Like a Human Being...

John 18. 33 – 37

Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’ Jesus answered, ‘Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?’ Pilate replied, ‘I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?’ Jesus answered, ‘My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.’ Pilate asked him, ‘So you are a king?’ Jesus answered, ‘You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.’

Daniel 7:9-14

⁹ As I watched,
thrones were set in place,
and an Ancient One^* took his throne;
his clothing was white as snow,
and the hair of his head like pure wool;
his throne was fiery flames,
and its wheels were burning fire.
¹⁰ A stream of fire issued
and flowed out from his presence.
A thousand thousand served him,
and ten thousand times ten thousand stood attending him.
The court sat in judgement,
and the books were opened.
¹¹I watched then because of the noise of the arrogant words that the horn was speaking. And as I watched, the beast was put to death, and its body destroyed and given over to be burned with fire. ¹²As for the rest of the beasts, their dominion was taken away, but their lives were prolonged for a season and a time. ¹³As I watched in the night visions,
I saw one like a human being^*
coming with the clouds of heaven.
And he came to the Ancient One^*
and was presented before him.
¹⁴ To him was given dominion
and glory and kingship,
that all peoples, nations, and languages
should serve him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion
that shall not pass away,
and his kingship is one
that shall never be destroyed.

For my field ed experience, I’m an intern at the Hot Metal Bridge Faith Community. I get to hang out with people at their ministry called “The Table.” It’s about as simple as it sounds. If you’re hungry, come to The Table at about 5:30 on Tuesday and Thursday nights and you’ll be treated to a free hot meal, a place to sit, and if you listen hard, some pretty interesting and eclectic and heartbreaking conversation. People from all ages and backgrounds and perspectives come to The Table. The place is so full of sticky, sweaty, hungry humanity that I leave exhausted, completely drained. It’s all I can do to drive home, give my son a bath, put him to bed and then collapse on the couch to play Plants Vs Zombies or watch reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

A lot of homeless people come to The Table. Some who could use a good “drying out” and others who are just down on their luck and looking for work. Sleeping under bridges has hardened some, has made others just tired. We also get a lot of lonely older people. They are estranged from their children, or never had children, or their children just live far away. Their bones hurt; their joints ache. We also have a table of widowed men. They meet at the McDonald’s on Mount Oliver every morning for coffee and Egg McMuffins, and then meet up again at The Table in the evening. Some of them are homeless, some are living off of social security, and others got out of the steel business just in time and are doing quite well living off their pensions, but they’re all just hanging on, holding on to this daily routine, holding on to each other. Then we have our “Occupy Table.” They’d been sleeping in tents in Mellon Park before they got kicked out, and have since formed their own little communities, sleeping on friend’s couches or in vans in Walmart parking lots. They’re tired too, and now just looking for jobs as baristas or sous chefs or freelance photographers. Some are still trying to hold on their idealism; others are just worn out and want to be able to afford a burger and a pack of smokes.

This place is chock-full of humanity. You’re in the thick of it. On any given night, you’ll see the broken families, the worn out day laborers, the dirt caked fingernails, the matted hair, the broken teeth, the guys still suffering with PTSD from the Vietnam War. You’ll see the hunger. The deep hunger of humanity. You’ll see people scramble to the free bread table, almost knocking each other down just to get the biggest loaves. You’ll see people get into arguments, debating politics, or the recent Port Authority cuts, or the Ref’s call from last Sunday’s Steeler game. They’re waving their arms, cussing at each other, raising their voices, and mostly, it’s just so they’ll be noticed. Here are people who are longing, aching, for community, for a place to belong, a place to call home. A place to be truly human. A place to rest their bodies and their minds and their hearts from the constant attacks from the media, from the failures of the government, from our social and economic systems, from the bigotry and the heartache of humans failing each other. They are longing for a break from the beasts of our day. And aren’t we all?

For Daniel, the beasts are the kingdoms and rulers that have threatened Israel’s very existence and way of being. They are far from human. In chapter 2, they are clay and iron and silver and gold. In our passage, they are bestial hybrids, horns and wings and tusks and teeth. They are the oppressors, the powers and the systems and the structures that force Israel to be who they are not.

We may not have foreign nations commanding what we eat or changing our names or throwing us into dens of lions, but we have beasts here. They’re the advertisements that tell us that we’re too fat. They’re the culture that tells us that violence is the answer to our problems. They’re the society that believes that money can make us happy. They’re the religions that isolate and control.

These systems, fears, failures, and prejudices are the beasts of our day. They’re the things in our society that make us think that we are somehow less than human, that we are simply the sum of our parts -

• I am just a drunk who sleeps under a bridge,
• I’m only this broken, arthritic body that my children have rejected,
• I was once just a soldier in a failed war, and now I’m nothing but migraine headaches and alcohol addiction, or
• I’m this collection of master’s degrees and grade point averages,
• or I’m these publications and awards and professional accolades,
• or I’d be somebody if only my boss would notice me, or if I could afford this car, or if my children would get good grades, or if I could just get married, or if I could quit smoking or eat organic or lose weight or...

The beasts want us to forget that we are made in the image of God. The beasts try to distract us from the very truth that we have been made just a little lower than the angels. But Daniel’s vision reminds us that it isn’t another beast who comes to deliver us. It’s “One like the Son of Man” - which just means “one like a human being.” The enemies are those who are sub-human, the ones who deny their own humanity, the things that oppress us and keep us from being who we are truly made to be.

And for the first time in the book of Daniel, this seventh chapter gives a glimpse of Daniel’s fear. Daniel is completely freaked out. If we just read a little further to verse 15, we’d hear “As for me, Daniel, my spirit was troubled within me, and the visions of my head terrified me.” In chapters 1-6, Daniel is depicted as a confident hero, one who knows all the answers and has worked the “system” well. But here, Daniel is scared out of his mind.

What is this fear about?

- The beasts frighten him. But he’s seen beasts before.

- The judgment in front of the Ancient One frightens him, but he’s been pretty familiar with the judgment of God before.

But what he hasn’t seen yet is this “One like the Son of Man” - someone or something, a community perhaps, that is so real, so vulnerable, so very fleshy and messy, and complicated and hungry and broken, terrifying and exhausting and so very very human. It’s to this humanity that is given dominion, and glory and kingship. And that’s scary.

When Pilate asks if Jesus is the King of the Jews, Jesus replies, “My kingdom is not of this world.” And I see him gesturing to the flags of the Roman empire, the eagles on his standards, and the swords and armor and military guards surrounding him. He says, “If my kingdom were from this world,” this world of fear and control and suppression, this world of power and exchanges and rigid definitions, “my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews;” they’d be playing your game. “But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”

This is scary, ‘cause this gets him killed. And this is scary because somehow, in his weakness, we are saved.

Jesus’ kingdom isn’t a kingdom of beasts. We have got to remember this. Jesus’ kingdom is a kingdom made of lepers and prostitutes and tax collectors and friends who doubt and fear and run away. Jesus’ kingdom is a human kingdom.

And isn’t that the mystery of the incarnation? Isn’t it strange and scary and wild that God should come to us in our humanity?

There is a wonderful ambiguity in the text for today. According to scholars, the Aramaic could mean either “One like a human being coming from the clouds of heaven, or with the clouds of heaven.” These two simple prepositions, “from” or “with,” give us two pictures of what could be going on here. Is the Son of Man coming down from the clouds, coming down to us from the heavens? Or is the Son of Man ascending, going up, coming from this earth and joining to God? I don’t think anybody really knows. And maybe that’s how it should be. God comes to us in our humanity. We come to God in the same way, through our true humanness, through our connection to Jesus Christ.

To paraphrase Simone Weil, 20th century mystic and philosopher, when we come before God, we don’t need to have all the answers, we don’t need to shed all of our doubts, we don’t need to get rid of our fears; we only need to know that we are hungry. We are hungry for real food. For real nourishment. Longing to rid ourselves of the beasts of our day who try to manipulate and control us into being something other than who God has made us to be. May we come to this table today in our true humanity, with real hunger, with an honest desire to be fed by the one who was hungry himself, the one who defeated the beasts of Daniel’s time and of our own, and the one who invites us into the kingdom of true, full, real humanity. Thanks be to God.

Tit for Tat

John 2:13-22

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, "Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!" His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me." The Jews then said to him, "What sign can you show us for doing this?" Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." The Jews then said, "This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?" But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

I’ll do almost anything to get a good deal. I cut coupons, I shop around, I buy generic, and you’ll see me in the back of the store, rifling through the clearance rack, but only if it’s an extra 50% off. I’ve also joined that “Groupon” website - you know the one where you get special deals for restaurants and museums and movies. Some people call me “cheap,” or “stingy,” others “smart,” and still others just understand that, yes, I’m a poor seminary student. I don’t let go of the few dollars in my pocket easily. I want to receive a lot in exchange for what I give.

And unfortunately, I find myself doing this in other ways, too, in ways that aren’t directly connected to my finances. I want to know what I’ll “get” from that long drive to visit my family, or what will come out of my time spent having coffee with a friend.

If I work hard in my classes, it’s not good enough that I’ve learned the material or grown spiritually; I want the A. If I spend “quality” time with my son, he’d better be learning a new skill, like learning to count, or learn to recognize the difference between green and yellow, or know the ABC’s by the time I’m done. Heck, I often find myself coming to church and thinking, “Gee, I wonder what I’m going to get out of the service today.”

In our world, everything seems to have to have some “point,” some purpose. I have to “get” something out of it, or it’s a waste. A waste of time, or of resources, or of money, or energy or whatever.

And I don’t think I’m alone here. I think that we all live our lives in a frenzied consumerist economy. We all have this expectation that If I give you something, I should expect something from you in return. We give our time to our workplaces, and receive a paycheck in return. We give money to charities, and we expect them to use it wisely, sure, but we also expect a sense of self-satisfaction to come over us after we send that check in the mail.

If I tell my husband, “I love you,” I have this expectation that he will respond in kind by saying, “I love you, too.” We live in a “tit for tat” world, one where there is “no such thing as a free lunch” and where everything comes with a price of some kind.

It seems like our brains are just wired for this. We live in a world that seems to define for us what we should want, and then tells us what we have to give up in order to get it. Do you want a slimmer body? Just take these pills, or follow this exercise regimen, or eat our specially made menu of food items, and for $195 a month you can look just like Angelina Jolie, or Brad Pitt, or any one of the other celebrities that the media has told us we need to look like. Do you want to be respected and admired? Just put down $3000 and with a $500 lease you, too, can drive the fancy car with the shiny rims, and finally get the respect you deserve.

Or maybe you can go to school for years, spend your time studying and take out mountains of loans and tack your walls full of diplomas. Or you can just spend that extra hour a night at work so your boss will finally recognize all your hard work.

Now please don’t misunderstand me, in and of themselves, there really is nothing wrong with going on a diet, driving a nicer car, or going to school. But it is when we live our lives with a kind of economic expectation, when we expect an exchange of goods or feelings or whatever in every encounter, I think we’re missing out on something, something big.

We’re spending all our time acquiring stuff and accolades and friends and culture and lawn tools and power machines and purse collections and fancy shoes that we’re missing life altogether.

This is what our passage is about today.

Maybe that’s why we feel so uncomfortable with this passage. This is Jesus acting the opposite of what we expect. This isn’t the “gentle Jesus, meek and mild” that we’re comfortable with. Jesus is angry here, really angry. Something absolutely wrong is going on, and John wants to emphasize it, which is why he places this event at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. So what is it that has Jesus so riled up?

It’s not about Jesus’ rejection of the “old” way of worshipping God and replacing it with some “new” way. It’s not about Jesus rejecting Judaism or the Temple, or even sacrifices themselves. Jesus is challenging the same element in his own culture as is in ours. It’s about our economic brains or culture or logic or whatever you want to call it. It’s about our insistence that we have to “get” something out of everything we give. It’s about how we feel like we don’t deserve something if we haven’t “paid” for it in some way.

John places this at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. John wants us to know that Jesus’ actions here are foundational to everything he is going to do afterwards.

Let’s take a closer look at what is going on in this passage:

This passage reveals a series of exchanges. The time for celebrating the Passover is near, and so Jews from far and wide are coming to this central place, to the Temple, to offer their sacrifices to God. The Passover was and is the holiest time in the Jewish calendar, a time for remembering the Exodus from Egypt - a time when the Hebrews, enslaved by the Egyptians, were granted freedom.

This celebration is about God’s liberation, God’s absolute Grace toward the Hebrews, the amazing Gift of freedom for God’s people.

But when they prepare to enter Jerusalem and go to the temple, their economic brains are put into high gear. They are locked into a system that will enslave them, and will enslave us, if we’re not careful.

First, they must exchange their coins. For a small fee, their local coins would have been exchanged for a “purer” Tyrian shekel. This wasn’t because their coins would have had images on them and the Tyrian shekel wouldn’t. Both had pagan images on them. But the high priests of the Temple only accepted the Tyrian shekel for the Temple tax because it was considered to be made of the purest silver. The moneychangers would charge a small fee for this service. This is their first economic exchange: their own local currency in exchange, for a small fee, for the “purer” Tyrian shekel.

This Temple Tax was expected of all good Jews, with exceptions for the poor. Many Jews did this because they believed it was just the right thing to do. And tithing, I think, is the right thing to do. But so often we do it with expectations in mind. We give, but we still want something in return, even if its just the good feelings that come when we write that check. We can imagine that these people felt this way too: “I’m a good Jew because I have paid the tax.” This is similar to how many of us may feel when we tithe to our church or donate money to the local public radio station or buy girl scout cookies.

We want to give without expecting anything in return, but so often, we do expect a tit for our tat. This is yet another exchange: Paying the Temple Tax is an exchange for the feeling that you are doing your duty, you’ve met expectations, you’re in “good standing” with your faith tradition.

Then we have another set of exchanges: the purchase of the animals needed for their offerings to God. So they’d exchange their Roman denarii or local currency for cattle and sheep if they were wealthy, or for a pair of doves if they were considered poor.

Ideally, these animals were considered gifts to God, an offering of love and an expression of worship. But I can picture myself in this situation. I’d want to think of these animals as being offered as sacrifices to God because I’ve done something wrong. I’d want to look upon my doves or my lamb and think of them as replacements for what I deserve. After all, I’ve worked hard for the money to buy this, and I want something tangible to come out of all my hard work.

I’d like to think that if I just offer this one thing to God - maybe my Sundays, or 10% of my income, or if I give up chocolate for Lent, I will have done what I need to do to be right with God, or to be a good Christian. It’s a very human attitude: I will have met the requirements. I will have made a proper exchange. Again, John gives us another picture of our economic brains. Yet another exchange.

Then those who have come to celebrate Passover would take their offering to the priest who would offer it up to God in their stead. The Jews didn’t think just anyone was worthy of offering his or her sacrifice to God. A purer, holier person had to do it. How often do we think that our gifts, our talents, our little pittance offerings aren’t good enough for God? How often do we think that we need something more, something worthier, than what we have? How many of us think that our offering isn’t enough. This is yet another side of our economic brains.

And the reality is that none of us have enough. If we try to keep playing this game, this “tit for tat,” this “this for that” economics, we’re all going to run out of resources, and quick.

And it is this that gets Jesus all riled up. He’s ANGRY. We are not comfortable with this Jesus. We want the Jesus who is meek and mild and accepting. But, it’s clear that the one thing that makes Jesus the most angry, the thing that causes Jesus to react the most dramatically out of all of the testimonies in our Gospels, is that the house of God has turned into a house of trade. A marketplace. A place where you have to come with something in order to get something. A place where you have to have in order to get more. This isn’t what the Temple was about. It was supposed to be a place to meet God. It was supposed to be a place to express your love for God, and that could be where you gave an offering of sheep or cattle or doves. But here, it seems to have become a requirement.

It has become a place where the economic brain and the exchange of “this for that” attitude has been reinforced, instead of a place where God’s grace has flourished and grown and exploded beyond the Temple walls. The offerings were supposed to be responses to God’s grace, but instead, they have become tools of exchange for consumers, a philosophy of supply and demand.

This passage is about Grace. And boy, if we’re totally honest, are we uncomfortable with Grace. We hate the unfairness of Grace. We hate that the prodigal son gets a party when we’ve been good and faithful and working all along. We hate that the workers who started at 5 in the afternoon get paid the same amount as those of us who started at 8 in the morning. And, if we’re really honest with ourselves, we are extremely uncomfortable with the fact that we, too are the ones who don’t deserve all that we have, and so we join in on the rat race to try to prove to everyone else, and even to God, that we deserve what we’ve got.

We try to “pay” for our grace, for our encounters with God. We try to prove to ourselves and to others that we’ve earned it. Don’t we feel so much better about ourselves when we’ve paid that final car payment, or gotten the raise after we’ve devoted our hard work and time to that important project? Aren’t we terrified to come before God with empty hands? I know I am.

This is what Nicodemus asks right after Jesus’ encounter in the Temple. He wants what Jesus has to offer, and wants to know how he can get it, what he can do to achieve it. And Jesus basically tells him that there is nothing he can do. He says, “You must be born from above.” Nicodemus responds by basically saying, “How the heck do you do that? And I think that’s exactly the point. Jesus says that it’s not about what Nicodemus can or should do, but about what He is going to do. It’s about receiving, not about exchanging.

Jesus is so serious about this that when asked for a sign, or for justification for the havoc he is raising, he says, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Those around him are in a state of disbelief: this is an impossibility. They say, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” They immediately go straight to their own human powers and abilities. They go to their default setting, which is thinking in economic terms.

But Jesus doesn’t think in those terms. John tells us that Jesus isn’t thinking about a place, but his body. This is a temple that has nothing to do with the quid pro quo of economic exchange. This is a temple that has to do with relationship.

And Jesus’ ministry begins in the Gospel of John with this usurping of expectations, with this emphasis on the relationship, and continues his ministry in this same vein. The disciples are expecting great wealth and power and prestige from the coming of the Messiah, but what they get is a broken man hanging on a cross like a common thief. They certainly do not get what they expected. But they are given more than what they expected.

They are given the freedom to live their lives in the arms of the one who loves beyond any economic expectation, any consumer perspective, any system of exchange of goods or attitudes or accolades or anything that can be earned. God’s Grace is that big.

When we give up our “exchanges,” our “tit for tat,” our false assurance that we’ve done our duty and we can check “good Christian” off of our list and then claim to just move on with our lives, when we can do that, then we can live in the freedom that God wants us to live in. We can experience the true joy of grace and peace and love, and then we can respond with our tithes, our talents, our time, our gifts. But the Grace, always, always, always, comes first.

Thanks be to God.

Resuregano

Mark 1:9-15

9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. 11 And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased." 12 And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. 13 He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him. 14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, 15 and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."

First, a disclaimer: So I’m going to attempt to talk about suffering. But to do this, I need you to join me out on the high wire. I need you to come with me to do a little bit of tightrope walking. It’s a fine balance that we must strike between seeking suffering and ignoring it altogether. If you go too far on one side, you’ll end up thinking that God wills suffering and that you can’t be a good Christian without it. If you swing too far on the other side, you’ll start to think that suffering is always evil to the core, and that there is no chance of redemption or healing or resurrection. Like trying to hold the divinity and humanity of Christ, or trying to balance the spiritual with the physical, it’s a tightrope walk - if we go too far on one side or the other we’ll fall. So, for the record: I am not advocating that we seek out death or suffering. Nor am I saying that we should ignore that it exists. And, well, if we do end up falling on one side or the other, God’s grace will be there to catch us.

So. Here we go...

I’m a terrible swimmer. My mom put me in swimming lessons as a kid, and when other kids were passing out of levels every two weeks, moving on from freestyle to backstroke to the butterfly, I spent two whole summers in the fourth level, trying to figure out how to coordinate my breathing with my arms swinging and my legs kicking. Kids years younger than I were literally leaving me in their wake.

When we’d play that game - you know the one where you line up at one end of the pool and you all take a deep breath at the same time and then push off from the wall, swimming under the water to see who could hold their breath the longest, I was always the first one up, only a few feet away from where I had started.

I hated the feeling of being overwhelmed, completely surrounded by water. I hated not feeling in control, and instead of surrendering to the currents and the weight of the water all around me, I fought it. And my head would bob right back up to the surface again. It was my own fear that limited my swimming experiences. When kids would be diving in the deep end, or swimming far out on a sand bar on Lake Michigan, I was wading in the shallow end, waiting for them to come back in for lunch.

I was terrified of drowning. Terrified of being out of control. Terrified of the oppressive weight of all that water. I couldn’t figure out how to let it hold me, how to be in it. How to not freak out when the water came up over my head.

These last few weeks it feels as though my family and I have been pummeled. Or maybe, to stick with the water metaphor, we have been drowning under the weight of water all around us. The powers of the universe, or evil, or fate, or just life, have been throwing us into the deep end seemingly every time we turn around. We’re finding it hard to breathe, to keep our heads above water, to find the side of the pool to hang on to and rest. Lots of deaths. Lots of disappointments. Lots of heartbreak, all condensed into a few short weeks. We are bruised deep. We’re limping a little. Our breathing is a bit labored. We are hunched over, flinching at every turn, waiting for the next round of bad news: another has passed away, or another is in the hospital, or yet another is abusing or being abused. These are all little and big deaths. They’re weighing us down and tripping us up.

And we’re carrying them with us, inside of us, even now, like a millstone or one of those scuba diving weights that send you straight to the bottom of the ocean.

We have death that we carry with us. It’s inside of us, deep in our bones. It’s loss and fear and disappointments. But I want to be clear: I’m not really talking about sin here, though. It may be a result of sin, but it’s not our sin. It’s not something we had a choice about. It’s our suffering. And if you can let it go, and heal, and move on. Great. Please. Do it. Let it go. Move on. Heal. Go back up to the surface and take a big deep breath.

But for those of you who can’t. For those of you, who, like me, will be hobbling along for some time now, hanging out at the bottom of the ocean for a little while longer, I want us to sit close, to lean in, to hear the words in our Gospel reading today.

‘Cause you know what, some of us - no, I’m willing to bet, all of us, if we’re honest - we all have pain that we will carry with us, carry inside of us, forever.

My brother-in-law and good friend just lost his brother - who was only 37 - a little over a month ago. When he has expressed his grief, many people have encouraged him, saying things like “time does heal all wounds” and “it’ll get better.” These are all good sentiments. They come from deep love and care and concern for my brother-in-law. And they may very well be true. But what if they’re not? What if the grief doesn’t lift? What if he carries this loss inside of him forever? Or for what feels like forever. Where’s the hope in that? There HAS to be hope within, inside of, the pain, even as it’s happening here, and now, not just beyond the pain. Otherwise, we could rush through our sorrow or our fear or our humiliation to get to the other side and be happy again. But that’s not how it works. Or at least, not how it’s worked for me.

Sure, we cover over the pain with time, or numbness, or distractions. But it’s always there, always ready to surprise you with tears or anger or frustration at the least convenient times. The death is always there. Scar tissue always stays scarred.

So isn’t it crazy that we use the death imagery of being overcome by water in our baptisms? When we are baptized, we are not just “washed” clean, but ritually sent into the depths; we are dead with Christ. Funny how something as necessary and life-giving as water can also mean distress, pain, and even death.

In the Hebrew Bible, feelings of distress and fear of death are often depicted by images of being overcome by water.

And in the New Testament, Romans 6:3-4 says, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We have been buried with Christ in baptism, into Christ’s death...”

• Colossians 2:12, says “When you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.”
• Galatians 3:27 says that we who are baptized are “clothed ourselves with Christ” - clothed with both the glory and the suffering of Christ.

And When James and John come to Jesus later on in Mark 10, and ask to sit at Jesus’ right hand, wanting to live in his glory, Jesus refers to his death. He says, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” Essentially, Jesus asks, if you want to sit on my right hand, you will need to suffer what I suffer. You will need to enter into a baptism of sacrifice, service, and death.

So, isn’t it crazy that we baptize babies - these beautiful, helpless, hope-filled and fleshy new lives? Even infants are ritually “sent into the depths” in their baptisms. And I don’t think that this is because of any morbid fascinations of our church fathers. We baptize babies because we know that life and death are so very closely entwined. No matter how careful and protective the infant’s parents are, this child will suffer. This child will experience little deaths, moments of pain, and maybe even long stretches of sorrow. But what an act of faith it is to come up to that baptismal font, to bring your child forward, and say, “God’s grace is sufficient. God’s power is made perfect in weakness” - maybe even in death, maybe even through a death on a cross.

If we read the story of Jesus’ baptism carefully, we’ll see that this is no fairy tale; there is no defeat of evil, no satisfying happily ever after, not even a clear hope that the Super-Hero Savior is now going to swoop in and fix everything. You may say, “Well, that is because this is the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.” But everything we need to know about how this ministry is going to turn out is given to us in these seven short verses. It’s a micro-narrative. The end is included here, in the beginning. The pain and the sorrow that will result for Jesus and his followers in his work here on earth is all mixed up with the glory and the peace and the joy.

• Jesus’ baptism is a symbol of both death and new life
• Jesus is put under the water, signifying death
• But Jesus comes out of the water and the heavens are torn apart, and the Spirit descends like a dove upon Jesus. And Jesus hears “This is my son, The beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Initially this sounds like a lot of life. A real affirmation. A glorious moment. But any good Jew hearing this would think back to another very important time when they heard God refer to a “beloved son” - that of the story of Abraham and Isaac, when God tells Abraham to walk up Mount Moriah with wood and flint and a knife to sacrifice his only “beloved son.” They would hear sacrifice and death, as well as glorious life in this one short phrase directed towards Jesus.

• And then Jesus is immediately sent into the wilderness - a barren, dead, deserted place. A frightening place, a place where no one goes alone for surely bandits or animals, or just plain exposure will threaten to take one’s life.
• He is there for forty days, tempted by death itself.
• And yet there is also life here in this desert, for the angels wait upon him.
• But we are thrown back into a world of death when we learn that John has been arrested - because we know what that will lead to. But there is life, yet again, when Jesus begins his ministry in Galilee, “proclaiming the good news of God”

• Jesus says, “It’s time! The kingdom of God is near!” - life is here!
• Andin the same breath he also says, “repent” - realize the death in your life, the big and the little deaths that you have caused.
• And we are left in a liminal space, this place of in-between-ness. When Jesus says, “believe in the good news,” we are left holding both the life and the death in our hands. We are left with the hope of the future, the hope that is not yet here, but soon to come.

This passage is one that swings us from life to death and back again. Or perhaps, they aren’t two different places, or two different concepts, but tied up so intimately with each other that it’s artificial to try to sift them apart. Jesus’ baptism is a moment of both life and death, all mixed up together. The story of Jesus’ baptism is also the story of Jesus’ death on the cross. There isn’t a linear, straight path from struggle to life here. It’s a big life/death mess. The cross, the symbol of a horrid and humiliating death is also our symbol for hope and new life. And that’s what our baptisms are - recognition that this faith journey is a big life/death mess - but that the Grace of God is there to give us the hope of the future, the hope that is not yet here, but soon to come.

We don’t suffer “in order to” accomplish anything. We don’t go through heartache just so we can “learn from it” and move on. It’s not about “whatever doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” Although strength or learning or growth may be an outcome of suffering, it’s not the reason WHY we go through it. So, you’re asking, why DO we go through it? I don’t know. I’m just an intern. Ask the real pastors. You get what you pay for. But what I do know is that there is life - not just after the pain, but in the midst of it. God doesn’t put us through trials to toy with us, or to make us grateful, or to teach us some important life lesson. God certainly doesn’t put us through trials to punish us. This is not a mathematical equation. Pain + God does not equal “good Christian” or “lesson learned” or “stronger faith.”

(Although, again, I want to emphasize that these things can and do come from pain. But that is not WHY we suffer. Remember, we need to balance on that tightrope a little while longer.)

Pain is just pain. And it sucks. God doesn’t will it. God doesn’t want it. But here it is.

And yet.

When we hold death inside of us, when we carry the weight of it inside of us, what if we saw it as staying underwater just a little bit longer? Can we trust that God is holding us, even in the midst of stress, death, fear, whatever is holding us down? The surface of the water is right there; the seed, buried in the soil, will sprout. We don’t need to freak out. We just have to wait. And it’s often a painful wait. We have to trust that we won’t drown. We have to trust that the earth will not completely crush us. We have to give up things we thought defined us.

But while we’re waiting, we can hold on to the life that is still there; it’s just hidden among all that death. But even if the trust isn’t there, or we just can’t hold on anymore, even if taking the next breath is a strain, God is there. And God is holding on to us.

I’m a lazy gardener. I stick stuff in the ground and I see what it does. Or I put plants in pots, and forget about them until months later. This dead stuff here, came from my house. These used to be violets, and these are mums. They came from seeds that had to die in order for the plant to be grown. And now, they look pitiful. They are pitiful. This thing right here - that’s oregano. It’s looking pretty sad.

But I like to call it “resuregano” because sure enough, if you look close enough, you’ll see a little bit of green amidst all that shriveled, dried up death. That green, that life, has been in there all along, deep in its taproots, even in the dead of winter, even when the snow weighed down its leaves and the winds broke its stems. Even when the soil froze and hardened and the ice sealed it over. The life is just now starting to sprout. But it has been in there all along. Amidst the pain and harshness of winter. Amidst the rains and this dead grey Pittsburgh sky. It’s been there. Waiting. And also just being. Just existing.

When we are pummeled by all the deaths around us, may we be able to sit in it, to find the life within it, to find the hope even in our despair. That’s what the writer of Mark leaves us with in this passage. Just hope. That’s it. And yet, that’s it. The kingdom is coming. But it’s also right here - right here when the waters overwhelm us, right here when the soil has buried us, right here when the winter has frozen us to the core. This “hereness” of the kingdom is what enables us to say, with Paul, “we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.” It’s what enables us to say, along with Jesus, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” - for even as he breathed his last breath, he called out for his Father, for the one who gives life and hope and peace to us all. Just as the kingdom of God was in that moment of despair, so is it in all of ours.

Thanks be to God.

Mustard Trees

³¹He put before them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; ³²it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches."

³³He told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened."

^{Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52}

⁴⁴"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

⁴⁵"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; ⁴⁶on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

⁴⁷"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind;⁴⁸when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. ⁴⁹So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous ⁵⁰and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

⁵¹"Have you understood all this?" They answered, "Yes." ⁵²And he said to them, "Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old."

So every Spring, Dan and I continue our crusade to eliminate our need to do any sort of lawn care. Well, it doesn’t really start out that way. What really happens is that after a long winter of gray skies and frozen pizzas, we get this itch to plant things, to see stuff grow, to just walk out our back door and pick fresh raspberries and sun-warmed tomatoes - even eat them right off the vine. So each year, we set our sights on adding to our garden. Every May we move the t-posts and stretch out the chicken wire a little further to accommodate just one more tomato plant, and then just one row of asparagus, and then, heck, while we’re at it, let’s try blueberry bushes this year. Needless to say, we’re running out of lawn. The three strawberry plants we planted two years ago have now taken up the whole flower bed and wandered out past our fence and into the front yard. The raspberry bush we planted last year has tripled in size and sprouted up three new extensions. And we really only wanted one zucchini plant and one yellow squash, but when they come in packs of four, well, you might as well plant them all and see what happens. Well, what happened is that we’ve got a whole freezer full of shredded zucchini, and I’ve tried so many different yellow squash recipes that I’m thinking about trying yellow squash sorbet next.

But here’s the thing - we really don’t spend that much time gardening. Neither of us would describe our thumbs with any shade of green. We stick the plants in the ground, throw some worm castings over it, give it some water now and then, and get back to reading about Process Womanist Theology, or the “shared cultural milieu of the Gospel of John and the Dead Sea Scrolls,” and appeasing our toddler’s newest fascination with trucks and vacuum cleaners. We just let them go, and yet, and yet, they still take over our lawn and fill our countertops and freezer with produce. It’s overwhelming, really, but in a fun, melting-ice-cream-all-over-your-fingertips sort of way. And I’m sure our neighbors think we’re crazy, and maybe shake their heads a little at our tiny farm in the city.

And that’s sorta how I feel when I try to thread all of these parables together in today’s Scripture reading. The images and their implications are overwhelming, maybe even a little overgrown, and so much can be said about each parable individually that we could be here all day. But don’t worry, I’m just a seminary student, so I won’t make us do that.

Instead, what I want us to do is to hover over these stories, and see how they are all planted in the same field, how, when these parables are sewn together, or sown together, they make a kind of narrative, a pattern of responding to the kingdom of God that is both present here, now, as well as in the future. I want us to see the narrative arch that the writer of the Gospel of Matthew presents to us when we thread these parables together. The kingdom starts small, invisibly even, but when we see it, or when we know it’s there even if we don’t see it, our response should be one of both joy and discernment.

This list of parables is Jesus’ response to the disciples’ confusion. They don’t get why more people aren’t coming on board with Jesus’ message. As good, observant Jews, they’ve been waiting and looking for the Kingdom to come their whole lives, and now that it’s here, now that they see it and feel it and can almost taste it through their encounters with Jesus, they don’t understand why everyone else isn’t seeing it too. They’re trying to juxtapose two incongruous facts: the “smallness” of Jesus and the disciples’ ministry and the “great” expectations of the future - the fact that a scrubby son of a Jewish carpenter and his mentally unstable cousin - along with twelve or so equally scrubby fishermen, tax collectors, and joe six packs - are going to be the beginning of this paradigm shift that centuries of Jews have been waiting for. This collection of parables is an invitation to contemplate these two things - our present circumstances as well as our hopes and expectations of a future that God has promised us.

And of course, Jesus explains things in a way that turns everything on its head and, if we’re paying attention, completely confounds us. The kingdom of heaven isn’t going to come in a grand whirlwind or from a lightning bolt from the sky. No, Jesus tells us, the kingdom starts small. Its beginnings look insignificant, and maybe even a little precarious - like a mustard seed, like leaven. Through these series of parables, a vital truth is revealed about God’s kingdom - that, to quote Dale Allison, “a humble beginning and secret presence are not inconsistent with a great and glorious destiny.”

So, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field,” and “The Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour.” When it comes to gardening, or making bread, or the beginnings of the coming of the Kingdom, it’s easy to screw it up. So much can so easily go wrong. That’s why we place ten or even fifteen tiny seeds into the peat pots in the spring, hoping to get one good tomato plant out of it. And if your water is too cold, your yeast won’t activate. But if it’s too hot, the yeast will die. If you accidentally forget about your sourdough starter, and find it dried up and crumbled in the back of your refrigerator, you have to start all over again. Someone can tell you that you don’t belong in a church, or that you’re not good enough, or that you’re not “spiritual” enough, and the hopes of the Kingdom could just whither on the vine.

And yet. In each of us is a part of the divine spark that sent entire planets into being. The end is held in the beginning. A little bit of the old leaven is needed to make new dough. And all the potential, the entire future of a tree is held within that one seed. Again, our buddy Dale Allison writes, “For Matthew, the kingdom exists now; and it is an ‘eschatological sphere of salvation, which breaks in, makes a small, unpretentious beginning, miraculously swells, and increases; as a divine “field of energy” it extends and expands ever farther.”

But let’s not forget about the scandal of it all. This is Jesus after all. Jesus not only takes the expectations of the Disciples and turns them upside down, but he completely reverses the clearly defined codes and limits of Jewish life. But for us to understand this, we need a little bit of a botany lesson as well as a little bit of an Old Testament lesson. According to Jewish codes in Leviticus, “You shall not sow your field with two different kinds of seed.” Seeds need to be properly separated. You don’t mix the wheat with the corn, or the barley with the oats. But the thing is, it is the nature of the mustard seed to spread and take over, to cross boundaries, to do what my raspberry bush is doing now by fraternizing with the tomatoes. If you tried to plant one nice, neat little row of mustard bushes, they’re so resilient and persistent, they’ll soon spread and take over the whole field. So hold that idea in one hand.

And in the other hand, consider that in the Old Testament, it’s trees, not bushes, that are symbols for God’s reign on earth. The book of Daniel, the book of Ezekiel and even Psalm 104 all refer to giant trees where birds find shelter and places to nest. “A tree in whose shade animals or birds find shelter and sustenance is an Old Testament image of a powerful kingdom sheltering the nations.” But Jesus changes this up. He says that this planted mustard seed “is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown, it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” Mustard plants don’t really become trees. According to Pliny the Elder, an ancient Roman botanist who wrote a Natural History - a sort of ancient encyclopedia of nature - most mustard bushes grow to be about four feet tall. These are bushes, not trees. So why does the writer of Matthew choose to call it a tree? Maybe Matthew was a horrible botanist who didn’t know his ragweed from his sea weed. Or, maybe, and perhaps more likely, Matthew, an ever careful writer, chooses the word “tree” on purpose, to emphasize that this is something that we’ve never seen before, something beyond our expectations. God’s kingdom is one made up of mustard trees. As Bernard Brandon Scott calls it, these trees are an “unnatural malformity of mythical botany.” And in these overgrown bush/tree hybrids is “recognition that God’s mighty words [and works] are among the unclean and insignificant.” It’s not a giant cedar or a majestic oak, but the tiny shoot of Jesse, a lowly carpenter’s son, a torn up man hanging on a cross of rotting wood, or a bush that barely grows four feet high - these are the ways the kingdom of heaven comes to earth.

The planting and growth of a mustard seed is a scandal on many levels. It’s a scandal for planting this seed where it will certainly “corrupt” the other fields, and a scandal for becoming a tree - something completely unexpected for such a humble plant. Or, think of the scandal, the shock on the faces of the disciples when Jesus suggests that a woman is one who can facilitate the coming of the kingdom in the simple and domestic realm of baking bread.

Jesus again restructures, adjusts, and sometimes even obliterates our expectations. The kingdom is like a seed, or the leaven needed for bread. We want the quick fix, the immediate answer, or if we have to wait, we at least want something majestic and lasting and big. But this isn’t how things work, says Jesus. The kingdom must be planted, and when planted, it is buried, it is hidden, and then it must germinate and grow. All of the potential of the kingdom is in that tiny seed, or contained in that yeast, and that potential is huge, life-changing, unexpected and welcoming.

The coming of the kingdom begins with a hidden presence, and it’s first growth is vulnerable, small, weak even...maybe even threatening.

But Jesus says to the Disciples - give everything you have for it anyway. And so we continue with our narrative of parables. If the parables of the mustard seed and the yeast tell us that the kingdom of God has humble, even scandalous beginnings, the parables of the treasure and the great pearl tell us to give up all that we have to attain it - even if it seems strange, or radical, or ridiculous or even a bit scandalous.

Jesus says, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” Or again, it’s like “a merchant in search of pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all he had and bought it.” The value of the kingdom goes hand in hand with our appropriate response. Give everything you have, because it is worth everything you have.

And I can hear you all, right now. You’re thinking, “whoa, whoa, Jenn - I go to Sixth, I’m a Presbyterian, one of the “frozen chosen,” when did you get all Fundagelical on us?” Give up everything? That’s just irresponsible. That’s not only crazy; that’s just dumb.

But let’s stop and think about this for a minute. Don’t we do this all the time? Don’t we make decisions about what we’re going to give our lives to and what we aren’t? This is where our parable of the nets comes in. The kingdom of heaven “is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad.”

Don’t we give our whole lives to our children? Or, wouldn’t we, if we were asked to? Don’t our jobs demand this from us, even if we resist? Don’t we watch television commercials and think, “If I just had that new car, or bought that kind of mayonnaise, or used that kind of deodorant or had that degree everything in my life would be so much better?” The question is, how do we sort through what is life-giving and what needs to be thrown out? Does what you give your whole self to give you your self back? Does it give back more? What is worth giving of our whole selves? And what isn’t? Jesus tells us it’s the stuff that surprises us, the stuff that seems a little bit scandalous, the stuff that seems hidden that will give us our lives back, and ultimately, bring the kingdom of heaven here on earth.

Jesus tells us that when we find that hidden, vulnerable, pervasive thing that brings in the kingdom, it’s worth everything we have, and that means making some choices. That means that when we gather up everything that life has to offer into our nets, we’re going to have to throw out the things that don’t bring about the kingdom. We must sort through what gives us life and what takes life from us.

Jesus says, the Kingdom is worth it, even when it’s hidden, even when it looks like a weed, even when it needs to be carefully tended to, even when it disrupts our neat little rows of order, control and routine. And when we give everything we have, we don’t leave with nothing. We leave with our arms full of life, nets full of fish, loaves and loaves of bread, and acres of mustard trees. And more than that. We leave with an idea of what we thought was impossible is now possible - bushes become trees, fields become treasure, a speck of dirt becomes a pearl.

Thanks be to God.