Arranged Marriages

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Biblical Text: John 4:5-26

The title is kinda tongue in cheek, but if you get beyond the surface, not really. In the bible God consistently describes his relationship with his people in romantic and marriage terms, both Old Testament (the whole book of Hosea) and New Testament (Paul saying marriage is symbolic of Christ and the church). Also in the Bible scenes at wells are the Rom-Coms (cross references Rebekah and Jacob and Rachel). So when Jesus comes to a well by himself and a Samaritan woman comes along, it’s a biblical scene drenched in romance and marriage. And yes, we are not used to thinking of Jesus in that way, and as the scene plays out the flesh is not what it is concerned about. But it is concerned about the Spirit. It is concerned about what lord or gods or idols you might currently be married to.

And in the context of the Galilean ministry – the sermon describes the way that I typically take John as meta-commentary around Matthew, Mark and Luke – the question is that the arranged marriage to those who should have known is failing. The Jews will not accept Jesus. Will the Samaritans? The Gentiles? What does it mean negotiating a new arranged marriage? So the sermon ends up being a contemplation on the call to faith and what it means to worship God instead of the idols.

Comment: After service I received some interesting comments from some different people than normal. It struck a vein. I was happy with this one. But I was also quite afraid that the topic might be too – I suppose the word is – symbolic. Which is often my trouble with John because I think he’s taken – or been given by the Spirit – these actual events from the life of Jesus, but they are events that are themselves symbolic. It is something that I think artists tend to get immediately. There are just episodes in life that have endless meaning. (Pixar’s Inside Out would call them “core memories”.) They are endless wellsprings that we find ourselves returning to in order to understand ourselves. But the extent that “normies” do this or connect to life on the basis of story is different. I think it is a difference not of kind but a quantity. Normies are not as given to reflection as the artistic spirit. But there are still those “core memories.” So preaching about faith, conversion and leaving idols, behind a life events as symbols I was afraid it might be too many layers of inception.

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Unscrupulous

In business grad school I had this professor who also happened to be an orthodox Jew.  By orthodox I don’t mean Haredi, who are often like urban Amish, completely separate from society. He kept the Sabbath, he followed the kosher laws, he wore the yarmulke.  It is that yarmulke that I am thinking about.  Because one day in class he takes it off. Something that an Orthodox Jew should not do. He takes a minute to say exactly that, but also that it was the perfect example for the concept he was teaching. The concept happened to be a parabolic shape like an upside down yarmulke and that the operational point we were looking for was that local minimum, the bottom of the upside down hat. And he concluded that he supposed the Lord would forgive the trespass of going hatless because it was done for the mitzvah, the good work of teaching.

Now almost 30 years later I don’t remember much about that class, but I remember that episode. And I also suppose that entire lesson might have been planned around that.  That a business operations professor also wanted to teach something about God to a group of students much more interested in money. Christian Mark tied it immediately to Jesus walking through the wheat fields plucking some grain, and Jesus being met at the Pharisee’s door with the man with dropsy. My Orthodox Jewish professor’s understand of God and the law seemed to mirror Jesus in that laws can conflict. The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.  Hence if the choice was Sabbath or hunger – and we are not talking about fat Americans here who could almost all skip a meal or two – take care of the hunger.  And the second one maybe even closer.  If you have the ability to do the good work – like healing the man of dropsy – even if it breaks the sabbath, do it.

There is an old-fashioned word – scrupulosity – that catches what I’m thinking about.  It is old fashioned because we are all antinomians now.  We are very used to dismissing the law or saying it doesn’t apply for many and sundry reasons. But like my professor, that is a bad habit.  He really considered the law before taking his yarmulke off. The law of God is good and wise and we should not be quick to dismiss it. But there is a ditch on the other side.  Scrupulosity is something that has often been hurled at Martin Luther himself.  The Table Talk has Luther being thrown out of the confessional by von Staupitz and told not to come back until he had committed an actual sin. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but we can carry that fear too long.  Fear is the beginning.  Love and trust are the completion. The person afflicted with scrupulosity is always worried about the little things.  Like tithing the mint and cumin (Matthew 23:23).  And they might come to see God as the galactic accountant scrupulously counting each penny.

But that is not God’s self-revelation. God is rather unscrupulous. David, that horn-dog, is called a man after God’s own heart.  God seems to have no problem calling prophetesses – like Deborah we studied on Wednesday – even through that would seem to cross a law or two. Or Jesus himself defending the work of picking grain on the Sabbath or healing the diseased man. The God who has revealed himself is one full of mercy and abounding in steadfast love. He is a God who is going to do His good work.  A God of whom it is said it is his glory to overlook offense (Proverbs 19:11).  A God who removes sin and remembers it no more.  We have an unscrupulous God.  One who forgives the sin while we are still sinners. One who quickly holds that love covers a multitude of sins. And whose great command is to love one another.

Redemption Tour: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity

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Biblical Text: Psalm 133, Hebrews 12:22-24

We are continuing on the Redemption Tour – specific things that Jesus can be said to have redeemed from ruin. This week the topic is brotherhood. It’s a topic that gets demoted or devalued by our current “the future is female” culture, but it is a surprisingly strong biblical theme. Maybe it should not be so surprising as erasing biblical themes is what our entire culture is about. Although we are not alone in this. That has been Satan project all along, to erase the work of God.

While I was thinking about brotherhood or fraternity, I got to thinking about the French Revolution motto, hence the title. That is the opening to this sermon. And the overriding theme is that in our sinful quest for equality with God, we lost liberty and fraternity. In Christ those are redeemed, especially the fraternity. We will never have equality with God, but Christ is our brother.

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Are You Born Again?

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Biblical Text: John 3:1-17

I’m sorry, we had audio problems this morning. The audio recording of the sermon wasn’t good enough for me to really use. If I have a little time tomorrow I might do an after the fact recording. Which sometimes I hate Satan, because this one felt on fire with good material. The manuscript is never 100%. There is always something in the moment that is better. And a re-recording is never the same. An actual congregation just makes things live. The text has John 3:16, but the sermon and in my reading the text is really about the interaction between Jesus and Nicodemus. John 3:16 is a conclusion only earned in a very specific conversation. “Are you born again?”

And that question takes in baptism, faith and just who you think God is. Nicodemus’s last words in the middle of the story are “how can these things be?” As the sermon would develop, he’s got a very specific concept of God. A concept tied to the fleshy existence of the children of Abraham. Jesus challenges him and through him us to believe in the Spiritual God. The God who so loved the world.

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Golden Mean vs. All-In

The wisdom of the world is often expressed as the golden mean.  The Oracle said, “nothing in excess.” Aristotle talked about virtue as the path between extremes.  Courage was the virtue between recklessness and cowardice. And it is not just a western thing.  The Buddhist might chart the middle path between existence and non-existence which was the expansion of the Buddha’s original rejection of both extreme asceticism (non-existence) and self-indulgence (too much existence).  And you can even find it in Christian thought.  For Aquinas and Dante the middle path is that between insufficient love and excessive love. In our love infatuated age it might be hard to imagine that second pole of excessive love.  But think again of courage and recklessness.  Isn’t recklessness an excessive love of risk? It is hard to outgrow old training so I return to a finance example. If one part of our society is engaged in the attempt to eliminate all risk, like shutting down all society for a virus, is not the other, invested in prop bets on Draft Kings and Crypto coins, running to an excess love of it?

And you would be a fool to completely reject the golden mean. But there is something in the spiritual life that speaks against it. Let’s describe it as submission and aggression. God says to Abram, “Go, from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land I will show you (Genesis 12:1).” It is the demand of absolute submission. Not much later God would ask Abram to sacrifice Isaac, his only son, the only child of that promise. And Jesus uses demands like this.  “”If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26 ).”  Or speaking in a way that people responded – “this is a hard teaching, who can listen to it” – “”Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. (Jn. 6:53).”  You shall have no other gods before me is a call for complete submission.

Yet that submission is aggressive, it is not passive.  “Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran.  And Abram took Sarai…and Lot…and all their possessions…and set out (Genesis 12:4-5).” Sarah when Isaac was born told Abraham to get rid of Hagar and Ishmael, and God told him to listen to his wife. Joshua was told to conquer the land and Israel was only rebuked when they didn’t go far enough. And like Abram who “journeyed on (Genesis 12:9),” Jesus “sets his face to go to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51).”  Within Jesus’ prayer at Gethsemane “Lord, not my will, but thine be done” are both the absolute submission and the aggression.

I think there is something here of what we need. Occasionally it is the law which says do this.  And the “this” is usually some virtue or some golden mean.  The golden rule – “treat your neighbor as you would like to be treated” – is akin to that golden mean. If we all lived that way, we would have no problems.  But we don’t live that way.  And as much as the philosophers might agree in theory, in practice each one has their own list of virtues and their ordering. And when we find ourselves off the middle way, and the true path is lost, it takes something radical to restore us.  It takes the One who “gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist (Romans 4:17).” 

It is that One, who is not at all the middle way, but a jealous God, that we need. And who has shown up not walking a middle path dispensing wisdom like the Buddha, but setting his face for the cross. And it is that One who has given us a promise like Abram.  The Kingdom is yours.

Redemption Tour: Worship

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Biblical Text: Psalm 50:1-15

I rarely do this. The sermon itself explains a bit more. But my Lenten Midweeks this year are going to be a Series. They will each be based on a Psalm. The general theme will be redemption. Each week will expand a bit how in Christ the specific part of our lives are redeemed. This week the Redemption Tour starts with worship.

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Lead by the Spirit

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Biblical Text: Matthew 4:1-11

I start this sermon with a little reflection on what I believe the purpose of preaching is – proclamation. And mention that I think this particular sermon does some of that, but it ventures a little more into speculation that normal. The text is the temptation of Jesus. In the lectionary it is paired with the Old Testament reading of the fall into sin. Which at least for me brings up the problem of Evil. Why is Satan allowed to do this? And extending further, why does he continue to have such reign. The sermon does eventually attempt an answer. Or at least it is my answer. And it is an answer rooted in a duality word – testing or trial and temptation. In the Biblical languages they are really the same word. It is in English they are different words. And it is that divergence that I think causes so much trouble with evil. We have a simplistic and rosy view of God who never brings the trial. How that trial is allowed to happen is often by evil. Satan surely means for us to die. But the time of trial for God has two potential outcomes. 1) We pass the test, but we pass it because we have grown closer to God and know how he carries us through. 2) We fail the test, but are then met with the grace of God to restore us. Evil loses either way when you are not just looking at temporal things but things eternal. The sermon develops that.

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A Life Well Lived?

It is Lent, so I get to be a little more somber. And Satan’s big lie to Eve is the bald assertion that “you will not surely die.” And it is a completely unfair lie.  Did Eve even have a concept of death?  Or maybe a better way of expressing that would be that Eve only had a concept of death.  The naked reality of it is not something she was acquainted with. So even if she had a concept, she was working in the realm of theory.  And we all know what happens to theory when it meets reality.

I watched a recent interview with former Senator Ben Sasse. He is 54 years old, about the same age as I am. Also has three kids with the youngest being 15.  This past December he was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer and given a plus/minus of 90 days.  He has not “given up” as the saying goes. A podcast he is recording with another friend is entitled Not Dead Yet.   He has turned himself over to an experimental treatment delivering massive amounts of chemo drugs (i.e. poison) to the cancer. But the reality is still the reality. Unlike my 80-something father whose pancreatic cancer was caught in nascent stages because his appendix just happened to go bad and the surgeon saw something, Mr. Sasse has it all over including in the spinal column which requires massive doses of morphine for the pain. The entire interview is worth your time to watch (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8MO-i3CBZQ, Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson) and to listen to what he has to say.  And I don’t pass it along lightly.  He is that exceedingly rare voice who is honest enough with himself, and open enough to share, and verbal enough to express it.  And his message is that most rare of things – good.

It got me thinking about comparable works on grief and death and advice to the living and they are rare. The poets have an advantage: John Donne’s Death Be Not Proud and Dana Gioia’s Planting a Sequoia come to mind. Both of those are by people who have a functional theology and are struggling to live it. From a different place of white hot rage Mary Karr’s Face Down.  “What are you doing on this side of the dark?…” Now Ms. Karr also has a theology, or she did last I knew, but sometimes it takes a while to travel from head to heart.

The prose writers are at a disadvantage. I know quoting C.S. Lewis is getting to be a cliché, but A Grief Observed is without peer.  Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy was maybe the first Christian work on the subject of “A Good Death” or “Advice for Living from those at Death’s Door” written as he awaited the carrying out of his death sentence. Any critique I have of it says more about me than the work, but it’s a bit too much consolation and philosophy, compared to Lewis who truly lets you in the door.   There are some others.  Richard John Neuhaus attempted it in As I Lay Dying.  But he survived, and I always had a feeling he “knew” he would survive.  He was already thinking about the book he could write as he lay dying. Tolstoy fans would put forward A Confession.    Marcus Aurelius has portions in his Meditations. Simone Weil and Joan Didion both attempted and they have their adherents. But it is a hard thing to pull off.  You have to be remote enough from yourself to think and translate, while being close enough to feel.

That is where Mr. Sasse’s interview excels. He has something to say while he is on death’s door. For all of us creatures of dust, who might want to gather our rosebuds while we may, it is worth your time.

He Knows Our Frame

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Biblical Text: Psalm 103:1-22

This is an Ash Wednesday sermon. Gave a version of this Valley Lutheran High School chapel earlier. Had to rework it a bit for the home crowd. Although the basic message is the same. Had to tweak some of the examples. They are both more numerous for an older crowd and they didn’t need to be as strong. Ash Wednesday is a unique day. I’m not sure any – other than maybe Good Friday, but the focus of GF is the unique God-Man, Ash Wednesday is on us poor humans – but I’m not sure any day gets closer to the weird consolation of the gospel. We are constantly striving for the glory story, the sermon the American Dream, yet that story is a single point. It is balanced on the tip of a pin. It is easy to undermine. The gospel is the admission that the glory story is an Empire of Dust, and that God loves you and has you anyway. He knows our frame and his steadfast love is from everlasting to everlasting. And you don’t get one pole without the other.

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Direct Spiritual Experience

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Biblical Text: Matthew 17:1-9

The text is the transfiguration. And I do think the sermon comes deeply from the text, but the subject is really from the disciples’ point of view. They have a direct spiritual experience at the top of that mountain. Now talking about such things might not we in the normal wheelhouse of an everyday suburban congregation, but it is more in the air than you think. The first part of the sermon reflects on how our longing for such an experience expresses itself all around us. The second part of the sermon reflects on the troubles of such spiritual experiences: they don’t tell us what we think they do, we think the experience is the point and seek to stay in it or repeat it, we interpret everything based on them. The third part hopefully resolves or answers those troubles. The voice from the cloud says “listen to him.” That is where it starts. And if we listen to Jesus, that voice starts telling us what to do with the vision. That is what this sermon is about.

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