is happening.
It’s important that Mary both sees and hears Jesus, at the same time.
If she’d only seen dead Jesus, well, she could have just seen a ghost. People have been seeing ghosts … imaginary or real … for thousands of years. There are ghost stories, yes, in the Bible … in the Old Testament, the witch of Endor conjures up the ghost of dead Samuel the prophet for King Saul. If it was just a ghost that Mary saw, well, people always see ghosts. They imagine they see ghosts. She really misses Jesus … maybe Mary misses him so much that she wants and wills herself to see Jesus again.
Big deal.
And, if Mary had only heard dead Jesus, well, that might have meant she was a prophet. Prophets are always hearing the voice of God but don’t always see God. Moses heard God’s voice in the burning bush. Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Isaiah had visions … strange visions … who knows what or who they saw ... but they heard the voice of God speaking to them, and they passed the words that voice said along to their people.
Words of prophecy. Words of bane and blessing, curse and comfort.
Mary could have been a prophet. But she is just a woman. So her prophecy probably wouldn’t carry very far.
And people could always say, “ah, that Mary, she hears voices, she hears the voices of dead people. Stay away from her.”
But Mary sees and hears dead Jesus.
Dead Jesus who isn’t dead any more.
“My sheep know my voice,” Jesus said, earlier, before he died.
Mary! Jesus calls her now.
And Mary knows it is really Jesus. Mary hears, and sees, and believes.
Mary’s faith comes from hearing.
Mary’s faith is confirmed by seeing.
Mary wants to hold onto Jesus … but don’t think poorly of her for wanting to do this. Wouldn’t we want to do the same thing, if one who was beloved to us, who once was dead, was now alive – anew – before us?
But this One who was, and was not, and now is again … this Jesus, he has, he is, something new … really dead, now really alive … and on his way to his Father and our Father, his God and our God. Don’t hold him back, Mary; don’t hold him back, us.
For what Jesus is about now is something totally new. This Resurrection, this Easter … it comes at the end of the Gospels and the end of Jesus’ story in the Scriptures … so yes, there is a tendency to see Easter as The End … the end of Lent, the end of Holy Week …
But Easter is not the end. Easter is the beginning. IT’S THE BEGINNING. THE BEGINNING OF A NEW BEGINNING FOR JESUS, FOR MARY, FOR THE DISCIPLES, FOR US.
That’s why what happens for Mary, with Mary, now that she’s seen and heard, is that now … now Mary’s faith sends her out, out to tell the disciples “I have seen the Lord,” and those disciples will go out and live and do and serve in the name of this dead-now-alive-anew Jesus … disciples of that age, and into the ages, even to us today.
Disciples who saw dead people … people weighed down by the worries and suffering, pain and grief and loss of this life … people, dying, dead because of their bad life-choices or as a result of the life-choices of others … people, dying, dead … made alive because these disciples heard and saw, tasted and touched Jesus, through his gifts, his promises in Water and Bread and Wine, in Word of Forgiveness, in Lives of Service … disciples saw dead people made alive again through these who were sent out … through the ages ... even to us. Even to us.
For we are the latest, the newest beginning, the now-incarnation of Easter into the world … we who are claimed by Jesus, here and now, who are being made alive, through Word of promise and hope, forgiveness and welcome, wholeness, peace, joy … all those good things God wants and wills for us … come to us through Water of Baptism, the Bread and Wine of Communion, and in this community of disciples … each of us, symbol-signs of what was dead now being made alive through Christ … his Spirit, this community; his work, our hands; always being made new, into this world God loves so much that God doesn’t want to see it end … to see us end … so God gives us the promise, the hope, of life.
Look around you. Look around you and see dead people. Dead people made alive because of Jesus. For this life. Into this life. Living into this world God loves. Hearts warmed with Jesus’ Spirit and overflowing with love for this life and love for others sharing this life. Hands getting dirty with servant work.Called together, gathered as One, sent as many to serve.
So may you see dead people.
May you see dead people and bring them the Word, the sight, of Easter life. The beginning of real life.
For then you will see dead people, made alive again.
And one day, you will see dead people, once, really, truly and finally dead, made alive forever. No more wishing to see them alive at the store, on the street, in that chair … but then, we will see them face to face.
And, yes, hold on to them.
Because Resurrection means Jesus never lets go of us. Ever.
Mary sees dead people ... dead people, no long dead, but alive ... and you will too.
That’s the meaning, the promise, of Easter.
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed. Alleluia! Amen.
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Sunday, March 24, 2013
24 March 2013
“Making the Sign of the Cross … in Jesus”
Psalm 31:15 / Philippians 2:5-11 / Luke 23:46
Sunday of the Passion
24 March 2013
You are my God; my times are in your hand.
That verse from today’s Psalm … it started me thinking about hands.
My hands … your hands.
Hands can be good and do good … they can create good times for us.
But hands can create poor times too.
Poor times for ourselves.
And certainly … as we meditate on our text this morning … this portion of the Passion of our Lord according to St. Luke … they create poor times for Jesus.
There are many hands in the times before us this morning.
The assembly rose as a body and brought Jesus before Pilate ... these same hands which, a few short days before, had waved palm branches before Jesus as he entered Jerusalem … now they are grabby hands, they grab Jesus, and move him along toward trial and judgment.
They began to accuse Jesus … fingers point and wag at him, “He’s the one!”
Pilate says, “I will therefore have Jesus flogged” … and now come hard hands, wielding tools of torture and pain.
The crowd seized a man, Simon of Cyrene; they laid the cross on him, and made him carry it behind Jesus. There are those hands again … then, palms in palms, they waved … now, angry … angry hands, they are laid on another innocent one;
and Simon’s frightened hands, shake, pained, as he carries the cross.
Women and men beat their breasts … sad, anguished hands, express pain and sorrow at what is happening.
Soldiers come up and offer Jesus sour wine… still more mocking hands, abusive hands, cruel hands, put to Jesus.
Jesus suffers at the hands … in the hands … of those who would claim these times as their own, our own, and not God’s.
Until , in the end, he trusts himself … trusts himself completely … into his Father’s, our Father’s hands.
Into your hands I commend my spirit.
You are our God; our times are in your hands.
Your hands, O God … they hold all our times … times in which we’re called to examine our own lives, lives into which we’re called to make and live the Sign of the Cross as we have in this Lent just passed … in ashes … when we’re tempted … in defiance … for one more year … in welcoming the lost … when the world can’t and won’t.
Your hands, O God … they guard us and guide us as we hear your call to make the Sign of the Cross into, for the sake of the world, a world dancing into its death bound spiral, a world who doesn’t want to see itself, themselves, ourselves, in the mirror of our reality which the Sign of the Cross holds up before us …
Your hands, O Jesus … despite what our hands do to you, your hands are never lifted against us in anger. Your hands, O Jesus, they are open to us in undeserved kindness, grace, peace, forgiveness, and love … and because of and through your hands, your Father’s are ready, too, to welcome us home.
Because of your hands. Because of your nail-scarred hands, Jesus.
Scarred by us …
… yet in them, we are held by you …
… in your love …
… to and through death itself.
Our times are in your hands, O Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Psalm 31:15 / Philippians 2:5-11 / Luke 23:46
Sunday of the Passion
24 March 2013
You are my God; my times are in your hand.
That verse from today’s Psalm … it started me thinking about hands.
My hands … your hands.
Hands can be good and do good … they can create good times for us.
But hands can create poor times too.
Poor times for ourselves.
And certainly … as we meditate on our text this morning … this portion of the Passion of our Lord according to St. Luke … they create poor times for Jesus.
There are many hands in the times before us this morning.
The assembly rose as a body and brought Jesus before Pilate ... these same hands which, a few short days before, had waved palm branches before Jesus as he entered Jerusalem … now they are grabby hands, they grab Jesus, and move him along toward trial and judgment.
They began to accuse Jesus … fingers point and wag at him, “He’s the one!”
Pilate says, “I will therefore have Jesus flogged” … and now come hard hands, wielding tools of torture and pain.
The crowd seized a man, Simon of Cyrene; they laid the cross on him, and made him carry it behind Jesus. There are those hands again … then, palms in palms, they waved … now, angry … angry hands, they are laid on another innocent one;
and Simon’s frightened hands, shake, pained, as he carries the cross.
Women and men beat their breasts … sad, anguished hands, express pain and sorrow at what is happening.
Soldiers come up and offer Jesus sour wine… still more mocking hands, abusive hands, cruel hands, put to Jesus.
Jesus suffers at the hands … in the hands … of those who would claim these times as their own, our own, and not God’s.
Until , in the end, he trusts himself … trusts himself completely … into his Father’s, our Father’s hands.
Into your hands I commend my spirit.
You are our God; our times are in your hands.
Your hands, O God … they hold all our times … times in which we’re called to examine our own lives, lives into which we’re called to make and live the Sign of the Cross as we have in this Lent just passed … in ashes … when we’re tempted … in defiance … for one more year … in welcoming the lost … when the world can’t and won’t.
Your hands, O God … they guard us and guide us as we hear your call to make the Sign of the Cross into, for the sake of the world, a world dancing into its death bound spiral, a world who doesn’t want to see itself, themselves, ourselves, in the mirror of our reality which the Sign of the Cross holds up before us …
Your hands, O Jesus … despite what our hands do to you, your hands are never lifted against us in anger. Your hands, O Jesus, they are open to us in undeserved kindness, grace, peace, forgiveness, and love … and because of and through your hands, your Father’s are ready, too, to welcome us home.
Because of your hands. Because of your nail-scarred hands, Jesus.
Scarred by us …
… yet in them, we are held by you …
… in your love …
… to and through death itself.
Our times are in your hands, O Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Sunday, March 17, 2013
17 March 2013
“Making the Sign of the Cross … when the world can’t and won’t”
Philippians 3:4b-14 / John 12:1-8
5th Sunday in Lent C
17 March 2013
And so we have come to the fifth and last Sunday in the season of Lent. Lent officially ends at sundown next Saturday, as we enter Holy Week. Next Sunday we’ll have palms strewing the way through the Sanctuary, and we’ll hear a portion of the Passion of Jesus according to St. Luke read, as we sing, and meditate, and worship our way through the liturgical drama that is the Sunday of the Passion.
But today we are still in Lent … and we conclude it, this year, as every year, with a foreboding text. It is this way during each of the three years of our lectionary cycle … we receive a Word from John’s gospel which is one of the concluding words of Jesus’ earthly ministry … some from before he enters Jerusalem on the donkey, with the palm branches waving, for that last week of his life which we call the Passion of our Lord … and some from immediately after that celebratory scene.
Last year we read the verses following what we have before us today … right after Jesus enters Jerusalem, some Greeks who are in town because of the festival come and want to see Jesus … and Jesus offers a final, stirring prediction of his suffering and death which are soon to come.
Next year, we’ll hear the story of the final miracle Jesus works in John’s gospel … as he raises his friend Lazarus from the dead to this life, once more.
But today … today we have the aftermath of that miracle-scene before us. Immediately before Jesus’ palm-strewn ride into Jerusalem, Jesus goes to the home of Mary, Martha, and the newly raised to this life Lazarus, to have dinner with them.
And there’s a scene at dinner. Oh, here’s a surprise! There was a scene last week too, with Jesus, at dinner with the “sinners and tax collectors.”
Martha is serving … her usual place at such times … and Mary is not … which is her usual place at such times too.
Well, she’s not serving the meal.
But she is serving Jesus. She takes a pound of costly perfume and pours it over Jesus’ feet.
The smell fills the house … a particularly ironic word … since Mary was the one who objected the loudest to Jesus when, in the previous verses, he asked that the stone be rolled away from then-dead-Lazarus’ tomb.
Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.
Now from the stench-protesting one comes a more beautiful smell. The contrast to John’s readers and hearers is obvious … here, this One, this Jesus, has the power to remove even the stench of death itself, and make it into the sweet smells of thankfulness and praise for life!
It is a home-ly and tender scene.
And then Judas has to open his big mouth.
Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?
Well, maybe he has a point. The perfume was valuable ... it had come a long way, from the Himalayan mountains … and it would have been a major expenditure for a family such as this. Three hundred denarii was nearly a year’s wages for a laborer.
Ah, but then there’s John’s next sentence, which shows Judas’ true motivation:
Judas said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.
Judas was bothered by Mary’s extravagant use of the expensive perfume because it meant that he – Judas – was being shorted a large sum of money, which he’d skim off the top of the disciples’ common purse. But he couches it in a catchy moralism, so it looks like he really cares for the poor.
It’s confusing, I know.
And then Jesus adds to the confusion.
Leave her alone … you always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.
So is Jesus simply being callous and unfeeling here toward the poor … showing fully what Judas is trying to hide so piously? What’s really going on here anyway?
We need some help.
And so we get some.
Our New Testament reading, from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, gives us some much-needed perspective on both Judas’ and Jesus’ words.
It … these words, this reading … here is the bridge and link to our Gospel stories for the past two weeks, and today.
Here, Paul starts out by building himself up, listing off his credentials and heritage, his “valuable perfume” …
Circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
Paul’s perfume smelled nicely to the leaders, the religious movers and shakers of his age. It was certainly worth more than a laborer’s yearly wages.
And yet … and yet … Paul counts it all as rubbish.
Well … our nice English is too polite in this case. The Greek word is ssssssssskubala, and yep, it’s same as that “vulgar” English S-word. Paul is a man of his times and doesn’t pretty things up, he uses the vernacular to make a point.
And that point is … that in Jesus, he, Paul … like the younger son, the Prodigal Son in last week’s story … when Paul met the living Christ, he ‘came to himself,’ that wonderful phrase Luke uses in that story to signify what it means to repent … to stop, to pay attention, to turn around … to, in the words of our 12 step program today, to “admit that he is powerless” over his life-situation as he’s worked himself into it … that “his life had become unmanageable.” And things like pedigree and wealth, riches and honor, they don’t mean s*** to him personally anymore.
What a contrast to Judas in the Gospel reading!
And that’s the whole point.
Paul “gets it” and in his “getting it” he “gets” Christ.
I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Paul has “come to himself” and in “coming to himself” Christ has come to him and has made his eternal home with him, to bring him to his own … to Christ’s … eternal home.
Mary has “come to herself” too … and extravagantly spreads the expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet and spreads it around with her hair … this was a demeaning act for a woman … but she has received the living Christ, the Son of God … she received her brother Lazarus back from the dead in a prefiguring of Jesus’ resurrection, so here she anoints Jesus as for burial, in another prefiguring of what is to come.
And Judas? Well, don’t put all the blame on him, don’t set him up as a straw man, “he’s the one that got Jesus killed.” No, he is a prefigure too, a prefigure of all those who never “come to themselves” … those who go through life, day in, day out, clocking in every morning and clocking out at night, simply putting in time until their time is up. Those who wake up on Easter Monday, having slept the weekend away, and wonder what’s the big deal that’s got people so excited.
If Mary’s anointing is prefiguring Jesus’ burial, then, Judas’ attitude is prefiguring Jesus’ death. What, indeed, is the point of God become a man anyway, since this life is pretty much pointless.
But then there’s enough of the prefiguring, the words behind the words, the actions behind the actions.
Jesus gives that Last Word.
Leave Mary alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.
There are those words again … so are they really callous? Unfeeling? Does Jesus really mean what it sounds like he says, that it’s better to spend money on him … to be extravagant for his sake … than to help the poor?
NO WAY. No way.
In using that phrase “you always have the poor with you,” Jesus is quoting Deuteronomy 15. And here’s what the Hebrew law has to say about how God’s people are to treat the poor:
If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community in any of your towns within the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor. You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be. Be careful that you do not entertain a mean thought ...and therefore view your needy neighbor with hostility and give nothing; your neighbor might cry to the LORD against you, and you would incur guilt. Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so, for on this account the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake. Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, "Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land."
Jesus is making a point here to Judas … “Judas… and all you who are like Judas, who piously claim you are just being financially prudent in how you deal with the poor … you’re nothing but a bunch of hypocrites. The Law of Moses undeniably states that you are to open your hand to the poor and needy neighbors in your land … to be generous, liberal and ungrudging in your giving … and in your selfishness and sinfulness, you don’t do this at all.” Indeed, if you were “in me,” if you had “come to yourselves,” you would do even more than that … you would live as Paul … your money wouldn’t mean s*** to you, you would give it all up for the sake of the poor, as I’ve told you, and you would follow me. But you don’t. You just don’t, at all. And soon, you’ll even put me to death."
One of our own local Lutheran professors, Samuel Torvend of Pacific Lutheran University, brings this verse home for Lutherans in particular. He’s found some writings of Martin Luther on the poor and hungry and compiled them in a book titled “Luther and the Hungry Poor: Scattered Fragments.” Now Luther isn’t known for his social justice writings … he didn’t write on this subject like he did many others … but what he did write is quite consistent with his other more well known words.
Namely, Luther says that in this sinful world, the rich need the poor to remain poor, so that they can remain rich and in power, and that the rich will do whatever it takes to keep the poor poor, so that they can feel self-justified in being “kind hearted souls” in giving the poor food, money, clothing, etc. … but just enough … not too much … not giving them the goods or means to be lifted or to lift themselves out of poverty … no, just giving them enough … a handout here, a meal there … to keep them alive, but poor. Always, and forever, poor.
It’s certainly another of Luther’s critiques on the works-righteousness way that made the world go around in the time of our text today … certainly, also during the Reformation … and, dare I say, is still at work today.
And yet … and yet, in contrast, there’s that call of our Lord. With me. With me. Be with me. Come to yourselves, pay attention, turn around … repent … suffer the loss of all things, regard them as rubbish … for the sake of the Gospel … the Good News … which is Good News for rich and poor, man and woman, Jew and Gentile, Mary and Lazarus … and Judas … and you and me.
There’s that call of our Lord. And yet … yet he’s realistic about how seriously we’ll take it, on the “before” side of the Cross … before the Sign of the Cross is made over Jesus in his suffering and death ...
… for the day of my burial.
But for us now … we who live on the “after” side of the Cross and Tomb, there remains this word for us:
I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own … forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead … I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
Jesus calls to us today … be with me. Come to yourselves. Confess, be forgiven … come, eat and drink, be formed into my body, my people, in the world … show, live the world another way… The Way …
Come. Be. With. Me.
Philippians 3:4b-14 / John 12:1-8
5th Sunday in Lent C
17 March 2013
And so we have come to the fifth and last Sunday in the season of Lent. Lent officially ends at sundown next Saturday, as we enter Holy Week. Next Sunday we’ll have palms strewing the way through the Sanctuary, and we’ll hear a portion of the Passion of Jesus according to St. Luke read, as we sing, and meditate, and worship our way through the liturgical drama that is the Sunday of the Passion.
But today we are still in Lent … and we conclude it, this year, as every year, with a foreboding text. It is this way during each of the three years of our lectionary cycle … we receive a Word from John’s gospel which is one of the concluding words of Jesus’ earthly ministry … some from before he enters Jerusalem on the donkey, with the palm branches waving, for that last week of his life which we call the Passion of our Lord … and some from immediately after that celebratory scene.
Last year we read the verses following what we have before us today … right after Jesus enters Jerusalem, some Greeks who are in town because of the festival come and want to see Jesus … and Jesus offers a final, stirring prediction of his suffering and death which are soon to come.
Next year, we’ll hear the story of the final miracle Jesus works in John’s gospel … as he raises his friend Lazarus from the dead to this life, once more.
But today … today we have the aftermath of that miracle-scene before us. Immediately before Jesus’ palm-strewn ride into Jerusalem, Jesus goes to the home of Mary, Martha, and the newly raised to this life Lazarus, to have dinner with them.
And there’s a scene at dinner. Oh, here’s a surprise! There was a scene last week too, with Jesus, at dinner with the “sinners and tax collectors.”
Martha is serving … her usual place at such times … and Mary is not … which is her usual place at such times too.
Well, she’s not serving the meal.
But she is serving Jesus. She takes a pound of costly perfume and pours it over Jesus’ feet.
The smell fills the house … a particularly ironic word … since Mary was the one who objected the loudest to Jesus when, in the previous verses, he asked that the stone be rolled away from then-dead-Lazarus’ tomb.
Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.
Now from the stench-protesting one comes a more beautiful smell. The contrast to John’s readers and hearers is obvious … here, this One, this Jesus, has the power to remove even the stench of death itself, and make it into the sweet smells of thankfulness and praise for life!
It is a home-ly and tender scene.
And then Judas has to open his big mouth.
Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?
Well, maybe he has a point. The perfume was valuable ... it had come a long way, from the Himalayan mountains … and it would have been a major expenditure for a family such as this. Three hundred denarii was nearly a year’s wages for a laborer.
Ah, but then there’s John’s next sentence, which shows Judas’ true motivation:
Judas said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.
Judas was bothered by Mary’s extravagant use of the expensive perfume because it meant that he – Judas – was being shorted a large sum of money, which he’d skim off the top of the disciples’ common purse. But he couches it in a catchy moralism, so it looks like he really cares for the poor.
It’s confusing, I know.
And then Jesus adds to the confusion.
Leave her alone … you always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.
So is Jesus simply being callous and unfeeling here toward the poor … showing fully what Judas is trying to hide so piously? What’s really going on here anyway?
We need some help.
And so we get some.
Our New Testament reading, from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, gives us some much-needed perspective on both Judas’ and Jesus’ words.
It … these words, this reading … here is the bridge and link to our Gospel stories for the past two weeks, and today.
Here, Paul starts out by building himself up, listing off his credentials and heritage, his “valuable perfume” …
Circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
Paul’s perfume smelled nicely to the leaders, the religious movers and shakers of his age. It was certainly worth more than a laborer’s yearly wages.
And yet … and yet … Paul counts it all as rubbish.
Well … our nice English is too polite in this case. The Greek word is ssssssssskubala, and yep, it’s same as that “vulgar” English S-word. Paul is a man of his times and doesn’t pretty things up, he uses the vernacular to make a point.
And that point is … that in Jesus, he, Paul … like the younger son, the Prodigal Son in last week’s story … when Paul met the living Christ, he ‘came to himself,’ that wonderful phrase Luke uses in that story to signify what it means to repent … to stop, to pay attention, to turn around … to, in the words of our 12 step program today, to “admit that he is powerless” over his life-situation as he’s worked himself into it … that “his life had become unmanageable.” And things like pedigree and wealth, riches and honor, they don’t mean s*** to him personally anymore.
What a contrast to Judas in the Gospel reading!
And that’s the whole point.
Paul “gets it” and in his “getting it” he “gets” Christ.
I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Paul has “come to himself” and in “coming to himself” Christ has come to him and has made his eternal home with him, to bring him to his own … to Christ’s … eternal home.
Mary has “come to herself” too … and extravagantly spreads the expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet and spreads it around with her hair … this was a demeaning act for a woman … but she has received the living Christ, the Son of God … she received her brother Lazarus back from the dead in a prefiguring of Jesus’ resurrection, so here she anoints Jesus as for burial, in another prefiguring of what is to come.
And Judas? Well, don’t put all the blame on him, don’t set him up as a straw man, “he’s the one that got Jesus killed.” No, he is a prefigure too, a prefigure of all those who never “come to themselves” … those who go through life, day in, day out, clocking in every morning and clocking out at night, simply putting in time until their time is up. Those who wake up on Easter Monday, having slept the weekend away, and wonder what’s the big deal that’s got people so excited.
If Mary’s anointing is prefiguring Jesus’ burial, then, Judas’ attitude is prefiguring Jesus’ death. What, indeed, is the point of God become a man anyway, since this life is pretty much pointless.
But then there’s enough of the prefiguring, the words behind the words, the actions behind the actions.
Jesus gives that Last Word.
Leave Mary alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.
There are those words again … so are they really callous? Unfeeling? Does Jesus really mean what it sounds like he says, that it’s better to spend money on him … to be extravagant for his sake … than to help the poor?
NO WAY. No way.
In using that phrase “you always have the poor with you,” Jesus is quoting Deuteronomy 15. And here’s what the Hebrew law has to say about how God’s people are to treat the poor:
If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community in any of your towns within the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor. You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be. Be careful that you do not entertain a mean thought ...and therefore view your needy neighbor with hostility and give nothing; your neighbor might cry to the LORD against you, and you would incur guilt. Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so, for on this account the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake. Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, "Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land."
Jesus is making a point here to Judas … “Judas… and all you who are like Judas, who piously claim you are just being financially prudent in how you deal with the poor … you’re nothing but a bunch of hypocrites. The Law of Moses undeniably states that you are to open your hand to the poor and needy neighbors in your land … to be generous, liberal and ungrudging in your giving … and in your selfishness and sinfulness, you don’t do this at all.” Indeed, if you were “in me,” if you had “come to yourselves,” you would do even more than that … you would live as Paul … your money wouldn’t mean s*** to you, you would give it all up for the sake of the poor, as I’ve told you, and you would follow me. But you don’t. You just don’t, at all. And soon, you’ll even put me to death."
One of our own local Lutheran professors, Samuel Torvend of Pacific Lutheran University, brings this verse home for Lutherans in particular. He’s found some writings of Martin Luther on the poor and hungry and compiled them in a book titled “Luther and the Hungry Poor: Scattered Fragments.” Now Luther isn’t known for his social justice writings … he didn’t write on this subject like he did many others … but what he did write is quite consistent with his other more well known words.
Namely, Luther says that in this sinful world, the rich need the poor to remain poor, so that they can remain rich and in power, and that the rich will do whatever it takes to keep the poor poor, so that they can feel self-justified in being “kind hearted souls” in giving the poor food, money, clothing, etc. … but just enough … not too much … not giving them the goods or means to be lifted or to lift themselves out of poverty … no, just giving them enough … a handout here, a meal there … to keep them alive, but poor. Always, and forever, poor.
It’s certainly another of Luther’s critiques on the works-righteousness way that made the world go around in the time of our text today … certainly, also during the Reformation … and, dare I say, is still at work today.
And yet … and yet, in contrast, there’s that call of our Lord. With me. With me. Be with me. Come to yourselves, pay attention, turn around … repent … suffer the loss of all things, regard them as rubbish … for the sake of the Gospel … the Good News … which is Good News for rich and poor, man and woman, Jew and Gentile, Mary and Lazarus … and Judas … and you and me.
There’s that call of our Lord. And yet … yet he’s realistic about how seriously we’ll take it, on the “before” side of the Cross … before the Sign of the Cross is made over Jesus in his suffering and death ...
… for the day of my burial.
But for us now … we who live on the “after” side of the Cross and Tomb, there remains this word for us:
I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own … forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead … I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
Jesus calls to us today … be with me. Come to yourselves. Confess, be forgiven … come, eat and drink, be formed into my body, my people, in the world … show, live the world another way… The Way …
Come. Be. With. Me.
Monday, March 11, 2013
10 March 2013
“Making the Sign of the Cross ... in welcoming the lost”
Luke 15
4 Lent C
10 March 2013
Hurray! It’s the Fourth Sunday in Lent!
That is the correct response for this day in this season ... in the history of the Christian church this is traditionally known as “Laetare” Sunday ... “Laetare,” the Latin word for “Be Joyful.” In the somber, even severe days of self-denial that were Lent in the Middle Ages, Laetare Sunday was a much-needed bright spot on the Lenten walk with Jesus towards the cross. The deep purple color on the altar was replaced with pink; the music was a little less severe, the texts more uplifting.
So today we do have those features present in our worship. We light the pink Lenten candle. Our hymns and songs are familiar, beloved ones, which we can and will sing forth loudly and joyfully.
And our Gospel text ... as we continue through our Lenten journey of Making the Sign of the Cross ... our Gospel text in also one which is given to us to bring us great joy.
Hurray! It’s another Word for us about Repentance!
What? You don’t think repentance is joyful?
Certainly that’s not the fault of the text ... one chapter with three different yet similar stories ... like the many facets of a fine jewel, this Gospel text comes to us this morning, this 15th chapter of Luke’s Gospel, which is all about Welcoming Back the Lost.
Now, yes, it’s true, the first two story-examples Jesus shares with us ... the lost sheep, the lost coin ... in neither of these stories could we say that there is repentance ... in the way we understand what that word means. In Luke’s Greek, the word is metanoia, which literally means “turning around.” A coin can’t “turn around” on its own, it’s an inanimate object after all. And a sheep, although a living creature, is certainly not capable of recognizing its error in wandering away from the flock, “Ohh, I’m sorry I ran away Mister Shepherd” ... no, the shepherd must go out after it to find it, and “lay it on his shoulders” and bring it back to the flock.
But to keep our focus here would be An Adventure In Missing The Point. And the point of these two stories ... is that Jesus tells us ... when the lost is restored to the rest ... the one sheep to the ninety-nine, the one coin to the ten .... when the lost is restored to the rest ... this is cause for rejoicing. Indeed, hear the words of the shepherd, and of the woman:
Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.
Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.
The joy of repentance, then, is in the heart and soul of the One who has wholeness restored to them, as they welcome the lost.
That One is God ... God, the Good Shepherd who goes far afield to find the lost sheep ... God, the Woman who turns her house upside down to find the lost coin.
And when God finds the lost ... and God welcomes the lost ... we are invited, encouraged, to rejoice along with God.
That, my friends, is the heart of repentance. It is cause to be joyful, because God is joyful when the lost are found, we are called to rejoice along with God.
The Pharisees and scribes certainly weren’t rejoicing. They saw Jesus associate with tax collectors and sinners ... tax collectors, those loathed co-conspirators with the Roman occupiers who preyed on the occupied Judeans, trying to take more than they were really owed, and pocketing the difference ... sinners, a catch phrase-description for anyone who was living outside the Law of the Religion of that place and time ... criminals, thieves, prostitutes, adulterers, you name it.
It was bad enough to the Pharisees and scribes that Jesus was associating with them. But to actually sit down and eat with them ... to share table fellowship ... a sacred time in their religion, when the unclean was to be scrupulously separated from the clean ... and here, Jesus was mixing it all up, and making a mockery and mess of their carefully delineated, noted and notebooked, catalogued and three ring bindered faith ... well, it was all too much for them. And so they grumbled.
Maybe that’s where we get that attitude, that repentance is one big negative. From the Pharisees and Scribes. From their behavior which suggests, implies, that God’s Big Tent simply isn’t big enough, so that All May Be Welcome.
If They are welcome ... They ... the tax collectors and sinners ... They who have obvious character defects (and I don’t) ... They who have come later than me (and I’ve been here longer) ... if They are welcome, well, there surely won’t be Enough to go around ... I, We who by right should be here will get shorted ... well, it’s just not fair.
It’s the Theology of Scarcity, at work, once more. The word, the way, that says there just won’t be enough to go around, so therefore, you who don’t “deserve” any shouldn’t get any.
No wonder we view Repentance as a dour, sour affair. Instead of rejoicing with the One who gladly, joyfully welcomes back the lost, we sit and gripe that the pool’s getting too full, and that There Won’t Be Enough For Me.
Jesus sees this, Jesus knows this.
And so he tells those Pharisees and Scribes, he tells us, an extended story. The second-best-known story in the New Testament ... perhaps even tied for number one.
This is the Story of the Lost Son.
The story begins on an unhappy note. A man had two sons, and the younger one wanted his father dead.
But the younger son, for whatever reason, couldn’t get rid of dad himself, so he did the easier deed … he asked for his share of the inheritance early. An act which not only shows what he thought of his father … but, truly, of the whole family. Asking for his share of the inheritance before his father had died puts the whole family at risk of financial ruin.
It’s OK for us to be angry with this character. I’m furious at him. What a selfish, self centered, careless jerk of a younger brother. Would that he would get what he deserves … a swift kick in the butt … and to be banished from the family forever.
But he doesn’t get it.
Instead … this unproductive young sapling … he gets precisely what the unproductive fig tree got in last week’s Gospel text … in its unfruitfulness, in his unfruitfulness, despite his unwillingness to bear good fruit … he gets one more year.
Sir, let it alone … let him alone … for one more year … if he bears fruit next year, well and good …
Grrr. Sometimes grace can really hack me off.
And so it is that the younger son is given time … more time … to blow through the inheritance … not like a drunken sailor on shore leave (that’s what his older brother thinks) but more like a silly spendthrift.
And then he hits rock bottom. Finally! Just desserts for the wasteful fool! No one will help him! He finds out the world can be a terrible, cruel, mean place.
And then … and then he comes to himself.
Some readers of this text … coming from families where their “younger brothers” have hit “rock bottom” … they read this text and say, “Hey! Wait a minute! Where’s the repentance here? This jerk, he put the whole family at risk! Sure, he decides to go back to his father with the words “I have sinned” on his lips, but his motivation is purely selfish. His belly is as empty as his wallet, and he wants to be taken care of … get bailed out of his mistakes … once again.”
Well, now, wait a minute.
The text says he “came to himself.”
Literally, that’s the meaning of the Greek word that we, in our American English, would rather feebly interpret as “repent.”
Really, what that word … metanoia … what that word means, is “to have a change in one’s thinking.”
If that is the true meaning of repentance, then, the younger son has used his ‘one more year’ wisely.
He has ‘come to himself,’ in exactly the same way the 12 step programs of today define ‘coming to oneself,’ “We admit that we are powerless over … alcohol … drugs … gambling … pornography … violence … our lives have become unmanageable.”
Coming to oneself. That’s what it’s all about.
The younger son has ‘come to himself’ in his one more year.
And so he sets out on his way home.
Now the Father in this story, the Father plays the same role as the Shepherd and the Woman in the first two stories. He is all about the Joy of Welcoming the Lost.
When he sees his son coming, way off in the distance, he runs out to meet him. This is behavior unbecoming for a grown man of his standing and position. And yet … he does it … ‘unbecoming’ and all. As unbecoming as Jesus who eats with tax collectors and sinners.
A party is in the offing, one of great excess in its celebration. There will be meat … not a usual part of the daily diet. People will come from miles around for the celebration.
It’s a scene ensconced in popular culture ... my favorite description comes from Elton John’s song, “Bennie and the Jets” …
Hey kids, shake it loose together.
The spotlight’s hitting something that’s been known to change the weather.
We’ll kill the fatted calf tonight, so stick around!
You’re gonna hear electric music, solid walls of sound …
A great big blowout, a real shindig, as my dad used to say.
Everyone’s celebrating.
Everyone, that is, except the older brother.
Here’s one so full of resentment at his younger brother that, not only can’t he bring himself to go in and celebrate with his family … he’s so full of resentment that he makes things up about his younger brother.
But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!
Nowhere in the text does it say that the younger son blew his money on prostitutes. The younger son is a poor money manager, yes, but the older brother makes the assumption and accusation where there is no proof. And he can’t call him brother.
So all the Father can do in the face of such resentment … grumbling and negativity … is to offer more grace.
Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come back to life; he was lost and has been found.
Like the shepherd, and the woman who finds her coin, the father simply wants completeness … wholeness … to have what was … and is … lost … to be found once again.
So what happens next? We don’t know. Because that’s the end of the parable.
It’s open for interpretation, and there are as many different interpretations as there are hearers.
For those of us who attended last year’s Synod Assembly, Professor Mark Alan Powell of Trinity Seminary offered to us how different people hear and interpret this text, based on where they live in the world.
Namely … Westerners (Europeans and Americans) over and against Middle Easterners and Africans.
To Westerners … the words we hear the loudest are the sins of the lost son. He squandered his property in dissolute living. He needs to repent!
But to Easterners … far more community minded folks than independent, self-actualizing Americans and Europeans ... well, they hear two things. First, the sin of the community into which the younger son fell when he hit rock bottom. No one gave him anything. Yes, it’s his fault he ended up where he did … but others helped push him down.
But more important for Easterners and Africans … and remember, this is an Eastern parable told by an Easterner to Easterners ... so what is truly the heart of this text … and where the focus of the story should lie … is in the welcoming behavior of the father. And recovery. Recovery of the family.
The lost is found.
The dead is alive.
The family is complete once more … well, at least they are all in the same general vicinity of one another … for now.
For now.
That’s all anyone can say.
Because so much about this parable is unknown.
What happens next? We don’t know.
We also don’t know if there is, or was, a mother.
And what about the older brother? Will he ever reconcile with the younger?
We just don’t know.
And that, I believe, is for good reason.
Because now the text, the parable, the story is for us to live into it and see ourselves in it … sometimes the younger brother, sometimes the older; we hope, sometimes, as the father … and Jesus tells it for us, it has survived down through the ages for us, as a vehicle to move us to acknowledge our own lost-ness … for us to accept the reality that God has found us in Jesus Christ, all of us, lost sons and daughters of our loving Father, who is running toward us in love.
And there’s more.
This story … these three stories … Jesus gives them to us for the same reason, for us to see and hear that EVERYTHING we do here ... EVERYTHING we do here ... MUST BE FOR THE SAKE OF THOSE ‘OUT THERE.’
EVERYTHING.
Now I realize this is an offensive word.
Well, pastor, come on, I come here because of the community, to be called on when I’m sick, to be prayed about when I need it, to receive the Word and Communion. What do you mean that EVERYTHING we do here is to be for the sake of those Out There?
What about us, here? What about me, here? I’m here, week in and week out, I’ve been here, for years, I’ve served and labored and slaved over this place to make it what it is today.
If we, if YOU do everything for the sake of those OUT THERE ... there ... there won’t be enough to go around.
Now all the tax collectors and the sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
The point is, not that we should drop everything we do here which serves us who are here ... not at all ... BUT THE POINT IS THAT EVERYTHING WE DO HERE IS TO BE DONE WITH THOSE WHO ARE NOT HERE FIRST AND FOREMOST IN MIND.
Why do we serve each other? Because it’s nice? Because we like each other? Because we like being served?
Or because in serving, we are showing the world an example of what “living in Christ” is all about?
aaaAAAHHHHhh.
And so we, too, we, always, are called to repent. To come to ourselves. To receive that “one more year” from our good gardener Christ who tends us and feeds us and gives us that one more year ... he waits and watches for us, too, to bear good fruit.
Not simply for our sake.
But for the sake of the others who are lost.
For the sake of those ‘out there.’ For the sake of the completeness, the wholeness, of God’s good, beloved creation.
So how are you going to live into this parable now? How will you complete this story Jesus gives us, in this one more year of God’s grace?
Luke 15
4 Lent C
10 March 2013
Hurray! It’s the Fourth Sunday in Lent!
That is the correct response for this day in this season ... in the history of the Christian church this is traditionally known as “Laetare” Sunday ... “Laetare,” the Latin word for “Be Joyful.” In the somber, even severe days of self-denial that were Lent in the Middle Ages, Laetare Sunday was a much-needed bright spot on the Lenten walk with Jesus towards the cross. The deep purple color on the altar was replaced with pink; the music was a little less severe, the texts more uplifting.
So today we do have those features present in our worship. We light the pink Lenten candle. Our hymns and songs are familiar, beloved ones, which we can and will sing forth loudly and joyfully.
And our Gospel text ... as we continue through our Lenten journey of Making the Sign of the Cross ... our Gospel text in also one which is given to us to bring us great joy.
Hurray! It’s another Word for us about Repentance!
What? You don’t think repentance is joyful?
Certainly that’s not the fault of the text ... one chapter with three different yet similar stories ... like the many facets of a fine jewel, this Gospel text comes to us this morning, this 15th chapter of Luke’s Gospel, which is all about Welcoming Back the Lost.
Now, yes, it’s true, the first two story-examples Jesus shares with us ... the lost sheep, the lost coin ... in neither of these stories could we say that there is repentance ... in the way we understand what that word means. In Luke’s Greek, the word is metanoia, which literally means “turning around.” A coin can’t “turn around” on its own, it’s an inanimate object after all. And a sheep, although a living creature, is certainly not capable of recognizing its error in wandering away from the flock, “Ohh, I’m sorry I ran away Mister Shepherd” ... no, the shepherd must go out after it to find it, and “lay it on his shoulders” and bring it back to the flock.
But to keep our focus here would be An Adventure In Missing The Point. And the point of these two stories ... is that Jesus tells us ... when the lost is restored to the rest ... the one sheep to the ninety-nine, the one coin to the ten .... when the lost is restored to the rest ... this is cause for rejoicing. Indeed, hear the words of the shepherd, and of the woman:
Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.
Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.
The joy of repentance, then, is in the heart and soul of the One who has wholeness restored to them, as they welcome the lost.
That One is God ... God, the Good Shepherd who goes far afield to find the lost sheep ... God, the Woman who turns her house upside down to find the lost coin.
And when God finds the lost ... and God welcomes the lost ... we are invited, encouraged, to rejoice along with God.
That, my friends, is the heart of repentance. It is cause to be joyful, because God is joyful when the lost are found, we are called to rejoice along with God.
The Pharisees and scribes certainly weren’t rejoicing. They saw Jesus associate with tax collectors and sinners ... tax collectors, those loathed co-conspirators with the Roman occupiers who preyed on the occupied Judeans, trying to take more than they were really owed, and pocketing the difference ... sinners, a catch phrase-description for anyone who was living outside the Law of the Religion of that place and time ... criminals, thieves, prostitutes, adulterers, you name it.
It was bad enough to the Pharisees and scribes that Jesus was associating with them. But to actually sit down and eat with them ... to share table fellowship ... a sacred time in their religion, when the unclean was to be scrupulously separated from the clean ... and here, Jesus was mixing it all up, and making a mockery and mess of their carefully delineated, noted and notebooked, catalogued and three ring bindered faith ... well, it was all too much for them. And so they grumbled.
Maybe that’s where we get that attitude, that repentance is one big negative. From the Pharisees and Scribes. From their behavior which suggests, implies, that God’s Big Tent simply isn’t big enough, so that All May Be Welcome.
If They are welcome ... They ... the tax collectors and sinners ... They who have obvious character defects (and I don’t) ... They who have come later than me (and I’ve been here longer) ... if They are welcome, well, there surely won’t be Enough to go around ... I, We who by right should be here will get shorted ... well, it’s just not fair.
It’s the Theology of Scarcity, at work, once more. The word, the way, that says there just won’t be enough to go around, so therefore, you who don’t “deserve” any shouldn’t get any.
No wonder we view Repentance as a dour, sour affair. Instead of rejoicing with the One who gladly, joyfully welcomes back the lost, we sit and gripe that the pool’s getting too full, and that There Won’t Be Enough For Me.
Jesus sees this, Jesus knows this.
And so he tells those Pharisees and Scribes, he tells us, an extended story. The second-best-known story in the New Testament ... perhaps even tied for number one.
This is the Story of the Lost Son.
The story begins on an unhappy note. A man had two sons, and the younger one wanted his father dead.
But the younger son, for whatever reason, couldn’t get rid of dad himself, so he did the easier deed … he asked for his share of the inheritance early. An act which not only shows what he thought of his father … but, truly, of the whole family. Asking for his share of the inheritance before his father had died puts the whole family at risk of financial ruin.
It’s OK for us to be angry with this character. I’m furious at him. What a selfish, self centered, careless jerk of a younger brother. Would that he would get what he deserves … a swift kick in the butt … and to be banished from the family forever.
But he doesn’t get it.
Instead … this unproductive young sapling … he gets precisely what the unproductive fig tree got in last week’s Gospel text … in its unfruitfulness, in his unfruitfulness, despite his unwillingness to bear good fruit … he gets one more year.
Sir, let it alone … let him alone … for one more year … if he bears fruit next year, well and good …
Grrr. Sometimes grace can really hack me off.
And so it is that the younger son is given time … more time … to blow through the inheritance … not like a drunken sailor on shore leave (that’s what his older brother thinks) but more like a silly spendthrift.
And then he hits rock bottom. Finally! Just desserts for the wasteful fool! No one will help him! He finds out the world can be a terrible, cruel, mean place.
And then … and then he comes to himself.
Some readers of this text … coming from families where their “younger brothers” have hit “rock bottom” … they read this text and say, “Hey! Wait a minute! Where’s the repentance here? This jerk, he put the whole family at risk! Sure, he decides to go back to his father with the words “I have sinned” on his lips, but his motivation is purely selfish. His belly is as empty as his wallet, and he wants to be taken care of … get bailed out of his mistakes … once again.”
Well, now, wait a minute.
The text says he “came to himself.”
Literally, that’s the meaning of the Greek word that we, in our American English, would rather feebly interpret as “repent.”
Really, what that word … metanoia … what that word means, is “to have a change in one’s thinking.”
If that is the true meaning of repentance, then, the younger son has used his ‘one more year’ wisely.
He has ‘come to himself,’ in exactly the same way the 12 step programs of today define ‘coming to oneself,’ “We admit that we are powerless over … alcohol … drugs … gambling … pornography … violence … our lives have become unmanageable.”
Coming to oneself. That’s what it’s all about.
The younger son has ‘come to himself’ in his one more year.
And so he sets out on his way home.
Now the Father in this story, the Father plays the same role as the Shepherd and the Woman in the first two stories. He is all about the Joy of Welcoming the Lost.
When he sees his son coming, way off in the distance, he runs out to meet him. This is behavior unbecoming for a grown man of his standing and position. And yet … he does it … ‘unbecoming’ and all. As unbecoming as Jesus who eats with tax collectors and sinners.
A party is in the offing, one of great excess in its celebration. There will be meat … not a usual part of the daily diet. People will come from miles around for the celebration.
It’s a scene ensconced in popular culture ... my favorite description comes from Elton John’s song, “Bennie and the Jets” …
Hey kids, shake it loose together.
The spotlight’s hitting something that’s been known to change the weather.
We’ll kill the fatted calf tonight, so stick around!
You’re gonna hear electric music, solid walls of sound …
A great big blowout, a real shindig, as my dad used to say.
Everyone’s celebrating.
Everyone, that is, except the older brother.
Here’s one so full of resentment at his younger brother that, not only can’t he bring himself to go in and celebrate with his family … he’s so full of resentment that he makes things up about his younger brother.
But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!
Nowhere in the text does it say that the younger son blew his money on prostitutes. The younger son is a poor money manager, yes, but the older brother makes the assumption and accusation where there is no proof. And he can’t call him brother.
So all the Father can do in the face of such resentment … grumbling and negativity … is to offer more grace.
Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come back to life; he was lost and has been found.
Like the shepherd, and the woman who finds her coin, the father simply wants completeness … wholeness … to have what was … and is … lost … to be found once again.
So what happens next? We don’t know. Because that’s the end of the parable.
It’s open for interpretation, and there are as many different interpretations as there are hearers.
For those of us who attended last year’s Synod Assembly, Professor Mark Alan Powell of Trinity Seminary offered to us how different people hear and interpret this text, based on where they live in the world.
Namely … Westerners (Europeans and Americans) over and against Middle Easterners and Africans.
To Westerners … the words we hear the loudest are the sins of the lost son. He squandered his property in dissolute living. He needs to repent!
But to Easterners … far more community minded folks than independent, self-actualizing Americans and Europeans ... well, they hear two things. First, the sin of the community into which the younger son fell when he hit rock bottom. No one gave him anything. Yes, it’s his fault he ended up where he did … but others helped push him down.
But more important for Easterners and Africans … and remember, this is an Eastern parable told by an Easterner to Easterners ... so what is truly the heart of this text … and where the focus of the story should lie … is in the welcoming behavior of the father. And recovery. Recovery of the family.
The lost is found.
The dead is alive.
The family is complete once more … well, at least they are all in the same general vicinity of one another … for now.
For now.
That’s all anyone can say.
Because so much about this parable is unknown.
What happens next? We don’t know.
We also don’t know if there is, or was, a mother.
And what about the older brother? Will he ever reconcile with the younger?
We just don’t know.
And that, I believe, is for good reason.
Because now the text, the parable, the story is for us to live into it and see ourselves in it … sometimes the younger brother, sometimes the older; we hope, sometimes, as the father … and Jesus tells it for us, it has survived down through the ages for us, as a vehicle to move us to acknowledge our own lost-ness … for us to accept the reality that God has found us in Jesus Christ, all of us, lost sons and daughters of our loving Father, who is running toward us in love.
And there’s more.
This story … these three stories … Jesus gives them to us for the same reason, for us to see and hear that EVERYTHING we do here ... EVERYTHING we do here ... MUST BE FOR THE SAKE OF THOSE ‘OUT THERE.’
EVERYTHING.
Now I realize this is an offensive word.
Well, pastor, come on, I come here because of the community, to be called on when I’m sick, to be prayed about when I need it, to receive the Word and Communion. What do you mean that EVERYTHING we do here is to be for the sake of those Out There?
What about us, here? What about me, here? I’m here, week in and week out, I’ve been here, for years, I’ve served and labored and slaved over this place to make it what it is today.
If we, if YOU do everything for the sake of those OUT THERE ... there ... there won’t be enough to go around.
Now all the tax collectors and the sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
The point is, not that we should drop everything we do here which serves us who are here ... not at all ... BUT THE POINT IS THAT EVERYTHING WE DO HERE IS TO BE DONE WITH THOSE WHO ARE NOT HERE FIRST AND FOREMOST IN MIND.
Why do we serve each other? Because it’s nice? Because we like each other? Because we like being served?
Or because in serving, we are showing the world an example of what “living in Christ” is all about?
aaaAAAHHHHhh.
And so we, too, we, always, are called to repent. To come to ourselves. To receive that “one more year” from our good gardener Christ who tends us and feeds us and gives us that one more year ... he waits and watches for us, too, to bear good fruit.
Not simply for our sake.
But for the sake of the others who are lost.
For the sake of those ‘out there.’ For the sake of the completeness, the wholeness, of God’s good, beloved creation.
So how are you going to live into this parable now? How will you complete this story Jesus gives us, in this one more year of God’s grace?
Monday, March 04, 2013
3 March 2013
“Making the Sign of the Cross … for one more year”
Luke 13:1-9
3 Lent C
3 March 2013
Here at this mid point in our Lenten journey, Making the Sign of the Cross … it’s appropriate for us to step back and take stock of where the Word has taken us so far.
We have Made the Sign of the Cross … in ashes.
When we’re tempted.
And in defiance.
And now, today, we come to perhaps the most difficult of all these Lenten words for us … as we
Make the Sign of the Cross … for one more year.
The Gospel Word is a text in two halves … first comes Jesus’ response to a couple of news items of the time, events which were surely a topic of daily conversation for people of that place and time. Pilate had killed some residents of Galilee as they came to make their sacrifices in the Temple at Jerusalem. This event is not noted anywhere else, but given the politics of Roman-occupied Judea, with an oppressive force trying to keep oppressed people in line ... well, it shouldn’t surprise us. Despotic governments today do the same, and worse. It was a big deal then, as it would be now... and that’s why it’s brought up to Jesus.
The second news event is not a human-caused disaster, but a “natural” one. People were killed when the Tower of Siloam – not a tall building, as we use that word “tower,” but more likely, some kind of a structure offering shade and shelter at the Pool of Siloam ... they were killed when, for some reason, it collapsed and fell on them. This event also isn’t noted anywhere else, but unlike Pilate’s actions, this sounds like an accident.
Yet ...yet it’s Jesus’ response to the news of the day that is most unnerving.
Unless you repent, you will perish just as they did.
And then ... in the second half of the text ... Jesus launches into a parable, this one, about a fig tree planted in a vineyard, an unfruitful fig tree which after three years should have been producing figs, but isn’t, so the vineyard owner wants to cut it down. The gardener intercedes on behalf of the fig tree, to give it one more year to be productive; but the lesson ends with a word of dire warning,
If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.
So what do we make of this strange two part juxtaposition of apparent cheerlessness, on this Sunday, this midpoint in our annual Lenten journey?
I can report to you what I have seen, and heard, over the years. Perhaps ... for those of you who have been this Way before, you will report the same. For those to whom this text comes fresh and new this year, here is a word of experience.
And my experience has been, given the time and season we’re in, when this text comes, every three years, this time in the season of Lent ... well, preachers preach it and we hear it as a harsh word about repentance. The conventional wisdom behind these words, is that it is a Word about how everyone needs to repent ... to turn around, to confess our sins before God, and to receive forgiveness. Here is a call and cry, we say, for us to stop playing “pin the sin on the sinner,” but instead, to realize that everyone ... everyone ... is in need of repentance ... and no one ... no one ... lives into life the way God calls us.
That’s the bad news. And the good news?
The Good News is that Jesus will give us “one more year” ... "time for amendment of life" as the old Confession and Forgiveness order put it ... Jesus the Gardener intercedes with his landowner Father who, by all right of the law, demands righteousness and justice. Jesus the Gardener gives us the blessed gift of time ... time to come to ourselves, time to repent of our unfruitfulness, our lack of faith ... time to repent and receive forgiveness, to be made over into fruitful, productive people, for Jesus’ sake and the sake of his reign.
As I said, that, in my experience, perhaps, likely, for those of you who have heard them before too, that is the usual way we receive these words.
But this year, here, now, we are exploring what it means to be called into Making the Sign of the Cross ... and the Word for us, through the Cross, is that God’s wisdom, to and for the world, is not the same as human wisdom; often, it’s the exact opposite of what we of the world would say.
The Sign of the Cross is Strength ... through what would be labeled weakness.
The Sign of the Cross is Goodness ... coming through suffering, and self-denial, those which the world says are bad, which we want to avoid at all costs.
And the Sign of the Cross is life ... coming through this symbol, this emblem, of death.
So that’s where we are going to go; in, with, and through this text, this morning.
Now ... and hear this clearly ... this is not to deny the Word this text has for us when we’re prideful, haughty, full of hubris ... making of ourselves that we don’t need God, that we haven’t done anything requiring our repentance; indeed, that we are “masters of our domain” and don’t need to apologize to anyone for our way of living life.
That’s not what I’m saying at all. Far from it. When we are like that ... and all of us are like that at one time or another ... we most certainly need to get knocked down off our self-exalting pedestals, and this Word is just the sledgehammer to do it. That is the work of God’s Law of righteousness and justice, after all; as a mirror, held up to our lives, to show our guilt and convict us.
But there is another Word here ... a Word for us when we are in a season of unfruitfulness ... because we simply don’t believe that we have it in us to be fruitful, in Christ; and so we don’t live lives which are blessings before the Lord for the sake of the world. We say that we’re too old or too young, too sick or too busy, too tired or too broke, too small or too timid in our witness ... that “Lutheran Laryngitis” has us in its grips ... to make anything of ourselves before God.
This is a text about people perishing, and indeed, there are many ways to perish. Some people suffer at the hands of the Pilates of the world, those who mingle their blood with their sacrifices; and some people have towers fall on them. Some people are responsible for their own suffering and death because they ate poorly or ingested harmful chemicals or they didn’t get enough exercise or they drove too fast and reckless ... and some people were simply at the wrong place at the wrong time.
And then ... then there are those who “never live until they die.” Those who, when they think about their life, their presence on earth, and believe of themselves that they don’t really amount to much. Those who go through the motions of life, putting in their time, every day, the same old dull routine; never questioning, nor examining “the way things are;” those who don’t engage, or connect, or live into the world around them. Those who say, “Well, I’ve done my share,” and then sit back to watch the world go by, day after day after day.
The spectators. Those on the sidelines.
Those who, if they thought about it, live daily into the words of this poem by Toyohiko Kagawa:
I read
In a book
That a man called
Christ
Went about doing good.
It is very disconcerting to me
That I am so easily
Satisfied
With just
Going about.
That, too, is perishing. Living an unfruitful, unfulfilled, unremarkable life.
And so ... from this, too, we are called to repent ... to turn around, to hear the truth about ourselves.
And that truth is ... God loves and cares for you; God made you for remarkable things; who, indeed, are you to claim otherwise?
God made you ... for being touched by the Sign of the Cross. In your own life, in the lives of others, people, the world, God made, and loves ... calling us, one and all, to watch, to see, ourselves, part of something larger than just ourselves, what we might say is our dull or humdrum daily existence. As a friend of mine once said, “In God’s world, if you are bored, you’re simply not paying attention.”
The Sign of the Cross is Christ’s touch to us, Christ’s saying to us, you are not insignificant, you were not put here merely to take up space, you are a beloved Child of God, one who God loves so much that I came and lived and gave, taught and preached and healed, suffered and died and was buried into this world which tries to pull everyone down ... but I beat that pulling down, that perishing, that bottomless pit called death, once and for all, so that you might have life; full, rich, abundant, the way God calls and desires all to have it, fruitful lives of significance; free of fear of what is to come, so that you can live fully engaged in the here and now.
And that brings us here and now fully into another Word ... that God made you for touching others in the Sign of the Cross.
The Sign of the Cross is not individual, “just me and Jesus,” exclusive and even, perhaps, excluding of others. Not at all. The Sign of the Cross is a inclusive, calling, gathering, welcoming, empowering sign ... a sign, the sign, of God's all-encompassing love for us in Jesus.
An all-encompassing love which washes over us, on which we are fed and blessed and filled;
An all-encompassing love which calls us into living in Christ’s joy, and peace, and hope for all the world.
An all-encompassing love which calls, no, impels and propels us; in this life, in this love from The Sign of the Cross, we do not keep all this to ourselves; we are called, and gathered together in this love to be sent ...
Sent to share this love, God’s love, in Christ, into the world where we live, and breathe, every day. God’s garden, God’s vineyard, full of the creation which God so desperately loves and wants and wills to be his place, his people, who bear much fruit, living into each other’s lives because that is the will of the Vineyard Owner and his beloved Gardener.
Friends, there are no spectators in this life of faith.
All are valued, all are loved, all are called into serving, sharing the gifts we each have been given for the sake of God’s good vineyard.
And the only way you’ll know what your gifts are, is to engage in the vineyard. To be willing to get your hands dirty along with the Gardener ... to plunge in, to communicate with others, to ask, to study, to pray, to worship, to discover your gifts for this season of working in God’s good vineyard.
For the Good News for us this day, is that everyone has a place, and a purpose, gifts to share, and fruit to bear, for the sake of this world God loves.
Yes, there are seasons ... seasons of work, and seasons of rest, but all are lived under the Sign of the Cross, calling us, compelling us, to live, one with and for another, one with and for the sake of the other, no one, just themselves, alone, apart;
... whether that’s for our own glory and justification ...
I work hard
I made my own life what it is
Let others do the same
... or in our sad isolation ...
My life has no purpose, no meaning
I have nothing I can share with others, no means to make the world a better place
I am tired, too young, too old, too small, too insignificant to make a difference
To us, to one, to all, this Word of the Sign of the Cross comes, comes to us to give us, and fill us, with life ...
Life where all are called, all are gathered, all are sent, together, one in God’s great vineyard of this life, one in the Sign of the Cross.
Together ... we are fed.
Together ... we are watered.
Together ... we are tended with loving care by our Gardener.
All, to bear much fruit, in serving and sharing into and for the sake of the world God loves, empowered to risk, daring to dream, living to love one another even as Jesus Christ loves us.
So Go And Bear That Good Fruit ... Much Good Fruit ... People of Nativity, people of new birth and new life, Go And Bear That Good Fruit Into the World God Loves.
Amen.
Luke 13:1-9
3 Lent C
3 March 2013
Here at this mid point in our Lenten journey, Making the Sign of the Cross … it’s appropriate for us to step back and take stock of where the Word has taken us so far.
We have Made the Sign of the Cross … in ashes.
When we’re tempted.
And in defiance.
And now, today, we come to perhaps the most difficult of all these Lenten words for us … as we
Make the Sign of the Cross … for one more year.
The Gospel Word is a text in two halves … first comes Jesus’ response to a couple of news items of the time, events which were surely a topic of daily conversation for people of that place and time. Pilate had killed some residents of Galilee as they came to make their sacrifices in the Temple at Jerusalem. This event is not noted anywhere else, but given the politics of Roman-occupied Judea, with an oppressive force trying to keep oppressed people in line ... well, it shouldn’t surprise us. Despotic governments today do the same, and worse. It was a big deal then, as it would be now... and that’s why it’s brought up to Jesus.
The second news event is not a human-caused disaster, but a “natural” one. People were killed when the Tower of Siloam – not a tall building, as we use that word “tower,” but more likely, some kind of a structure offering shade and shelter at the Pool of Siloam ... they were killed when, for some reason, it collapsed and fell on them. This event also isn’t noted anywhere else, but unlike Pilate’s actions, this sounds like an accident.
Yet ...yet it’s Jesus’ response to the news of the day that is most unnerving.
Unless you repent, you will perish just as they did.
And then ... in the second half of the text ... Jesus launches into a parable, this one, about a fig tree planted in a vineyard, an unfruitful fig tree which after three years should have been producing figs, but isn’t, so the vineyard owner wants to cut it down. The gardener intercedes on behalf of the fig tree, to give it one more year to be productive; but the lesson ends with a word of dire warning,
If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.
So what do we make of this strange two part juxtaposition of apparent cheerlessness, on this Sunday, this midpoint in our annual Lenten journey?
I can report to you what I have seen, and heard, over the years. Perhaps ... for those of you who have been this Way before, you will report the same. For those to whom this text comes fresh and new this year, here is a word of experience.
And my experience has been, given the time and season we’re in, when this text comes, every three years, this time in the season of Lent ... well, preachers preach it and we hear it as a harsh word about repentance. The conventional wisdom behind these words, is that it is a Word about how everyone needs to repent ... to turn around, to confess our sins before God, and to receive forgiveness. Here is a call and cry, we say, for us to stop playing “pin the sin on the sinner,” but instead, to realize that everyone ... everyone ... is in need of repentance ... and no one ... no one ... lives into life the way God calls us.
That’s the bad news. And the good news?
The Good News is that Jesus will give us “one more year” ... "time for amendment of life" as the old Confession and Forgiveness order put it ... Jesus the Gardener intercedes with his landowner Father who, by all right of the law, demands righteousness and justice. Jesus the Gardener gives us the blessed gift of time ... time to come to ourselves, time to repent of our unfruitfulness, our lack of faith ... time to repent and receive forgiveness, to be made over into fruitful, productive people, for Jesus’ sake and the sake of his reign.
As I said, that, in my experience, perhaps, likely, for those of you who have heard them before too, that is the usual way we receive these words.
But this year, here, now, we are exploring what it means to be called into Making the Sign of the Cross ... and the Word for us, through the Cross, is that God’s wisdom, to and for the world, is not the same as human wisdom; often, it’s the exact opposite of what we of the world would say.
The Sign of the Cross is Strength ... through what would be labeled weakness.
The Sign of the Cross is Goodness ... coming through suffering, and self-denial, those which the world says are bad, which we want to avoid at all costs.
And the Sign of the Cross is life ... coming through this symbol, this emblem, of death.
So that’s where we are going to go; in, with, and through this text, this morning.
Now ... and hear this clearly ... this is not to deny the Word this text has for us when we’re prideful, haughty, full of hubris ... making of ourselves that we don’t need God, that we haven’t done anything requiring our repentance; indeed, that we are “masters of our domain” and don’t need to apologize to anyone for our way of living life.
That’s not what I’m saying at all. Far from it. When we are like that ... and all of us are like that at one time or another ... we most certainly need to get knocked down off our self-exalting pedestals, and this Word is just the sledgehammer to do it. That is the work of God’s Law of righteousness and justice, after all; as a mirror, held up to our lives, to show our guilt and convict us.
But there is another Word here ... a Word for us when we are in a season of unfruitfulness ... because we simply don’t believe that we have it in us to be fruitful, in Christ; and so we don’t live lives which are blessings before the Lord for the sake of the world. We say that we’re too old or too young, too sick or too busy, too tired or too broke, too small or too timid in our witness ... that “Lutheran Laryngitis” has us in its grips ... to make anything of ourselves before God.
This is a text about people perishing, and indeed, there are many ways to perish. Some people suffer at the hands of the Pilates of the world, those who mingle their blood with their sacrifices; and some people have towers fall on them. Some people are responsible for their own suffering and death because they ate poorly or ingested harmful chemicals or they didn’t get enough exercise or they drove too fast and reckless ... and some people were simply at the wrong place at the wrong time.
And then ... then there are those who “never live until they die.” Those who, when they think about their life, their presence on earth, and believe of themselves that they don’t really amount to much. Those who go through the motions of life, putting in their time, every day, the same old dull routine; never questioning, nor examining “the way things are;” those who don’t engage, or connect, or live into the world around them. Those who say, “Well, I’ve done my share,” and then sit back to watch the world go by, day after day after day.
The spectators. Those on the sidelines.
Those who, if they thought about it, live daily into the words of this poem by Toyohiko Kagawa:
I read
In a book
That a man called
Christ
Went about doing good.
It is very disconcerting to me
That I am so easily
Satisfied
With just
Going about.
That, too, is perishing. Living an unfruitful, unfulfilled, unremarkable life.
And so ... from this, too, we are called to repent ... to turn around, to hear the truth about ourselves.
And that truth is ... God loves and cares for you; God made you for remarkable things; who, indeed, are you to claim otherwise?
God made you ... for being touched by the Sign of the Cross. In your own life, in the lives of others, people, the world, God made, and loves ... calling us, one and all, to watch, to see, ourselves, part of something larger than just ourselves, what we might say is our dull or humdrum daily existence. As a friend of mine once said, “In God’s world, if you are bored, you’re simply not paying attention.”
The Sign of the Cross is Christ’s touch to us, Christ’s saying to us, you are not insignificant, you were not put here merely to take up space, you are a beloved Child of God, one who God loves so much that I came and lived and gave, taught and preached and healed, suffered and died and was buried into this world which tries to pull everyone down ... but I beat that pulling down, that perishing, that bottomless pit called death, once and for all, so that you might have life; full, rich, abundant, the way God calls and desires all to have it, fruitful lives of significance; free of fear of what is to come, so that you can live fully engaged in the here and now.
And that brings us here and now fully into another Word ... that God made you for touching others in the Sign of the Cross.
The Sign of the Cross is not individual, “just me and Jesus,” exclusive and even, perhaps, excluding of others. Not at all. The Sign of the Cross is a inclusive, calling, gathering, welcoming, empowering sign ... a sign, the sign, of God's all-encompassing love for us in Jesus.
An all-encompassing love which washes over us, on which we are fed and blessed and filled;
An all-encompassing love which calls us into living in Christ’s joy, and peace, and hope for all the world.
An all-encompassing love which calls, no, impels and propels us; in this life, in this love from The Sign of the Cross, we do not keep all this to ourselves; we are called, and gathered together in this love to be sent ...
Sent to share this love, God’s love, in Christ, into the world where we live, and breathe, every day. God’s garden, God’s vineyard, full of the creation which God so desperately loves and wants and wills to be his place, his people, who bear much fruit, living into each other’s lives because that is the will of the Vineyard Owner and his beloved Gardener.
Friends, there are no spectators in this life of faith.
All are valued, all are loved, all are called into serving, sharing the gifts we each have been given for the sake of God’s good vineyard.
And the only way you’ll know what your gifts are, is to engage in the vineyard. To be willing to get your hands dirty along with the Gardener ... to plunge in, to communicate with others, to ask, to study, to pray, to worship, to discover your gifts for this season of working in God’s good vineyard.
For the Good News for us this day, is that everyone has a place, and a purpose, gifts to share, and fruit to bear, for the sake of this world God loves.
Yes, there are seasons ... seasons of work, and seasons of rest, but all are lived under the Sign of the Cross, calling us, compelling us, to live, one with and for another, one with and for the sake of the other, no one, just themselves, alone, apart;
... whether that’s for our own glory and justification ...
I work hard
I made my own life what it is
Let others do the same
... or in our sad isolation ...
My life has no purpose, no meaning
I have nothing I can share with others, no means to make the world a better place
I am tired, too young, too old, too small, too insignificant to make a difference
To us, to one, to all, this Word of the Sign of the Cross comes, comes to us to give us, and fill us, with life ...
Life where all are called, all are gathered, all are sent, together, one in God’s great vineyard of this life, one in the Sign of the Cross.
Together ... we are fed.
Together ... we are watered.
Together ... we are tended with loving care by our Gardener.
All, to bear much fruit, in serving and sharing into and for the sake of the world God loves, empowered to risk, daring to dream, living to love one another even as Jesus Christ loves us.
So Go And Bear That Good Fruit ... Much Good Fruit ... People of Nativity, people of new birth and new life, Go And Bear That Good Fruit Into the World God Loves.
Amen.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)