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.

How We're Built

Genesis 37:2-11, 18-28

2 This is the story of the family of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was shepherding the flock with his brothers; he was a helper to the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father's wives; and Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father. 3 Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his children, because he was the son of his old age; and he had made him a long robe with sleeves. 4 But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him. 5 Once Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more. 6 He said to them, "Listen to this dream that I dreamed. 7 There we were, binding sheaves in the field. Suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright; then your sheaves gathered around it, and bowed down to my sheaf." 8 His brothers said to him, "Are you indeed to reign over us? Are you indeed to have dominion over us?" So they hated him even more because of his dreams and his words. 9 He had another dream, and told it to his brothers, saying, "Look, I have had another dream: the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me." 10 But when he told it to his father and to his brothers, his father rebuked him, and said to him, "What kind of dream is this that you have had? Shall we indeed come, I and your mother and your brothers, and bow to the ground before you?" 11 So his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind.

18 They saw him from a distance, and before he came near to them, they conspired to kill him. 19 They said to one another, "Here comes this dreamer. 20 Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; then we shall say that a wild animal has devoured him, and we shall see what will become of his dreams." 21 But when Reuben heard it, he delivered him out of their hands, saying, "Let us not take his life." 22 Reuben said to them, "Shed no blood; throw him into this pit here in the wilderness, but lay no hand on him"--that he might rescue him out of their hand and restore him to his father. 23 So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe, the long robe with sleeves that he wore; 24 and they took him and threw him into a pit. The pit was empty; there was no water in it. 25 Then they sat down to eat; and looking up they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead, with their camels carrying gum, balm, and resin, on their way to carry it down to Egypt. 26 Then Judah said to his brothers, "What profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood? 27 Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and not lay our hands on him, for he is our brother, our own flesh." And his brothers agreed. 28 When some Midianite traders passed by, they drew Joseph up, lifting him out of the pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver. And they took Joseph to Egypt.

This Joseph story is fascinating. It is such a human story. It’s the story of every dysfunctional family - the story of every family, if we’re being honest. It’s the story of a bunch of almosts - people who are almost devils - people who are almost heroes.

We only get part of the story in this lectionary text. The full story of Joseph and his brothers encompasses the last thirteen or so chapters in Genesis. Interestingly, this text isn’t interrupted from other sources very much. Most scholars argue that the book of Genesis is made up of three sources: the Yahwist, the Elohist, and the Priestly. But this Joseph narrative, or novel, as it is sometimes called, is not a collection of these sources, nor does it have many interruptions from the Priestly, or Elohist sources. And some scholars even contend that this story comes from a source that is older than the Yahwist. It’s one long story, the longest continual story in all of Genesis. And an ancient one at that. So preaching on just part of the story has its challenges, and I encourage you all to crack open your Bibles and read the story in its entirety.

But there is a reason, I think, for us to focus on just one part of the story. This is the part of the story of Joseph that is all ugly. It’s all of the rising action with none of the conclusion. And the rising action continues even past our reading for today, complicating the plot and developing the characters all the way through the story’s arch. At this point in the story, there isn’t a single blameless person. No one is the hero here.

Jacob, the chosen father of the twelve tribes of Israel has manipulated his way into this birthright from the very beginning. In this part of the story, this chosen father of the Twelve Tribes of Israel spoils the child of his favorite wife, and doesn’t hide it from his other sons. He gives Joseph a long coat with sleeves, maybe multi-colored, but the Hebrew here is more accurately “sleeves.” It’s a coat made for a prince, a coat that would completely inhibit any physical work that needed to be done in the fields or at home.

And Joseph revels in his father’s treatment. He’s one of those stereotypical punk teenagers who knows all the answers and has it all figured out. He flaunts his dreams of future domination over his brothers, and has no problem tattling on his brothers when they step out of line.

And his brothers. His brothers are jealous bullies who beat up on Joseph, leave him for dead, sell him as a slave, and then lie to their father about it.

Even Reuben, the oldest, who sees the sin in all of this, who wants to save Joseph, doesn’t have the guts to do it.

And Judah restrains his brothers from killing Joseph, not because he cares for him, but because he knows that the bloodguilt that would result would haunt him and his family for the rest of their lives.

There isn’t any blameless person in this whole story:

But these are the people that God makes. This is you and me.

Find yourself in this story.

You could be a villain:

Are you Jacob, the one who has put his hopes on only one thing, neglecting your other responsibilities, blind to others who want and need your love? Blind to those who give you love?

Are you Joseph, maybe a little naive, flaunting your gifts and preaching your ideas at the expense of others?

Or are you one of the brothers, willing to sacrifice the life of another because you feel threatened by their potential?

You could be a victim:

Are you Jacob? Has the one thing you love most in the world been taken from you?

Are you Joseph? Have you been betrayed and hurt by those who you were supposed to trust the most?

Or are you one of the brothers, whose gifts have always seemed to be overlooked because someone else walks by with a sparkling coat and a flashy smile?

There isn’t a blameless person in this story. And there isn’t one person who is not a victim. Isn’t that like all of us?

Interestingly, God isn’t mentioned in this part of the story once. - Later, the narrator attributes some of the actions and outcomes to God, but the greatest reflection on God’s actions doesn’t come until the end of the Joseph narrative, and only in hindsight. It is after all the complications and actions of our protagonists, after all the deceit and corruption and pain has past, that God is finally given any credit for anything that has happened.

And yet, here it is, in our Bible. A story that somehow is supposed to point us towards God, or teach us something about God, and it doesn’t have God’s direct actions in it at all.

So the challenge is, can we see the work of God in the middle of the story, when things aren’t finished, when God seems absent? When the characters - even ourselves - are both villains and victims? Where is God when you feel like you’ve been thrown into a dry well? And when you feel guilty for throwing someone else into that well? Where is God when you’re in the middle of your story and there’s no evidence anywhere that God even cares? Where’s God when you’re in the middle of the storm?

Peter can do this, see God in the heart of the chaos. Sort of. He says in the middle of the storm, smack dab in the middle of Matthew’s Jesus narrative, in the midst of his fear and disbelief, “Hey, if it is You, in the middle of this crazy storm, in the middle of the sea, in the middle of all of this chaos, then I want to be with you.” And Jesus says, “c’mon.”

And when he forgets that Jesus is out there, when he sees the waves crashing all around him, when he feels like he is going to be swallowed up by all that’s around him, when he’s smack dab in the middle of that raging sea, that’s when he begins to sink. So even someone like Peter, who has Jesus right there, performing miracles right in front of him, even Peter still sinks.

So there’s Joseph, dumped in the cistern, sitting in that giant pit used to collect water for the dry season, and it’s empty. There is no water for the future. The land is dry. His brothers have abandoned him. You’re not going to last long exposed out there in the desert, alone. It’s a hopeless situation, and a prediction of how things will be in the land for a long time to come.

Both the Joseph narrative and the story of Peter on the water give us the opportunity to ask the hard questions. Where is God when the land is dry and your support system is gone? When the wind is against you? When you look for God but only see a ghost?

Where is God when you’re being sold out to insurance companies, and mortgage companies, and political systems that can’t seem to get their acts together in order to avoid a complete financial meltdown? Or when you’ve lost your job or your spouse or you’ve been the one to have left someone alone in the desert?

And yet...

Joseph dreams dreams he’s not “supposed” to dream. Crazy dreams that upend all of society’s expectations. Dreams that disrupt the balance. He’s the youngest; he’s not supposed to be the greatest. He’s supposed to get the dregs of his father’s inheritance, not become richer and more powerful than even his own father.

But in order to understand the impact of these dreams though, we need to rewind our psychology to a time before Freud, before Realism, before Modernity. Dreams in the time of the formation of the Hebrew Bible were more than just fantasies of the subconscious. Dreams were portents of the future, they came from God, and they had power.

Joseph predicts his rise to power. He predicts that his brothers and father and mother are all going to need him to save the day. He predicts that his life is going to be different from what it is now.

And we have that seed of those dreams throughout the rest of the story. It’s the promise that God won’t leave us, even when we’re in the pit, even when we’ve thrown someone else in the pit, even when we’ve cursed God and found that what we’ve loved has been torn to shreds. It doesn’t seem like much, but it’s something. And the dreams don’t really come to fruition in the way that Joseph expects. The way that they happen is far more humbling, far more life-changing, and far more transformative than any of our characters realize at the time that Joseph reports them.

But the fact that there were dreams, that there is a promise, that is what Joseph and his brothers and Jacob have to hold on to - even when they think Joseph is dead or sold off as a slave. Even when they no longer believe in the dream. Even when they never believed the dream in the first place. The dream is still there.

Those with great faith aren’t those who are sure of themselves or of the presence of God, or are certain things will turn out ok in the end. Those with great faith are the ones who can sit in the pit, sink into the water, and still stretch out their hands to God, or maybe just think about stretching their hands, or even wish they had the strength to stretch out to God. Those who stretch out their hands to God may not even be sure that someone’s going to be there to grab it on the other end. They don’t know if God is going to make everything right again. If you shout down to them as they sit at the bottom of that well and ask them if they even believe in God, they may not even answer. It’s a faith so deep in their bones that they may not even know that it’s there.

It’s like a reflex - something you can’t control anymore because you’ve practiced it and practiced it. It’s a faith that runs so deep that if one day you began to question everything you thought you knew, if you started to think that your faith is just a hoax of incredible proportions, you’d still live it out anyway because that’s just how you’re built.

Like Mother Teresa, who, even though, at the end of her life, questioned everything that her life had been based on, she still got up in the morning and prayed to a God she questioned existed. The believing of what is truth vs. what is false, the modern idea of “facts” versus “lies” - even though these are important questions - isn’t the faith; the persistence is. The shouting out to God even when you doubt God’s existence - that’s the faith. The remembering that there was once a dream - maybe it came long ago, and maybe you only remember it in pieces and whispers - that’s the faith. That’s the something deep inside of Peter, deep down in his bones that reminds him to call out, to reach up, to grab a hand.

And that IS how we’re built.

We are made by the creator, God’s very self. We have the essence of who God is deep in our flesh. When we breathe, we are in communion with God. When we enjoy a great meal with good friends, we are enjoying it with God. When we are hungry, or lost, or when we’ve just thrown our brother into a dry cistern, God is there. This is the beautiful and terrifying thing about the incarnation.

‘Cause when we throw our brother down there, we realize we’ve thrown God down there too. And when we’re the ones down there, when we’re in despair, hungering and thirsting for a God who only seems silent and distant, God’s there, too.

That’s why we come to church, why we listen to these stories. We come to be reminded that we’re not alone. We come to be reminded that the dreams were dreamt, the histories happened, that the God whose presence was felt two thousand years ago, and even further back in history, can still be felt today. We are both villains and victims, but we’re dreamers, too. And just remembering this, just remembering that there was a dream once, even when we feel so far away from it now, even if we can’t believe what it claims, we have enough to hold on to, to stretch out for. God has built us to have faith, deep in our very bones.

May we always remember that that’s how we’re built.

Thanks be to God.