FIfth Sunday of Easter (April 28, 2013)

The Rev. Franklin Wilson

Acts 11:1-18
Psalm 148
Revelation 21:1-6
John 13:31-35

“Get up, Peter; kill and eat …. What God has made clean, you must not profane.”

“See, I am making all things new.”

“Where I am going you cannot come.”

This sermon proclaims what the readings declare: Christ makes the profane sacred.  Christ Jesus’ crucified death makes sinners holy.  The hallowing of things profanes God.  This is “glory.”  Further, Christ’s sacrificial death remakes “love.”  Love is no mere feeling, but self sacrifice for the unlovable.  The sermon shows forth Christ’s sacrificial death for profane sinners as resurrection—the only new and eternal thing under the sun.

Though essentially good, Gawpae looked bad.  Like most young men, he’d had frequent rows with his folks and siblings.  From his mother he’d inherited a dreamy personality thought by his kinder teachers as “contemplative,” but seen by his father and coaches as “lazy,” “soft,” or (worse still) “intellectual.”  He liked to read, and saw conventional things in unconventional ways.  Still, like your average bomber, you wouldn’t pick him out as a revolutionary.

Working in the shop after school, or on weekends, and summer breaks, Gawpae heard but ignored his dad’s constant refrain:  “Quit your day-dreaming and get to work.” His father believed in work.  Work was his father’s creed,  “Kill and eat” his motto. Though he liked to eat, Gawpae believed in something else.  Call it “kindness” or “patience,” or maybe even “charity.”  Hardly a day went by without Gawpae’s charity crossing his father’s temper. “Get to work,” ordered the paternal boss; and Gawpae asked, “Why?” “Because I said so!  That’s why!” replied his father.  The voice sometimes hurled a sarcastic barb, “Why?  Because some people like to eat, and have a roof over their heads, and a place to sleep.  Any more questions, you lazy walloper?  Now get to work!”

Gawpae took to hanging out with n’er-do-wells.  Not because he was like them.  In fact he wasn’t like them at all.  They were the desperate, lost, and rejected sort who naturally take to camaraderie—the way stray dogs gravitate to packs, and roam about getting into mischief.  So it was with Gawpae and his lot.

Maybe it was because he was different than the rest that he stuck out more than the others.  And maybe it was because he stuck out that they came to regard him as their leader.  Not a guru exactly, and certainly not a teacher in any professional sense, but more a kind of “alpha male” among people who wouldn’t have known what an “alpha male” was. Certainly, in his own mind, Gawpae was anything but an “alpha;” perhaps more like a “beta” or a “zeta” or even an “omega”:  first and last among misfits.  Their misfit identity consisted in not knowing what to do, and his in doing what he knew—patience, kindness, and maybe you could call it charity toward the uncharitable.

He’d ask them, “Why do you guys keep hanging out with me?  Don’t you have anything better to do?” “Get a life,” he’d urge them, “Go out and do something!”  He was beginning to feel and sound like his father:  “Do something!”  But they seldom did.  Other than eating, and drinking, and hanging around, what was there to do?  Work?  They’d left all that behind when they started hanging out with him.  Their work was avoiding work, even as he urged them on:  “Do something!”  But they didn’t.

A pack of stray dogs is one thing: people call that a nuisance.  But a pack of young stray wandering men is another altogether:  people call that a public danger, a high risk deal, trouble waiting to happen.  Something went missing?  Probably Gawpae and his gang.  A local disturbance?  Probably Gawpae and his crew giving the authorities grief.  Public drunkenness at a wedding?  Rumor has it one of them got hammered and went joy riding on a Sunday afternoon.  You know the story.  They all turn out the same way. You can’t have that sort of thing.  Can’t tolerate it.  A bad influence.  A worse example.  Pretty soon somebody gets hurt; even killed.  Lives and reputations ruined.  Consequences cold as the grave, and bleak as a prison cell.  It’s an old story; a common story.  Our story.

“Kill and eat….What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”  Really?  Call the dirty clean?  The profane holy?  The dead alive?  Eat that stuff?  Die for it?

Near the end, Gawpae calls it “glory;” he even calls it “love.”  Commands it.  His persistent patience; his silent kindness answered with the ugly profanity death boasts.  The profanation of life impregnated with our hungry lust for emptiness sold full:  like a national championship, or a super bowl ring, or the next big religious thing while people stand at graves and weep; and children go hungry, and men hunger for in prison cells: for what?  The glory of God?  God with the dead?  With the drunk?  God amid humiliation?  Violation?  The utter despair and loss of all value, trust and pride?  No, not that exactly.  But yes, something close to holy as bad: the shocking participation of God—the eternal God—right there in the ugliest, deadliest thing you can imagine.  God mixed up with all the profane mess, all the pain, all the humiliating confusion, loss, lies and death.  Therein lies truth—or something close to truth—as close as flesh to blood: the truth we all seek amid the countless lies.  Gawpae’s own ugly death bound to beautiful mercy, and something we do not yet know but name as resurrection.

Resurrection is the only new in a world of old death, grief, and shadowed light.  For now, resurrection remains a word, a hint, a hope, a promise amid the ruins; a flower on a grave, his alone empty, all ours overflowing.

“See, I am making all things new.”  “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.”   “It is done!  I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end.  To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.”

We thirst.  We all thirst.  Yet he gives the water of life.  Here in this font.  Here at this table.  Here flows life forever more.  Now it appears a profane waste—nothing but a lazy waste of time and money.  But then! Then it will be revealed for what it is:  Glory, the holy-profane weight of God, the cross of Christ.  The self-sacrifice called charity—the sacrificial love of One who exchanges his holy life for our profane death.  Lord have mercy.  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Second Sunday of Easter (April 7, 2013)

The Rev. Franklin Wilson

Acts 5:27-32
Psalm 118
Revelation 1:4-8
John 20:19-31

“We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name….” “The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus whom you killed by hanging him on a tree.” 

“The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.”

“Then Jesus said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands.  Reach out your hand and put it in my side.  Do not doubt but believe.’  Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’”

Abstraction empties Easter; theory eviscerates faith.  How often do we hear that Easter is “about resurrection”?  Or that Easter celebrates “new life”?  Or that Easter forms “the heart of Christianity”?  But what is “Christianity”?  Were the disciples hauled before the religious authorities because they were teaching something called “Christianity?”  Were the disciples beaten because they had talked generally about “resurrection”?  Were the disciples forbidden from talking about Spring or the general patterns of seed germination relative to sunlight?

According to the First Lesson, the religious authorities said, “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name….”  And Peter replies, “The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree.”   So, the disciples were not prohibited from talking about “names” in general, or some theory of “naming.”  They were prohibited from teaching “in this name,” a name so specific that the religious authorities appear afraid to speak it.  It was and is the Name of Jesus.

“The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus.”  Neither the disciples nor we ourselves are called to preach and teach an abstraction called “naming,” nor a general theory of resurrection.  We are baptized and ordained to preach and teach the resurrection of a specific person—a man, a first century Jew, named Jesus [of Nazareth] who was put to death as a common criminal and on [not just any day but on] the third day raised from the dead.  This faith in “the God of our ancestors” takes particular form in the mouths of all who have been baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ.  It’s the double particularity of Easter that rankles: this Jesus crucified and raised. And not some general theory of new life in Spring, a theme easily hi-jacked by our passion for bunnies, flowers, sun, and sweets.

The scriptures insist on specifics:  “…not to teach in this name.”  “The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus.”  “The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.”  Offense resides not in “names” generally, but in this specific name, the name of Jesus.  Resurrection leaps not in general, but in this particular dead Jew, raised up by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Surprise consists not in any stone becoming the chief, but in this particular stone rejected by the builders becoming the chief corner stone.

Easter, therefore, is not Easter apart from the proclamation of this particular name—the name of Jesus.  Nor, can the name of Jesus be authentically proclaimed without the offense of our human error announced along with it.  We rejected him; we crucified him; we chose instead a more appropriate stone as the chief cornerstone of our lives:  whether religion, or Christianity, or or “monotheism,” or “ethics,”  or  “capitalism,” or “socialism,” or “environmentalism,” or “conservatism,” or “liberalism,” or “democracy,”  or “peace, justice, and the American way.”  Please note: the religious authorities prohibit none of these or any other perhaps laudable “isms,” themes and views.  The prohibited offense resides in “this [particular] name.”

But, of course, even “this name” can be reduced to the status of magic mantra and religious code deformed by the vagaries of  power, privilege, pride, and prejudice.  Therefore even the name of Jesus—or at least the human uses of it—must ever and again be authenticated by close identification with the grim signs of his particular death by crucifixion:  “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”  Ours is an embodied faith, a specific trust in the crucified and risen Jesus: not a disembodied theory of resurrection, nor even an embodied belief in Jesus as “good teacher,” unless the particular goodness of this specific teacher somehow reveals the crucified Lord marked by the wounds of his public death in his nailed hands and pierced side.

Today’s Gospel bears within it the general pattern of death and resurrection, but always in relation to the specific person of the crucified and risen Jesus.  First, the fearful disciples hide within a locked room: they are biologically alive but theologically dead.  Then, Jesus enters, speaks peace to them and shows them his wounded hands and side.  Only then do the disciples rejoice at seeing Jesus, and he breathes the Holy Spirit on them—as at the dawn of creation.

Now, those who formerly were theologically dead are alive in faith.  The fearful skeptics are made faithful witnesses.  But absent Thomas refuses their resurrection witness: he will not believe resurrection testimony apart from signs of crucifixion.  Thomas’ cruciform desire bears insistent specificity: nail marks, hands, side, fingers.

Then, a week later, the process repeats itself, and Thomas is moved from mere biological to eternal life.  Having seen the marks of crucified death in the risen Lord’s hands and side, Thomas confesses, “My Lord and my God.”  Thomas the Twin offers a double affirmation of Christ’s death and resurrection by means of double attributes:   “Lord” and “God.”

John goes on to say that “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.  But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”

Easter Day (March 31)

The Rev. Franklin Wilson

Isaiah 65:17-25
Psalm 118
1 Cor. 15:19-26
Luke 12:1-12

Isaiah proclaims, “…the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.”

According to Luke, the two men said to the women, “Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again. Then they remembered his words….Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them told this to the apostles.  But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.  But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.” 

Notice this:  The women’s report seemed “an idle tale,” literally, “empty words.”  So, even though the women told what they had experienced, the other followers of Jesus—the men (who had probably stayed behind to watch March Madness and drink beer)—the other followers (true to form) didn’t believe a word of it.

And, when you think about it, who would have believed what the women said?  They went to the tomb, found it open and the body missing.  There they encountered two men in “dazzling clothes” whose appearance had “terrified them.”  The men questioned them in bizarre fashion (“Why do you look for the living among the dead?”), and proceeded to chide them for not remembering what he (presumably Jesus) had told them back in Galilee:  “that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.”

Luke says, “Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest….”  But, when you think about it, what does “remembering his words” have to do with it?  Does the fact that they remembered his words mean that his words were in fact true, accurate, and trustworthy?  Put another way, does their memory of his words mean in fact that he was/is raised from the dead?  Does the fact that his body was not there mean that he was/is alive?  In other words, real words may in fact be empty words.  Real tales may in fact be idle tales.  What appears as real may in fact be only divergent.

I saw a movie for the first time in 1956.  I mean, before 1956, I had never seen a film.  It was Walt Disney’s King of Beasts, a kind of cinematic documentary about lions of the Serengeti—and especially male lions with the huge manes, a terrible roar, and tremendous physique.  It came as a terrible shock some years later in high school biology to learn that, in fact, the Queen of Beasts, the female lioness, posses the greater danger.  But never mind.

The movie was a tremendous experience.  Shown at the Paramount Theater on Broadway in downtown Portland, Oregon, King of Beasts was like going to East Africa inside an opulent palace complete with liveried servants, plush carpets, and gigantic chandeliers sparkling all gold and crystal.  Lions roared and cavorted, hunted, killed, ate, and relaxed right there in front of us.  Within minutes I was totally absorbed.  I was in Africa, on the Serengeti Plain, doing lion things with lion friends in liony ways.

But suddenly, maybe an hour into it, the tremendous symphonic sound track with the magnificent basso narrator’s voice slowwwwed to a halt and stopped; the music wilted. For a single second the fierce features of a kingly lion remained fixed on the screen before curling up and disintegrating into darkness.  The house lights came on and, in a mire of slurred vision, we were transported from exotic East Africa back to a movie theatre in Portland.  What had appeared as real adventure became mere entertainment: no Africa, no Serengeti, no lions; just people all murmuring disappointment amid the sounds of crunching popcorn.

It was just at this point in the women’s report that Peter leapt up and started to run.  Some might have thought he was off to the men’s room.  But they would have been wrong.  He was off, instead, to the tomb—off to the generic place of idle tales, ghost stories, and sounds that go bump in the night.

Those who did not believe the women’s story had every right to consider it an empty report.  Not because it was carried by women, but because facts are facts: the dead do not live again; neither a missing body nor remembered words prove resurrection.  They had every right to view the report as nothing more than excited entertainment less durable than celluloid before heat—as easily incinerated as ghost stories told round a fire.

But Peter ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.  He was amazed.  Perhaps at Easter amazement is the most that can happen.  Not merely amazement at flowers, or architectural beauty, or refracted light, or dazzling vestments, or even magnificent music—I myself would generally be more than sufficiently thrilled on that score alone.

But then there’s Peter—Peter on the run—Peter racing to the tomb, stooping and looking, and seeing the linen cloths by themselves—amazed at what had happened.  But what had happened?  Either someone had stolen the body or (Remember what he had said?) “The Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” Grave robbers or resurrection: Why was Peter amazed?  Perhaps he expected the movie to disintegrate into a simple case of grave robbery. But grave robbers never leave linen: the cloth was like a pile of steaming lion dung right in the center aisle of the Paramount; like a fresh lion track in the Serengeti.  Dung + track = lions!  When movies stop the enchantment generally ends.  But Peter was amazed.  He still is.  So am I.  How about you?  Come and eat.  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Good Friday (March 29)

The Rev. Franklin Wilson

Psalm  22

St. Luke 23.46, [The second thief said], “Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom.  And [Jesus] said to him, ‘Truly to you I say today you will be with me in paradise.’”

“I say to you today you will be with me in paradise.”  Someone has said that we major in the minors.  That is, we focus on the texture of the eucharistic bread, instead of Christ himself.  So also in hearing this second “word from the cross” we may focus on the “when,” instead of the “who.”  Instead of the promise that we will be with Christ in paradise, we worry the adverbial modifier: whether or not the thief will be with Jesus in paradise by midnight on Thursday (as the “today you will be with me” might seem to suggest) or on whether “today” modifies the speaking verb (“Today I say to you”).  We major in the minors.

Fortunately, in its more original form, the Greek text lacks any and all punctuation: the adverb may reasonably be thought to modify either the speaking or the being.  Perhaps it modifies both.  Either way, however, our focus on adverbial modification of either time or speech misses the point.

After all, in his plea the thief doesn’t insist on being with Jesus today.  In fact, he already is with Jesus and, in point of faith, if paradise consists of being with Jesus, then even when crucified with Jesus, he is in paradise, though whether crucifixion with Jesus is the same as being with Jesus in his kingdom may seem doubtful. The thief had said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  And Jesus had replied, “I say to you today you will be with me in paradise.”

Within the context of public execution, the mere mention of “paradise” may seem odd.  The pathetic deaths of three human beings by crucifixion could hardly be further from almost any definition of “paradise.”  Though if, as may be the case, paradise (as in the Greek text of Genesis 2.8) refers to Eden, that first garden of primeval memory, this will not be the first death to occur in paradise.  It was after all in Eden—in Paradise—that our first parents, disobeyed their creator and believed a lie that they too could be like God—and death enters Eden as our first parents are cast out.  This, then, is not the first occasion in which evil will manifest itself in Paradise—if, indeed, the events of Golgotha occur in Paradise.  But whether paradise or no, this will be the first occasion in which evil will fall pray to its own devices, such that death is put to death by means of the unjust death of the only innocent person ever born under law.

So it’s not so much that Jesus died in Paradise, but that Jesus’s death on Golgotha, his dying with a thief on either side, righteous Jesus dying as the epitome of unrighteousness, restores paradise, that is, it restores the creation to the Creator, restores us to God, and thereby makes all things new: Eden restored.

“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” In Eden, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge yielded death.  Now, on Golgotha, the Fruit of the Tree of the Cross yields the kingdom of God, the rule of Christ, and the reign of life forever more.   Here, Paradise is restored and a garden of death becomes the garden of life.

To be with Jesus is to be in paradise—whether now or then; whether today, tomorrow, or whenever.  Being with Jesus, even in his death, is paradise.  Being with Jesus at any time, in any place, is being in paradise.  Baptized into Christ, we are in Eden; baptized into his death, we are with him in his kingdom.  Joined to Christ’s crucified body, we are eternally re-membered in his kingdom—all by means of the Lamb of God’s death yesterday, today, and forever.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Maundy Thursday (March 28)

The Rev. Franklin Wilson

Exodus 12:1-14
Psalm 116
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13:1-17, 31b-35

“The blood shall be sign for you upon the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall fall upon you….”

“Likewise also the cup after supper saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood.  Do this as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another just as I have loved you—that you might also love one another.”

Mandatum: command.  On Maundy Thursday, Jesus gives two commands:  “Love one another,” and “Do this for the remembrance of me.”  Two commands: one impossible, though desired; the other possible, yet undesired.  Of course, we think it desirable to love, and most especially to love the people we like.  But, the trouble is, Jesus doesn’t command us to love those we like.  He means something else.  He commands us to sacrifice ourselves for people we don’t like—to love as he loves, and this, of course, with respect to our selfish human nature is impossible.

Loving people we don’t like requires the constant work of the Holy Spirit.  Put in current terms:  it’s tolerably easy to wash somebody’s feet; but it’s largely impossible to like it.  Christ doesn’t call us to wash feet because we like it, but because doing it reveals how much we dislike it.  It reveals that we aren’t called to like the people we serve, but to love them—even as Christ loves us.

Washing feet (even clean ones) may be a nice religious symbol, but it’s a largely distasteful practice; this very distaste reveals the wonder of our crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ.  He doesn’t wash his disciples’ feet because the rubrics say he should; he washes their feet because he loves them enough to die for them—even if he didn’t always (or perhaps ever) really like them.  According to the New Testament, Jesus generally spoke of the disciples as a foolish and adulterous generation, people of little faith—and exceeding stupidity.  Like Peter: only too willing to step out of the boat, rebuke the Lord, and deny him.

Some time ago, on a Sunday morning, a regular worshipper in the parish I then served, asked if I knew the identity of a person who had sat near them that morning.  They said, “It was a guy sitting in the same pew I was in.”  They described the man, when he had come in (late!), what he’d worn, and where he sat.  But I had no idea who it had been.  So I asked, “Why do you want to know?”  And the regular person said, “Because he stunk!  His BO overwhelmed me; I couldn’t concentrate on the sermon!”  “Ah,” I said, “Perhaps his body odor was leading you to Jesus; perhaps his stench was turning you toward the Christ who washes his disciples’ feet not because they’re clean, but because they’re dirty, and stinky, and foul.”

What I should have said, but didn’t was something like, “I wonder if that guy’s stench wasn’t really pointing you toward your own inner stink—the deeper stink of your own inner rebellion against God; the hidden stink of your own hostility toward God, and the offense of the Christ who embraces the stink of our sin, who washes not only our dirty feet, but who also cleanses our filthy souls, our inner stench.  Not because he likes us—but because he loves us enough to die for us.”

That’s what I should have said.  And, had I said that, I could then have pointed out that Maundy Thursday’s second command nourishes and sustains us that we might hear and obey the first command.  Today’s second command (“Do this for the remembrance of me.”) makes possible the first (“Love one another, as I have loved you.”).  “Do this for the remembrance of me,” means to eat and drink Christ—to consume the One who loves us enough to die for us.

Without eating and drinking Christ’s body and blood we have no hope—not the slightest possibility of loving one another as Christ loves us.  It’s only by eating and drinking Christ himself that we are re-membered into his crucified and risen body.  When we eat and drink Christ, he forms us anew, re-members us that we might lay down our lives for broken, hurting, stinking, and dying sinners.

“Do this for the remembrance of me.”  We can do this command, and yet we neglect it—perhaps even disdain it as a religious “extra” that requires special understanding.  But a primary understanding of Christ’s Eucharistic gift of himself only confirms our failure to comprehend it, and the necessity of obeying Christ’s command to do it.

Obedience to this command forms us into the body of Christ who loves us enough to die for us.  Christ’s body and blood re-member us into Christ, and all he loves enough to die for.  His body and blood are a sign for us:  the sign of the Lord’s Passover—that we might lay down our very selves for one another—even when we don’t like each other—in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Fourth Sunday in Lent (March 10)

The Rev. Franklin Wilson

Joshua 5:9-12
Psalm 32
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
Luke 15:1-3,11b-32

“The Lord said to Joshua, ‘Today I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt.”

 “that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself….Be reconciled to God”

“But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.”

Gilgal: reproach removed.  At Passover the Lord removes Egypt’s disgrace.  In Christ Jesus, our Passover Lamb, God reconciles the world to himself, and rolls away all disgrace.  In Christ’s death and resurrection, God makes the unrighteous righteous, the dead are raised, the lost found, and all things are made new.

But what does Paul mean by saying, “everything has become new”?  Perhaps the answer resides between the indicative (In Christ Jesus God was reconciling the world to himself) and the imperative (We entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God).  In Christ Jesus God has reconciled the world to himself.  Yet, Paul begs us “to be reconciled to God.” But if God has reconciled the whole world to himself, why do we still need to be reconciled?

The word here translated “reconciled” or “reconciliation” may in a primary sense mean “exchange,” as in one thing exchanged for another: I give the merchant a dollar and, in exchange, the merchant gives me an orange—quid pro quo—this in exchange for that.

Paul puts the exchange in personal terms:  “For our sake [God] made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”  In other words, the exchange of which Paul speaks takes place not in a market place, not online, not at Amazon or the Apple store, but in Christ.  Christ Jesus is the personal locus of the exchange of “sin” for “righteousness:” Christ made to be sin and we made the righteousness of God.  This is “the Great Exchange.”  This is reconciliation.  In Christ Jesus, God exchanges sin for righteousness to restore the world to himself: Christ receives our sin and (in exchange) we receive his righteousness.  Why then the imperative, “we entreat you, be reconciled to God”?  If the exchange has been accomplished why then an entreaty, an exhortation, a command: “be reconciled to God”?

It may be like this, like the parable of the waiting father, or (more traditionally) the prodigal son or (perhaps more exactly) the obedient son who, though reconciled with the father does not know it, does not trust it, does not, in any sense, accept it.  Though, from the father’s side, the older son is not alienated.  Yet, the father’s reconciliation with the disobedient younger son brings to light the older son’s hidden alienation from his father—a dissonance which the father apparently does not know or admit:  “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.”

According to the story, however, the younger son ought to be at odds with his father or, perhaps better put, it’s the younger disobedient son from whom the father ought to be alienated.  After all, the younger son had more or less demanded his father’s death—demanded the portion of the estate that would come to him on his father’s death.  The father had given what the younger son demanded—had given the son his inheritance before its time.  And, the son had “squandered it in dissolute living.”  In other words, the disobedient son took his inheritance and used it in pursuit of a living death—a life that left him poor, hungry, and alone in a far country.  So bereft was he, that he was forced to feed among the pigs—a most irreligious life and, in fact, a kind of living death.  But, as the story goes, it was there amid the pigs that the young man came to himself and decided to throw himself on the mercy of his father’s civic decency.  After all, he reasoned, even his father’s hired servants had more of life than he.  So he composed a confessional speech of self-reproach:  “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”

Now the surprise:  even before the son could make his confession—while he was “still far off”—“his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.”  The son starts his speech, but the father interrupts him.  The father trumps the son’s true confession with deeper love:  “Quickly, bring a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.  And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!”

Here is Easter dynamic—baptism’s dying and rising:  “this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost is found.”  Jesus evokes this dynamic as, time and again, he relates stories of lost coins and lost sheep found, and dead children restored.  The Easter party ensues, and is generally followed by a stunning assertion, “There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous people who need no repentance.”  This, I suppose, may be the origin of Luther’s infamous dictum, “Sin boldly, but repent more boldly still.”  Sin exposes our need of confession; repentance reveals an awareness of that need, and our desperate desire for reconciliation.

Yet, oddly enough, obedience may cloud Easter’s move from death to resurrection.  As desperate as the disobedient son was, he appears more available to the father’s compassion than his obedient older brother.  When the younger son came to himself, he only sought the status of a servant—but he was restored to the life of a beloved child—a status signaled by a robe, ring, and sandals; a slaughtered calf, and celebration.

But, keenly aware of his own obedience and hard work (“like a slave”), the older brother cannot appreciate the father’s compassion, cannot acknowledge the disobedient son is “his brother,” but dismissively as “this son of yours.”

The older son, then, provides the picture of a reconciled son who must yet “be reconciled to God.”  That is, even though from the father’s side the older son is one with him—all he has belongs to the son—from the son’s side, he remains not a beloved son, but a slave.  Though at home, he remains lost and must be found; though alive, he remains dead and must be raised.  Christ Jesus—the lost and found, the one who was dead and is now alive—he is the sign that we are reconciled; yet he is also the call to be reconciled to God in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Third Sunday in Lent (March 3)

The Rev. Franklin Wilson

Isaiah 55:1-9
Psalm 63:1-8 (1)
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Luke 13:1-9

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.”

“For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.  Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness.”

“No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did…If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.”

Do you wonder why?  I suppose most people do.  Why some things happen and others don’t: Why do we suffer?  Why do some suffer more than others?  We wonder in general terms:  why cancer?  Why mental illness?  Why retro-viruses, suicide, Ebola, and bovine spongiform encephalitis.  And in specific terms: Why did Ralph die of Mad Cow, when Margie did not?  Why did June suffer schizophrenia when her sister Jane did not?  Why did Pam kill herself just like their father, when Susan did not?  Guns, Germs, and Steel aside, why do we occupy Ho Chunk land and not the other way round?  Then again, Sandy Hook, Chicago, and the Second Amendment aside, why guns at all?  Why Germs?  Why steel?  And what about those Galileans whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices?  What about the slain Sikh people near Milwaukee?  Is it any different being gunned down at prayer than, say, shot while watching a movie, or doing math?

Some told Jesus “about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.” Then Jesus replied by asking and saying, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way that they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?  No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.” Jesus advises repentance—not repentance in theory, but repentance in practice:  “But unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

What does Jesus mean?  That, if those Galileans had repented, then Pilate wouldn’t have killed them at prayer?  Or, does he mean that, whether or not the Galileans had repented, Pilate would have killed them in any case, and that their random death is a warning to us—warning us to change our hearts and minds.  Does Jesus really mean that changing our hearts and minds—repentance—changes the outcome of things?  Alters the course of events?  Even prevents the sort of “random death” apparent in the death of “those Galileans”?  Is that what he means?

Jesus seems less interested in philosophical and ethical theory than obedient practice.  He tells a parable:  “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none.  So he said to the gardener, ‘See here!  For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none.  Cut it down!  Why should it be wasting the soil?’  He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it.  If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”

Jesus speaks of “fruit” (or the lack thereof); in this case figs, the fruitful purpose of fig trees.  People don’t generally plant fig trees in order to go looking for figs; they plant fig trees in order to eat figs.  They may not care about figs in theory, but they do care about figs in practice. In practical terms, they eat the fruit of fig trees.  They eat figs.  And if a particular fig tree doesn’t produce fruit, they cut it down so that a more fruitful tree might take its place and yield figs.

At least in the case of a fig tree, life and death appear anything but random.  Its fate depends on the owner’s disposition, and especially as regards a particular tree’s production of figs.  The owner tends his vineyard and, in this case, his fig tree with a purpose and, if that purpose is frustrated, the owner will take action to alter the course of events.  A fruitless tree will be cut down.

“Well,” you say, “That might be all well and good for vineyards and fig trees.  But what about people?  Do you mean to say that cutting down a fig tree is no different than the mass murder of Galileans?”  No, I don’t mean to say that, but it appears Jesus may; or at least that the writer of Luke may. Be that as it may, both Jesus’ warning and the parable lead to Isaiah’s rather obvious, but nonetheless difficult, observation:  “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.”

We may know a good deal more than Jesus about figs, fig trees, and vineyards.  Given two millennia of critical study, comparative religion, anthropology, psychology, ethnology, horticulture and political theory—we may even know more than Jesus about Galileans, Pilate, sacrifice, vineyards, and the architectural defects of first century towers.  But no matter how much we may know about these things, the fact is we know very little of God—save, perhaps, what Isaiah’s words say:  the Lord’s thoughts and ways are unlike our own.  By comparison, the Lord goes on to say, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Even if a thousand fig trees were of less value than a single Galilean to God, think what it may mean that the parabolic owner consents to grant the fruitless tree yet another year. Think what it may mean that “all those other Galileans” were preserved even when some weren’t.  Think what it may mean that we have been thus preserved.  The readings seem to suggest two things:  (a) we have been preserved for repentance—for bearing fruit that befits our baptismal call.  That is, for loving the Lord our God with our whole heart, mind, and strength, and our neighbor as our selves.  And (b) there will come a time when we shall be cut down— even perhaps for our own good.  So Paul writes of those who perished in the wilderness:  “For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.  Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness.”

They drank from Christ—as indeed do we—and yet God was not pleased with most of them and “they were struck down in the wilderness.”  God’s displeasure yields destruction.  But destruction isn’t the story’s end.  Destruction is but one point on the way to Christ—his cross bears the fruit of salvation for the whole world.  Lent’s point isn’t our comprehending God, but Christ bearing fruit for us, and his baptismal call to follow.  Whether we live or die we are the Lord’s, and the Lord desires obedient fruit—loving God and neighbor, and repenting when we do not, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Ash Wednesday (Feb. 13)

The Rev. Franklin Wilson

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17
Psalm 51:1-17; (Ps 103:8-14)
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

“Yet even now, says the Lord,
return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
rend your hearts and not your clothing.
Return to the Lord, your God.”

“So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God”

“Rend your hearts and not your clothing…”  Ash Wednesday’s exterior sign marks an inner turning—a heart-rending turn toward God.  And that turning, that heart-rending turn toward God, is a turn away from ourselves.

I don’t know about you, but I have a difficult time being in conflict with those I love, not I suppose out of concern for those I love, but (again, I suppose) out of greater concern for my own discomfort than for theirs.  I don’t like being at odds with others because it discomforts me.  And therein lies a good bit of my problem: even when I feel bad about having offended or hurt someone I love, my chief concern generally remains with me—and not with them.  I’m more concerned with how I feel, than with what I’ve done or left undone in relation to them.  I’m more concerned with me than with them.  My heart is turned toward me.

Let’s get down to cases:  say I run a red light and hit another person’s car or (worse still) hit another person in a crosswalk with my car.  While I might outwardly exhibit an overt concern for the welfare of the person I’ve injured, or the property I’ve damaged, inwardly I’d likely be more concerned with the legal consequences of my action, whether or not I’d be taken to court, have to go to jail, lose my driver’s license, be required to pay a fine, incur legal expenses, and suffer damage to my reputation.  While the various scenarios I’ve sketched are fictional, my essential condition is factual.  The church speaks of my condition as en curvatus se: “the self turned in upon itself.”  And it is one of the chief concerns of Ash Wednesday.

But you say, “So what? That’s your problem.”  Yes, but the very fact you think my problem is purely my problem and not also yours is part of our problem—even emblematic of a larger problem.  Of course, you may be correct in psychological terms: you can’t be expected to take responsibility for someone else’s psychological dysfunction, nor should you.  And yet, the fact that you neither can nor should take responsibility for me and my problem is itself emblematic of a larger theological problem.

The scriptures put it in these terms: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.  And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  In short, what may be psychologically necessary is nonetheless theologically wrong.  To love my neighbor as myself is necessarily to take my neighbor’s problem as my own.  And yet, if I am to live a psychologically healthy life, I simply cannot make my neighbor and her problems my own.  And yet, what else can it mean to love my neighbor as myself?

For starters, it means to love God completely, with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength.  But no matter how I try—and, to tell the truth, I don’t try very hard—I simply cannot love God completely.  I simply don’t love God completely.  I simply won’t love God completely.  So far as I can tell, the only person I even come close to loving at all is myself, and I don’t even love myself completely, and yet I am completely turned in upon myself.  And that, I would submit, is as likely true of you as it is of me.

Therefore, at Ash Wednesday, the Lord bids us,

“Return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
rend your hearts and not your clothing.”

And the prophet goes on to say,

“Return to the Lord, your God,
for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love,
and relents from punishing.”

The Lord God is more gracious than we are.  Unlike us, the Lord is “slow to anger.”  Unlike us, “the Lord abounds in steadfast love.”

At Ash Wednesday we hear again that we are dust, and are marked with ashes not that we might thereby persuade God to ignore the inward curve of our very selves, but in recognition of the good news that God himself has suffered the outward consequence of our inward curve, and in his cross Christ has taken our sin upon himself.  In the Apostle’s words, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Knowing full well the interior lineaments of our unrighteous selves, Christ laid down his life that we might become the righteousness of God—the Righteous sacrificed for the unrighteous.  This is mercy’s dynamic.

There is One who has loved God completely.  There is One who has loved his neighbor as himself.  And that One Lord Jesus Christ bids us rend our hearts—that we might receive him and live.  Marked with the sign of his cross, we receive his body and blood; he feeds us with the righteousness of God that we might become what he is.  Even as we are reminded of our mortality, we are promised eternal life in his name, rending our hearts and turning toward the rising sun of Easter.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Transfiguration of Our Lord (Feb. 10)

The Rev. Franklin Wilson

Exodus 34:29-35
Psalm 99
2 Corinthians 3:12—4:2
Luke 9:28-43

“When Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil on his face; but whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he would take the veil off….”

“They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem.”

When Moses speaks with God, his face shines; he then speaks with his fearful people, and then he veils his face until he speaks with God again when he removes the veil, and the sequence is repeated.

Paul interprets Moses’ veil as that which prevents the Jews from believing in Christ.  But the trouble is, that’s not what Exodus 34 seems to say.  What it means may not be clear, may even remain hidden to this day (After all for a thousand years biblical interpreters misinterpreted Moses’ “shining” face as “horns,” thus accounting for medieval images of Moses with horns on his head.)  So veiled (hidden) meaning is surely real, and most assuredly real for all people, and not merely the people of Israel, the Jews.

Interestingly, one of the biblical uses of “veil” is in the Temple.   A veil covers the entrance to the Temple’s holy of holies—the veil signals holiness, is a sign of God’s holy presence.  Still, it’s not exactly clear why Paul interprets Moses’ veil as blocking understanding.  Moses may veil his face to retain the radiance derived from encounters with God; he may veil his face in order to capture and preserve its shining between encounters with God.  But, be that as it may, even if we go with Paul’s interpretation, and understand Moses’ veil as an impediment to understanding and faith, we may gain insight.

Indeed, many things that impede vision also yield insight.  Last Thursday morning, I sat in my study staring out the east window—the window through which at one time I could see the eastern sky, Grainger Hall, Porchlight, trees, and (in springtime) an apple tree with buds, leaves, and birds flitting from branch to branch.  Now, of course, “X01,” the new 8-story high rise, some 20 feet away, fills the entire view with intermittent patterns of wall and window.  The loss of former vision presents new insight.

It’s an intense time at Luther Memorial: our neighborhood is changing, and will continue to change.  We’re eagerly awaiting the arrival of our new student neighbors—242 of them—next August, and a new phase of our city’s vision for high density student living all along University Avenue.  I disagreed with the city’s decision to destroy the former green space next door, limit sunlight on our building’s eastern side, and increase congestion on Conklin.  But now that the 8-story veil has risen, now that my eastern view is blocked, I see some things more clearly.

St. Francis House, the home of Episcopal Student Ministry on campus, is much nearer our front door.  What should have been obvious even when it was nearer the School of Business, is now indisputably clear:  we are closer neighbors than we thought.  As the future unfolds, we will need to cooperate: Episcopal and Lutheran campus ministries will grow together even as our buildings have been forced together by the new high rise.  The impeding veil yields new vision.  And I am glad.

The truth is, although we will experience greater congestion and the discomforts associated with it, the impending arrival of more students crowded at our very doorstep is both a gift and a challenge.  This church was largely founded by students and, for more than a century, the University has been both our neighbor and in some sense our parent.  But a larger view of western history recalls that the Lutheran reformation was initiated by a priest/theologian/professor within a university—albeit at a time when the university recognized church as “mother.”  Of course, in this post-enlightenment culture, the university has largely forgotten its ecclesial mother and, like a petulant teenager, when it does acknowledge ecclesial origins, it generally speaks disdainfully of that maternal institution from which most, if not all, western learning has been born.

Why speak of this now?  Why recall ancient relations between church and university at Transfiguration?  Because the transfigured Christ prepares to transfigure all things in his “departure …. in Jerusalem.”  The word translated as “departure,” is έξοδος, our English “exodus.”  In other words, Jesus’ transfiguration, his appearance in glory with Moses and Elijah, prepares us for his crucifixion and resurrection.  When Christ dies, the veil is torn.

The transfiguration of our Lord, his death and resurrection at Jerusalem, his έξοδος, proclaims that nothing, not even death itself, need trouble us.  The construction of an 8 story high rise outside our windows need not threaten us, but may in fact become a catalyst for renewal, new life, and energy.

It was snowing last Thursday as I wrote this sermon and listened to Orlando Lassus’ Marienvesper—medieval polyphony from the age of Luther.  The intertwined voices gliding up and down, in and out, round and round in vine-like patterns hung in the air, transforming my study into a medieval 21st century liturgy reflective of snowflakes falling outside my window, their swirling image echoed in music, a symbiosis of sound, light, and change, a transfiguration suggestive of the exodus yet to come.  We are on the cusp of Lent, Holy Week, and Easter.  In Christ Jesus, death and resurrection dance together in one great Transfiguration.

Our Lord’s Transfiguration is a window into the future, transforming the present, reinterpreting the past—that we might live in hope.   Hear the voice of God:  “This is my Son, my Chosen.  Listen to him!”  We are not assembled to hear the prating of mindless religion: Peter’s vision of religious commemoration.  We are not here to plan another anniversary, or wring our hands and wallow in anxiety common to change.

We are come to hear Christ himself.  We are assembled to receive him, to hear his Word, to feed on his Body and Blood, and to be sent out to serve him in daily life.  This transfigured One is the crucified and risen Son of God, the Chosen Lord and Savior of the whole world.  In him we need not fear.  In him we have the forgiveness of our sins, reconciliation between God and all things, the hope and promise of everlasting life: the veil is torn.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Third Sunday after Epiphany

The Rev. Franklin Wilson

Nehemiah 8:1-10
Psalm 19
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
Luke 4:14-21

“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.”

“Then Jesus began to say, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’”

“… and all the members of the body though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.”  The fulfilling of this scripture today in our hearing entails our seeing and hearing the crucified and risen Christ in this embodied assembly of enfleshed baptized creatures, we mortal human beings, assembled around the ever ancient, ever future, and ever present word-speech of God heard and made visible in the bread and cup of the holy Eucharist.  Our participation in this Communion, our eating and drinking bread and wine—our sipping, gulping, chewing and swallowing the sacramental body and blood of the crucified and risen Lord manifests Christ in the world.

The Eucharist does indeed make the church.  The one holy catholic and apostolic church cannot be what it claims—what it is called to be—unless it is and does body things, unless it speaks and listens, eats and drinks—is and does these things together, as many members of the one body of the crucified and risen Lord.

A graduate student preparing for baptism wanted to talk further about “the resurrection of the body.”  We were discussing the 3rd article of the Creed:  “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sin, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.”  The student wanted to know more of what the Creed means when it says, “the resurrection of the body.”  What or whose body does it mean?

Elemental discussions of the issue generally revolve around three alternatives:  (1) the body means the physical flesh, blood, and bones of baptized people; but (2), from another view, “the body” may mean, the “spiritual body” discussed, for example, by St. Paul in First Corinthians 15 and referenced, perhaps, by St. John in his 20th chapter when Mary Magdalene encounters the risen Christ in the cemetery.  Mary assumes he’s the gardener, and fails to recognize him until he speaks her name—this is the crucified and risen Christ who enters locked rooms, cooks breakfast, and asks, “Have you anything to eat?”; or (3) “the body” may mean, “The body of Christ, the church.”  Of course, coming as it does on the heels of faith “in the holy catholic church,” this makes good sense.  But, as some have pointed out, we might also find true meaning in a combination of either 1 and 3 (baptized bodies assembled as church) , or of 2 and 3 (spiritual bodies joined in resurrection mystery), of those options, I would probably lean more toward the latter than the former, while acknowledging that whether I lean one way or the other doesn’t really matter.  What matters is the fact that the one holy, catholic and apostolic church believes, teaches, and confesses the resurrection of the body, and that body (whatever else it may be) is joined to Christ in all eternity—and this is the salient point with respect to today’s readings—Christ was, is, and always will be embodied.

Reading 1 Corinthians 12, we might think what Paul says is that “the body is like Christ.”  But, in fact, he says the reverse:  “as the many-membered body is, so also is Christ.”  In other words, we don’t extrapolate the body from Christ, but rather the other way round.  We see how Christ is when we observe how the body—any body—is, whether an individual body, or a corporate assembly of individual persons.  All such bodies, whether individual or corporate, are complex assemblies of diverse members always operating in various conditions along a spectrum of function and dysfunction, stress and distress, anxiety and calm, activity and rest, sickness and health, affection and disaffection.

In this world—and this world includes the body of Christ—there is no such thing as a perfect body or a perfectly functioning body.  This is true whether we’re considering a “perfect” post-new-year’s weight loss program or a perfect stewardship program to “get your congregation back on track.”   As Wesley says in the Princess Bride, “Anybody who says otherwise … is either selling something or lying.”

In this world the only “perfect” body is profoundly imperfect:  the body of Christ.  Comprised of nothing but baptized sinners, this perfect body invariably and always appears as one of the most imperfect assemblages of characters one can imagine.  When most authentic—when comprised of diverse members, all flawed, in some ways enabled yet in other ways disabled—the body of Christ  will be derided as inauthentic, false, and delusional—will either be called hypocritically unholy by the very critics who deny all holiness, or undoubtedly holy by the very believers whose blatant hypocrisy drives unbelieving critics mad.  Invariably, those most critical of the body of Christ are those least familiar with the suffering and death of Christ—and those least critical are those least familiar with suffering and death in general.  All while the crucified and risen Lord manifests his holiness most clearly in camouflaged ungodliness:  his association with sinners, his adversarial relationship with authority, his conviction as a common criminal, his suffering and death under Pontius Pilate, his resurrection witnessed and proclaimed by ordinary unimpressive persons.

When scripture is truly fulfilled in our hearing, it subverts and undercuts all our assumptions; it offends us even as it comforts; it leaves us wanting more even as it promises all things.  It is like a powerful yet subtle melody, seductive harmony, the rhythm of the spheres, the eternal mystery of God borne on human lips in earthly sound via carbon dioxide expressed from human lungs, accompanied (or not) by musical tones both odd and familiar, haunting as they are ordinary, ancient yet ever new.  All this we have received and heard as scripture fulfilled in our hearing: music both sung and played for 35 years under the direction of Bruce Adrian Bengtson—a member with us in the perfectly imperfect Body of Christ. More often than not, such music has been stunningly beautiful; but even when not, it has shown forth the body of Christ, crucified and raised—many members, one body, one Lord, one baptism, one faith.  For this gift beyond all gifts we give thanks and praise to the Lord of Song, the Word himself embodied among us in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.