Human Bricks

 

Matthew 16:13-20

Now, I’m no architect, but I do admit to having extensive experience with…Legos. As a mom of two boys, and the once preferred babysitter of a whole bunch of kids in my teens, I have an advanced degree in Lego building. And if you go way far back, before my own kids, before the $3/hour babysitting gigs, you’d find me holed up somewhere in a corner of my house with the brightly colored blocks spread out before me, inventing my machinations of spaceships, pirate raiders, and most of all, a house of my very own, with my very own room and my very own bathroom and my very own flowers in the pots outside my very own windows. I mean, a girl can dream. 

Now all experienced Lego builders know that in order to build a stable house where the walls won’t cave in on your very own kitchen table and your very own bathroom sink, you have to start with the “two bys.” The longer, the better. So I’d search through piles of Legos to find as many as I could. Two by threes would do in a pinch, but two by fours, fives, and sixes were ideal. These longer, but thicker bricks provided just the right base upon which to build your walls, include your very own windows, and tuck in your very own front door. These bricks were all the same width, clicked securely into one another and could withstand most imagined torrential downpours, earthquakes, and forest fires, if not a giant toddler stomping through the village Godzilla style. These bricks made clear lines, smooth edges, and a solid foundation. Everybody knows that this is what you start with. Basic “two bys” - even, predictable, steady, safe. So naturally, that’s what we should start with if we want to build a church, then, right? Right?

Well, like the aforementioned Godzilla toddler, Jesus has come to knock down all our ideas of what it takes to build a church. 

Before we get that characteristic clatter of Legos spilling to the floor, Jesus has an inquiry. Before anything gets built, Jesus founds the church on a question. Not on a solid, stable set of answers, a black dot to end a sentence, but on the curved, unpredictable swerve and sway of a question mark. 

Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?” is fundamentally tied to what the Church should be. The question of who Jesus is is in direct relationship with what the church is. How we answer the question, “Who do you say that I am” determines how we do Church.

If Jesus is a prize to be won, then our church becomes a carnival where those with the best shot and the strongest arm get to take him home.

If Jesus is a commodity to be bought, then our church becomes the stock exchange, full of people shouting and where meaningless trades are made, and Jesus’ stock wavers with the price of oil and consumer confidence.

If Jesus is a warm fuzzy, then the church becomes “Build A Bear” - that place where you fill a lifeless Jesus with polyester stuffing and dress him up in a tutu or a fireman rain jacket.

If Jesus is an academic exercise, then the church becomes the university where Jesus wanders around in texts and in elevated conversations, and the ones with the degrees get the best and the clearest access to the Kingdom.

If Jesus is a secret code, then the church is a computer, a series of zeroes and ones, that, if put in the right order, will reveal an operating system, a way to plug in the right algorithm and get the correct answer for every possible scenario.

If Jesus is Santa Claus, then the church is a shopping mall, and we wander from store to store, making lists, sitting on laps, asking for more stuff. 

Jesus asks his friends, “Who do you say that I am?”

And Peter blunders forward, without thinking, without questioning, without processing or weighing the costs. He comes to the feet of Jesus and shouts out, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God!” 

And Jesus says, essentially, “because of the way that you’ve answered, because of your floundering, and stumbling, and your commitment and your willingness to make such a pronouncement of your faith in me and in the Living God, I’m giving you the keys to the kingdom.”

“You, Peter, who speaks before thinking and does before counting the costs, who jumps in and forgets that you can’t walk on water, you, who have no filter, who blurts out whatever is on your mind, to you I give the keys, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

The one who has no filter is the one who is put in charge of the Kingdom of God.

Peter, the blundering idiot who is an organizational and categorical mess, whose heart is in the right place - unless he’s scared to death of course, is the one who is the Rock, the foundation of the Church.

I don’t think too much emphasis can be put on this point. See, the Church’s foundation is fundamentally faulty. It’s crumbling. It’s enthused and ready and all in one moment, and then running off and denying Jesus the next. And this guy is given the keys - the filter - that will determine who is in and who is out. The one who has no filter becomes the filter.

Because it’s not the answer to the question that is important. It’s the how of how we answer the question.

Because I don’t really care who you think you are, whether a cradle Catholic or a rational atheist or a born again Christian, your attempt to answer the question, “Who do you say that I am,” will be wrong. You’re going to get it wrong. We’ve all got God a little bit wrong. None of us truly, fully, get it. Or if you do get it right, like Peter, you’re not really going to understand what you’ve just said. Jesus just doesn’t fit in a stable two by four, or six, or eight.

It has never been about answers — if it was, then Jesus would have reneged his offer to Peter to be the foundation of his church. After all, just a few verses later, Peter is going to be called Satan by Jesus, and then later, he’s going to deny Jesus three times, and then he’s going to get into big theological fights with Paul at the church’s earliest inception.

It’s not about the answer, really. But about HOW we answer the question.

Jesus wants us all in. All of us. All the way in. With whatever answer we’ve got for this moment. Jesus wants our messy humanity. He proves it by making Peter the cornerstone of everything else that will be built upon it.

I think the church has been worrying about getting enough people into a building all nodding in unison to the “right” answer to the question. So of course, when put this way, the Church is dying. We no longer have churches thronging with folks ready to contort themselves into acceptable shapes to help build some sort of stable building. After all, Peter is far from stable. He lands on the right answer one moment, and then blunders it the next. 

I think that Jesus is telling us that it’s not about getting it right or wrong at all; faith is not a Scantron sheet or a true/false quiz, or an easy sell. Faith isn’t about conforming to some shape that you think will build the sturdiest building. 

And Jesus knew this. That’s why he gave Peter the keys to the kingdom, precisely because he goes all in, he flails around, because he believes and then he doesn’t. He gets the keys precisely because he has no filter, because he speaks before he thinks, he jumps in before he remembers that he doesn’t have a dry change of clothes. He just goes for it. And he’s the one with the keys. He’s the gatekeeper. The one who has probably forgotten where he left his keys, or lost them in the parking lot, or has them tucked in his pocket the whole time he’s frantically tossing pillows and looking under tables in search of them is the one in charge. He’s the brick upon which the church is built. Not stable. Not sturdy. Not consistent. One big ol’ question mark. One messy human. That’s our rock. Our cornerstone. 

Peter jumps in, blurts out, flails around and tries and tests and falls on his butt. So, everybody come on in. Peter has the keys, and he’s got no filter. No straight lines. No predictable perfect fits.

The kingdom of God is built on people. Not “two bys.” 

The Church is built on the precarious foundation that is humanity.

This is a little scary, but it's really good news.

When it comes to humans, there are no guarantees.

When it comes to humanity, anything can happen.

Jesus bids us to enter, to be the bricks. Enter the kingdom of God where you don’t have to have the answers, where you don’t have to fit into a mold in order to belong, where you don’t have to be consistent or sane or sober or a straight-A student. Where you don’t have to have it all neat and tidy and where everything must have its place. Enter the kingdom of God where we don’t build stable structures made out of uniformly sized Legos, but where we build community, made up of messy people and their messy shapes, where we will definitely get it wrong, and disappoint each other, and our walls will be knocked down again and again by the Godzilla Jesus toddler so that more and more can come in, more can belong, more can blunder and flail and hold hands until the kingdom is built.

Thanks be to God.

When Pigs Fly.

 

Matthew 14:22-33

Every three years, this passage comes up in our lectionary, and every three years, I struggle with what to do with it. I’m all about it when God comes to us in the human form of Jesus. It gets harder for me to relate to when Jesus comes to us in the form of God. These so called “nature miracles,” where Jesus defies all the laws and breaks all the natural rules and upends the delicate balance on our earth, are tough for me. This walking on water, the raising of the dead, the multiplication of something out of nothing, changing water into wine, they don’t make sense. I want to understand them. I want them to make sense. I want a logical explanation that does not offend my Post-Enlightenment sensibilities.

I mean, honestly, if I hadn’t grown up with this story, I’d listen to it one time and then say, “Yeah. Right. When pigs fly.” 

For reals, though. Don’t we think of this story as a little bit myth, a little bit fantasy? It’s a nice little story. But it can’t possibly be true. 

- Most of us have probably heard that according to the laws of Physics, the math just doesn’t work out to make it possible for a bumblebee to fly. According to the physics, because of their shape, size, and weight, it shouldn’t be possible for a bumblebee to fly.

- Up until recently, we had no idea how dolphins could swim so quickly. Called “Grey’s Paradox,” physics states that for something dolphin-sized to swim as fast as it does, it needs much more muscle mass than dolphins actually have. This was a question way back in the 1930’s, and although they’ve made some headway in finding an answer to this question, and they know that it somehow has something to do with their powerful flukes, they’re still not totally sure how this is possible.

- The basilisk lizard actually does walk on water. Or rather, it sort of runs. But this lizard is nicknamed the Jesus Christ Lizard because of this ability to seemingly glide upon the water on its hind legs. According to Wikipedia, “the common basilisk can [walk on water] because its feet are large and equipped with flaps of skin along the toes that allow it to catch on tiny air bubbles. When moving quickly, the basilisk lizard can cross a surface of water at an average of 15 miles per hour. 

So maybe Jesus just had extra big feet with flaps of skin along his toes that allowed him to catch on to tiny air bubbles, and thus, walk on water.

Or maybe, like the bumblebee, something extraordinary is happening in our world all the time, and we just don’t have the words or the understanding to explain it. Or maybe we’ve lost the wonder to even be able to see it. Remember when you were a kid, and your imagination could take you anywhere? Princes fought giant dragons and unicorns sailed through the skies and pirates battled the mighty leviathan? Remember when a treehouse was a fort in the Revolutionary War, and big wheels were race cars in the Indy 500? In our childlike minds, in our worlds where anything was possible, these worlds were 100% true. They were as real as I am standing before you. They weren’t “fact” of course, but so much more than fact. They were true. And, at least for me, truth is so much more interesting than plain ol’ boring facts. Truth is about possibility, potential, growth, and change. Facts are vitally important, don’t get me wrong, we need them to get us to what can be, but they’re static, they’re still, they describe what is right now. Facts can lead us to truth, but truth is so much more open and wild than 1+1=2 or Mars is 226.25 million miles away.

I mean, what if, someday, through the wonders of evolution over billions of years pigs really do grow wings, find their upward thrust and begin to fly? I mean, dinosaurs are the millions times great grandparents of this common brown sparrow that hovers and flutters around my bird feeder. Is it really beyond the realm of - eventual - possibility? Truth lets us ask questions like that. Truth invites us to enter in to possibility, not just actuality. 

So the challenge, for me, in this passage - and maybe it’s the same for you - is to somehow hold on to the idea that I don’t understand everything yet. And taken a step further, maybe humanity as a whole doesn’t understand everything yet. Shocking. I know. 

Maybe there’s more truth out there than we know. Maybe there’s more meaning out there than I can comprehend?

But how often do I do all my Jenn things with this arrogance that suggests that I know what’s going on? I pump my gas, I flip the light switch, I throw the ball up that promises to come down. How often do I live my life as if the world does make a sort of “sense,” and that people just don’t walk on water and there’s a logical explanation for everything, an explanation that we can get to right now if we just think hard enough, if we just had enough facts. 

What if, like a child, we could let ourselves believe in the impossible? What if we let ourselves believe that like the bumblebee - someday pigs will fly? That dolphins really do swim that fast? That the basilisk lizard and two men two thousand years ago really do and did walk on water? What else is possible? Where’s more truth?

Peter could do it. He could ask the questions and wonder the wonders. He was willing to step out of the boat and try the impossible. I’m jealous of Peter who was able to suspend his disbelief long enough to be suspended above the water. Who could suspend his disbelief long enough to name Jesus as the Son of God. Who believed in forgiveness enough to show his face again, to look Jesus in the eye, after his terrible betrayal. Who could take the facts and then go beyond, further, out there, into the realm of truth. 

But those things happened. That’s the thing. The impossible is possible all around us, all the time. Maybe it wasn’t “faith” - as we think of it - that got Peter out of that boat, but rather the simple sense of wonder that comes when we look closely at everything. Maybe every time we get on our knees to follow an ant down the sidewalk, or look up to see the V of geese in perfect formation, or those starlings that form murmurations of thousands of birds and then they all move as one, or we watch a seed break open and make food out of dirt, or we make it just one more mile on the empty tank, or we say “I’m so sorry” and we’re actually forgiven, we are walking on water. We’re reaching past facts, and entering the sea of truth. When we study bees and basilisks and dolphins, when we watch in awe as they fly in the air, and walk on the water, and race through the sea, we are participating in the impossible, we’re watching it unfold, we’re taking a step out of the boat. We don’t have full or complete explanations for how any of this happens, and yet, somehow, it does. Before there was an understanding of the world being round, of whirling planets swirling around a star, the sunrise, every morning, was a miracle. Why isn’t it still? What would change in our lives if we really tried to suspend our disbelief and just chose to believe that Jesus really did walk on water - and that Peter went with him?

So what other impossible things are actually possible if we just had the sense of wonder and radical trust to step out of our boats made of answers and limits and facts and onto a raging sea churning with power and possibility? 

Maybe no one would go hungry anymore. Maybe the word “war” will lose its meaning. Maybe we can solve this climate crisis. Maybe we’d stop shooting each other. Maybe everyone would have a roof over their heads and access to clean water. Maybe, if bumblebees can fly, and dolphins can race through the ocean and basilisk lizards can walk on the water, what if Jesus did, too? How does our world change if the impossible becomes possible? 

I don’t think this story is asking us to take a side or make a choice between rationality and belief. We don’t have be on team logic or team faith. I think these are old, tired questions that simply aren’t as interesting as the wonder of “what if?” If Jesus could walk on water, if bumblebees and dinosaurs can fly, if the sun can rise once again over the horizon, what else could be possible? If we lean in, if we look closely, if we experience the childlike wonder of the impossibility of everything, maybe then everything becomes possible. The relationship can be healed. The life can be restored. The addiction can end. The earth can heal. We can stop fighting and buying and comparing. We can enter in to the truth of our lives, beyond the mere facts. Men have walked on water and pigs are gonna, someday, fly. I believe it. I mean, maybe? 

Thanks be to God.

Hands Full of Nothing

Genesis 32:22-31

Matthew 14:13-21

 In our passage today it’s so easy to forget Jesus. There’s just so much stuff everywhere. There’s the fish and the loaves and the crowds and all their need. There’s the disciples and the wilderness and the illnesses and brokenness. And we sort of forget Jesus. I mean, we remember the superhero, defy the laws of physics Jesus who can make food somehow appear out of nowhere, but we so easily forget the one who has come out of nowhere, out of a nowhere town, from a nowhere family, with a nothing education, and a nothing bank account. And he’s just received the worst news of his life thus far. His cousin has been killed. Beheaded. Served on a platter on the whims of a jealous woman, her teenage daughter, and the cowardice of puppet-ruler named Herod. Served on a platter to these guys because they can’t think of anything else they might possibly need. And Jesus has just learned that his cousin, only six months his elder, who probably shrugged his shoulders with the same kind of shrug, and his eyes wrinkled in the sun with the same kinds of wrinkles, whose hair was just as wild, whose call was just as radical, has been put to death, essentially for doing the same thing that Jesus has been doing. Wandering around with a whole lot of nothing, offering healing, demanding repentance, overthrowing corruption with radical words and radical grace. Jesus has to be asking himself, “Well, am I next?” And this very human Jesus is not only mourning the loss of his cousin, but he sees the road ahead of him, and it looks a lot like prison, and puppet kings, and the power of the Roman Empire, and death. The loss of everything. 

And so Jesus is tapped out. He’s done. He’s hit the wall. He’s at the end. He’s got nothing left, and he doesn’t know what to do. All he’s got is his empty hands and his broken heart, and so he takes them out into the wilderness, where more nothing abounds. 

And the crowds follow. They chase him down with their own empty hands and broken hearts and limping hips. They chase him down with their own nothing. 

And Jesus sees them in their need, in their own empty handedness, and he starts to heal them out of his own woundedness. He starts to speak to them out of his own emptiness. He offers them his nothing. And they’re healed.  And when the crowd realizes the gnawing of their stomachs, the emptiness of their lunch pails, and the nothing in their hands, Jesus has nothing to give them. Only his own empty hands and a command to the disciples to do something about it.

And if Jesus has nothing, then the disciples have even less. “You give them something,” Jesus says. And the disciples pull their pockets inside out, they dump out their satchels, check their credit reports and un-crumple their bank statements and come up with…nothing. Or at least almost nothing. Enough that it might as well be nothing. Five loaves and a couple of fish. Enough nothing to make a sick joke at least. 

Now the reality is that most of us in this room don’t have nothing. We have a whole lot of everything. In fact, most of us, including yours truly living on a pastor’s salary, most of us are members of the top ten percent richest people on this planet. We’re like Jacob in our first reading today, who is in the middle of a frantic race to save all his stuff, because surely his brother, Esau, from whom Jacob stole his birthright, is coming, and surely, Esau is gonna be pissed. 

So in a last ditch effort to save his family - or maybe to just save himself - he sends them all across the river with all of his stuff and camps out alone. Where, somewhat strangely, he starts wrestling with some guy. And like a honey badger, Jacob keeps at this guy even after he’s been struck in the hip. Jacob is so worried about stuff and flesh and food and more stuff, he won’t let go until this guy blesses him. He thinks he needs more. What is Jacob expecting, I wonder? More wives? More children? More cattle and camels and goats? What does he need that he doesn’t have already? What do we need that we don’t have already?

Jacob is scrambling to save all his things, all this stuff that he has, and he demands more. What more could Jacob need? Whatever it is, Jacob doesn’t get it. Instead, he simply gets a new name. He wants to know the name of God, but Jacob gets the name instead. And a limp.

Struck in the hip, the tendons and sinews stretched, the ball pulled out of its socket, Jacob asks for a blessing and gets…essentially…nothing. Nothing more than who he is already. Nothing more than his brokenness. He gets less than nothing. He gets a limp and name. That’s it. A limp and a name that means “to struggle with God.” God blesses him…with nothing.

Remember that time when you were on your knees, begging God for something? When you had all the things but they weren’t what you really needed? When you pleaded with God to give you just that one thing…and then…nothing? 

You walk with a limp now, because of that gift of nothing.  I know I do. I have limps and scars and cracks and cavities and empty hands from all the times that I begged God for something, and was blessed with a whole lot of nothing.

It’s important to note that both of our stories today happen out in the wilderness - the wild “out there” where rebellion and wrestling with God happens. Both of our stories happen out there in the desert, where there’s a whole lot of nothing.

Psalm 78 asks, “Can God spread a table in the wilderness?” In the place where there’s nothing. Where nothing grows. Where nothing stays alive for long. Where nothing thrives. Where there’s nothing but searching and fear and brokenness and barren land? Where there is nothing but emptiness and lack? Can God spread a table in the wilderness?

This miracle story, the only miracle story that is included in all four Gospels answers, “yes.” Yes. God can spread a table in the wilderness. But not without us. Not without our nothing. Not without our lack and our flesh and our mess and our limping hips. Not without these two empty hands.

Jacob wrestles with God, sees the face of God, and ends up with nothing but a bum hip. He asks for God’s name, but instead, God gives Jacob a name - Israel, which means, “One who struggles with God.” 

The disciples follow Jesus around, they see the face of God, they call to Jesus to fix it, and Jesus turns it back on them, gives them the responsibility, tells them to do it.

“When you see my face,” God says, “you’ll struggle, you’ll probably fight, or argue, or look at me incredulously, and then you’ll walk away broken, limping, with “nothing” to offer.” And then God says, “ok, now, feed them.” 

Feed them from your lack.

Feed them out of your pain.

Feed them in the desert.

Feed them with your stories of heartache and hunger and feelings of rejection.

Feed them with the measly ration of five loaves and two fish and a bum hip.

Feed them with your nothing.

Because we are the hands and feet of Christ.

We are the holes in his hands and his feet.

We are the broken hips and the bruised ribs and the bleeding temples of Christ.

We are his cry to God, “Abba, Father! Why have you forsaken me?”

We carry with us the stories of heartache and pain and grief that are the flesh and blood of Christ.

And we offer that Christ to each other. And it is the face of God.

Our nothing, when it is a part of the Body of Christ, when it is blessed and broken - yes broken - is enough.

Jesus comes to us, is broken for us, becomes nothing with us, and saves us with his empty hands.

That’s the resurrection. 

We want our need and our pain and our bum hips to go away. We want to get past it. We want to ignore that we were ever hurt. Or that we ever failed. Or that we walk with a limp. We want to be able to say that we can’t do anything because we have nothing. Or we don’t have enough. Or we’re not prepared. Or we don’t have the skills. Or we’re not good enough. Or that the world just doesn’t want what we have to offer. 

So we don’t show up. We don’t share our nothing. We pass the buck, thinking surely somebody with more can handle it better. But guess what y’all? We’ve all been blessed with nothing.

But because of who Jesus is, because of Jesus’s nothing, we are changed. Because we have wrestled with God, we are different. Our name has changed. We have been marked. And we can never take it back. We’ve been given a whole pile of nothing, and then told to feed them all.

Jesus says, don’t wish the need and the lack away. Don’t wish for your struggles to vanish. That nothing is enough. That nothing is exactly what you need to get the job done. Jesus wants us to draw closer to it. Live in it. Share it. That is wholeness. 

When you carry the scars around with you and you are no longer ashamed, when you can say, “come, touch the holes in my hands, place your hand in my side, see, I’m a little like Christ, I’m part of the body of Christ, and I’ve got a whole lot of nothing, but Jesus broke it and blessed it and now there’s so much food. And here, have some bread,” that’s wholeness. That’s what God calls us to. That is redemption and resurrection and freedom. 

Come, bring your nothing. Bring your brokenness and your heartache and your limp. Come before Christ. Demand a blessing. Wait and see what happens. He’ll tell you to pack up your nothing and get out there and get to work.

Let’s not forget Jesus, and his nothing. His nothing that is everything. His nothing that saves us. 

Thanks be to God.