Testing Times Lament

Sometimes the tests are easy:
an extra trip to town
to pick up oranges, seltzer and Zicam
for my sick spouse;

this nagging toothache,
the new filling fell out
making eating effortful.

Some are numbing:
Wednesday, Kim didn't show up for book club.
Was she combing her hair,
thinking of The Cat's Table
when her heart burst?

Some are downright daunting:
Mat's memorial
at the old Waldorf school
where Khay studied, played, loved;
driving the old car pool route,
walking the familiar tiled halls,
standing on the wood floor
in the eighth grade room,
sitting in the crowded auditorium
to hear of Mat's life,
the fifth boy from this small community
to die young.

a poem for the third Sunday in Lent

by Rachel Horsley

Reaching Across the Table

1 Kings 19:11-13

Luke 9:10-17

When I was a kid, my folks tried to teach me manners. Two of them were “Don't put your elbows on the table” and “Don't reach across the table. Ask for what you need.” I've been struggling to remember them ever since. Hence the title of this sermon.

I'd like to tell you a story about Heaven and Hell. This guy dies and St. Peter takes him around to look in on Heaven and Hell so he can decide where he wants to spend all eternity. First they open the door on Hell. There is this great banquet table with all this heavenly food on it, and all these people sitting on either side of the table. But they are all desperate and starving. They can see the food. They can smell the food. They can touch the food. But they don't have elbows. So they can't eat the food, no matter how hard they try. And try they do, for all eternity. Then St. Peter closes the door on Hell, goes next door, and opens the door on Heaven.

Here is the same set up: this huge banquet table covered with the same heavenly food. There are all these people on either side of the table who don't have elbows either. But they are having a wonderful time. What's the difference? In Heaven, of course, they are reaching across the table and feeding each other.

God is found in relationship: “Where two or more of you are gathered in my name, I am there in your midst.” (Matthew 18: 19-20) Now let's go with St. Peter back over to Hell again to see a surprising transformation. Looking in, we see this guy, Slim, who has been trying to feed himself for all eternity. After an eternity of trying, he comes to the miserable conclusion that he's never going to be able to feed himself, no matter how hard he tries. So he stops trying and settled back into quiet despair. Having stopped exhausting himself by trying so hard, Slim has enough energy left over to become aware of this woman across the table from him. Sally has been striving to feed herself for all eternity as well. Slim notices that Sally looks just as hungry as he feels. He thinks to himself, “I may be miserable and will always be miserable, but I guess I could give Sally a bite. Then at least somebody will be feeling better.”

So Slim breaks with tradition, reaches across the table, and gives Sally some food. Sally is taken totally by surprise, since she has never been given anything before. Suddenly, for no reason that she can understand, she is enjoying a bite of Mary Emma Johnson's delicious super-chocolate layer cake. Sally looks across the table and sees that the surprise had come from this guy sitting across from her. She might go on trying to feed just herself, but her reality has been forever changed. Someone else has entered her lonely world, modeling a radically new way of being. Sally responds to Slim's gift by reaching across the table in return, and gives Slim a bite of Irena McCormick's string beans with country ham.

Well, Slim is taken totally surprise as well. Here, he's been trying to feed himself all this time and never has gotten anywhere. And this one time that he gives food away, he suddenly gets fed wonderful food. It doesn't make sense to him, but he can see it works. So he gives Sally another bite and she returns the favor again. Their eyes meet in mutual understanding and miraculously, in that instant, they find themselves transferred to the banquet in heaven.

What did it take for them to make the change? They had to put their own self-serving efforts and desires on hold, in order to consider someone else's needs and make the effort to reach across the table to meet those needs. Suddenly there was room for God to stop by in unexpected places.

Now I'd like to tell you about something that happened to me a few years back. In the fall of 1968, while John McCain was in the Hanoi Hilton being tortured by the Vietcong, I was hitchhiking across the country from California to Williamsburg to start my final year of college. The little commune I had been hanging out with in Arcata, California had passed the hat and collected $6 to get me back across the country. So I'd said a prayer and stuck out my thumb. The country was even more polarized then than it is now: soldiers, cops and the government on one side; Blacks, hippies, and college kids on the other. I'd been tear gassed and called names at protest marches against the war, but otherwise, hadn't been personally impacted by the conflict.

By the time I got to Wheeling, West Virginia, the $6 was long gone, I was tired and dirty, and hadn't eaten in two days. I wasn't a prepossessing sight and rides were hard to come by. Evening was coming on when a beat up '56 Chevy pulls over. I gratefully open the door, and see a military style haircut. I hesitate...and get in.

The angel is in the form of a former marine, Vietnam vet, off-duty cop. I give him my patter about getting back to college and he tells me he's heading to Virginia to deal with a car accident he'd been in. He doesn't comment on the dirt, longhair, beaded necklace, or tie-dyed Tshirt I'm wearing. But after a while, he gives me a poem to read that he'd written while serving in Vietnam. The poem is about how hard it was to be out there with his buddies fighting for their country, while back at home others like me were pushing against what he and his friends were risking their lives for.

As the evening wears on, he gets us a place to stay for the night. Unasked, he buys me a huge cheeseburger with everything on it. He didn't change my opinion of the war, but he sure changed my opinion of the men fighting it. He'd reached across the table to me. How could I not respond? Suddenly, there was room for God to stop by in unexpected places.

Christ made a habit of reaching across the table when he saw people in need. There is the story of the Samaritan woman shunned by the Jews. Christ breaks the silence by asking her for water and then offers her spiritual living water in return. He reaches across the table when, as evening fell, he gave thanks for the little food he had and offered it to 5000 people who had come for his help. How could they not respond to his example? All were fed, with food left over. God had stopped by in unexpected places.

We reach across the table here at Cove Church too. I think about the food bank, onions, Habitat for Humanity volunteers, Ixtatan, Building Goodness, Reynosa mission trips, wine, church flowers and homemade communion bread. Tommy's incredible, freely given knowledge about the workings of any appliance you have ever encountered. John's free book, The Tumor; after church socials, newsletters, Rachel's poems: Everyone contributes somehow. It is quite a banquet! It seems to me, God stops by frequently. But then, I sort of expect that here.

To add a practical edge to this sermon, since Christ said our job here is to love God with our heart, mind, and strength and our neighbor as ourselves, I thought I'd share a simple gift any of us can offer to open healing connections with any lonely or suffering person that we may encounter, or to open connections with God for that matter. Often people try to connect with others by asking them questions.

Unfortunately, questions often make people feel uncomfortable and on the spot, so hurting people may just say “Everything is fine.” and hope we will quit probing. Instead of asking questions, we can connect more effectively if we make a special kind of guess. This guess is a tentative statement that contains two parts: The first part is a name for a feeling or emotion that we think the person might be carrying. The second part is to offer a logical reason recognizing why the person might be feeling that way. Then we wait and listen.

When we offer those two aspects of their internal experience, it makes it easy for people to respond either in agreement with us or, if they think we are mistaken, to correct us. In either case, we then have additional information with which to connect. So we can repeat the strategy and begin to create in the person a sense of being heard and cared for. Even though this may not fix the problem, at least we can share their burden.

I saw someone use the skill to warm up a grumpy intake woman at the hospital during the ice storm last week. The person waiting next to me said to her, “You must be tired. I bet you've been here all night.” He had named her feeling: tired, and a reason: perhaps the woman had been up all night. The intake woman responded, “No, but I did have to get up at 4 AM to get here. The guy managed to squeeze a smile out of her before we left. God had stopped by and left the woman an unexpected little blessing

It occurs to me we may be able to use the same strategy to reach across the table in our love for God. 

I've noticed God expresses a lot of emotions in the Bible: anger, love, satisfaction, frustration, patience, faith, pain, suffering, and forgiveness. So, as an experiment, we might try using the same communication skill in our quiet time with God and see what happens.

So, rather than asking God questions, or telling God what we want, or just sitting there and hoping that God will somehow get through our usual preoccupations, instead, we might try telling God what we think he is pleased about concerning our lives and why he might be feeling that way. Then wait and listen for God's quiet reply.

If we are brave, we might also try telling God how we think he might be disappointed in our efforts, and why - and what might bring an improvement. And then, again, listen for His still small voice. God just might stop by for you.

A similar metaphor to “reaching across the table” is “priming the pump.” In both cases, we Christians are asked to give first. To “cast our bread upon the waters.” Our reward comes later. When I was a kid there were neighbors on the farm who didn't have running water. Instead there was a pump out back with a pipe descending down a well to their drinking water. But when you pumped the handle up-and-down nothing whatever would come out of the spigot. The pump had a stiff old leather washer inside that wouldn't hold enough suction to pull the water up from 15 feet below. 

First you had to prime the pump. They kept a Mason jar full of water handy which you would pour into the top of the pump before you started pumping. The wet leather would then create a good seal and up cold fresh water would come. There is this little song about priming a pump written by Billy Ed Wheeler called “Desert Pete”. The Kingston Trio made a hit of it on the Folk Song circuit back in 1963. I suspect not all of you remember it, so I thought I would end on that note for our final Hymn.

It's just about some thirsty guy who encounters an unlikely water pump in the middle of the desert, with some instructions on how to work the thing. He follows them and gets a nice drink. The song doesn't sound especially religious. But then, God stops by in unexpected places. The chorus for the song is in your bulletin and I hope you will sing along. That primes my pump. Like anything else, the more you put into something, the more will return to you.

And the people said: Amen

preached February 28 by Walter Mehring III

Earthquakes

Haggai 1:15b-2:9

Psalm 98:1-9

Luke 20: 27-38

I love crossword puzzles. My favorite thing about them is the moment when you’re taken completely by surprise and the answer comes jumping out at you. One minute, you’re looking at the clue, trying to figure out a four-letter word for “Robin’s quest.” You’re thinking Robin Hood. “Steal from the rich, give to the poor.” You’re thinking “take,” or “give” or something – but it ends with an M, not an E. Then, all of a sudden, you realize you’ve been looking at it the wrong way all along: the answer is “worm.” A robin’s quest is a worm.

“Sing to the Lord a new song,” the psalmist says, and sometimes it’s hard to recognize how terrifying that command can be. The moment we’re called to sing a new song – to change direction, to do something different than we’re used to – is often profoundly difficult. For me, one of those moments came fifteen years ago, when I was on a mission trip in Rocky Mount, North Carolina.It was a Sunday morning and my youth group was worshipping at the church that would be hosting us during the week to come. They were commissioning their seminary intern to go accept the call he had just received to pastor his first church. As they laid their hands on him and prayed, something deep inside me said, “You do that.”

This was a shocking and totally unexpected thought for me. You see, my first memory of being in a church is looking up at my pastor from one of the front pews (my parents always made us sit in the front pews) and thinking, “Who in their right mind would ever want to do that?”Hearing that voice felt like being in an earthquake.

“Once again, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land.” The Hebrew word for “shake” in Haggai 2:6 comes from the same root as the Hebrew word for “earthquake.” The word is also used metaphorically in Isaiah 14:16 – “Is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms?” There it describes the fall of the king of Babylon. So this word can describes the cataclysmic upheaval of the ground upon which we stand or the institutions upon which we dearly depend. Haggai isn’t just talking about an earthquake; this is a heavenquake – a worldquake. Everything changes – nothing can ever be the same.

And if that sounds frightening, let me just say that I see this as a passage of hope – a response to the people’s despair. Haggai preached this message during the Feast of Booths in the year 520 BCE. It had been more than 60 years since the Temple had been destroyed and the people had been carried away into exile. Now, more than half a century later, many had returned and the Temple was starting to be rebuilt. It should have been a time for celebration, but there were some, as Haggai points out, who thought the current rebuilding efforts were a disgrace.

Haggai couldn’t agree more. “How does [this Temple] look to you?” he asks rhetorically. “Is it not in your sight as nothing?” Compared to the good old days of Solomon’s Temple, the pathetic structure paled in comparison. Even though there couldn’t have been many in the community who were old enough to actually remember Solomon’s Temple, the stories of its splendor had only grown more and more fantastic with every year spent waiting for the House of the Lord to be rebuilt.

Looking upon the meager work that had been done so far didn’t so much remind the people of God’s presence with them as it reminded them how dismal their lives were, how bleak their hopes for the future.

Things looked bad and there was no end in sight. Then, one day, as they celebrated a feast that had long ago lost its meaning for them, God spoke to the people through Haggai, and this is what they heard:

“Be strong! Be strong! Be strong! Work! Fear nothing!” Of course, there was a little more to the message than that, but at the end of the day, after the feasting and celebration, after the families had returned to their homes, after the last oil lamp had been turned down and everyone was tucked in bed, I have to believe it was those words that kept at least some of them awake.

“Be strong!” How it must have rung in their ears! God was telling these people – these pathetic people, who had just returned from exile in a foreign land – to be strong. Haggai proclaimed that not only would things get better, but they would be better than they had ever been before. In that moment, the earth shook; nothing could ever be the same.

Jesus and the Sadducees

In the reading from Luke, we hear a story in which Jesus causes the earth to shake for some of his listeners. He is confronted by some particularly obnoxious and sarcastic Sadducees, who hope to stump him on the issue of the resurrection. (In case you hadn’t noticed, trying to stump Jesus is not easy and rarely goes well for those who try.) “So, Teacher,” they begin. “Say you’ve got this woman, right? And she gets married, but her husband dies. And then she gets married again. And again and again and again – you get the picture – anyway she gets married seven times, and then finally she dies. So, Teacher, when this woman is ‘resurrected’, who’s she gonna be married to? ‘Cause remember she got married seven times.”

Jesus manages to avoid directly answering their question while also saying something incredibly wise and profound. What he says is that they’re looking at things all wrong; they’re trying to conceive of the infinite in terms of the finite. There is a fundamental problem with their logic, Jesus explains, “For God is not God of the dead, but of the living; for to God, all of them are alive.”It is moments like these when we have no choice but to do as the psalmist says and “Sing to the Lord a new song,” because our old ones don’t quite fit anymore. The earth shakes beneath our feet and it seems the whole world is coming down around us. It may last just a moment, but that moment seems like it will go on forever. When the trembling ceases we look around and see that we have come through the ordeal unscathed, but not necessarily unchanged.

And the Bible is a seismograph, a written record of the ups and downs of God’s people throughout the ages. If there’s one thing we know beyond a shadow of a doubt, it’s that God’s people live on some kind of spiritual fault line, the earth constantly shifting under their feet.

Sometimes earthquakes inspire us to action, like in the story of Esther – a Jewish woman who marries a gentile king. When her uncle discovers a plot by the king’s right-hand man to exterminate the Jews, he pleads with Esther to help them. She isn’t sure at first – she’d be risking her own life. Then comes the rumbling. “Who knows?” her uncle asks. “Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.”

There are times when the ground trembles as we realize who we’ve become. Take David, the great king, from whose line Jesus was born. While he was king, he gets another man’s wife pregnant and then has that man sent to the front lines to die in battle. Nathan, the prophet, confronts him with a parable about a wicked rich man. David is so angry about what the rich man did that he doesn’t notice the ripples in the water set out at the table. “You are that wicked man!” Nathan cries.

For some characters in the Bible, their earthquakes come in a private moment, catching them completely off guard. Mary, a young girl, engaged to be married to a carpenter, gets a visit from an angel, who says, “You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David.” And after asking her question and getting her answer, Mary rises up from the rubble surrounding her and says, simply, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

The ground is always shaking as we read the stories of God’s people. And the ground still shakes today. If you don’t believe me, ask the man who’s just gotten the test results back from the doctor. Ask the graduate who’s just landed her first job out of college. Ask the person who’s just purchased an engagement ring, or the woman looking at the little plus on a pregnancy test, or the man who’s just buried his wife. They will all tell you of the upheaval life brings – good and bad – at those momentous times.

Perhaps there’s nothing in your life that seems momentous, nothing you expect to result in upheaval. Perhaps you feel comfortable with your routine. I’m sorry to say, it doesn’t mean you’re safe. Earthquakes strike those just stepping out to take a phone call or smoke a cigarette or catch a taxi. They come just as easily when you’re sipping orange juice at the breakfast table or slipping under the covers at bedtime.

In painting this picture for you, I don’t want you to see God as some kind of cosmic prankster, shaking things up just to keep them interesting. I don’t want you to think I’m saying that God sends us blessings or tragedies in order to test or reward or punish or teach us. To be honest, I’m not really sure what causes these seismic disturbances, and that’s not really the point. The point is not what happens or what caused it to happen; it’s what you do when it happens.

I don’t know when your next earthquake will come or how. I don’t know if it will come with tears or laughter, with shouting or with song. I don’t know if you’ll even realize it when it comes, or if you’ll only see it in retrospect, as the aftershocks strike. But I do know that I want you to keep your eyes and ears open, because this next one could be the big one.

So be strong! Be strong! Be strong! Work! Fear nothing! For once more, in a little while, God will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land.

And praise God because everything – everything – will change.

Amen.

Tell That Fox

What would you do
if you were given three days
before the walk to your demise?

I would gather family and friends,
touch each one, look into their eyes,
ask forgiveness for my derelictions.
I would eat my favorite foods
unless anticipation felled my appetite.
I would pray.
Would I volunteer
to make the trek to Jerusalem?

Jesus said, Tell that fox
I'll be there in three days,
and went back to work,
casting out demons,
performing cures,
touching people,
looking into their eyes.

a poem for the second Sunday in Lent 2016
(see Matthew 13:31-35)

by Rachel Horsley

Wednesday

A cross of ash on my forehead I enter the emergency room seeking my friend, Lyn.
I don't know if the intake person looks quizzical because of the ashes or my inquiry about Lyn's mother, Wayne, her lifetime weighted with a man's name.
I find Lyn in a tiny, gritty room, Wayne deceased on a gurney, her 86-year-old body blanketed, her white hair haloing her face.
Earlier, on the drive to church, clouds softly pillowed blue and pink, soon to dissolve dark.
I whisper Impermanence, it is all impermanence. Lyn, that moment, in her car, carrying her mother to the hospital.
As I inhaled sunset, Wayne exhaled.

a poem for Ash Wednesday and the first Sunday in Lent 2016 by Rachel Horsley

Photo by Danny Hassell

Ash Wednesday Homily

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

My first act as an ordained minister was to burn palm leaves from the previous year’s Palm Sunday service to use as ashes on Ash Wednesday, and that act seems to have set the tone for my ministry ever since – especially in my work at the hospital.[1]

Several years ago, on Ash Wednesday, I stood with one of the attending physicians of the Pediatric ICU. He is Catholic, and it was probably about 7:30 at night. “I didn’t get ashes,” he said.

He and I had been working with the family of newborn girl all afternoon. She had been born happy and healthy eight days ago. We learned from her parents that she was definitely a daddy’s girl; she didn’t really like to be touched, but her dad could always get her to calm down when he held her.

Around 11 that morning, her mother had noticed some blood while changing her diaper. She called the pediatrician’s office and was directed to the Emergency Room of our hospital. By 2pm, she was in the ICU. By 6pm she had died. And we had no idea why.

“I didn’t get ashes,” he said again.

And all I could say was, “I don’t think either of us needs any reminder that ‘we are dust and to dust we shall return’.”

Tonight, we are asked to do strange things: to remember our mortality, to confess to our brokenness, to read words that don’t match up with our actions.

We read: “whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.”

And what we do is we gather in this public place and lift our voices in prayer.

We read: “whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces to show others that they are fasting.”

And what we do is we mark our foreheads with ash and so that there is nothing secret about us.

Tonight, what we read and what we do are not going to match up.

But is that really any different from every other day?

We read: “you shall have no other gods before me.’

And what we do is we worship success and power and fame and fortune.

We read: “forgive seventy times seven transgressions.”

And what we do is we savor our bitterness and plan for revenge.

We read: “make disciples of all nations.”

And what we do is we keep our faith to ourselves, because it's not polite to talk about such things in mixed company.

We read: “if you love me, you will feed my sheep.”

And what we do is we turn our backs on those who are starving for love and acceptance and compassion and, yes, even for food.

Today is the day that we admit the truth – to ourselves, to each other, to God – that what we read and what we do don't match up.

This is a difficult thing to admit, and the world does a good job of trying to blind us to the truth. Just this afternoon, in my email inbox, there was a promotional message from Applebee’s. The subject line: “Joshua, no guilt here!”

Today we begin the 40-day process of repentance called Lent. Repentance involves two steps: first, we must turn away from sin, second, we must turn toward righteousness.

I think that it's fitting that the words we read and the actions we perform today don't match up, because it forces us to recognize the truth of our sinfulness – a truth we try desperately to hide from ourselves, from each other, and even from God.

We know from scripture that the penalty for sin is death, and so we are forced to recognize not just our frailty, but our mortality. We face, head on, the truth that we all must die, must return to the dust from which we were created.

And so this is the way the story of our life reads: we are sinful and we are mortal – we rebel and we die.

Those are painful truths to accept, but we must accept them.

Because unless we understand these truths, the good news that we will spend the next 40 days preparing to receive is meaningless.

The Good News that what we read and what Christ does DO match up.

When we are faithless, Christ is faithful.

When we sin, Christ shows us how to repent.

When we die, Christ gives us life.

May it be so.

Amen.

---

[1] I work full-time as the chaplain for Pediatrics and Women’s Health at a level-one trauma center.

Alive

Nehemiah 8:1-10

Luke 4:14-21

One of the things I hope to impart to Norah is a love for reading. It’s something my parents instilled in me from a very early age. I can’t say I remember any picture books in particular, but I do remember curling up with my siblings and mom while she read The Boxcar Children to us before bed. As I got older, I remember being captivated by Piers Anthony and Madeline L’Engle and Stephen King. I would carry their books around with me at school, snatching every chance I got to read a page or two when I had an extra minute. I would stay up way too late, with a flashlight under the covers, to finish one more chapter, or to find out if the hero would escape from the trap, or to discover the next clue to the unraveling mystery.

I remember a particular trip we took to the beach. I was reading one of the books in L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time series, and for some reason the thought hit me: they are in there – the characters – just waiting for me to pick this book up and bring them to life. That’s it: they’re alive! From then on, it was very difficult for me to put books down.[1]

So Jillian and I read to Norah every night, even though it’s hard to tell exactly how the words affect her. To date, the greatest mystery we have come across is: Who took Gossie the Gosling’s shoes? The biggest thrill: How will Harold and his purple crayon survive after falling off the cliff he drew for himself? It’s not terribly exciting, but it’s fun – especially when I can use different voices. The science (and more importantly, my heart) tells me it’s important. I want her to know the joy, the thrill, the magic that comes in the moment of realization: these people are alive!

For the people in our reading from Nehemiah, it had been a long, long time since anyone had read to them from the “book of the Law of Moses” – what we now refer to as the first five books of the Old Testament.[2] The story takes places a short time after the exiles have returned from their captivity in Babylon. Decades earlier, many of those who lived in the Holy Land were deported to Babylon, including most of the religious leaders and many of the people who could read. Now Ezra, a priest, has returned to Israel, and as the story begins, we learn that “all the people” – men, women, even children old enough to understand[3] – have asked him to read scripture to them. It may have been decades since they heard the stories in these books, and they are so captivated that they end up listening for at least six hours!

The words stir up strong emotions in them – indeed, they find themselves crying at times. The text doesn’t tell us which passages they heard that morning (surely they didn’t make it all the way from Genesis through Deuteronomy in only six hours), but I wonder which ones would evoke such tears. Could it have been the rainbow painted across the sky as Noah and his family stepped onto dry land after the flood? The moment of profound relief as God stayed Abraham’s hand just before he sacrificed his son Isaac? The pain of sibling rivalry so deep that Joseph’s brothers would sell him into slavery? Did they identify with the Jews in Egypt who felt abandoned by God before Moses returned to liberate them? Or did they connect more with the feelings of uncertainty and lost-ness that accompanied those same people as they wandered for forty years in the wilderness?

Professor Matt Skinner points out that, though the people are moved to tears, Ezra and the other teachers encourage them not to mourn, but to rejoice. “The move is to joy,” he explains. “And why? It’s not ‘Yay, we found the law!’ or ‘Yay, we found scripture!’ But ‘Yay, we’ve encountered a God who refuses to stay put, who spreads out, who wants to be known, who provides a means to be known: through a book, through words, through stories, through commands, through traditions.”[4]

Whatever Ezra read, it brought God to life for these people. It helped them to see their place in the story of God’s ongoing creation.

In our selection from Luke, we know exactly what Jesus read when he stood up in the synagogue. At that time, any male could volunteer to pray, read passages of scripture, or give the sermon.[5] Jesus was a regular worshipper at the synagogue, and after being given the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, he turned to chapter 61, verses one and two:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” he read, “because God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind; to let the oppressed go free; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” He stopped reading there. Interestingly, that’s only the first half of verse two. The second half says, “and the day of vengeance of our God.”[6] So if you hear people criticizing those who “pick and choose” what parts of the Bible they follow, just keep in mind that Jesus, apparently, did the same thing!

After rolling up the scroll and sitting down, Jesus said “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Boom! If he were holding a microphone, that would be the perfect line on which to drop it and walk offstage.

It seems a little haughty, doesn’t it? And let’s not forget that he’s saying this in his hometown: in front of the women who changed his diapers, the siblings and cousins who sat at the kids’ table with him on holidays, the friends he grew up playing kickball with, the teacher who gave him a C-minus in chemistry, the men who taught him carpentry, the rabbis who taught him how to read from the synagogue scroll in the first place! All these people cared for him, loved him, encouraged him – but they also knew him. They knew that he had a temper, that he could often be impatient, that he had an irritatingly uncompromising sense of right and wrong, and that he could be arrogant.

And, going back to the whole “changing his diapers” thing: can I just say – from experience – that there is no better way to see a person as utterly and completely human than to wipe her butt.

So, here we have this person, whom everyone (except perhaps his mother) knows to be completely human, declaring that this passage of prophecy from Isaiah is “fulfilled in your hearing.” Keep reading and you’ll discover that Jesus’ preaching eventually got the synagogue crowd mad enough to try and throw him off a cliff!

But what if his assertion wasn’t completely about arrogance? What if Jesus was trying to make an even bigger claim? What if he was trying to tell them not just about himself, but about Scripture itself? “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” We tend to place the emphasis on “fulfilled,” because we know Jesus as the center and fulfillment of all Scripture.

But try putting the emphasis on “today” instead. “Today this scripture is fulfilled.” Not two-thousand years ago, not tomorrow or next week or when you were baptized or when you were “saved” but today, right now, February 7, 2016 – this scripture is fulfilled! Every time we read this passage – Jesus’ mission statement about who he is and what he does – it is fulfilled in our hearing. Now is the time to bring good news to the poor. Now is the time to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind. This year is the year of the Lord’s favor.

Perhaps Jesus was saying, “These are not just words written down hundreds of years ago. They are words that come to life – that bring us to life – every time we read them.” Perhaps he was saying, “Children of God, live this day as if it were your first day, as if it were your last day, as if it were your only day.”[7]

These stories from Nehemiah and Luke are less about what Scripture says and more about what it does.[8] Scripture brings God to life for us, and it brings us to life for God.

When Ezra read the words of Scripture to the Israelites, God came to life for them. They were brought to tears of joy as they heard the story of a living God who ceaselessly pursued their ancestors, covenanting with them again and again, promising to be with them despite their sins and shortcomings. They saw, in the ancient stories, a reflection of their own story. We can do the same. We can look for God as we wander in the wilderness of joblessness, or addiction, or grief. We can listen for God in the exile of a missed opportunity, or a broken relationship, or a failed dream. We can trust that God is present no matter where we are or what we have done, no matter whether we can feel that presence or not. We can open up our minds, bodies, and spirits as God comes alive for us.

When Jesus read from the scroll of Isaiah, he came to life for God. He sat down and said, “These words will guide my life from now on.” We can do the same. We can commit ourselves to seeking justice for the poor and oppressed; to working for healing and wholeness for those who are hurting; to seeing dignity and value in the lives of everyone we meet – especially those whom the world tends to overlook; to lose our own lives and, in so doing, to find our lives made new as we come alive for God.

Scripture is alive. It is a breathing, growing, flourishing thing. It is our witness to THE Word (with a capital W), Jesus Christ: the Word of God in flesh and blood and spirit. Because it is alive, it can become part of our lives – today, here and now – guiding us and bringing us joy. And, when we open ourselves to it, we become a part of the ongoing story that Scripture tells: that good news comes to the poor, that the captives will be released, that the blind will see and the oppressed will be freed, and that the Lord’s favor is upon us all!

Amen.

---

[1] To be entirely honest, this epiphany may have come to me while reading a Star Trek novel – I just can’t quite remember – but I thought A Wrinkle in Time would sound a little more theologically impressive.

[2] Anathea Portier-Young, https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=496

[3] Robert Williamson, “Tamir Rice and the Anguish of our National Sin.” http://www.huffpost.com/us/entry/9010548

[4] Matthew Skinner, Sermon Brainwave podcast #98: Third Sunday after Epiphany, published January 17, 2010. https://www.workingpreacher.org/brainwave.aspx?podcast_id=109

[5] See Acts 13:15, 42; 14:1; 17:2.
Linda McKinnish Bridges, Feasting on the Word: Year C, Vol. 1. Westminster John Knox Press, 2009. (287)

[6] Carol Lakey Hess, Feasting on the Word: Year C, Vol. 1. Westminster John Knox Press, 2009. (286)

[7] Walter J. Burghardt, “What We Don’t Have is Time,” in Best Sermons, vol. 3. Harper & Row, 1990. (57)

[8] Adapted from an idea by Matthew Skinner, Sermon Brainwave podcast #459: Third Sunday after Epiphany, published January 16, 2016. https://www.workingpreacher.org/brainwave.aspx?podcast_id=709