A House Divided

I Samuel 8:4-20/Mark 3:20-35

June 9, 2024

 

            Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.

            That’s a phrase I didn’t understand as a child. Why would I ever want to be careful what I wish for? Why would I ever not want to get what I wish for? But then I read books like Freaky Friday, do you remember that one? It’s where a mother and a daughter switch bodies but stay themselves on the inside. The daughter wishes she had her mom’s life, because her mom is an adult and has no problems and everything is so much easier when you’re grown up, while her life as a young teenager is completely untenable.

On one fateful and freaky Friday, the daughter wakes up as herself but in her mother’s body, and the mother does the same. The whole premise of the book is the daughter trying to navigate the world as her mom and realizing that being an adult with responsibilities is not as easy as it looks. Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it. 

Like I said, as a child I didn’t understand this phrase … until I did. Until some of the things I wished for happened, and while getting what I wished for wasn’t bad per se, getting what I wished for also didn’t make my life perfect or easier or magically change the way things were.

It seems to me that the underlying theme in our passages today is “be careful what you wish for”. The elders of Israel go to Samuel and ask him, demand him really, to appoint a king. As one commentator wrote, Samuel was a wise and good prophet, a wise and good leader … until he wasn’t. And the wasn’t is described in the first sentences of chapter 8. Sentences that the lectionary left out. These first three sentences set the scene by telling the reader that when Samuel was old, he appointed his two sons as judges over Israel. But Samuel’s sons are not like Samuel. They are not wise. They are not good leaders. They are not good judges for or of the people.

If you remember the beginnings of Samuel’s story, he was called by God as a young boy when he was serving the priest, Eli. Eli also had two sons, who did not follow in their father’s footsteps when it came to leading and serving God and God’s people. They were corrupt and inept. The first word from the Lord that Samuel received was to tell Eli that he would bear the consequences of his sons’ bad judgment. Now it seems that Samuel is experiencing the same dilemma. Samuel is a human being after all, and appointing his sons to be judges reveals that as a human he can make mistakes just like all humans do. And the Israelites, humans as well are about to make a big mistake.

They want a king. They don’t want Samuel’s sons to lead. Instead they want a king. They want a monarch, forgetting, it would seem, that the monarchy passes on from father to son as well. But the people have spoken. Samuel prays to God about it, and God responds by telling Samuel that the people are not rejecting Samuel. They are rejecting God. They don’t trust God, not really. They did this when God led them through the wilderness. Life got hard and they wanted to go back to Egypt. Why did God lead them away from the devastation of slavery only to let them starve in the wilderness? They didn’t trust God then. They don’t trust God now. They were not rejecting Samuel by asking for a king, they were rejecting God.

God instructs Samuel to warn the people about what life under the rule of a king will really be like. And Samuel tries.

“These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers.”

            He will take, and he will take, and he will take. The list Samel gives them goes on and on. It sounds horrible, doesn’t it? The consequences of having a king sound much worse than not having one, but the people don’t care. They want to be like other nations. They’re like children who want what the other kids have. All the other nations have kings, why can’t we?! They want a king to fight their battles for them. They want a king to solve their problems for them. And in the end, God gives them what they wish for. God gives them a king. Saul becomes their first king, and it does not end well. Some might say that it’s an unmitigated disaster. But that’s a story for another sermon.

            Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

            The monarchy eventually leads to exile. And when exile ends, occupation by Rome begins. The people turned their hope toward one greater than a king – a Messiah. But just like their desire for a king, they don’t know what they wish for. And many do not recognize the messiah when he stands right in front of them.

            Mark’s gospel tells us that Jesus has gone home. Just before he returns home, he has called all twelve of his disciples. Not only has he called them to proclaim the good news of God, the message that the kingdom of God is now in their midst, he has also given them authority to cast out demons. Exorcising demons is a big deal in Mark’s gospel, so the disciples being given this authority is also a big deal. And now he returns to his hometown. If Jesus expected his homecoming to be warm and welcoming, he was wrong.

            The growing crowd of people following Jesus does not dissipate when he goes home. They show up there too. That must have been unsettling for the people who knew Jesus when. It’s one thing to have this carpenter’s son come back home with twelve of his friends. But to have hordes of people following him? That’s too much. And this crowd of folks seems to think that Jesus can actually heal people! They think he can cast out demons! What?!

            Obviously this hometown boy has gone off the rails. His family heard about this, and they go to Jesus and try to stop him. The text says they try to restrain him. I don’t know if Mark means they used a literal restraint or a verbal one, but either way, his family wants him to stop doing and saying what he’s doing and saying.

            The scribes from Jerusalem have also followed Jesus, but not because they’re fans. They stir up the opposition to this hometown boy even more, saying that he has Beelzebul, and that he casts out demons through the power of the ruler of the demons.

            But Jesus turns this claim completely on its head and shows it to be ridiculous.

            “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.”

            I must admit to you all that I was an adult before I realized that Abraham Lincoln was quoting scripture when he spoke these words. But he was and this is the scripture. A house divided against itself cannot stand. If I am Satan, why would I cast out Satan? If the ruler of the demons had power over me, then I wouldn’t be casting out demons. You refuse to see what is right in front of you. You cannot recognize what is holy in your midst. And blaspheming against what is holy is going to land you in an eternal world of hurt.

            It is at this moment that Jesus’ family comes back into the narrative. Jesus is surrounded by the crowd, the crowd of believers, the crowd of those who are hungry for the Word of God, the crowd of people who may be outsiders in every other context, in every other part of their lives. And as Jesus is surrounded by these people, someone tells him that his mother and brothers and sisters are outside. They want to talk to him. I suspect that they want to stop him from getting into any more trouble, from bringing anymore attention to himself – and to them. I suspect they don’t want to be known as the family of this man that the scribes believe to be ruled by the ruler of demons.

            But Jesus does not bow to their desires. Instead he says words that sound harsh, that are harsh.

            “Who are my mother and my brothers?” “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and my sister and my mother.”

            Yes, these words are harsh, and there is a part of me that wants Jesus to soften them, to at least go out and hug his mother, acknowledge his family. But maybe this is also a matter of being careful what you wish for. You wished and prayed and hoped for the messiah. You wished and prayed and hoped for God to hear you, to come to you. But when God comes, everything gets turned upside down. What is outside becomes inside, what is inside becomes out. Boundaries are redrawn. Even familial boundaries are changed. And none of it is easy. But it comes back to trust, doesn’t it? The people trusted their inclinations for a king far more than they trusted God. They thought a worldly leader would save them, but no leader of this world can. And the people who thought they knew best, who believed they understood God and the Law and their place in the world did not trust that God was bigger than the box they put him in, that the messiah would be not the one they constructed. They could not trust what their eyes saw, and their hearts knew; this Jesus was more than they could know or comprehend.

            What exactly are we wishing for, praying for, hoping for in our church, in our community, in our country? Even more than that, who is that we trust? Do we trust God? Do we really trust God? Or is our trust misplaced and misdirected?

            I think the good news of these stories probably doesn’t feel like good news at first. I think that the good news is that sometimes God gives us exactly what we wish for, not so that we can fail or fall, but so that we can understand a little better that being faithful requires that we trust in God more. Being faithful requires that we trust in God more. Trust. In. God. More. Thanks be to God.

            Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

            Amen.

           

           

 

Good Sabbath

Mark 2:23-3:6

June 2, 2024

 

            I had a seminary professor who told our class that when she was growing up her family took the sabbath seriously, really, really seriously. There was no doing homework on the sabbath. If you hadn’t gotten your homework finished by Sunday, it was not getting finished. If the weather was warm and sunny and your friends were going to go swimming, you weren’t. I don’t remember if she shared with us how her family handled meals on the sabbath. I suspect they ate leftovers, so meal preparation would not have to be done on Sunday. But the point is, her family took sabbath seriously. I’m not sure this professor was quite as strict with her own children about the Sabbath as her parents were, but this strict observation of the sabbath stuck with my professor her entire life.

            When she told us about her family’s observance of the sabbath, it reminded me of the book Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I remember reading it for the first time as a little girl and being struck with how Laura and her family observed the sabbath, and how much Laura hated it. Laura and her sisters had to sit still and quietly all day long. They could hold their dolls and look at them, but they couldn’t play with them. Pa would play his fiddle, but his sabbath music wasn’t lively. He played hymns, slowly and somberly. Ma would have prepared food for the day beforehand. There was no having fun, no running and playing. The sabbath was about keeping quiet and being somber, and Laura hated it! She hated sitting still. She hated not being able to jump and shout and run. And one Sunday, she couldn’t stand it anymore and she began to play. She got in trouble, but then after a while Pa told her a story about her grandfather and how much stricter sabbath rules were for him.

            My family’s observance of the sabbath was not as strict as my professor’s and certainly not as strict as Laura Ingalls Wilder’s. We went to Sunday school and church. My mother started the Sunday meal before we left for church in the morning. We always had a nice Sunday dinner after church – something my kids did not get to experience growing up. It was a quieter day, but I wasn’t forbidden from playing outside. And we could watch tv and read the funnies in the Sunday newspaper. If for some reason we didn’t go back to church on Sunday night, we got to watch Wonderful World of Disney and that was huge! But looking back I realize that for my parents it was a day of rest. They weren’t working around the house. They weren’t running errands. It was their day of rest before the work week relentlessly began again the next morning.

            The sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the sabbath.

            This is the summary statement that Jesus tells the Pharisees who criticize his disciples for plucking grain on the sabbath day. Jesus and the disciples were walking through grainfields on the sabbath, and the disciples begin to glean from the heads of grain. The Pharisees question Jesus about this because what the disciples were doing was not lawful on the sabbath. Gleaning any other day of the week was acceptable, but not on the Sabbath.

            In response Jesus reminds them of the story of David and his companions. They were hungry. They needed food and sustenance. They entered the house of God and ate the food that had been blessed. According to the Law only the priests were allowed to eat that. But David and his companions were hungry and so they ate. The sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the sabbath.

            This response surely did not sit well with the Pharisees. But if they responded in any way other than appalled silence, the text doesn’t share that. Instead Mark moves us forward. Jesus enters the synagogue and there was a man with a withered hand. The Pharisees are watching Jesus closely, wondering – hoping – that Jesus would heal the man with the bad hand so they could accuse Jesus of breaking the Law. Jesus tells the man to “come forward.” He looks at the Pharisees, clearly aware that they are watching him and for what purpose, and says to them,

            “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?”

            The Pharisees keep their mouths shut, and their stubborn silence angers Jesus. He grieves at their hardness of heart and tells the man to stretch out his hand. He does this and the man’s hand is healed. The Pharisees don’t say anything else to Jesus, but they leave and immediately find the Herodians to coordinate their efforts to stop this troublemaker.

            I’m going to say something controversial here, but according to the Law the Pharisees were right. The disciples were breaking the law by gleaning on the sabbath. The Law allowed for someone’s life to be saved on the sabbath, but there’s no indication from the text that the man with the withered hand was in great peril. His healing could have waited until the sabbath was over. According to the Law the Pharisees were right. Jesus and the disciples were wrong. And to add to the controversy, the Pharisees were not necessarily the villains they are made out to be. They were religious folks who were trying to do what they believed the Law and their faith instructed them to do. I often compare the Pharisees to the ministers of today, to myself and to my colleagues, but they were also the lay leadership of the day. They were me and they were the session, trying to live out their faith and abide by the Book of Order.

            But Jesus upends their understanding of the Law and of the sabbath. He doesn’t throw the Law out, nor does he claim that it has no value. It seems to me that Jesus wants the Pharisees to understand that both the sabbath and the Law were gifts. The Law was a gift from God to help God’s people be in relationship with God and with each other. And the sabbath was a gift, not only to humankind, but to all of creation. It was the gift of rest. It was the gift of restoration. It seems to me that Jesus wanted them to understand that showing compassion on the sabbath, whether it was through gleaning for food or healing a man with a non-life threatening illness, was the heart of the sabbath. Compassion was at the heart of the gift that God had given them. And again, I’m not convinced that the Pharisees were without compassion. But where they went wrong was that they made the sabbath the object when it was intended to be the means. The sabbath was made for humankind, not the other way around. The sabbath is not the object. The sabbath is the means – to restoration, to rest, to wholeness. God gave humans and all creation the gift of sabbath. The sabbath was the means not the object.

            I think the Pharisees’ struggle to understand Jesus, his words, and his actions, is the same struggle we have today. The Pharisees were trying to uphold the rules. Rules are not a bad thing. We need them. We need their limits. We need their constraints. Rules allow us to live with one another. But the rules are not the object, they are the means. And when we get so caught up in the rules that we make them the object, I think we can miss the point.

            I think that’s what angered and grieved Jesus about the Pharisees. They were missing the point. They were missing the point that compassion was the beating heart of the Law. Love was the heart of the Law. God created the Law out of love. God gave the gift of sabbath out of love. A good sabbath was a sabbath that both remembered and honored that gift.

            It’s easy to say this, but it’s much harder to do. I struggle with balancing my need for the rules and my call to be, to live, compassion. And I don’t like it when others break the rules that I think are important, no matter what their reason. No matter how much I hate to admit it, I can easily slip into the shoes of the Pharisees in stories like this, and I find it much harder to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. I doubt that I’m alone in this. I suspect that if we’re all honest with ourselves, that this is true for you as well as for me. As much as I think of myself as a compassionate person, the truth is, living according to the dictates of compassion is a tricky, tricky balancing act and more often than not it’s just plain hard.

            Living according to the Law of compassion means that I must be willing to forego my judgment of others. Living according to the Law of compassion means that I must see the Law as a means of restoration and wholeness, of life and of love. It doesn’t mean that I can always achieve that, but it does mean that should be my guiding principle.

            Miss Erlene and I must make decisions every day about who the church can help and who it can’t. It’s hard, harder than you can imagine because I want to help everybody. I want to help every poor soul who walks into this church needing assistance, and there are many poor souls out there who need help. But we can’t help everyone. We can’t help with every need, no matter how hard we try and want to. We do have rules we have to follow and guidelines that must be met. But compassion requires us to remember that the rules and guidelines are not the object, they are the means.

            The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath. The sabbath was never meant to be the object. It was meant to be the means, a gift, a way to restoration and wholeness and life. Jesus practiced this good sabbath. Jesus lived this good sabbath. He understood that it was never the object, but the means. He meant it when he said that it was created for humankind and not the other way around. When we remember that, when we live that, we live and practice a good sabbath too; a good sabbath that is the means to restoration, wholeness, and life. Thanks be to God.

            Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia!”

            Amen.

How Can These Things Be? -- Trinity Sunday

John 3:1-17 (Isaiah 6:1-8)

May 26, 2024

 

            Some people use the phrase, “sounds like Greek to me,” to show that they don’t understand something that is being said. But I don’t say that for a couple of reasons. The first is that I’ve studied ancient Greek and a little bit of modern Greek, and while it is a challenging language, there is a logic to it so it kind of makes sense – sort-of. And two, because if I’m going to use an expression that indicates that something makes absolutely no sense to me, I’m going to say, “that sounds like math.” If I say that something sounds like math, that means that I have no clue whatsoever. I don’t understand what’s being talked about or explained to me because it’s all over my head. That sounds like math.

            Math makes me anxious; really, really anxious. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve gone to a teacher for help with math, understood it – or thought I did – while I was one-on-one with the teacher, studied on my own, then got to the test and fell apart. It happened with long division. It happened with algebra. As far as geometry, no amount of extra help made that stuff make sense. I even had a tutor for a while. I got through math because I had to, but when something makes absolutely no sense, I say to myself, “that sounds like math.” Then I close my eyes, take deep breaths to release my anxiety, and hope that my head doesn’t explode.

            The reason I share this with you is because when I read this story about Nicodemus, a learned Pharisee and leader of his people, I feel for him. We generally spend a lot of time focusing on Jesus in this story. And we always zoom into verse 16 because it’s so well-known and so beloved. But what about Nicodemus?

            As I said, I feel for him because I suspect he was as lost and confused about what Jesus was trying to tell him as I am when someone tells me something that seems like math.

            Nicodemus came to Jesus by night, probably afraid that his visit to this radical rabbi would put him into hot water with his fellow pharisees. So, he uses darkness as a shield to cover him, and goes to Jesus with questions. Clearly, something about Jesus compels Nicodemus, calls to Nicodemus. He tells him,

            “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”

            Nicodemus makes it clear that he understands that Jesus is from God. Whether he believes that he is the Messiah or God himself, we don’t know. But he recognizes the divine in Jesus and wants to know more.

            But Jesus does not seem to give him a straight answer. He doesn’t say, “Yes, you are correct, Nicodemus. I am from God.” Jesus instead replies,

            “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”

            And this is where the real confusion for Nicodemus and controversy for generations of believers to come begins. Nicodemus must have been stunned by Jesus’ words, and clearly confounded by them. You must be born from above?! What are you talking about, Jesus? Can a person return to his or her mother’s womb and be born all over again? This makes no sense! Then Jesus goes on to tell him that no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.

            “What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.”

            Again, Jesus is giving Nicodemus metaphorical and layered meaning answers to his questions. But Nicodemus is trying to understand Jesus’ answers literally. And this is where I say the controversy over this passage comes from. Our evangelical brothers and sisters speak of being “born again,” and it comes from these verses. You must be born from above. You must be born of the Spirit. And this more literal interpretation of Jesus’ words has translated over the generations to requiring an experience, a date and a time, when you have been born again, accepted Jesus into your heart, and allowed your life to be transformed.

            Now I am not trying in this sermon to refute that claim or dismiss that claim. It is not the claim I make about this passage, but if our siblings in Christ believe it this way, that’s their choice.  

            However, the way that I falteringly interpret this passage is that Jesus is trying to tell Nicodemus that the kingdom of God is more than just geography and that entering that kingdom is a spiritual enterprise. And he tells Nicodemus that the leaders don’t understand what he is saying when he talks about physical things, earthly things, so why should they understand when he is talking about heavenly and spiritual things?

            But none of this seems to alleviate Nicodemus’ confusion. Because he asks Jesus, “How can these things be?”

            How can these things be? Today is Trinity Sunday, the day when emphasize God the Three in One, God in relationship, God in community. But I guarantee you that any explanation I could offer about the Trinity would probably leave us all more confused, and asking the same question that Nicodemus asked, “How can these things be?”

            I suspect that this passage from John’s gospel was chosen for this day because Jesus talks about the Spirit, about how it blows where it will. You cannot see the Spirit, but you can hear it. You do not know where it comes from or where it goes, but you can recognize the transformation it leaves in its wake. The Spirit that Jesus speaks of is the Spirit of God that blew creation into existence. The Spirit that Jesus speaks of is the Spirit of Pentecost that we celebrated last Sunday. It is the Spirit that transforms and renews and creates.

            But the Spirit is part of the Trinity. It is not separate from God the Father and Jesus the Son. It is not on a lower level in some divine hierarchy. The Spirit is the presence of God, just as Jesus was the incarnation of God. And God is God.

            That sounds like math to me. The Trinity that we celebrate and put our faith in is a difficult concept to say the least. When I try to contemplate the Trinity, I feel like Nicodemus, trying to wrap around something so big and mysterious and using my literal brain to do so. It doesn’t work. Even though my Church History professor told us not to explain the Trinity to people by saying, “It’s a mystery,” the truth is that is exactly what it is.

            In our passage from Isaiah, we read about a God who is big that just the hem of his robe fills the temple where Isaiah stood. We read about a God who is so other that his attendants are seraphs. The literal translation of the word seraph, according to Working Preacher, is “the burning ones.” And seraphs were not like the little cherubs that we might imagine. They were snakes. With wings. They were burning, fiery, snakes with wings. And when we read that they were calling to one another, this was no serene, “Hey neighbor! What’s up?”

            They were screaming and screeching,

            “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts!”

            These were the attendants of God the Father. This God is so big that we cannot see more than the hem of his robe. And that hem fills every space around us, every space that is visible.

            And yet, and yet, God draws near. This big, enormous, mighty, unseeable God draws near to us. God draws near to us by becoming us in Jesus. Jesus, who was God incarnate. Jesus, who was human just like us, fully human, not just divine cloaked in a human shell. And when Jesus, God incarnate, died on the cross, the Spirit descended to keep God near because God draws near.

            That should sound like math to me, because it is confusing and confounding and more than my small brain can take in. We do not have the language to understand or describe it. But for some reason, as confusing as all this is, it does not cause me the anxiety that math does. Like Nicodemus, my ongoing question is, “How can these things be?” And I don’t have the answer. I cannot unravel this mystery, for you or for myself.

            But I do know that at the heart of this mystery of our God, Three in One, is love. That’s what is being said in verse 16 of the third chapter of John’s gospel. It’s about love. It was through love that God called the universe into being. It was because of love that God called the universe into being, and breathed life into creation. It was love that was incarnate when Jesus was born and lived and died and rose again. It was love that blew in with the Spirit to open minds and hearts, to reach beyond our narrow boundaries of who is in and who is out. It is about love.

            And because it is about love. Because it is about God drawing near in these different ways, through these different aspects, that I can embrace this mystery. I don’t have to understand it all. I don’t have to know how these things can be. It is enough to know that God draws near, and to live within the love that God gives and is and do all that I can to respond in kind, to share that love with others. Maybe “how can these things be” is not a question but a statement. These things are because God draws near in love and calls us to love in response. Thanks be to God.

            Let all God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

Amen.