All Means All--First Baptist Church Asheville, NC, July 12, 2015

Video Excerpts. (Please note that the audio and video are not in sync.)

Amos 7:7-15; Mark 6:14-29

 

This morning’s gospel lesson from Mark 6 reads as though it was lifted from the pages of a steamy novel. The bedroom politics of the marriage of Herod Antipas to his brother’s divorced wife Herodias, the suggestive overtones of his stepdaughter’s dance at his birthday party, and Herodias’s calculatingly lethal exploitation of her daughter to manipulate her husband that ended with the head of John the Baptizer on a platter make this entirely tangential episode in the gospel of Mark look like the stuff of tabloids and pulp fiction. There’s not another passage in the four gospels that makes it any harder for good church-goin’ folk—and their preacher—to stay focused on Jesus.

I once paid a pastoral visit on a widow in her seventies who had just returned from her first-ever trip to New Orleans. “So, what did you think of the Big Easy?” I asked. I was left speechless when she answered with a wry smile on her face and a sparkle in her eye: “Oooh, I didn’t know there WAS so much sin in the world.” “I see,” I said, while I tried to figure out whether I should tell her I was glad she enjoyed her trip or I should offer to hear her confession. Once the music and the dancing start, it’s hard to stay focused on Jesus.

We have to be reminded that the point of this morning’s gospel lesson is who Jesus is and what Jesus is doing. Mark 6—the chapter in which this episode is recounted—begins with Jesus teaching in the synagogue and his wisdom and his mighty works. That is what Herod Antipas had heard about when our passage begins in verse 14: “King Herod heard of it; for Jesus’ name had become known.” The point is who Jesus is and what Jesus is doing. In the flashback to the court of Herod Antipas and the execution of John the Baptizer, this morning’s gospel lesson makes it clear that Jesus’ teaching and wisdom and mighty works played out from the beginning in a world replete with tensions and conflicts and anxieties and animosities. Then as now, claims and counter-claims of religious and political authorities compete for our attention and our loyalty. And once the claims and counter-claims begin, it’s hard to stay focused on Jesus.

That dynamic of claim and counter-claim is also present in this morning’s Old Testament lesson. Instead of John the Baptizer there is the prophet Amos, and instead of Herod Antipas there is King Jeroboam II of Israel, and instead of Herodias there is Amaziah the priest of Bethel. Amaziah claims to Jeroboam that Amos has committed treason. According to Amos 7:10-11, “Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent to King Jeroboam of Israel, saying, ‘Amos has conspired against you in the very center of the house of Israel. . . . For thus Amos has said, ‘Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel must go into exile away from his land.’”

Amos is a textbook example of a doom-and-gloom prophet. Amos warned of God’s coming judgment on God’s own people. Years ago, back when I was a young and ambitious Old Testament professor, I agreed to teach three simultaneous January Bible Studies on Amos. There was a Wednesday-evening series at one church, a Sunday-evening series at another church, and a Friday evening, Saturday morning, Sunday morning series at a third church. I began that January so excited at the prospect of unpacking the message of Amos in his time and relating it to the church and to the world in our time. But I have to tell you: By the end of the month, the doom and gloom of Amos times three had so beaten me up and beaten me down that I was demoralized and discouraged for the church and for the world. “Thus says the Lord: ‘For three transgressions, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment; because they sell the righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals—they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, and push the afflicted out of the way. . . . I will press you down in your place. . . . Flight shall perish from the swift, and the strong shall not retain their strength, nor shall the mighty save their lives.” That’s in Amos 2 (vv. 6-7, 13-14). “Therefore thus says the Lord, the God of hosts, the Lord: In all the squares there shall be wailing. . . . I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your . . . offerings, I will not accept them. . . . Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps.” That’s in Amos 5 (vv. 16, 21-23). “Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, The Lord has spoken. . . . Surely I will never forget any of their deeds. On that day, says the Lord God, I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation.” That’s in Amos 8 (vv. 4,8,10). Would you like me to stop now? Before the month was out, I was seriously considering not going to Bible Study, and I was the one leading it. Not every word of Scripture, you see, is a word of comfort and peace. Two centuries after Amos, the prophet Jeremiah took up his predecessor’s mantle when he said, “From the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain; and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely. They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace” (6:13-14).

I for one am convinced that we have gathered here this morning as a wounded people whose wounds are being treated carelessly. We are wounded by our own excesses and by the excesses of others. We are wounded by the apathy of others and by our own apathy toward others. We are wounded by tensions and conflicts and anxieties and animosities, by claims and counter-claims. For example, two weeks ago today I saw for the first time a now widespread internet meme: There are side-by-side photographs of a Confederate flag and a Rainbow Coalition flag; and the caption reads, “My Facebook feed looks like a battle broke out between the confederates and a skittles factory.” Travis Garner, a staff minister at Brentwood United Methodist Church in Brentwood, TN, reflected recently on carrying out ministry in a culture and a church divided 5 against 4, an allusion to last month’s Supreme Court ruling on marriage. Garner wrote, “The fact of the matter is that we are a divided nation, a divided people. In today’s culture, every possible division between people is exaggerated and exploited. Everything is turned into an either/or scenario. Either you agree with me, or you are a bigot. Either you agree with me, or you are completely immoral. . .  . The reality,” he wrote, “is that there are not ‘two sides.’. . . Each of us has a different story, unique experiences, particular struggles, and when we make anything a simple ‘either/or,’ we greatly miss the mark. What I’m feeling this morning as I prepare to head to worship,” he wrote, “is a deep sense of gratefulness that I believe in a God who loves all people. I’m thankful to be part of a church that has an open table: all people are invited to sit at God’s table. Which means, by the way, that people with whom I strongly disagree are loved by God and invited to sit at God’s table. People who are and have been hurtful to me are loved by God and invited to sit at God’s table. After all,” he wrote, “Jesus died for bigots. Jesus died for the immoral. Jesus died for us all.” Travis Garner nailed it. When charges and counter-charges of bigotry and immorality start flying, it’s hard to stay focused on Jesus.

In recent weeks, we have seen considerable publicity given to churches who welcome and affirm the 5s to the exclusion and marginalization of the 4s whom they call bigots, and considerable publicity has been given to churches who welcome and affirm the 4s to the exclusion and marginalization of the 5s whom they call immoral. But instead of churches of 5s and churches of 4s defined by our differences and divisions, I’d like to lift up this morning a church of 3s. A church of 3s instead of 4s or 5s is a church whose vision and mission and identity are grounded in three great equalizers in the Bible. These three great equalizers are biblical common denominators that stand over against the exaggerated divisions and the exploited of differences that are so widespread in our world and in the church.

The first great equalizer in the Bible is found in Genesis 1:27: All human beings are created in the image of God. Behind our various divisions and differences there is a first biblical common denominator: All human beings are created in the image of God, and “all” means “all”; not just us; not just some; all. The second great equalizer in the Bible is found in Romans 3:22-23 where Paul wrote, “There is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Behind our various divisions and differences there is a second biblical common denominator: “There is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”; and “all” means “all,” not just them, not just some, all. The third great equalizer in the Bible is found in 2 Corinthians 5:15: Jesus “died for all.” Behind our various divisions and differences there is a third biblical common denominator: Jesus “died for all,” and “all” means “all,” not just some, all. All are created in the image of God; all sin and fall short of the glory of God; and Jesus died for all.

A church that grounds its vision and mission and identity in the biblical 3—instead of the cultural 5 or 4—is a church that refuses to participate in the exaggeration of divisions and the exploitation of differences. It’s a church that lives by the reality that there are many more than “two sides” because “Each of us has a different story, unique experiences, particular struggles” in our respective and mutual woundedness that our culture and even our churches so often treat so carelessly.

It’s not an easy or comfortable thing to live by the 3s instead of the 5s or the 4s. For example, most of us here know that on Wednesday evening June 17, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, the pastor of the storied Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, welcomed into a Bible Study a young man who an hour later would murder him and eight of his parishioners because that young man’s understanding of the world and of other human beings had been distorted by a culture that exaggerates divisions and exploits differences. Something most of us here might not know is that two years ago, standing in the sanctuary of the congregation he pastored and addressing a group of doctoral students about the history of Mother Emanuel Church and its historic activist role in Charleston and in SC working to ensure that “all” means “all,” as in all human beings are created in the image of God and as in “All [persons, not just some] are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights,” Rev. Pinckney told the group, “You may have to die  . . . to do that.” “You may have to die . . . to do that,” he said. And he did.

And that brings us back to Jesus. In a world that is—and until kingdom come will always be—replete with tensions and conflicts and anxieties and animosities and torn by claims and counterclaims, Mark 6 reminds us that whatever else happens in the world around us and among us and within us, the focus of the church’s worship and the church’s work, the focus of the church’s vision and mission and identity, what brings us together in our differences that are real and our divisions that are powerful is the teaching and wisdom and mighty works of Jesus who died for the bigots, who died for the immoral, who died for all.

And all means all.

Hymn 437 in Celebrating Grace Hymnal: How Wide the Love of Christ: It knows not class or race but holds our one humanity within its broad embrace. (Herman G. Stuempfle, Jr., 1996) 

Copyrighted © 2015 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at 02tlsjeff@gmail.com.

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice? Nails and Gold and Everything Bold!

The Orangeburg Series

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2 Kings 5:1-5; Luke 4:22-30
January 8, 2012

NOTE: This sermon is adapted from “Like a Child,” in Building a House for All God’s Children: Diversity Leadership in the Church (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2008), pp. 76-84.

“What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and everything nice. That’s what little girls are made of.” These days, we know better than to put much stock in such old-fashioned, gender-biased adages, if for no other reason than the fact that our experience has introduced us to at least some girls and women who are obviously composed of anything but “sugar and spice and everything nice”—all present company excluded, of course.

Even so, we might be surprised to see in this morning’s Old Testament lesson a girl of an entirely different mettle than in the nursery rhyme. We never learn her name or anything more about her than what we read in 2 Kings 5:2-4. But from what we do learn about her in these three verses, I want to suggest an alternative adage to characterize this na‘ărâ qĕtannâ, this “little girl” from the land of Israel: Nails and gold and everything bold. That’s what this girl is made of.

There is a cast of powerful people in the fifth chapter of 2 Kings. There is Naaman, the Syrian general. There is the king of Syria and the king of Israel. And there is the prophet Elisha who lives in Samaria, the capital of Israel. It would be all too easy for us to assume that we can learn the most from the most powerful people in the story. But it turns out that it’s the “little girl” from whom we can learn the most. Recognizing that the most important person in the story is the one who appears to be the least powerful person in it is a striking reminder that our assumptions and our expectations and our conventional interpretations frequently limit what we can learn from reading the Bible.

Perhaps you have read 1 Peter 3:7, which speaks of women as “the weaker sex.” Those three words in 1 Peter 3:7 have created centuries of assumptions and expectations and conventional interpretations in the church and in our culture. But 1 Peter ignores the biblical woman named Deborah who was a judge and a prophet over Israel without whom Barak, the commander of the Israelite army, refused to go to war unless she went with him (Judges 4:4,8). It ignores the biblical woman named Athaliah who was queen over Judah for six years when there was no king in the land (2 Kings 11:3). It ignores the biblical woman named Esther whose cunning and courage saved her people from a massacre (Esther). It ignores the biblical woman named Phoebe whom the apostle Paul refers to as “a deacon of the church” in Romans 16:1. And it ignores the biblical woman named Eve in Genesis 2.

Genesis 2:7 reads, “God formed a man from the dust of the ground.” The Hebrew verb in that verse is yatzar, “to mold” or “shape” or “form.” It’s what a potter does to make a clay vessel. Contrast that with verse 22, the creation of Eve: “the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man [God] made into a woman.” So the man is made of dust, and the woman is made of bone. Which one might be stronger? Dust or bone? The Bible says men are made of dust and women are made of bone. Who looks like “the weaker sex” now?

In fact, Bible translators don’t play fair with you or with Eve either one when they use the generic English word “made” to describe the creation of Eve. The Hebrew verb in that verse is banah, and it means “to build” or “to construct.” Eve was not just “made.” Eve was built. Elsewhere in the Bible, houses are built, city walls are built, towers are built, fortresses are built. There is nothing weak about this woman created in Genesis 2.

So when I say that the little girl in 2 Kings 5 is made of nails and gold and everything bold, you shouldn’t be surprised. Because 1 Peter 3:7 may call women “the weaker sex,” but the rest of the Bible pictures women very differently than 1 Peter does. Nails and gold and everything bold.

I say, “nails,” because she was “tough as.” Consider what we know about this girl’s situation. She was an Israelite captive who had been carried away from her village by Syrian raiders. Naaman the general must have selected her as part of the spoils of war to give to his wife as a household slave. So when this girl suggests in verse 3 that Naaman could be cured of his disease if he would pay a visit to “the prophet who lives in Samaria,” she reveals an amazing spiritual toughness. In spite of the terror, misfortune and dislocation she has experienced, she has not abandoned her confidence in her God and in the religious institutions of her upbringing. How could her faith be so tenacious as to survive and even thrive as a captive slave in a foreign land instead of a child at home? Tough as nails.

This “little girl from the land of Israel” models for us the toughness and the tenacity of faith that is required for citizenship in the kingdom of God. The author of the book of Revelation understood what it takes when he wrote, “as a follower of Jesus I am your partner in patiently enduring the suffering that comes to those who belong to his Kingdom” (Revelation 1:9). That’s not the kind of talk we like to hear about citizenship in the kingdom of God. When’s the last time you saw a sign outside a church that read, “Come suffer patiently with us”?

That’s not a gospel you and I want to hear or to preach, much less to live. We buy the conquering savior who vanquished sin and death and evil, and we sell the suffering servant because we want no part of servanthood or suffering either one. We preach a Christ who conquers, overcomes, protects and defends us against all comers, a national championship Jesus. And then we find ourselves and our theology utterly unprepared for the adversity that eventually comes our way in life when there is no triumph, only travail, when the losses in our lives pile up and the wins are few and far between at best or evidently all in the past. In adversity, our faith slips away like sand through our fingers, and we fall into despair or cynicism, unlike the girl from the land of Israel, who had not sold her soul to a theology of victory and success. Nails, I say, because she was tough as. Nails and gold.

I say “gold” because she had “a heart of.” Why it ever occurred to this child to be so astonishingly compassionate as to wish that her captor could be cured of his disease we will never know. Perhaps she is an ancient example of what is called the “Stockholm Syndrome” or “capture-bonding,” in which persons who are held hostage, such as prisoners of war, kidnap victims, battered wives and abused children, become emotionally attached and intensely loyal to their captors. Or maybe her circumstances as a household slave in the home of a wealthy and pampered Syrian woman was actually an easier and happier condition than she had known in the home of her rude, impoverished Israelite father who had no good use for a daughter who was no help to him in the fields. Or maybe it was her character. Maybe she was one of those unusually empathetic children you come across from time to time, that child with a sensitivity to others that takes everyone by surprise.

We can’t get behind the text in front of us to reconstruct her feelings, but what we can see in the text is an astonishing compassion that looks right past differences in nationality and religion and disparities in power and wealth to see the commonality of human suffering and need. And so she said, “I wish that my master could go to the prophet who lives in Samaria! He would cure him of his disease.” That is astonishing compassion on the part of a victim of conquest and coercion. And it is precisely the compassion that is required for citizenship in the Kingdom of God, as Jesus puts it in the sermon on the mount: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:43-44). That’s another piece of the gospel for which it is hard to find a practitioner in these days of religious, political, and national partisanship, polemics and polarization. But we’ve found one in 2 Kings 5. This little girl from the land of Israel exhibits Kingdom-of-God compassion for her enemy and her oppressor. Nails and gold, I say, because she had a heart of.

Nails and gold and everything bold. I say, “everything bold,” because this girl makes an outrageously bold claim on the grace and mercy of God. We have no idea how she knew that the prophet Elisha and the God of Israel would cure the Syrian general of this disease. Perhaps she had suffered from it herself, or perhaps someone in her family had, or perhaps the reputation of this prophet was so widespread that she needed no personal experience with his gift of healing. However she knew it—or perhaps only believed it or hoped it or prayed it, she was outrageously bold in her offer to Naaman. She invited this foreigner to avail himself of the health and wellbeing that was available in her own community of faith. She invited the wolf into the sheepfold, for heaven’s sake. And when she did, she made an outrageous claim on the grace and mercy of God by suggesting that God would act to heal an enemy of God’s people, that God whom she worshiped was every bit as interested in and concerned for Naaman’s health and wellbeing as for her own.

Syrians were historic enemies of Israelites, so much so that more than 800 years later the good people of Nazareth in Luke’s gospel became so incensed at Jesus that they wanted to kill him when he reminded them of this passage that contradicted their assumptions and their expectations and their conventional interpretations. A leprous Syrian warrior is healed while Israelite men, women and children are not? They became furious with Jesus when he proclaimed as “the truth” (v 25) an understanding of God that insists that God does not discriminate against people we despise or detest.

In Luke 6, Jesus says, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:32-36).

In the end, it’s not the sociological imperative—“love your enemies”—that infuriates Jesus’ audience then and now. It’s the theological declarative that angers us most: God is “kind to the ungrateful and the wicked,” Jesus says, and God is merciful to our enemies. As Jesus preaches and teaches it, citizenship in the Kingdom of God requires worshiping and serving a God who loves even people who do not love God, a God who is good even to people who are not. That’s what this “little girl from the land of Israel” understood about God that many of us have not yet been willing to understand or to accept or to live by. Nails and gold and everything bold. That’s what it takes to be a follower of Jesus and to belong to Jesus’ kingdom.

And as for “the weaker sex”? Only in 1 Peter 3:7. The visionary words of the apostle Paul characterize Jesus’ kingdom this way: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

May we never fail to live into and live up to Paul’s vision of Jesus’ kingdom. It’s nails and gold and everything bold.

Copyrighted © 2012 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

A New Testament Lenten Journey: Who Is This?

Matthew 21:1-11
Palm Sunday 2011

When I was a child, Palm Sunday was one of my favorite Sundays in the Christian year. I loved waving a palm branch as the children’s choir led the procession while the whole congregation sang, “All glory, laud, and honor to Thee, Redeemer, King, To whom the lips of children made sweet hosannas ring!” I love a parade! Growing up as I did in good Lutheran churches, Palm Sunday’s triumphant entry was a welcome relief after all the gloom and impending doom of Lent.

What I know now that I didn’t know then is that Palm Sunday is the spiritual and liturgical equivalent of the eye of a hurricane. When a well-defined eye of a hurricane is passing over land, the wind and rain disappear and the sky above is clear. Fear subsides, and people come outside. They are sometimes fooled into thinking that the danger, the gloom and the doom, are past. But when the other side of the eyewall arrives, the winds and the rain return with a vengeance.

That’s the part I did not understand as a child: the return of the storm in the events of Holy Week. The impending passion of Christ in Maundy Thursday’s Last Supper, betrayal, and trial; Good Friday’s crucifixion, and Holy Saturday’s descent into hell were lost on me as a child on Palm Sunday. It was only palm branches and children’s choirs and “sweet hosannas ring.” “All glory, laud, and honor to Thee, Redeemer, King.” Is this morning about the palms, or is it about the passion? Is it about the triumphal entry of a king who has come to reign or the arrival of a suffering servant who has come to die? That either/or makes Palm Sunday the most ambiguous Sunday on the Christian calendar.

It also makes Palm Sunday an excellent example of one of the great religious and theological and spiritual challenges our world faces in the 21st century. It is the challenge of selective listening and selective reading and selective believing and selective living.

We all know what selective listening is. One mom characterized it in her family this way. Her family’s “sense of hearing is, at best, unstable, and seems to work in their favor, rather than mine,” she wrote. “If I drop a few coins, my 14-year-old daughter . . . can identify their value by the pitch and tone as they hit the kitchen floor. This same girl, however, can’t hear the dog barking five feet from her while she’s watching television. Presumably, ‘selective listening’ is a genetic disorder, since her father, who was sitting on the couch beside her, didn’t hear the dog either” (http://www.parentinghumor.com/categories/familyparenting/sensorywarfare.htm).

Humans are not the only organisms afflicted with this malaise. I read recently that the law of selective listening is one of many “laws of cat physics”: “Although a cat can hear a can of tuna being opened a mile away, she can’t hear a simple command three feet away” (http://www.pawsperouspets.com/humor/catphysics.html). Cats, like teenagers and husbands, are notoriously selective listeners.

I’ve heard that selective listening even happens in church—so I’ve heard. “A Husband came home from church, greeted his wife, and lifted her up and carried her all around the house. The wife was so surprised, and she asked, ‘Did the pastor preach about being romantic?’ The husband answered, ‘No, he said we must carry our burdens and sorrow’” (http://blogs.rediff.com/prannath/2007/09/19/selective-listening/, alt.). Selective listening.

Selective listening is what made it possible for me as child to hear and to sing the Palm Sunday hymn, “Ride on, ride on in majesty, in . . . pomp, ride on” without hearing the totality of the second line: “in lowly pomp, ride on to die.” I heard the majesty and pomp of the triumphal entry and filtered out the humility and the death at the end of the parade. It’s a dangerously common religious disorder.

In his just-published book titled When Religion Becomes Lethal: The Explosive Mix of Politics and Religion in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Charles Kimball—who in some ways still considers First Baptist Greenville a “home church”—describes the Islamic movement of Wahhabism, the “uncompromising, puritanical approach to Islam [that] took root in Saudi Arabia beginning in the 18th century and became “the most conservative of the four major Sunni legal schools” (p. 194). It features a strict adherence to what one particular 18th century Arabian cleric named Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab “understood to be the beliefs and practices of the earliest Muslims.” In the second half of the twentieth century Wahhabism was exported around the world from Saudi Arabia, and it is now most infamously associated with the extremism and the violence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda and Osama bin Ladin. Wahhabism is a religious and theological and spiritual disorder of selective listening, selective reading, selective believing, and selective living.

But the threat that Wahhabism poses to the West in particular has given rise to a similar disorder among non-Muslims who are choosing to misunderstand and misrepresent all of Islam as though it were all Wahhabi. And it is not. If you associate all Muslims with the radical extremism of Wahhabism, then to be consistent in your thinking, you must say that all Christians are skin-heads and snake-handlers. But you know better than that. And you should know better about Islam also. Selective listening, selective reading, selective believing, and selective living is a common religious disorder.

The crowd on the road to Jerusalem in this morning’s gospel lesson wanted a messiah-king so desperately that they threw down their coats on the road and cut branches from the trees to pave Jesus’ way into the city. They turned his arrival in Jerusalem into a parade with singing and cheering, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” They got the part in Zechariah 9:9 that reads, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he!” They got the “Ride on, ride on, in majesty” part. But in their desperation for a king in the image of their own projection, they ignored the rest of the verse: “humble and riding on a donkey” instead of instead of swashbuckling astride a stallion. They didn’t hear that part; they didn’t read that part; they didn’t believe that part; they wanted no part in living that part.

So later in the week, they were all surprised and offended when he offered no defense in response to the accusations that were made against him. When he was struck, he turned the other cheek. When he failed to meet their expectations as the kind of king they wanted they called for his crucifixion. That’s the kind of self-righteous sin that selective listening, selective reading, selective believing, and selective living can lead to. And every one of us is susceptible to it.

Some of us, for example, latch on to “Jesus Christ our Savior,” as Titus 3:6 puts it, and wish to hear nothing more of Jesus than that which feeds our personal faith and assures our “entry into the eternal kingdom” in the words of 2 Peter 1:11. Some of us, on the other hand, echo the words of the crowds in this morning’s gospel lesson who announce, “This is the prophet Jesus” (Matthew 21:11). We want an Old Testament Jesus, a reformer of the world order whose mission is centered on creating the ideal society, in spite of the fact that the Jesus of the gospels shows no interest whatsoever in establishing an ideal national or global or ecclesiastical society. He never ran for a seat on the Sanhedrin and he never endorsed a candidate for the Roman Senate. Pietists and policists alike turn their prized image of Jesus into a dashboard mascot whose head bobbles up and down in support of their every whim.

In contrast to the pietists and the politicists and self-centered crowds on the road to Jerusalem, the most important words in this morning’s gospel lesson are spoken by the bystanders in Jerusalem who on hearing all the commotion ask, “Who is this?” “Who is this?”

Every time you figure you have who this is figured out, your figuring will be inadequate. Every time you think you have found out who this is, your thinking will be confounded. Every time you believe you have who this is nailed down, the cross on which your believing nailed him will turn up empty. Who is this?

The New Testament says this is Joseph’s son (John 1:45), Mary’s child (Matthew 2:11), the brother of James and Joseph and Simon and Judas (Matthew 13:55), a Galilean (Matthew 26:69), a Nazarean (Matthew 2:23), a Savior (Luke 2:11), a prophet (Matthew 21:11), a blasphemer (Matthew 26:65), a madman (Mark 3:21), a rabbi (Mark 9:5), a slave (Philippians 2:7), a master (Luke 8:24), the king of the Jews (Matthew 27:37), the king of Israel (John 1:49), the Messiah (Mark 8:29), the Son of God (John 11:27), the Son of David (Mark 10:47), the Son of Man (Mark 8:31), God with us (Matthew 1:23), a glutton and a drunkard (Matthew 11:14), a friend of sinners (Matthew 11:19), the lamb of God (John 1:29), the lion of the tribe of Judah (Revelation 5:5), the Word (John 1:1), the true light (John 1:9), the Savior of the world (John 4:42), the bread of life (John 6:35), the light of the world (John 9:5), the good shepherd (John 10:11), the gate for the sheep (John 10:7), the way (John 14:6), the truth (John 14:6), the life (John 14:6), the vine (John 15:5), Lord and God (John 20:28), the Lord of glory (1 Corinthians 2:8), the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24), the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15), the firstborn of all creation (Colossians 1:15), the last Adam (1 Corinthians 14:45), the crucified one (1 Corinthians 1:23), the risen one (Luke 24:34).

The mistake that the crowd on the road to Jerusalem made was not that they welcomed Jesus as king; their mistake was that they could not or would not see that the Jesus they welcomed is always and everywhere much, much more than a projection of our own expectations and desires. And that’s precisely why Palm Sunday is so important in the annual cycle of the Christian year: it is palm branches and passion.

The truth be told, not one of us can avoid selective reading and selective believing and selective living any more than teenagers, husbands, and cats can avoid selective listening. The question is not whether you are selective or not; the question is what your principle of selection is. What do you select and why? What are the consequences of your selection for your listening, reading, believing and living?

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying the parade while the palm branches are waving and the sun is shining and the band is playing. We all love a parade. But Palm Sunday is the eye of a religious and theological and spiritual hurricane, a temporary respite before the storm begins anew with a vengeance in the upcoming week of the Christian year because who Jesus is is more fully and authentically revealed in the cross than in the parade.

So even now, as Holy Week begins, we turn our attention in the direction that Jesus’ attention had been focused all along: to the cross, to the cross, to the cross. There is no better principle of selection for listening, for reading, for believing, and for living than the cross. After all, it was the cross that was waiting at the end of the parade: “Ride on, ride on, in majesty ride; on in lowly pomp to die.”


Photo by davecurlee, used under license of Creative Commons.

This material is Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.

Bread for the Journey: Loaves Abound!

John 6:1-13
The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany 2011


“Wherever the road is turning, there is bread for the journey. Wherever God guides, God provides.”

“Pass the Word around: Loaves abound!”

For the past several weeks, the primary focus of our stewardship emphasis has been on our journey, our bread. To be sure, the focus hasn’t been on us alone. We have included “fellow pilgrims on the road” from Cowpens, SC, to Guanajay, Cuba. Along the way, we heard the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, call for friendship and understanding with those who are enemies or opponents, as well as our friends. Along the way, we have included others or “the other.” But the primary focus has been on our journey, our bread.

This morning, our focus changes.
“Pass the Word around: Loaves abound!” That’s a lot of bread. Why bring it all at once, all on a single Sunday? It’ll go to waste, somebody will say. Well, where it’s going, I can promise you it won’t go to waste. Most of you are familiar with “Loaves & Fishes,” the “mobile food rescue organization” that was founded here in Greenville in 1991. Our own Jon Good is the chair of the Board of Directors. According to “Loaves & Fishes,” 27% of the food produced in the United States every year goes to waste. Do you hear that? More than a fourth of the food that is produced here is thrown away. It turns out that world hunger is not nearly the problem that some people make it out to be. World hunger is not the problem. World waste is the problem.

Last year, Loaves & Fishes rescued more than a million pounds of fresh food that would have gone into the landfill right here in Greenville County. By receiving perishable food items that would otherwise be thrown away by grocery stores, restaurants, caterers, wholesale food distributors, churches and corporate cafeterias and transporting those items quickly to food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters and residential programs, community centers, and neighborhood distribution programs, last year Loaves & Fishes provided the food for more than a million meals out of the 27% wasted food in Greenville. Volunteers from Loaves & Fishes are standing by, just waiting to engage in a “mobile rescue” of this bread from our Sanctuary.

They are going to start by taking it to Project Host, “the soup kitchen,” on Academy Street just south and west of Greenville’s thriving downtown, a couple blocks too far west of West End to be fashionable. Last year, Project Host served 78,000 meals to people who otherwise would have gone hungry. Project Host serves 250 meals a day six days a week at lunch time. It also has a program called the Feed Hungry Children Project that serves full evening meals to 191 children at six different centers in Greenville County. I’m told that Project Host uses on average thirty loaves of fresh bread a day, and lately they have had to buy bread because rescue deliveries have not kept pace with their needs. Hearing that made me wonder if all that bread that gets bought off the shelves in the grocery story when the weather forecast predicts snow actually gets eaten? How much of it just gets horded and then thrown away? World hunger is not the problem. World waste is. If we have brought more bread today than Project Host can use in a timely manner, there are food pantries, shelters and residential programs, community centers, and neighborhood distribution programs standing in line behind the soup kitchen. Where this bread is going, it will not go to waste.

It was that way in this morning’s gospel lesson also. At the end of the story Jesus said, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” At the command of Jesus, the disciples became the first “mobile food rescue organization” as they moved among the people and collected what was left over. I’d like to suggest this morning that the point of the story is not just that there was more than enough to go around, as it is commonly preached. The point is also that none of it should be wasted. None of the sowing and the growing and the reaping and the grinding and the mixing and the kneading and the rising and the baking and the blessing and the breaking should be wasted. The problem is not hunger; the problem is waste. “Gather it up,” Jesus says, “so that nothing may be lost.”

The hero in the story, as everyone knows, is a child with a lunch, a lunch not nearly large enough to feed a hillside full of people. But children can be a resourceful lot. One summer day, dozens of First Baptist children were up on Paris Mountain for a children’s ministry activity. When lunchtime came, one little boy discovered that he had lost or forgotten her lunch. Bev asked the children sitting around him, “What do you think we should, do?” Before anyone could answer the question, another little boy sitting right beside took half of his sandwich and placed it in front of the boy who had none. “Here!” said a little girl, as she handed her bag of chips across the table. Another child handed over an apple, and another still fished out some cookies and passed them along. And before you knew it, a child who would have gone hungry had all he could eat and then some. That’s the gospel story. Like the little boy on the mountain in Galilee, the children on Paris Mountain were happy to hand over what they had so that everyone would have something. The problem is not hunger; the problem is hording.

“Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little,” Philip said to Jesus. The gospels tell us that Philip was from Bethsaida, which according to its name, “house of fishing,” was probably a fishing village along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. But Philip must have been in the accounting department of the fishing business. Because when Jesus asks him where to buy bread for these people to eat, Philip immediately estimates how much it will cost instead of answering the question Jesus asked. The deflection of the question from where the available resources are to the question of how much money is at stake is a common problem. Almost all of us get caught between the “two masters,” as Jesus calls them. You “will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth,” Jesus says (Matthew 6:24). You have to choose, Jesus says. Is God your God, or is wealth your god? This morning’s gospel lesson is a reminder that if our first question is always, “How much will it cost?” instead of “How can we make it happen?” then money has become our master. Jesus wasn’t asking Philip about how much it would take. Jesus was asking Philip about the wherewithal of God and God’s people to do it. The problem is not hunger; the problem is greed.

In the way the gospel of John tells the story, Jesus sees the hunger problem before anyone else when he sees the large crowd approaching him. No one has to tell him about their hunger; Jesus sees it coming. It’s not that Jesus is some sort of soothsayer or fortune teller. It’s not a power of prediction or prognostication. It’s a matter of sensitivity to the needs of others. We don’t need prediction or prognostication to know that that people are going hungry in the communities in which you and I live. We don’t need more information to see that people are starving to death on the planet we share with them. We don’t even need more production: most experts agree that the current production capacity of global agriculture is sufficient to feed the current population of the world. The problem is not prognostication or information or insufficient production but insensitivity.

But I would remind you that in this congregation there is a little boy who without even being asked handed over half his sandwich to a child who had none, and there is a little girl who gave her bag of chips and another child who shared an apple and another who passed along a bag of beloved cookies. And like those children on Paris Mountain, this morning you have joined the gospel story by bringing loaves of bread and commitment cards to the Lord’s Table as an expression of the stewardship of your life. It is a journey of sensitivity and responsiveness to the needs of others. It is a journey of serving God rather than wealth. It is a journey of generosity rather than hording. And it is a journey of conservation and “mobile rescue” rather than waste.

“Wherever the road is turning, There is bread for the journey. Wherever God guides, God provides.” “Pass the Word around: Loaves abound!” Thanks be to God!


“Pass the Word around: Loaves abound!” is from the hymn “Let us Talents and Tongues Employ,” by Fred Kaan, 1975.
“Wherever God guides, God will provide” is from an original composition by Kyle Matthews, 2011.
Photography by Bill Dunlap.

This material is Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.

Mary the Revolutionary

Psalm 146:5-10
Luke 1:46-55
The Third Sunday in Advent 2010

Have you ever known someone for a long time, only to discover something about them that you did not expect? When Bev and I married, we had known each other since we were both 10 years old. I thought I knew her. I really did. So you cannot imagine the surprise it was to me to discover that this otherwise fastidious, careful and particular woman would actually squeeze the toothpaste tube indiscriminately in the middle instead of squeezing it systematically from the end like you’re supposed to. It was unseemly. It still is. There it is, every morning. This mangled toothpaste tube sitting on the bathroom counter reminding me that you think you know someone, and then it turns out that you don’t know them all that well after all.

I thought I knew Mary the mother of Jesus. After all, I’ve known her longer than I’ve known Bev. When I was still too young to know what the words were, much less what they meant, I crooned in a boy soprano, “’Round yon virgin mother and child.” Later, I would learn to sing, “Gentle Mary laid her child lowly in a manger.” Later still, I learned of Mary’s great submission to God. In response to a troubling message from an angel she said meekly, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). Mary would never squeeze the toothpaste tube in the middle!

So, perhaps you can imagine how surprised I was to discover that this otherwise virginal, gentle and submissive woman was a revolutionary. To be sure, the submissive, gentle and virginal woman is the Mary whom the church has championed down through the centuries. But the song that Mary sings in Luke 1, called in church tradition “The Magnificat,” after the first word in the Latin translation of her song, reveals a Mary who is every bit as subversive as she is submissive.
The gospel of Luke tells us that after Mary was told of her unexpected pregnancy, she left her home in Nazareth to travel south to the Judean hill country and the home of her older relative Elizabeth who was also unexpectedly expecting. Elizabeth greets Mary with a blessing on her and on the child she is carrying. And in response to Elizabeth’s blessing, Mary sings her song that is at least as subversive as it is submissive.

It begins with praise for God in verse 46 and rejoicing in verse 47. In verse 48, it moves to divine grace, Mary’s humility, and her blessedness in the eyes of others on account of God’s grace and her humility. Verses 49-50 return to focus on God: God’s mighty acts, God’s holiness, and God’s mercy. Verses 46-50 form a model prayer of praise. It should come as no surprise that the mother of the one who taught us to pray a model prayer would herself pray a model prayer in Luke 1:46-50.

We know that when it comes to faith formation, children are are not merely “passive recipients of parental influences,” as researchers at Bucknell University have pointed out. But a mother’s religious influence is not to be underestimated in any aspect of childrearing and child wellbeing. In a study titled the “Relationship Between Maternal Church Attendance and Adolescent Mental Health and Social Functioning,” psychologists Stuart Varon and Anne Riley found these results:
Youths whose mothers attended religious services at least once a week had greater overall satisfaction with their lives, more involvement with their families, and better skills in solving health-related problems and felt greater support from friends compared with youths whose mothers had lower levels of participation in religious services. Maternal attendance at religious services had a strong association with the youths’ outcome in overall satisfaction with health and perceived social support from friends.” The effects of a mother’s religious influence are not to be underestimated.

Now, the truth is, we know nothing about Mary’s attendance at religious services. But Luke 1 portrays her as so familiar with the worship tradition of prayer in the psalms of her Jewish faith that in a time of great joy—and great stress—she prayed a model prayer just like Hannah’s prayer in 1 Samuel 2 and in the Psalms, and her son grew up to pray a model prayer in Luke 11. Mary’s model prayer in verse 46-50 is hardly revolutionary, is it?

But look where Mary’s song goes in verses 51-53: “God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; God has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” This Mary is a revolutionary. This Mary is subversive. This Mary would squeeze the toothpaste in the middle of the tube!

Is it any wonder that Mary’s son would grow up to say, “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled” (Luke 6:21), and “Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry” (Luke 6:25)? Should anyone be surprised that Mary’s son would grow up to say, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20), and “woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your reward” (Luke 6:24)?

Mary the mother of Jesus was no Joan of Arc or Harriet Tubman or Gloria Steinem or Mary Daly, but she is no less revolutionary than they. The lullaby that Mary sang her baby in utero was the Magnificat—and not just the first four verses that could easily be mistaken for a first-century praise chorus. The lullaby that Mary sang her baby included verses 51-53: “God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; God has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”

And when she did, she planted the seeds of the longest lasting and most frequently recurring revolution in the history of humankind. Again and again through the centuries, Mary’s song and Mary’s son’s words and life and death and resurrection have fueled aspirations and acts of justice for the oppressed, food for the hungry, freedom for those who are imprisoned, sight for the blind, the raising up of those who are bowed down, protection for strangers, and safekeeping for widows and orphans.

Down through the centuries, the church that carries Jesus’ name has often sided with the powerful and the proud; it has often sided with the rich and the wicked. But even when it does, you see, it carries with it the seeds of its own destruction in Mary’s song and Jesus’ words and life and death and resurrection. There is a model for us all and for Christ’s church in Mary the revolutionary.

Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God as being but a tiny “mustard seed that someone took and sowed in the garden; it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches” (Luke 13:19). That’s a quiet revolution that is planted and nurtured entirely without the fanfare, pomp and circumstance of the powerful and the proud. Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God as being as imperceptible as the “yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened” (Luke 13:21). That’s a revolution in the making that no one even notices until it has already happened.

Many years ago, my parents took my two younger brothers and me to Williamsburg, Virginia. Before we wandered that reconstructed treasure, we watched a video that introduced the town, its history, and the beginnings of the American revolution. The video concluded with a stirring clip in which young men and old took up arms and marched away to resist the British. When it was over and the lights came back on in the little theater, my youngest brother, who was probably six years old at the time, turned to my mother and said enthusiastically, “Mother, where do we get the guns?” That’s the kind of revolution we’re all looking for. “Where do we get the guns?”

Whether the guns are literal or metaphorical, we are always susceptible to the devilish temptation to turn the kingdom of God into a kingdom of men and women by force and by power. Even in the church, we always want a revolution we can be proud of instead of humble in. We want a revolution that is big and powerful, not small and imperceptible, that grows unnoticed in a garden, that leavens a loaf without anyone even noticing.

And when we do, we reveal that our mission is not really for the oppressed or the hungry or the imprisoned or the blind or the bowed down or the strangers or the widows or the orphans at all, but it is for ourselves. We make the mistake of only singing Mary’s praise chorus—“the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is God’s name”—without moving on to sing and to live the rest of her revolutionary lullaby. The revolutionary lullaby is how the kingdom comes, how God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven.

In the earliest decades of the church, that revolutionary lullaby was lived out in an uncommon common meal in which Jews and Gentiles, men and women, rich and poor, Asians and Europeans and Africans all sat down together to eat and to drink in communion with God and in communion with one another. That’s the uncommon common meal we share this morning because Mary’s song is our song and Mary’s revolution is our revolution, small and unnoticed, imperceptible even, until someone looks around and says, “Look, there are Asians and Europeans and Africans and rich and poor and men and women and Jews and Gentiles all eating and drinking together in communion with God and in communion with one another in the kingdom of God, in heavenly peace, in peace on earth, goodwill toward all!”

It all goes back to Mary the revolutionary. Let’s eat and drink to the kingdom of God.


Photo by sarah.mckenzie11, used by license of Creative Commons.

This material is Copyrighted © 2010 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.