Sermon: Be Curious

Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”

But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” He said, “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.” But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’: This is my name forever, and this my title for all generations.

Exodus 3:1-15

My sermon from the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost (September 3, 2023) on Exodus 3:1:15

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Robert Altar is a professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley and he published a complete translation of the Hebrew Bible in 2018. Translations made by one person can be a bit problematic since their conscious and unconscious biases often show up in the work. Yet they also have the opportunity to notice how different themes and ideas are engaged with by the different books within the Bible. Professor Altar, after translating the sections devoted to Moses’s story, noticed something specific that the Biblical authors were paying attention to. He wrote: “the general rule in Exodus, and again in Numbers when the story continues, is that what is of interest about the character of Moses is what bears on his qualities as a leader – his impassioned sense of justice, his easily ignited temper, his selfless compassion, his feelings of personal inadequacy. Alone among biblical characters, he is assigned an oddly generic epithet – the man Moses. There may be some theological motivate for this designation, in order to remind us of his plainly human status, to ward off any inclination to deify the founding leader of the Israelite people, but it also suggests more concretely that Moses as forger of the nation and prince of prophets is, after all, not an absolutely unique figure but a [person]… bringing to the soul-trying tasks of leadership both the moral and temperamental resources and the all-too-human weaknesses that many … may possess.” Moses was more than an almost superhuman figure living through a biblical story full of blockbuster special effects. Moses was also a person with gifts, abilities, and experiences that shaped who he was. After being rescued from genocide by the midwives Shiphrah and Puah, Moses was raised as an Egyptian in the home of the the Pharoah’s daughter. He grew up, fully aware of his background and his current privilege. When he came upon an Egyptian brutalizing an Isrealite, Moses killed the Egyptian and then fled into the land of Midian located in the north-west corner of the Arabian Peninsula. While there, he made a new life for himself by marrying into the family of a local religious leader and took on the job of managing his father-in-law’s sheep. He lived there for the next forty years, never forgetting the complex identities that made up his story. One day, when the old grazing spots weren’t quite what they used to be, he led the sheep into someplace new where, on a mountain, a bush on fire refused to be burned up.


Now this moment in Moses’s story has, for centuries, sparked out imagination. Art depicting this scene usually has a large bush surrounded by different shadows, light, and color meant to inspire in us an overwhelming sense of God’s power and might. This is one of the many blockbuster special effects moments within Moses’s story so we imagined it had to be a bit over-the-top. Yet the details within this story invite us to imagine it in a slightly different way. The word we translate as bush is an ancient Hebrew word that is rarely used anywhere else in the text. In fact, it’s a word often applied to the plants that sort of fade into the background that we tend to not notice at all. God, the creator of the universe who will part the Red Sea, fill the Nile with blood, and cover Egypt with a bazillion frogs, chose to show up in a plant most of us wouldn’t even notice. Even a little fire wouldn’t get us to raise an eyebrow since we expect, and hope, for a God who does big things. And yet God appearing in the thing we often overlook also feels like the most God-like thing God can do. God’s work in this world can sometimes be over-the-top, making a splash that changes all our lives. But God is also deeply invested in the little things we do with each other that end up being the most important things after all. Forgiveness, mercy, an act of patience, a listening ear, and a little thing that says we care might not seem important on the outside but is vital for us to truly know we’re not alone. God, then, showing up in what we would first overlook feels a bit too on-the-nose when it comes to pointing out one of our very human character flaws. But if “not noticing” is part of who we are – what character trait did Moses have that made him do something different?

Long ago, a few rabbis noticed that our Bible doesn’t actually tell us when the bush started burning. It could have been lit up right as Moses looked at it or maybe it burned in the days, weeks, or months before he came near. We could, I think, stretch our spiritual imagination to wonder if this bush had been burning since the earth was made – a visible manifestation of the presence of God that everyone had the opportunity to see. Yet it took generations before someone walking by finally noticed it. That is, I think, one of the character traits that helped Moses be who God wanted him to be. Moses was deeply curious, able to notice what others didn’t. This curiosity was more than simply a willingness to ask questions; it enabled Moses to live in a state of constant wonder. The curiosity he held – a curiosity we all can truly have – is simply a trust that this moment isn’t the limit of what all our moments might be. Curiosity never forgets its history nor does it assume our story is the default story meant for all. Curiosity takes seriously our faults, our failures, and our relationships while embracing every single one of our joys. Curiosity knows we are not meant to be experts about everything, nor do we need to always have everything figured out. Instead, curiosity is a gift that opens us to the fullness of God. When we’re curious, words and phrases like “tell me more?” and “what do you mean?” and “your story is important for me to hear” fill the dozens of small interactions we have everyday with a sense of love and hope. Curiosity is always supposed to be a verb that shows how we, and others, are never alone. Being curious, asking questions, and knowing there’s always an opportunity for more is one of the most courageous things we can embrace since it trusts we aren’t finished growing into who God knows we can be.

I wonder, then, if noticing Moses’ curiosity can invite us to grow our own. When we take the entirety of his story seriously, we notice how Moses’ curiosity never let the status quo be the limit of what his story might be. His history, his experiences, and his journey with God helped open him to the God who was already around him. Moses was very aware of how his own struggles, character flaws, and imperfections might get in the way of all that God wanted him to do. Yet God knows that a life of faith is less about knowing everything and is all about trusting how we are already fully known. In our quest to be curious, the questions we ask shouldn’t be about trying to get the other person to agree with what we’ve already come up with. Rather they expand who we – and they – get to be. The gift of curiosity never lets us limit who God might be since God lived curiosity out loud by doing the very curious thing of living a very human story. It was this God of Moses who chose to grow, to experience change, to live, to die, and to rise while helping all of us notice what’s already around us. God embraced curiosity since curiosity trusts that there’s always more to come. And if God can be curious, then the least we can do is be as curious with ourselves, our families, our neighbors, and our world, too.

Amen.

Children’s Message: Different Images from the Bible for God (i.e. God as a pronoun)

So it’s my tradition, after the prayer of the day, to bring a message to all God’s children and I have a hymnal supplement. In 2006, our denomination came out with a new hymnal to replace the one that came out in the late 1970s. Stuff from this hymnal is what we reprint in our bulletin every Sunday – but that hymnal, the ELW, is 17 years old at this point. So last year, our denomination put out a supplement – named All Creation Sings – with new songs, new resources, and new orders for worship that we can try. Sometimes we use these new songs in our liturgy during communion and I’ll explore using them more in the coming months. Yet one thing I find really neat about these hymnals – and the supplement – is the special resources at the end of the book. For example, there’s a list in the ELW where a lot of our language for worship comes from and in All Creation Sings is a list of all different images for God. When the Bible talks about God – describes God – imagines God – compares God to things in the world – there’s a list of all that God is described as. 

So let’s try that. Let’s imagine God. God is…God and our words can’t fully describe who God is. We have to use metaphors or descriptions to say who God is like. So who do you think God is like?

Go through the list. Examples include as a mother, as a man, as feet, as a bear, as a hen, and more. So many images!

You might notice that I tend to say “God” all the time – rather than use pronouns like he or she or they. And that’s because of a list like this. God is described in a lot of different ways that transfers what our words can do. Even the words in the Bible, while sacred, are still our words – so they are a little limited. So I just use God – and imagine that God represents all the things listed in scripture. God invites us to imagine God in all different kinds of ways – and when we want to know who and what God is like – we pay attention to Jesus because he shows us who God is, what love looks like, and how we have the power and responsibility to love like he does too. 

Children’s Message: The Responsibility of the Keys

*Bring your car keys

So it’s my tradition, after the prayer of the day, to bring a message to all God’s children and I have something with me that I carry often in my pocket. It’s my keys. Let’s go through what is on my keys. I have a bunch of little pieces of plastic for the various reward programs that stores I attend have. They give me a special coupon if I give them permission to track everything that I buy. I have a library card, ikea card, shop rite, stop shop, and even a card for A&P grocery store which closed in 2015. I probably should throw that card out. 

I also have keys for my home and keys for here at the church – like my office, the altar guild room, and the front doors in the sanctuary. And then I have these two keys – keys for my cars. Keys, for cars, are changing so these are a bit old skool. They have little buttons that will unlock doors but also this key that you insert into a door or into the engine to turn it on. You might see different kinds of keys, called FOBs, that allow you to turn your car on as long as you have it on you or in your car. So that shows you what a key does: it helps us enter the car, turn it on, and go. 

Now we live in an area where having a car is sort of essential. It’s very difficult to walk to places since we don’t have sidewalks, homes are far apart, and we sometimes need to travel miles to go to school, to fields for sports, to work, and more. Not everyone lives like we do so not everyone needs, wants, or even uses a car. But thinking about what car keys do helps us lean into the story about Jesus we’re going to hear in our second reading from the Bible. Jesus and his friends are traveling around, preaching, teaching, and healing when they near the city of “Caesarea Philippi.” Caesarea Philippi was a newish city that was a very important city – and was named after the Roman Emperor whose title was “Caesar.” The city was full of soldiers, a market place, important government officials, and a lot of different religious buildings that were designed for people who didn’t believe in God. And among those buildings and statues that people thought described the different beings who controlled the universe, influenced lives, etc – was a statue dedicated to an old Roman emperor. Folks were acting and believing and treating as if even the Roman Emperor was someone with power like God or Jesus. It’s there, in sight of those buildings and the Roman military and all these things that said something other than God was in charge of it all – that Jesus asked his friends a question: who do people think I am? The disciples shared what people thought Jesus was. And then Jesus asked “who do you think I am?” and Peter said the Messiah which is a word we don’t use too often but is all about the One who makes God’s love real in our world. Jesus agrees with Peter and promises that his confession – his proclamation about who Jesus is – will be the strong foundation that the church is built on. We continue to think about, proclaim, reflect on who we say Jesus is – and Jesus keeps coming to us to remind us that Jesus is God’s love made real and how that changes the church, our lives, and the world. 

Jesus then talks about keys. And the saying is a bit confusing which is why car keys might help us understand what Jesus is saying. Like how a key enables us to decide, with a car, where to go and to go there – Jesus is saying that because we know him, because of our baptism, because of our faith – we are going to jump into the driver’s seat of, like Jesus, helping make God’s love real in the world. That’s going to mean making decisions, making choices, and doing our best to know Jesus, spend time with Jesus, to pray, and to love like Jesus. And while this is a very powerful thing we get to do – it’s also a great responsibility. Jesus is trusting us – in all that we do, even if we don’t drive or don’t have car keys – to make loving decisions. That’s the freedom our faith gives us – the chance to make love, kindness, patience, hope, and mercy at the heart of everything we do because Jesus chooses each of us to, like him, make God’s love real in our world. 

Each week, I share a reflection for all children of God. The written manuscript serves as a springboard for what I do. This is from Christ Lutheran Church’s Worship on the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, 8/27/2023.

Sermon: Don’t Forget Your History

Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. The Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites, and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in every kind of field labor. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them.

The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, “When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, she shall live.” But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live. So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this, and allowed the boys to live?” The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.” So God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and became very strong. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, “Every boy that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every girl live.”

Now a man from the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw that he was a fine baby, she hid him three months. When she could hide him no longer she got a papyrus basket for him, and plastered it with bitumen and pitch; she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds on the bank of the river. His sister stood at a distance, to see what would happen to him.

The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her attendants walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to bring it. When she opened it, she saw the child. He was crying, and she took pity on him, “This must be one of the Hebrews’ children,” she said. Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?” Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Yes.” So the girl went and called the child’s mother. Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will give you your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed it. When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and she took him as her son. She named him Moses, “because,” she said, “I drew him out of the water.”

Exodus 1:8-2:10

My sermon from the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost (August 27, 2023) on Exodus 1:8-2:10.

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So there’s an entire genre of movies, shows, books, and comics devoted to “coming of age” stories. Typically within these stories a young person goes through a series of canon events that matures them into adulthood. Often these tales are funny, tragic, light hearted, or deeply emotional. And we can easily relate to them, even if they’re centered in a culture that isn’t our own, because we have either gone through our “coming of age” stories or hope to have one very soon. These stories remind us of who we are and how we, mostly, consider ourselves to be the mature people God calls us to be. We see ourselves through the eyes of the hero even if they’re going through something we never want to go through ourselves. I wonder, though, what would happen if instead of focusing on the hero, we saw ourselves as part of the wider story. Today’s words from the opening chapters of the book of Exodus are, on some level, the opening lines to a coming of age story that eventually raises Moses up as the person who will lead the Isralites out of slavery and into freedom. But it’s also a story centered on two women who refused to let the wider community rewrite its own history to the detriment of all.

The story begins in the years after Joseph and his family were reconciled. As you might recall from a few weeks ago, Joseph had a pretty traumatic life. Their father, Jacob, had continued the family tradition of naming one child as their favorite at the expense of everyone else. Joseph, instead of trying to keep the peace, wasn’t shy about rubbing this fact in the face of his 11 brothers. In response, the brothers did something horrific: they faked his death and sold him into slavery. Joseph quickly ended up in Egypt where he had no control over the violence done to his body nor the freedom to go wherever he wanted to go. After a series of dramatic events, he ended up as part of the Pharoah’s inner circle and, in the process, gained a lot of political power. But that didn’t really mean much since he was still enslaved. Eventually a famine spread through the entire area and Joseph’s skills enabled Egypt to thrive while everyone suffered. His father and brothers became refugees, coming to Egypt to find food. After a rather dramatic and tearful reunion, Joseph’s brothers were encouraged to settle the entire household inside Egypt itself. Their history up to this moment was pretty complicated but the brothers, Joseph, and the Egyptians, had worked together to build a new community that was more than what they were before. But as the years passed, this story was forgotten. The Egyptians grew suspicious of these people who didn’t look or talk or believe like they did. Their fear enabled the Egyptians to become resentful of these folks who had lived there for generations but were now labeled as foreigners. As the Israelites grew in size, the Egyptians became paranoid. They started to narrow their own history to the point where the Israelites could no longer be a part of it. They enslaved them, forcing them to build the cities that symbolized the might of their kingdom. And when this incredible violence failed to satisfy their xenophobia, they moved into the next stage of what this fear often brings. 

Now the next part of the story started with an upside-down request. The Pharaoh ordered midwives to kill all the sons born to Israelite women. He told Shiphrah and Puah, whose vocation was all about bringing life into the world to, instead, do the opposite. Rather than remembering their shared humanity, the Pharaoh chose to let fear consume him, his community, and his people. This was an extreme attempt to end the Israelites’ story and we get the sense that all Egyptians either supported this endeavor or didn’t think that they could, or should, speak up. In light of his power, authority, and a history that pretended to be something other than it was, he assumed this request would be answered and supported. And yet, in the heat of this overwhelming moment, these two midwives said “no.” 

One of the interesting things about this story is that we don’t really know who these women were. We never hear their internal thoughts nor discover a coming of age story that describes how they could, in the future, defy the supreme leader in the land. The only thing we’re told is that Shiphrah and Puah feared God. That was all they were equipped with to do the opposite of what the Pharaoh ordered them to do. The word “fear” is a bit confusing in English since we define it as an extremely unpleasant emotion caused by a belief that someone or something is dangerous. We either try to avoid fear at all times or limit it to something manageable like riding a roller coaster or watching a horror movie. Yet the fear Shiphrah and Puah held wasn’t something designed to be overcome nor was it the opposite of faith. It was, instead, rooted in a faith that trusted that their God was always near. Fear is more than a feeling; it’s a signal that we need to slow down and pay attention. Rather than assuming everything is fine with our status quo, fear invites us to notice that something more is around us. Fear can be helpful, keeping us safe during difficult situations. But fear can also consume us, changing how we live our lives today by warping and forgetting the fullness of our story. The fear that grounded Shiphrah and Puah wasn’t the fear that fed the actions of the Egyptians. It was, instead, a reverence that kept them focused on the God who was active in, around, and through them. This fear didn’t consume them; it, instead, helped them to remember who they were and whose they were while being surrounded by another’s unjustified worry and fear. This doesn’t mean they weren’t fearful of the Pharaoh, the Egyptians, and what could happen if they were caught; nor does it mean that they, as human beings, didn’t have their own biases and prejudices that shaped their relationships with others. But rather than letting their fear or the fear around them limit who they could be, the fear of God enabled them to say “no” in spite of everything else that was going around them. 

Now when we look at the wider Christian story, we have plenty of examples of Christians using their faith to commit the same kinds of genocidal acts the Egyptians are described as doing within the book of Exodus. And while it would be easy for us to ignore that part of our own history by focusing solely on the heroes of our faith, I’m not sure if that’s the most faithful response. We don’t need to rewrite our story; instead, we need to own it – to point to all the complications and joys and sorrow and evil and good that has shaped us into who we are today. God believes that we, though sinners, have the capacity to grasp the fullness of our history since God, in Jesus, chose to enter that same history and let it grow in the nearly 2000 years since he rose from the dead. Jesus didn’t ignore our complicated story; instead, he faced it head on and, through the Cross, showed us how it can become something more. Our urge to celebrate the Shiphrahs and Puahs of the faith is one that we should embrace as part of our collective coming of age story that shows what the kingdom of God is all about. And yet we also need to remember that we’re not always the heroes we want to be because fear can warp who we truly are. There are times when we will feel as if we’re not equipped to do what needs to be done to share and hold and learn and grow from the complicated history that define our lives and our world. But if a little fear is all that was needed for Shiphrah and Puah to make a difference in their world, your baptism and your faith is all you need to do the same. God knows that your story – your full story – should be known and that it will never limit who, in Christ, you get to be. Rather, you and I and the entire church will continue to grow through our own coming of age story that leads into the age of Christ – where God’s mercy, God’s love, and God’s peace is given to all. 

Amen

Sermon: We Can Resemble More Than Our Pets

“A disciple is not above the teacher nor a slave above the master; it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher and the slave like the master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household!

“So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered and nothing secret that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, fear the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell.[a] Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

“Everyone, therefore, who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven, but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace but a sword.
For I have come to set a man against his father,
and a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law,
and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.
“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

Matthew 10:24-39 (NRSVue)

My sermon from the 4th Sunday after Pentecost Sunday (June 25, 2023) on Matthew 10:24-39.

20 years ago or so, a team of psychologists and researchers from the University of California – San Diego photographed 45 dogs and their owners. Every person and their dog were photographed separately and then together and then, to mix things up, each person was photographed with a dog they met for the very first time. Once these pictures were taken, another group of people tried to look at the pictures and figure out which dog went with which person. As someone who personally spends way too much time laughing at pet videos on the internet, this project is right up my alley. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the people around us have noticed how we and the fuzzy or not-so-fuzzy friends in our life simply go together. The folks from UC – San Diego were trying to discover if there’s something behind the phenomena of pets who look like their humans. So after carefully examining every photograph, folks picked which person went with which dog. Once that data was collected, it was analyzed and the team noticed that mutts – dogs who are made up of more than one breed – were difficult to match with their own. But those who looked at these pet photos had no problem matching purebred dogs with their people. These results suggested that when people pick a dog, some seek out those animals who resemble who they already are. And I wonder if, based on our reading today from the gospel according to Matthew, if Jesus chose us because he trusted we could resemble him too. 

Now I don’t want to stretch this analogy too far, implying that we, somehow, are Jesus’ pets. Yet this reading does help unpack what it means to follow him. It’s a continuation of what we listened to last week. Jesus, after being the primary teacher, healer, and manifestation of the kingdom of God come near, decided it was time to give that mission to others. He gathered together a group of imperfect people to cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons. In other words, these tax collectors, fishermen, young adults, the faithful, the doubters, the betrayers, and those who would leave him hanging on the Cross – they were called to be like Jesus. These disciples would be sent out to form honest, authentic, and life-giving relationships with new people while relying on the hospitality of strangers. Rather than letting their own assumptions limit what love would do, these apostles would let other people reveal the compassion, mercy, and peace they needed. That kind of work isn’t easy to do since it asks followers of Jesus to be vulnerable. It requires them to admit the hard truth that maybe they haven’t been who they’re supposed to be. Making people whole while pointing to the One who brought God’s presence near will always upend the status quo. Now last week’s reading seemed to focus on the practical aspects of what that upending might look like. But today’s words feel way more intense because when we live like Jesus, we sometimes experience all the joy and all the sorrow he experienced too. 

Now I’m sure there are parts of Jesus’ life we wouldn’t mind living out. The power, with a few words or a gentle touch, to physically heal those around us is something I wish I had.  It would be awesome to not only have that power but also Jesus’ ability to deeply listen to his friends, family, and even strangers. Some of us might even get a kick traveling the countryside with a dozen close friends with most of our basic needs already taken care of. Making God’s love visible among those who are often denied that life and love in the first place, would bring so much purpose to our lives. But when the kingdom of God comes near, everything else responds. Conflict comes. And while many try to use such conflict to justify their own love of self, power, and control, it’s important to pay attention to Jesus’ own description of what that conflict looks like. Those who follow him will not find themselves in some kind of culture war that values a limited vision of family, tradition, and the past. Jesus described something deeper that upends the very foundations of who we are. He points to a kind of generational conflict, believing that the young – especially young adults – would grasp what his good news is all about while their parents and in-laws remained rooted in what they always knew. The presence of Jesus pushes people away from what they imagined themselves to be and into God’s vision of who they’re meant to be. It’s why he described his own ministry in an un-Jesus like way, pointing to the power of the sword as a symbol for how God’s love changes the world. Not only will the presence of the apostles change other people’s lives, Jesus reminds them that their own lives will be changed too. When we trust that God’s promises are real and that God’s love actually matters and that Jesus is who he says he is – nothing remains the same. The kingdom of God upends all the kingdoms that make us who we are so that we can be redefined by whose we are instead. 

We often expect that being made whole implies our lives are simply a puzzle that’s missing only a couple of pieces. We assume we’ve already prepared the outline of who we’re supposed to be. It’s a bit harder, I think, to wonder if the carefully constructed outline of ourselves might actually be the thing that will come crashing down. Jesus, through his own life and ministry, knew what it was like when God’s kingdom comes near. Yet he refused to let the intensity of this ongoing conflict not be matched by a promise that will never end. Even when God’s peace feels so far away, every hair on your head has been counted and your life is held in God’s hands. And it’s because God loved us first that we’re able to live as if faith actually matters. The call into this way of life isn’t easy because we need the wholeness Jesus brings too. Before we are perfect, Jesus calls us to love. We are to bring healing to others while needing that healing ourselves. We are to work for peace even when anything but peace makes up the bulk of our lives. We are to offer comfort while being uncomfortable and refuse to let the status quo become a stand-in for the kingdom of God. We are to be like Jesus because Jesus has claimed us as his own. If someone managed to snap a picture of Jesus and then a picture of us, they should see the body of Christ we are already a part of. Our faith would be seen in a life that, while imperfected and wounded, can’t help proclaim that God’s future is on its way. The call to embody this way of life is costly since it invites us to make something other than ourselves, our relationships, and our families, the center of who we are. But when we let God be God and we let ourselves be the body of Christ we already are, that’s when people discover how – in us and through us – God’s love can be found.

Amen.

Sermon: A Different Kind of Superhero Team

Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness. These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus and Thaddaeus; Simon the Cananaean and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.

These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not take a road leading to gentiles, and do not enter a Samaritan town, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick; raise the dead; cleanse those with a skin disease; cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.

Matthew 9:35—10:23 (NRSVue)

My sermon from the 3rd Sunday after Pentecost Sunday (June 18, 2023) on Matthew 9:35—10:23.

If you were putting together a group of people to make God’s love real on earth, who would be on that team? If it’s helpful, imagine we’re God’s version of the Marvel comicbook hero Nick Fury and we’ve been tasked with putting together a divine version of the Avengers. I, personally, wouldn’t call this new group the Avengers since God’s work is a lot bigger than simply avenging. But if we were putting together a holy team of real human beings, I wonder who we’d pick to be a part of it. I imagine we’d want folks who have a real connection with the God who is capable of casting out the demons that tear us apart. Yet they’d also know what it’s like to be in the presence of the God who bursts into tears when they do. They would be the faithful few who have graduated from the doubt and faithlessness we feel by truly believing God is here. 

In today’s reading from the gospel according to Matthew, we discovered what Jesus did after he finally assembled his version of a super-team we know as the Apostles. Jesus was, for quite awhile, the primary teacher, healer, and manifestation of the kingdom of God coming near. And after looking around and noticing the need that was all around him, Jesus officially invited others into this same kind of work too. The group he pulled together was to show what His community was going to be about. Yet when we closely examine the people who Jesus called to follow him, I’m not sure if we would have done the same thing. Jesus, who literally had a star hover over the place where he was born, brought people together who were not the stars of their own lives. He invited fishermen, tax collectors, the faithful, the doubters, and even the one who would betray him to become the people who would bring healing and wholeness to others. That honestly feels a bit too much since they, like us, are often the ones who need that healing too. Those who follow Jesus and who live in this world often need a refuge from it – a place or an experience where, for a moment, our pain and suffering is no more. We long to know we are loved, valued, and living a life that actually matters. And so that’s why we, and these apostles I think, come to Jesus – to grab hold of God’s grace so that we, in some way, might graduate from this basic life into something more. We want to be on our way into something new. And yet before the heavenly diploma comes, Jesus sends those who follow him out –  to show others what the kingdom of God is all about. 

That, I think, is one of the things that makes the life of a disciple hard. Within this identity we all share, we’re each given a lot of responsibilities. On one level, we’re called to return to Jesus over and over again. When we feel as if we’re not worthy of God’s love or when we feel as if we’re already good enough, that’s a sign we need to pause and sit at Jesus’ feet. We, by integrating Jesus’ story into our own story through the intentional practice of prayer, worship, Bible reading, service, and spending time with all of God’s people – we lean into the part of discipleship that makes us into students of God’s love. This is a type of education that does not end because it helps us become aware of what Jesus is leading us to. We are asked, as students, to also lean into the part of discipleship that’s all about following Jesus. Because when we follow Jesus, we end up in the places where God’s work of love, reconciliation, hope, and mercy can be found. A disciple seeks refuge in Jesus; is taught by Jesus; and goes wherever Jesus goes. And yet members of this super-team have one additional responsibility too. Jesus sends them out so that others can discover for themselves what it’s like for the kingdom of God to come near. 

Now the word “Apostles” is more than a title for the super team Jesus put together. The word really means: “one who is sent off.” An apostle is an emissary, a messenger, and an ambassador – and this term was used in our Bible for other people beyond who were named in our reading today. When we follow Jesus, we are sent out by Jesus to be like Jesus wherever God calls us to be. That language of sending and being sent might bring to our own minds a superteam full of missionaries, pastors, chaplains, nurses, doctors, non-profit workers, and all those who excite our spiritual imagination by giving hope to those who are often left behind. Yet that image in our head usually doesn’t include us since we think that work is supposed to be done by someone else. Matthew, though, didn’t believe that these words from Jesus’ words were only meant for the twelve. He included this entire scene so that those we’d never pick for our faithful super-team heard these words too. The original twelve Apostles was a group full of folks who challenged Jesus, questioned Jesus, talked back to Jesus, and fled from Jesus at the time of his greatest need. And they were the ones Jesus sent out to build new relationships with people they didn’t fully know. Their task was to do the hard work of making wholeness a reality for others by not assuming they already knew the pain and suffering they were going through. By relying on the hospitality of others, they were immediately brought inside so they could listen and witness the lives people actually lived. Those who were sent by Jesus could then participate in God’s work of breaking through what keeps all of us separated from a life full of hope and love. It’s a way of being in the world that keeps us connected to God and each other by admitting how vulnerable we all are. And it’s through this work we create places filled with a divine peace that extends beyond simply the comfort level of a select few. Being a disciple isn’t easy because being vulnerable, asking for help, and admitting the ways we do not love like God loves is a truth we aren’t always ready to bear. Yet this work – of being one of the ways God’s kingdom comes near in the lives of others – isn’t work we do alone because we can’t be sent to something unless we were already part of something first. 

And what we’re part of is Jesus himself. Through the gift of faith and the power of baptism, you are already part of this body of Christ. The team Jesus put together to make God’s love real in the lives of others includes more than just other people; it includes you too. You, as you are, are necessary for what God is up to in the world. Now there are times when this feels right – especially when our life is moving forward and we’re graduating from one thing to pursue another. But as our situations change, as our lives ebb and flow, and during those times when our moving forward feels like we’re, instead, going backwards – we can’t possibly imagine Jesus’ team truly includes us. Yet Jesus, as we see in today’s story, has a habit of not letting individuals get in the way of where God wants them to be. Jesus calls those who make mistakes, those who have doubts, and those are fuzzy in their faith – to be the ones who cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons. It’s Jesus who sends those who struggle to see the image of God in their neighbors to be the ones who share how God’s love is real. It’s Jesus who, over and over again, calls imperfect people to reflect His perfect love into the world. It seems pretty improbable that among the faithful people we look up to, Jesus would make us part of that team too. But you were made for this kind of Holy work because the love of God in you is meant for God’s world too. 

Amen.

Sermon: A Full and Different Future

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax-collection station, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.

And as he sat at dinner[a] in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting[b] with Jesus and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

While he was saying these things to them, suddenly a leader came in and knelt before him, saying, “My daughter has just died, but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” And Jesus got up and followed him, with his disciples. Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from a flow of blood for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, for she was saying to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.” Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And the woman was made well from that moment. When Jesus came to the leader’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion, he said, “Go away, for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. And the report of this spread through all of that district.

Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26 (NRSVue)

My sermon from the 2nd Sunday after Pentecost (June 11, 2023) on Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26.

If the space-time continuum broke at 3 pm and you had an extra three hours to do whatever you wanted until it was fixed, what would you do? That isn’t a lot of time but it’s enough to let us make a choice. We could, depending on how the rest of this morning goes, choose to take a guilt free nap but there could also be several movies or tv shows we’ve been meaning to binge. We might finally go on that hike we’ve been planning to take once the weather turned nice. Or we could pick-up one of the eighty or so books in our current “to-read” pile. A few free hours would be perfect for some guilt-free “me time” or, better yet, to crush my kids in several rounds of the board game Sorry. Yet you also might be a bit like me and get excited about how productive those three free hours could be. I, for example, could finish putting mulch around my yard or clean out the garage or and answer those dozens of emails currently haunting my dreams. It would be so easy to knock a few things off our never ending to-do list since that extra time would enable us to make a choice outside the busyness of everyday life. 

Now today’s reading from the gospel according to Matthew isn’t very long but it is full. It begins with a call story and moves into a healing and a resurrection that I wish all of us experienced way more often. Matthew, while busy living his life, was met by a Jesus who simply said “follow me.” This story feels pretty similar to the other call stories in this gospel. Way back in chapter four, Jesus met Peter, Andrew, James, and John while they were busy fishing along the sea of Galilee. After sharing only a few words, all four left their nets and boats to follow the One who had just begun to proclaim that the kingdom of God was near. It’s in that same general area where Jesus finds Matthew sitting in a tax booth. Matthew’s job, most likely, was to collect taxes based on how many fish people caught. Much of the fishing done in the ancient world along the Sea of Galilee took place at night and so when dawn broke, a long line of people would have been waiting for Matthew to go through what they caught. They hoped Matthew would go through the line quickly so that their fresh fish could make it to the market on time. By the time Jesus noticed the tax booth, Matthew was already sitting down. It’s possible he was doing that because the busy part of his day was already over. But there’s also a chance he was sitting down because he could. Tax collecting in the ancient world was a little complicated since governments, even as powerful as the Roman Empire, didn’t have the people or the infrastructure to physically collect all the taxes they needed. That kind of work was contracted out to individuals, businesses, and organizations that were basically street gangs. These groups were empowered by the Roman Empire to collect more than what the Empire asked for as payment for their services. And they were allowed to use violence, intimidation, and force to get what the ruling authorities wanted. Tax collectors, then, weren’t the most beloved members of their community since it looked like they chose a way of being in the world that was beyond redemption. Yet not every person collecting taxes could choose the life they lived. Some, through poor choices, bad luck, and awful circumstances, ended up doing that work just to make ends meet. Others, though, had no say in the matter since they were enslaved. No one liked tax collectors yet the story of every individual who collected taxes was complicated and complex. We have no idea why Matthew became a tax collector and the choices that led to him sitting in that booth on that day. But we do know that while living through the busyness of his complicated and imperfect life, Jesus showed up. 

Now I’m not sure what Matthew would do if he, on the day he met Jesus, had a few extra hours in the afternoon. Maybe, in a burst of productivity, he’d make sure everyone in line got their catch to the market on time. Maybe those few free hours would let him feel free in a way he never could be. Or maybe he’d have chosen to simply sit and wait – using the little bits of power he had to feel more important than those around him. I don’t know what Matthew would have chosen if he was given some extra time but I notice how everything changed once Jesus chose him. The text doesn’t tell us why Jesus called Matthew to be his disciple. We get no story that might prove, to us, the validity in the choice Jesus made. The two stories that follow – of a woman and religious leader who in the midst of their pain, grief, and sorrow, come to Jesus seems to be a little bit of what the life of discipleship is supposed to be about. And when Jesus talked to Matthew, Matthew didn’t do what we’d expect him to do: he made no declaration of faith; didn’t fall at Jesus’ feet; nor did he even ask Jesus a few questions of what following him might mean. Instead, in the middle of Matthew’s complicated and busy life, Jesus said “follow me.” And that’s exactly what Matthew did. 

Rev. Cleophus J. LaRue, in a commentary on this passage, recently wrote: “God never calls us to something, without first calling us away from something…You can never get to the next thing that God has for you until, in an act of simple obedience, you let go of where you are and follow after him…. [this call] is action-oriented, for it requires us to live now as if the rule and reign of God had come upon us in its fullness. It requires us to live now as if the lion and the lamb were already lying down together. To live now as if adversaries had already beat[en] their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. To live now as if justice had already begun to roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Matthew, while busy living his life, needed Jesus to choose him first before he could get a glimpse of what his life might be. This choice wasn’t rooted in the worthiness of Matthew’s past but in the love God already had for him. And like Matthew, you in your baptism, in your faith, and in who you are right now – you are chosen too. You’ve been called into a way of life that trusts the kingdom God is near. It’s a way of being in the world that comes to Jesus when we have nothing left and brings us into places where sorrow and death have made their presence known. It’s a point of view that doesn’t lean into a purity test that lets us decide who Jesus called to follow him. And it’s a life that knows how difficult it is to see what Jesus did 2000 years ago and wonder why our own lives haven’t been touched in the same way. You have been chosen for a life that isn’t easy but one that trusts that there is always more: because Jesus comes to you not in the place where you want to be but chooses to lead you into God’s hope, wholeness, and love. 

Amen.

Sermon: Entering Everything By Hand

So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day’s journey away. When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying: Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.

Acts 1:6-14

My sermon from the 7th Sunday of Easter (May 21, 2023) on Acts 1:6-14.

Twice a year, I work with another parent to make the Scholastic Book Fair come to life at my kids’ elementary school. It’s a fun three day event where kids and their caregivers argue about which books, pens, journals, bookmarks, erasers, and posters they’re going to bring home. The book fair raises thousands of dollars that are used to fund additional learning programs for every kid in the school. And we work hard so that every kid, regardless of economic background, can walk away with a new book or two. The fair is extremely fun but can be a bit stressful especially when the cash registers attached to the fair don’t work. During the height of the after school rush, the scanner attached to a register refused to work and so I spent what felt like hours entering 13 digit ISBN codes by hand. Once we worked through the line that, at one point, stretched across the entire elementary school gym, I…needed a break. I handed the machine off to another volunteer and joined a group of volunteers reshelving and adjusting a bunch of books. All of us had kids around the same age and so it didn’t take long for our conversation to focus on being a parent. We initially kept it pretty light, sharing all kinds of funny stories. But it didn’t take long for a different kind of story to emerge. On the surface, what we shared was what life was like for these kids. Yet when you listened a bit more closely, what we were really talking about was ourselves. We named our own worries and fears, wondering if we had the capacity to be the patient, loving, caring, and non-judgemental people these kids needed us to be. We, in whispers that no one else could hear, wondered what the future might bring. As we talked, we admitted that, for many of us, it felt like we were simply going through all this stuff on our own. What we needed – and what our stories seemed to be searching for – was the hope we weren’t alone. 

Our first reading today from the book of Acts takes place 40 days after Easter. Jesus had died but was now making his presence known to all of his disciples. He took the time to meet up with Peter, break bread with two disciples who fled towards the village of Emmaus, and then joined everyone for a dinner of broiled fish. Luke, who wrote the gospel according to Luke as well as the book of Acts, wove these individual events tightly together. They pile up, one on top of the other, to make us feel as if Jesus was meeting everyone all at once. For forty days, Jesus hung out with his friends in the city of Jerusalem. He ate with them, prayed with them, and even blessed them. Their time together included a bit of Bible Study that let the disciples ask all kinds of questions. I like to imagine that they, while in the presence of the resurrected Jesus, shared their joys, their doubts, and even their hopes for the future. Day in and day out, the disciples saw the risen Lord face-to-face and they probably assumed that this new habit was going to continue. But Jesus, on the 40th day, did something a bit different. He led them to a place outside the city, roughly two miles away near the village of Bethany. Once there, they walked up a nearby mountain known locally as the mount of Olives or Olivet. As they neared the top, their gaze took in the entire valley including the city of Jerusalem itself. They probably felt as if they were on top of the world and so one disciple decided that was the perfect time to ask Jesus a question. 

Now, if we were given the chance to talk to Jesus face to face, I’m not sure if we would ask the same question. But if we pay attention to where they were, that question makes a lot more sense. They had returned to the spot where, just a few weeks before, Jesus had mounted a donkey to ride into the city below. After sending his disciples to find him an animal to ride, Jesus rode into the city of Jerusalem as if he was already its king. They were standing in the exact place where Jesus had, for just a moment, embodied everything they hoped he would be. The disciples believed that the Messiah would change their world by re-establishing a political kingdom that would push the Romans into the sea. Everything that Mary sang about way back in chapter 1 – with the mighty being casted down and the poor raised up – was, they thought, finally coming true. The Romans, in response, tried to end Jesus’ story and yet here they were, just weeks later, ready for Jesus to ride that donkey once more. The Romans believed they were destined to rule the world so now seemed like the perfect time for them to meet a Risen Lord with the power to make everything right. The disciples were ready for Jesus to be the Jesus they always expected him to be. But he didn’t send the disciples to find another donkey for him to ride. Jesus didn’t deputize his friends as soldiers to engage in some kind of holy fight. Jesus didn’t embrace the symbols of power and might that we seek out every single day of our life. Instead, he ascended so that those who followed him could do a more difficult thing of simply living. Jesus, with only a few words, gave his disciples a commission to bear witness to what God was already up to in the world. They were hoping that Jesus would create an earthly power where they could finally meet and experience the fullness of their God. Yet Jesus reminded them that God’s kingdom had already come and that it would continue to unfold through them. Jesus didn’t promise his followers fame or privilege. He didn’t claim that Christians were entitled to a kind of power that placed them on top of anyone else. And instead of seeking the kind of wealth that would bring them a certain level of comfort, Jesus sends his followers to the ends of the earth because God’s kingdom is always bigger than our own. It’s in the sending that we discover a promise of what our life gets to be about. We live because God knows we have a future wrapped up in the One who has already claimed us as his own. 

This future, though, isn’t something we have to wait for because God, through the Spirit, shows we’re not alone. Jesus didn’t ascend because he was trying to escape the world. Rather, he took the particularities of his entire life and brought it into every aspect of the divine. God did more than simply create the world; God chose, in Jesus, to live in it. Jesus lived a complete human life – including moments when it felt as if he was alone. He lived through the experience of being abandoned and casted aside by those who believed there was no future for him. So Jesus, in response, chose to send us the Spirit – this energizing force that manifests the presence of God in our lives so that you, unlike him, will never be alone. In those moments when it feels like everyone else has it all figured out and we are, somehow, hidden in whispers we don’t want anyone else to hear – God’s Spirit comes to show that you are loved, you are valued, and that your life has a future because through baptism, in faith, and because of Jesus Christ – your eternal life has already begun. 

Amen.

Sermon: Paul and the Greek

Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely spiritual you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all peoples to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps fumble about for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said,

‘For we, too, are his offspring.’

“Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

Acts 17:22-31 (NRSVue)

My sermon from the 6th Sunday of Easter (May 14, 2023) on Acts 17:22-31.

Areopagus is a word that literally means “Mars Hill” and it was a physical place where court cases in Ancient Athens were heard and decided. But by the time Paul arrived in the city, it had become the name of the city’s governing authorities. Athens had long lost its status as a major political power but it was a place that valued education and learning. Paul, after being chased out of the city of Thessalonica, took refuge in Athens and told his friends to meet him there. He planned to keep a low profile but he soon fell into his old habit of visiting the local synagogue and the nearby marketplace to tell anyone who listened about the Jesus who lived, died, and rose again in a land across the sea. Some who heard Paul dismissed everything he said but a few gentiles – non-Jews – wanted to learn more. They brought him before the Areopagite Council who were more than simply the leaders within the city. They also represented the intellectual curiosity at the heart of Athenian identity. Paul, I think, knew what this kind of curiosity looked like since he, as a Pharisee, read, preached, studied, and just dug deep into God’s word. Those who brought Paul before the council probably recognized his curious spirit and so they asked Paul to flesh out the message he had been sharing. Paul, then, did exactly what they wanted him to do but chose to not share the name of Jesus at all. 

Now that feels a bit weird since Jesus was the reason why Paul was in Athens in the first place. Paul’s use of the name of Jesus was one of the reasons why he had been driven out Thessalonica. Paul name-dropped “Jesus” all the time whenever he was preaching. Yet here, before those who embodied who the Athenians imagined themselves to be, the name of Jesus was nowhere to be found. It’s possible that Paul, after his dustup in Thessalonica, was wary of what the leaders in Athens might do. He might have wanted to stay on their good side until his friends arrived. The name of Jesus can sometimes be used as a cudgel, turning words centered in love and grace into a threat. When we’re told to “Believe or else!”, we often build a kind of mental, emotional, and spiritual wall that protects who we think we are. This wall can either shut us down or cause us to lash out, refusing to fruitfully engage in whatever makes us feel uncomfortable. This defense mechanism can, in certain situations, keep us safe but it also might stop us from becoming who God knows we can be. We all, I think, worry that our words about Jesus will cause others to react to us in this very negative way. And we don’t think we have the words or knowledge or even the energy to faithfully respond to what this lashing out might look like. Paul, I think, didn’t even want to be in Athens and so avoiding the name of Jesus might have been his way to keep the governing council from arresting him or worse. Paul wanted to move into the future he had already planned for himself. Yet the words he shared with the Athenians revealed how God’s future had already begun to include them all. 

Paul began his words by describing what he recently saw: an altar in the middle of the city dedicated to an unknown god. The Athenians, I think, noticed how our beliefs don’t really capture just how big the divine actually is. This altar, which would have been used for different kinds of food and animal sacrifices, was their way of trying to grab this unknown god’s attention. The Athenians were doing what they could to reach out to God even though God had already reached out to them. Rather than digging into the Bible and his own Jewish identity, Paul invited those listening to him to remember their own story. The line “In him we live and move and have our being” was probably first written by the poet Epimendies and the words “for we too are his offspring” likely came from the poet Aratus hundreds of years before Jesus was born. Paul doesn’t, at first, use our scripture to show the Athenians who God is. Instead, he leaned into their own desire for grace, hope, and love, to show them what God had already done. The Athenians, up to this point in Paul’s sermon, probably thought Paul was simply naming the thoughts they already had. As he talked, he drew them deeper into who they thought they were. And they expected for Paul’s curiosity to lead them into a kind of thought experiment that felt abstract, holy, and mysterious. Yet Paul, without even naming Jesus, grounded the Athenians by showing how their unknown God had become known in a very particular time and place. God didn’t wait to be found before God decided to find those who needed to be welcomed and loved. By listening to the Athenians’ own story, Paul created space for them to do what none of us want to do: and that’s to repent. Repentance, in ancient Greek, is more than simply turning to God and turning away from sin. It’s more than what we typically do when we give up eating chocolate for Lent or decide that today we’re going to be a kinder person. Repentance is a deep re-orientation of our minds, opinions, and points of views so that we see ourselves and our world in a new way. Repentance is more than becoming the good person we think we’re supposed to be; it’s about joining in with God’s particular story of love, grace, and hope so that we become so much more. 

The Rev. Dr. Matthew Skinner, in his book Intrusive God, Disruptive Gospel, saw two big themes in Paul’s short speech to the Aergogaus. “First, it reminds us that salvation doesn’t exist in some pure, unadulterated form with no connection to human languages, cultures, and our foundational assumptions about the world. Paul preaches an enfleshed message: one enfleshed in the Athenians’ religious curiosity…God may disrupt or confound our preexisting understanding of what’s valuable or possible…but the message of God’s good news also connects to what we hope for and what we know.” 

“Second, Paul’s speech spotlights resurrected life as a core piece of Christian hope. The Easter message is about more than God undoing Jesus’ death; it is about a promise God makes to us in Jesus. God promises to change us… God values our embodied selves and intends a future for them.” It’s that last bit, I think, that describes the kind of story Paul was inviting the Athenians into. Repentance, while mindful of our past, is always about our future. It’s about a way of being in the world that says the particular life you are living matters because God, in Jesus, lived a particular kind of life too. When we share Jesus with others, we are inviting them into a future they can live in right now. And while I’ll admit that my default is to always encourage you to name  Jesus as the reason why we do what we do – from our worship, to our support of food ministries, to the meals we cook for one another when we’re in crisis, and including why we turn our church into a one-day thrift store to raise $10,000 or raise 1300 lbs of produce for the Tri-Boro Food Pantry – God also gives us the freedom to do what Paul did by learning another person’s story and showing how Jesus knows them too. That kind of sharing takes a little time and effort on our part, forcing us to leave our preconceived notions, assumptions, and points of views at the door while we discover what the world looks like through someone else’s eyes. But this is something we get to do because, in our baptism and in our faith, we’ve already been met by the Jesus who lived our life so that we could discover and see and know who God actually is. 

Amen.