Another Beginner's Sermon...

Seam Allowances.

We continue our reading with the Gospel of Luke, chapter 4, verses 22 through 30. This continues directly from our reading from last week, where Jesus is in the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth, and has claimed that he is the one Isaiah is speaking about: That he is the one to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, and freedom to the oppressed.

Let us pray:

Our God, speak to us through this text, that we may hear your good news. Invite us into your complexities, that we may find a way to live in your light. Show us your way, so that we can wade through the muddiness of our lives and see your truth. Amen.

I’m still working on my son’s quilt. I started it more than a year ago, as soon as I found out that he was coming. Now quilt-making isn’t so tricky, as long as you follow a few simple rules, and these rules all have to do with your seams. See when you’re quilting, you’re piecing many disparate parts of cloth together, sometimes sewing together two types of cloth that are of different consistencies, different thread counts, or different thicknesses. So when you sew these pieces together, you need to be consistent, and allow what the quilting books call a “scant one quarter inch seam.” You put the two pieces together, the back side out, and as you sew, you sew a quarter of an inch below the edge of the fabric. Now if you’re too stingy with the seam allowance, you could get holes in your quilt. If you’re too gracious with the seam allowance, your pieces won’t meet up, and you’ll get a quilt that is far from the square or rectangle that you were hoping for in the first place. When you first start cutting up your fabric into various shapes, then, you need to remember to add a quarter of an inch to each side, to account for the seams that you need to be able to combine your pieces. If you forget, you’ll have to start all over.

But when we look at a quilt, we hardly think about the seams; we think about how all the different shapes and colors combine to form a whole. But if you don’t think about seams when you’re first beginning your quilting project, you’ll find yourself in a mess of wasted fabric.

In our reading today, Luke shows us his seams. If you read the passage carefully, you’ll notice that there are a few strange things going on here, things that don’t appear to go together very well. You’ll remember from last week that Jesus has just come into the synagogue of his hometown and read from the Scroll of Isaiah. After he reads, he essentially says, “This passage is about me: I’ve come to give good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, give sight to the blind, let the oppressed go free and proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And everybody’s floored. They “all spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.”

But then they question his authority. They say, “Is this not Joseph’s son?” As if to say, “We know this kid – who does this guy think he is? He’s just Joseph’s son, the son of a carpenter.”

And then, Jesus gets his back up, and either goes on the offensive, attacking them, or begins defending himself against some accusation that hasn’t even been mentioned yet. He starts ranting about how even Elijah and Elisha couldn’t do miracles in their hometowns, how they, too, were rejected.

As readers, we’re left to think, “What in the world has just happened?” How did amazement at who Jesus is turn to some kind of angry diatribe on the part of Jesus? And again, why would a group of people who were amazed at Jesus suddenly turn around and decide that he deserves to be thrown off a cliff?

Many scholars have suggested that this is what is called a “literary seam” in the text.

Here the author of the Gospel of Luke has combined his sources, Mark and a second source scholars call Q, without trying to smooth things over, without trying to make any alterations. Luke stitches together two disparate passages, and there is an obvious discrepancy between the two. But instead of solving the problem, Luke lets the rough connections and inconsistencies stand as they are.

So instead of figuring out some way to resolve the problem of the dramatic change in response to Jesus on the part of the Nazarenes, Luke leaves it alone, and lets us wrestle with the fact that Jesus is, at the same time, loved and hated, by the same people.

So today, I’d like us to pay attention to these seams. In this passage, the seams are places where two things that don’t seem to go together are placed together anyway. Jesus is loved, and then hated. Jesus is praised, but then feels the need to get a little bit belligerent, to explain to them why he hasn’t done any miracles in their midst. The people of Jesus’ hometown are awed at his proclamations, and then, just a few minutes later, they’re ready to throw him off a cliff.

Let’s hear what the Spirit is saying to us, inside of these seams.

I think the key to understanding these seams is what Jesus does.

The Nazarenes, apparently forgetting that they adored him just a few minutes ago, get up, drive him out of town and prepare to throw him off a cliff. And what does Jesus do? He slips out. He passes through the midst of them and goes on his way.

Jesus slips by both sentiments. He slips by the love and the hate. He escapes from those who want to praise him and those who want to curse him. He goes away unnoticed because they’ve both got him wrong. Jesus is neither “just the carpenter’s son”, nor is he the military leader they’ve all been waiting for. And he goes away unnoticed because, in some ways, they’ve both got him right: He has come to bring about the Kingdom, and he is going to confound and frustrate.

Jesus once again breaks down the dialectic; Jesus turns everything on its head. Jesus doesn’t live in the either/or – the “this or that” – the false opposites that we put up for ourselves so that we can make sense of our world.

We put up these false opposites all the time: we create stark divisions between acceptance/rejection, black/white, rich/poor, smart/dumb, male/female, elation/depression, subject/object; the list goes on and on. Even Jeremiah, in our Hebrew Testament reading, says, “I’m just a kid; I can’t be a leader” – revealing the dialectic between youth and experience.

But Jesus gives them all the slip. Jesus breaks down these dialectics by living in the seams. Jesus sews two opposing things together and shows us how to find the grace to glide by – or through - them both.

Isn’t this the beauty of the incarnation? As soon as we emphasize Jesus’ divinity, we’ve forgotten his humanity. And as soon as we emphasize Jesus’ humanity, we’ve de-emphasized his divinity.

As soon as we think we’ve got Jesus figured out – he slips out through the crowd.

Now personally, I struggle with the divine aspect of Jesus. And I go to school with others who seem to forget about the human element of Jesus. But, the beauty of this is that as soon as I think I’ve got Jesus figured out, as soon as I think, “Jesus must have been solely human because he prayed to God, because he showed need, because he weeps, bleeds, and gets angry,” I am confronted by a Jesus who preexists the rest of creation, who refers to himself as “I Am” and who has the power to calm the waves and wind. My idea of Jesus is the bubble that, just as I reach out to hold it in my hands, as soon as I think I can control who he is and what he wants from me, the idea pops, and Jesus slips away, escapes my grasp.

It’s not easy to live in the seams. It’s not easy to be vulnerable enough to reveal our own seams – whether it be the uncertainties about who we think Jesus is, or to break down the walls between the dialectics by which we live.

But this is where we live. We just need to recognize it.

How often do we laugh after a funeral, telling funny stories, remembering the joy that that person gave us or the ridiculous things that person did?

Or, how often do we feel guilty that we can’t be in two places at once? For myself, I feel the tension of being a working mom, wishing I could do both things: be the best mother possible without sacrificing my work and vice versa. When I’m home, I feel like I’m not doing what’s best for my job. And when I’m at work, I feel like I’m not doing what is best for my son.

But this tension - this place of “both” – is where we are called to live.

How often do we try to balance our own view of ourselves, trying to find a healthy humility: one that is not completely disparaging, nor too elevating?

It’s a tightrope walk from which we are always falling.

And yet, this is where Jesus lives. He parties, going to weddings and making wine. He gives sight to the blind with mud and spit. He dines with sinners. He heals the poor hemorrhaging woman on the way to raising a rich man’s daughter from the dead. He feasts on the Sabbath and fasts in the desert. He dies among two thieves, while, at the same time, proclaiming the reign of God, and saying that he’s going to paradise.

Aren’t we so glad that we have a net of grace which catches us when we overemphasize one side of the dialectic over the other – when we put Jesus beyond our reach, we are reminded of Jesus’ humanity, of our commonality. And when we try to domesticate Jesus, we are reminded that Jesus cannot be tamed. We are called to remember that, as Dr. Dale Allison says, “a domesticated Jesus who sounds like us, makes us comfortable, and commends our opinions is no Jesus at all.”

Let us allow for seams. Let us strive to live in the seams – in the “both/and” – in the place where things don’t always make sense, but where grace abounds.

Jesus invites us to live in the synthesis of tensions, to live, not in the “black or white” but in the grey.

As we wrestle with who Jesus is, Jesus invites us to wrestle with who we are. Jesus encourages us to slip out of the prescribed roles set out for us so that we can be who we truly are.

May we live in the seams. Thanks be to God.

a beginner's sermon

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 religed, '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 listend to my voice.'"

My twelve week old son, Jonah, is starting to notice his world.

When he was born, we’d have to put our faces four inches from his in order for him to see us. He’d sleep all the time and only cry when he needed to eat.

Now, he stares. He can focus on things twenty feet away. When we wind up his Winnie the Pooh mobile, he kicks his legs and shakes his arms, and smiles in anticipation of the music and turning figures. He follows the spinning of the fan blades on the ceiling, and cries out in excitement at the Mylar balloon we tie to his leg. We watch him work: trying to find his hands, hold his head up, swallow when he nurses. He is suddenly intense: he can go from joy to screaming in an instant. When he is happy, his smile floods his whole body, and when he is upset, he becomes rigid, flushed.

And suddenly, my husband and I find ourselves experiencing the world anew. We cheer when he gets out a good burp, smile at a full diaper, talk about how much he’s eaten that day. We track his eyes, trying to find out what has him so mesmerized, so focused. We can almost see the synapses firing.

For Jonah, every moment is full, intense. Even when he’s sleeping, he’s sleeping hard.

I think that it is really appropriate that we observe Christ the King Sunday the Sunday just before Advent, the Sunday before we begin preparing to celebrate the entrance of Jesus as a tiny infant king into our world. Remember the three magi, who come to pay homage to the infant Jesus as king.

So I encourage you to hold on to that image of Jesus as an infant as we think about Jesus as King.

Our passage today places us, not in the quiet midnight manger, at the beginning of a savior’s life, but at the end of Jesus’ life, at his end days full of conflict, drama and turmoil. Jesus is confronted by Pilate, a man who, historically, cared only about political power, and would as soon kill a Jew in order to keep the so-called peace as swat at a fly. And Pilate is pulled out of bed in the middle of the night to pacify a raucous crowd, demanding the death of Jesus. The crowd wants Jesus dead. Or maybe, more accurately, the crowd is drawn into a drama created by men of power who want Jesus dead. But these politically and religiously powerful men are so caught up with themselves and their law, that they don’t have the courage to condemn Jesus themselves. They don’t even enter Pilate’s house in fear of “ritual defilement.” And, according to their code, they can only administer the death penalty through stoning, and they want something more humiliating, more dramatic to punish this one who threatens their carefully choreographed social order. A crucifixion would be the ultimate rejection of Jesus by the Jewish leaders. In a way, they are saying, you are no Jew, deserving of a Jewish death; rather, you deserve the death of slaves and lower classes, the death of one who stands outside, on the edges, death by crucifixion.

But Pilate needs a “reason” to crucify him. High treason is the only crime worth the crucifixion sentence. After all, the Romans, too, have their rules and codes to abide by. So Pilate asks, “Are you a King?”

And Jesus responds with ambiguity, but Pilate, like the religious leaders who want Jesus condemned, wants things clear cut, boundaries clearly defined. Pilate lives in a world of absolutes – he obeys instructions; he carries out the law, not unlike the religious leaders who brought Jesus to him in the first place.

But Jesus wants to talk about Truth. Not the law, not codes or social boundaries, something messier, more complicated, muddled. Jesus isn’t interested in Kingship or political power or labels. Even when his life is at stake, Jesus wants to talk about the Truth of God.

Throughout the Gospels, when Jesus speaks of the coming kingdom of God, he doesn’t call God king, but Father – God ruling not as a typical, tyrannical king, but as a loving parent.

The Israelites of the Hebrew Scriptures wanted a king.

They, like us, had difficulty relating to a god who is a loving Father, and instead wanted a King, someone to tell them what was right and what was wrong, someone to set out clear boundaries and give them all the answers. Talking of Truth is so messy, so much more complicated, than having someone just tell us what to do. But 1 Samuel 8:7 tells us that “Israel’s demand for a king was in fact interpreted as a rejection of God.” And all through the Hebrew Scriptures we see that the prophets know that God is the only one who can be a true, good king, because God does not want to be a king in the conventional sense. But the Israelites still insist on having a human king; someone to tell them who they are, what to do, where to go. God wants to talk about truth, to get in to the mess and the mud, to be in relationship, not rule over us as if we were wild horses needing to be broken. Unlike the reign of humans who want to constrict and manipulate, God’s reign is the reign of a good parent. God doesn’t care about human power, only relationship. And that’s scary, and complicated, and frustrating, and so freeing.

But, for some reason, we humans think we need kings. We want to be directed, guided, told what to do. God is invisible to most of us, and we need the concrete, the reality of flesh. King David tries to be the best kind of human king possible. We see this in our Psalm reading for today:

“Psalm 132 asserts the remarkable piety of David. According to this text, David pledged his utter devotion to Yahweh, such devotion that David made it a primary pledge of his monarchy that he would remain unsatisfied until Yahweh’s ark was adequately housed. […] The ark as “dwelling place” and “footstool” is taken to be the throne on which the invisible God sits. The ark is indeed a vehicle for “real presence.”

Housing the presence of God – the ark – is David’s primary pledge as king. He promises to be devoted to God and to give God a place to be.

Unfortunately, we often try to house God in a different sense. We try to put God in a box, to define who God is and what God wants. We can’t handle the expanse of Truth, so we try to create boundaries, borders lined with cement bricks and barbed wire, in order to deal with a God that we can control, understand, hold in our hands.

But if we take this idea of housing the presence of God to mean that we welcome God with true hospitality, then we have something different indeed. David defined his kingship as one whose primary role was to invite God in. This becomes one of the most important roles of a pious king. The king should house the presence of God.

But the Temple is destroyed. The Davidic line, essentially, ends.

The Jews are in exile. They must follow the rules of an alien empire. And maybe it’s because of the oppression that they’ve suffered, or maybe because of the many years that have passed, or maybe because they need physical freedom before they can have spiritual freedom, they forget David’s primary goal. They, and we, forget that the role of a king is to house the presence of God.

Years of oppression, sadness, and boredom can cause some of us to look for power however we can get it. We begin to look for a messiah who will come and give us the same kind of power that we see all around us – the power that tells us that success, money, intelligence, and “having it all together” is the only kind of power there is.

Doesn’t this happen to us all the time? We are so distracted by the “rules” and the everyday demands of the world that we forget relationships and start buying in to what we think will give us power? We start thinking that our lives would be better if we just had that new car, or if our debts could be paid off, or if we just got that promotion.

But here comes this Jesus. Jesus who comes to us as an infant. Jesus who breathes deeply, eats heartily, breaks the rules, stares with wide eyes, lives intensely. Jesus who got out a few good burps, who stared until people thought he was a little rude, and noticed things that were overlooked: the woman touching his cloak in the crowd, the man who couldn’t get to the water to heal himself, the political leader who was so wrapped up in power and following codes and rules that he scoffs at the idea of Truth.

THIS is our king.

So when we say that Christ is King, we are not saying that Christ is the one who binds us, who gives us rules and codes to follow, or the one who can demand our execution with the wave of an arm.

When we say that Christ is King, we are saying that Christ is the one who houses the presence of God.

The Temple that was supposed to house the presence of God has been destroyed. But Jesus rebuilds it.

Jesus rebuilds the Temple by becoming the Temple – the place where God resides. Jesus becomes King, not when he takes on power, but when he becomes a dwelling place for God. But, again, this looks nothing like the Hebrews’ or our idea of king – for Jesus refers to God not as king, but as Father.

Are we willing to become subjects of Jesus as King, by also inviting God into us? Are we also willing to become dwelling places for God? This is no boxing in of God, but an invitation to relationship. To acknowledge God as our Parent is to invite God in, and to invite God in, is to take on the role of king. Jesus invites us, too, to call God Father, and to create spaces in our lives where God may dwell.

John 1:12 claims that we are all children of God.

Jesus becomes the Temple, the place where God dwells. But we are also children of God, and we, too, may become temples, places where God may dwell. We then, become a kind of spiritual royalty, many “Davids”, and our goal is to make ourselves Temples, sacred places where God may dwell. We are no longer subjects of oppressive rulers and situations. We are freed to be rulers in the only way that matters, we are free to invite God into our lives, to become children of God. This freedom, and our ability to be dwelling places come as a gift from God. Just by being created by God, just by being infants in the hands of God, we can be vessels which invite the presence of God.

I try to remember this when I see the freedom and passion of my son. He lives completely, fully, intensely, and is truly a child of God. Jonah is a king because he invites the world in, invites God in, and although he doesn’t understand it, although he is often confused and frustrated by it, he is fully present to it. This is what it means to house God, to welcome God in, because he sees the magic and mystery in the everyday things of this world, and offers himself to it fully.

Jesus embraces the royalty, not on a warhorse through the main gates, followed by hundreds of soldiers and hired men, but on a donkey on a dusty road through the back door into Jerusalem. His triumphal entry is marked by palms torn from the trees, waved by poor peasants.

And remember what Jesus tells the disciples in the Gospel of Luke: “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them: and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest and the leader like one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.”

May we accept the gift that we are dwelling places for God, and may we respond to that gift as Jesus does, through humble service, and through living fully, completely, intensely. May the greatest among us become like the youngest. Amen.