Healed

A sermon preached at Niles Discovery Church, Fremont, California,
on Sunday, April 28, 2024, by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer.
Scripture:  John 21:1-8 and Mark 5:24-34
Copyright © 2024 by Jeffrey S. Spencer

It’s so easy to get this church thing wrong. It’s so easy to get caught up in the institution, in the preservation of what was, in power and property. Maybe more so for me than for you, since my position is rather institutional.

I’m thankful when I get reminders that the church thing is supposed to be a mirror of the Jesus thing. And a reminder of what Jesus was about. That’s what happened last week. I got to read a sermon that Nadia Bolz-Weber preached at the ordination of one of her dear friends. In that sermon, she told a story:

Nadia Bolz-Weber

“It’s Easter Sunday and I am worshipping inside the Denver women’s prison, and during one of the songs, my mind wanders … The band is playing and I am staring distractedly at our altar, a square plastic table which, each Sunday, is adorned with hand-me-downs from churches that have closed. I stare at the cheap faded yellow satin on the table in front of me; janky frayed letters sewn on its front spell out alleluia.

“‘God knows what decade that was made,’ I think to myself. ‘Maybe the 60s when it and whatever the now defunct congregation who donated it was still full and shiny.’

“And then I realize that surrounding me are 175 women in prison greens singing:
If you’ve got pain, he’s a pain taker.
If you feel lost, he’s a way maker.
If you need freedom or saving, he’s a prison-shaking savior.
If you’ve got chains, he’s a chain breaker.
Which is when I remember that this [church] thing has never been about power and institutions and property. It’s never been for the proud. It’s always been about God uplifting the humble and feeding the hungry and forgiving the sinner. Afterall, Jesus said he came for the sick and not the well.”^[1]

I think both of our scripture readings point to Jesus’ healing ministry – and in very different ways. The resurrection story from John’s gospel doesn’t look like a healing story, at least not at first glance. This account takes place maybe a couple weeks after that first Easter morning. A group of the disciples are hanging out. John doesn’t tell us where they are, but later we learn that it has to be evening or maybe even after sundown. Peter announces that he’s going fishing, and the group says they’ll go with him. Hey, at least they aren’t keeping themselves locked away in their fear.

What they’re doing here, I think, is going back to the familiar, going back to something concrete, going back to something they knew and understood. Nobody’s childhood is pain-free, and some childhoods are downright traumatic. All of us develop coping mechanisms that help us survive whatever pains we go through as kids. And when we become adults, it is really easy to go back to those coping mechanisms when we’re dealing with something painful, even though we have new skills for dealing with painful situations.

That’s the sort of thing I see happening here. Peter, Andrew, James, and John were fishers before Jesus called them. Here, even after spending time traveling with Jesus and being formed by Jesus, they go back to fishing. Jesus’ crucifixion (which was a traumatic thing to go through, even if these guys didn’t witness it directly) would push a button and make them turn to an old coping mechanism. Even though they’ve had experiences of the resurrected Jesus being in their midst, those are confusing experiences and difficult to explain, maybe even disconcerting enough to bring on an old coping mechanism response.

So Peter announces he’s going to do a thing he knows how to do. He’s going fishing. And a bunch join him. They fish all night and catch nothing. And Jesus shows up on the shore of the lake. He calls out to them, confirming that they haven’t caught anything, and he tells them to try casting their net on the other sides of the boat. And their net is so full of fish they can’t haul them in.

Jesus’ advice is about more than just fishing. This is a healing story. By meeting them at the lake at daybreak, Jesus helps them heal from their old patterns and coping mechanism, calling them to new ways of being and coping in the world.

The story in the passage from Mark is more obviously a healing story. A woman “had been suffering from a flow of blood for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians and had spent all that she had, and she was no better but rather grew worse.”[2]

I’m sure there are people in worship today who have had a similar experience with the medical industry. You’ve had a medical problem. You’ve done what you can. You’ve sought the advice of doctors and specialists. And things just haven’t gotten better. In fact, in some ways things have gotten worse.

The woman in the story “had heard about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, ‘If I but touch his cloak, I will be made well.’”[3] So, in the press of the crowd, the woman claims her own agency and reaches out and touches Jesus’ cloak. And she is healed.

There are some wonderful contrasts in these two stories. First, there’s the contrast between who sees what needs to be done. In the Mark story, the woman sees she needs to touch Jesus’ cloak. In the John story, Jesus sees where the disciples need to fish.

The contrasts continue. In Mark’s story, the woman knows what to do. In John’s story, the men need Jesus to tell them what to do. In Mark’s story, the miracle happens internally, inside the woman’s body. In John’s story, the miracle happens externally, out in the lake in the fishing nets. In Mark’s story, the woman sees Jesus and that leads to the miracle. In John’s story, the miracle happens and that leads to the disciples seeing Jesus. In Mark’s story, Jesus heals by taking something away (the woman’s illness). In John’s story, Jesus heals by giving the disciples something (fish). Mark’s story takes place mid-day. John’s story takes place just as dawn is breaking.

Many thanks to Cindy Sojourner for helping us notice all these contrasts at last Monday’s Monday Morning Bible Study. Here’s my big take-away from all these contrasts: Jesus’ healing resurrection powers are ready to work anywhere, at any time, with anyone.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. A friend recently wrote a poetic reflection about her mother entering hospice. Her father died not too long ago after a long journey with dementia. Her mother also has dementia and her journey has moved much more quickly. Here’s some of Reena’s reflection:[4]

You’ve been fading for a long time but you’ve also been reemerging as well.

Your past self, burdened with resentment and frustration and grief, seemed to be dissipating and in its place blossomed a new version of you.

This you was softer, lighter, more joyful.

This you was open and free with your love, rather than conditional and closed off.

I’ve lost count of the many beautiful things you’ve said to me these last months.

Things I never thought I’d be lucky enough to hear from you.

Things you had such a hard time saying before:

You’re so wonderful.

You girls, you’re like Wonder Woman!

Thank you so much sweetheart.

You’re so beautiful.

I’m so grateful for you.

The sweet words spill so freely from your lips I have a hard time believing you ever struggled to utter them.

I can’t believe how blessed I am to have had this time with you.

So many people never get the chance to heal relationships in their lifetime.

To witness change and healing in someone they love.

To experience adoration and gratitude where it had not been expressed before.

I’m so lucky, I know.

Why doesn’t that make this easier?

Reena has found and is finding healing during this hard, hard, holy time. She might not identify it as the resurrection power of healing. The language of her spirituality isn’t so traditionally Christian. Still, that’s what I see. I see Jesus, at this strange time and in the strange circumstances of Reena’s life, welcoming her touch. I see Jesus giving her what she lacks and needs in this moment.

For five years or more, there’s been a story floating around the Internet that is commonly attributed to A.A. Milne. It is almost certainly not his work, though it was written in his style. More likely, it is the work of Kathryn Wallace.^[5] Nonetheless, the story is sweet and it reminds us that we can sometimes me the means Jesus uses to bring healing.

It occurred to Pooh and Piglet that they hadn’t heard from Eeyore for several days, so they put on their hats and coats and trotted across the Hundred Acre Wood to Eeyore’s stick house. Inside the house was Eeyore.

“Hello Eeyore,” said Pooh.

“Hello Pooh. Hello Piglet,” said Eeyore, in a Glum Sounding Voice.

“We just thought we’d check in on you,” said Piglet, “because we hadn’t heard from you, and so we wanted to know if you were okay.”

Eeyore was silent for a moment.

“Am I okay?” he asked, eventually.

“Well, I don’t know, to be honest. Are any of us really okay?

That’s what I ask myself.

All I can tell you, Pooh and Piglet, is that right now I feel really rather Sad, and Alone, and Not Much Fun To Be Around At All.

Which is why I haven’t bothered you.

Because you wouldn’t want to waste your time hanging out with someone who is Sad, and Alone, and Not Much Fun To Be Around At All, would you now.”

Pooh glanced at Piglet, and Piglet glanced at Pooh, and they both settled, one on each side of Eeyore in his twig abode.

Eeyore looked at them in surprise. “What are you doing?”

“We’re sitting here with you,” said Pooh, “because we are your friends. And true friends don’t care if someone is feeling Sad, or Alone, or Not Much Fun To Be Around At All. True friends are there for you anyway. And so here we are.”

“Oh,” said Eeyore. “Oh.”

And the three of them sat there in silence.

And while Pooh and Piglet said nothing at all, somehow, almost imperceptibly, Eeyore started to feel a very tiny little bit better.

Because Pooh and Piglet were There.

During this time of reflection, I invite you to consider these two questions: Has this look at the resurrection power of healing unlocked one of your resurrection stories? How might you speak up and share this good news?

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[1] Nadia Bolz-Weber, “Who’s this whole thing FOR, anyhow?” The Corners, https://thecorners.substack.com/p/who-is-this-whole-thing-for-anyhow (posted 7 April 2024; accessed 22 April 2024). Some grammatical corrections made.

[2] Mark 5:25-26, NRSV.

[3] Mark 5:27-28, NRSV.

[4] Reena Burton, “Hospice,” Tender Heart, https://tenderheartedgirl.wordpress.com/2024/04/24/hospice/ (posted and accessed on 24 April 2024).

[5] “Fake Poohs,” English Wanted, https://englishwanted.com/editing/fake-poohs/ (posted 27 August 2019; accessed 13 April 2024).

Found

A sermon preached at Niles Discovery Church, Fremont, California,
on Sunday, April 21, 2024, by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer.
Scripture:  Luke 24:36-43 and John 14:18-28
Copyright © 2024 by Jeffrey S. Spencer

We’re mixing together Luke and John today. That’s always a little dicey, talking about two different gospels in one sermon. Each gospel writer wrote from a different context and each gospel writer had favorite stories and their own point of view. So we need to be careful when talking about two readings that are from different gospels. I’ll do our best.

Let’s start with the Luke passage we shared at the beginning of worship. Though this may seem a strange way to explore this resurrection story, I’ll ask the question anyway: Have you ever seen a video of what happens when you put a cucumber behind a cat? These videos made the rounds on social media maybe eight years ago or so. Lots of people filmed their cats after they snuck up on them and quietly placed a cucumber behind them, typically while they were eating. Here are a couple examples.

Confession time: I admit to finding these videos to be funny. I also find them to be cruel. I don’t know that there’s a definitive explanation of why the cats freak out when the turn around a see a cucumber. One explanation that seems to get a fair amount of traction is that the cucumber looks enough like a snake that it triggers a protective, evolutionary reflex in the cats. The other explanation is that it is simply surprising.

A lot has already happened in the 24th chapter of Luke’s gospel. Women found the tomb where Jesus was buried empty when they went there early that morning and two men in dazzling white (typically understood to be angels) told them that Jesus had been raised from the dead. Peter confirmed their story about the empty tomb (though there were no angels there by the time he got to the tomb). Two disciples who had left Jerusalem met Jesus on the way to Emmaus and finally recognized him as their resurrected Lord when he broke the bread with them. Those two (who weren’t among the inner circle of the 12 disciples) ran all the way back to Jerusalem that evening and tell the 11 (the 12, minus Judas Iscariot). And now, while they’re talking about what happened, Jesus stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”

Their reaction was not one of peace. Their reaction was much more like a cat’s when a cucumber is placed behind it. What are they seeing? Is it a ghost? You might remember that in one of John’s resurrection stories, Jesus gets inside to where the disciples are hiding – even though the doors were locked. Luke seems to be addressing this exact concern.

“Touch me and see,” Jesus says, directly addressing their fears and doubts that, rather than a resurrected Jesus, they were actually seeing a ghost. “… for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” Luke frames Jesus’ act of showing his wounds as not only an act of demonstrating who he is (as in, “look, I’m the one you saw crucified”) but also an act of demonstrating his physicality (as in, “look, I’m a human being, not an ethereal spirit”).

Jesus asks them if they have anything to eat, and this, too, seems to be a “ghosts don’t eat broiled fish” proof that the resurrected Jesus isn’t a ghost. I think something else might be going on here. Some early Jesus-follower communities celebrated communion with bread and wine – and fish. Just as Jesus breaking the bread in the Emmaus story helped the disciples recognize the resurrected Christ in their midst, the disciples giving Jesus some broiled fish might (and I stress might) be a nod to communion. The other thing that could be going on here is simply the importance of eating together.

Dr. Marcia McFee points out, “Meals are one of the best ways to be with people. Something about sitting down together and eating just loosens up the things that might keep us from interacting and connecting with our neighbor. I don’t think it is an accident that our most important ritual and sacrament is in itself a meal.”[1] Eating together has the power to help us reach across the divide of loneliness so many people feel.

I know that some of the loneliest I’ve ever felt was when someone I deeply loved died. When my mother died, I was living alone in a big apartment complex in Martinez. I was surrounded by lots of people, and they were all people I didn’t know. I had never taken the time to introduce myself to them and they had never taken the time to introduce themselves to me.

Suzanne Hanni Spencer

Her death wasn’t a surprise. She had had cancer and been through a year of chemotherapy that was awful. When the cancer grew back, she decided not to go through the treatment again. And then one morning, she died. And I didn’t know the people around me and so I couldn’t turn to them for support.

Thankfully, I had a friend in Berkeley and I called him, I think more to say the words out loud – “my mother died” – than for any other reason. He came over. He dropped whatever it was he was doing and came to my apartment, just so I wouldn’t be alone. He got me to change the flight I had already booked so I could fly back east the next day, while he cleaned some dishes that had accumulated in the kitchen sink. He made sure I ate – and that I didn’t have to eat alone. He got me through that first day.

I was in high school when my grandfather died. All these years later what I most distinctly remember is eating dinner in my grandparents’ home. The six from my family, my aunt and cousin, my grandmother, and my grandparents’ pastor gathered around a table. I remember neither getting to Pennsylvania, nor getting back home. I don’t remember how long we were there. I don’t remember where we stayed. The only other snippet of the trip I remember is of being impressed by the pastor’s sermon, that he seemed to actually know my grandfather. Other than that, the one thing I remember is eating together.

“Do you have something to eat?” the resurrected Jesus asked the disciples. Could he have been helping them simply be with each other in a way they didn’t know they needed. They were in each other’s presence, there in their room. But were they really in each other’s company? It is so easy to be in a crowd and still feel alone.

A year ago, the Surgeon General wrote an opinion piece published in The New York Times about loneliness.[2] He wrote, “At any moment, about one out of every two Americans is experiencing measurable levels of loneliness. This includes introverts and extroverts, rich and poor, and younger and older Americans. Sometimes loneliness is set off by the loss of a loved one or a job, a move to a new city, or health or financial difficulties – or a once-in-a-century pandemic.

“Other times, it’s hard to know how it arose but it’s simply there. One thing is clear: Nearly everyone experiences it at some point. But its invisibility is part of what makes it so insidious. We need to acknowledge the loneliness and isolation that millions are experiencing and the grave consequences for our mental health, physical health and collective well-being.”

Interestingly there isn’t uniformity of loneliness across demographic groups. For instance, a study commissioned by the insurance company Cigna found that young adults (18-24) for nearly twice as likely as seniors (66 and older) to experience loneliness.[3] Still, there’s a darn good chance that between a quarter and half of us gathered here today, whether we’re gathered on site or on line, are experiencing some level of loneliness. Even though we managed to get up and get dressed, even though we are in a group with a common purpose, a big portion of us are experiencing a measurable level of loneliness right now.

The consequences of the “epidemic of loneliness” reach far beyond the individual. “When we are less invested in one another,” Murthy wrote, “we are more susceptible to polarization and less able to pull together to face the challenges that we cannot solve alone – from climate change and gun violence to economic inequality and future pandemics.” He says that addressing loneliness requires “reorienting ourselves, our communities, and our institutions to prioritize human connection and healthy relationships. The good news is we know how to do this.”

Dr. Murthy says there are three areas that need our attention. First, we need to strengthen social infrastructure. He’s talking about the programs, policies, and structures that aid in the development of healthy relationships. This needs to happen in our schools, in our workplaces, in our community programs and institutions, and in our faith communities. Really, any place where people come together.

Second, we need to change our habits and uses of technology. This means doing things like putting down our phones so we can be more present with one another. It also “means choosing not to take part in online dialogues that amplify judgment and hate instead of understanding.”

Third, we need take steps in our personal lives to rebuild our connections with one another. Murthy says that “small steps can make a big difference.… It could be [as simple as] spending 15 minutes each day to reach out to people we care about, introducing ourselves to our neighbors, checking on co-workers who may be having a hard time, sitting down with people with different views to get to know and understand them, and seeking opportunities to serve others, recognizing that helping people is one of the most powerful antidotes to loneliness.”

While I agree with Murthy that reaching out to others is a great way to decrease loneliness, if you’re the lonely person, that can be hard to do. Though I don’t know if there’s science to back up this claim, I suspect that depression and loneliness dance together. When one is dealing with clinical depression, simply getting out of bed can be a victory and, once accomplished, there just isn’t anything left to be the one doing the reaching out. Similarly, loneliness untreated can, I deeply suspect, lead to depression. Likewise, it can be hard to reach out when one is dealing with other health concerns or disabilities. It’s hard to get to the neighborhood senior center if one has had to give up driving, and being around crowds can be dangerous when one is immunocompromised. All the more reason for the portion of us who aren’t lonely to reach out to the portion who are.

“I will not leave you orphaned,” Jesus says to his disciples (according to John). This is part of Jesus’ “farewell discourse,” and long monologue Jesus offers on Maundy Thursday. He knows he’s going to be killed by the powers that be. And, still, he promises that his death won’t leave them orphaned, he won’t leave them isolated and alone. They belong, and as his 21st century disciples we belong, to God’s family. Jesus says that it’s important to keep his commandments, which might seem like a tough thing to do. But at their core, Jesus’ commandments are this: love God and love one another.

And isn’t it wonderful, that when we keep that commandment, when we actively love one another, we become the presence of Jesus for others (whether they recognize it or not). When we love one another, we fulfill Jesus’ promise not to leave us orphaned, not to leave us alone.

I’m not sure what the opposite of loneliness is. I think it has something to do with belonging. I think it has something to do with being home. I think it has something to do with being seen. Perhaps the opposite of being lonely is being found. And having been found, being loved.

In this time of quiet reflection, I invite you to think about the resurrection power of being found. Has this look at the resurrection power of being found unlocked one of your resurrection stories? How might you speak up and share this good news?

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[1] Marcia McFee in her “Sermon Fodder” for this Sunday in the worship series Resurrection Stories: Unlock Yours, published on https://www.worshipdesignstudio.com/.

[2] Vivek H. Murthy, “Surgeon General: We Have Become a Lonely Nation. It’s Time to Fix That.” The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/30/opinion/loneliness-epidemic-america.html (posted 30 April 2023; accessed 20 April 2024).

[3] “The Loneliness Epidemic Persists: A Post-Pandemic Look at the State of Loneliness among U.S. Adults,” The Cigna Group, https://newsroom.thecignagroup.com/loneliness-epidemic-persists-post-pandemic-look (based on the study dates, I assume this was posted in early 2023; accessed 20 April 2024).

Released

A sermon preached at Niles Discovery Church, Fremont, California,
on Sunday, April 14, 2024, by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer.
Scripture:  Nehemiah 9:9-15 and John 20:19-23
Copyright © 2024 by Jeffrey S. Spencer

I began my sermon last week by quoting the Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber. I want to again, because she summed up in two sentences the core of Christianity, and she points us to what this worship series during the great 50 days of Easter is all about. Here’s what she said:

“The Christian faith, while wildly misrepresented in so much of American culture, is really about death and resurrection. It’s about how God continues to reach into the graves we dig for ourselves and pull us out, giving us new life, in ways both dramatic and small.”^[1]

In the course of this worship series, we will get a chance to both hear from others and discover within ourselves the many ways we dig graves for ourselves, and the many ways God reaches into those graves to pull us out, giving us new life.

Our theme for this week is Release. Today we look at how resurrection comes in the form of release. Let’s start with our reading from Nehemiah.

The historic setting for the book is the return from the Babylonian exile. It is about 70 years since the leaders of the Kingdom of Judah were first sent into exile when the Babylonian Empire conquered the country. The descendants of those who were exiled are finally being allowed to return and to reestablish themselves as a people and as a nation. Key to their identity is the story of the Exodus, the story of God intervening in history to bring the Hebrew people out of slavery in Egypt and into the land they thought of as promised. In our reading, Ezra, the high priest, reminds the people of this story.

Both stories have deep parallels and are both quite clearly stories of release. The Hebrew people were released from the bondage of slavery and led through the desert, finally arriving at their so-called “promised land.” A people held for generations in exile have been released and allowed to return to a land they had never been in, a land they nonetheless considered “promised” to them. God’s hand was at work in the Exodus. God’s hand is at work in the release from exile. The tasks of becoming a self-governing people are the same for the people of the Exodus and the people of the exile. In both stories, God is granting a newness of life, a resurrection of release to an entire people.

The people who experience a resurrection in our reading from the gospel of John is much smaller. In this story, it’s easy to focus on the resurrection of Jesus. He’s the central character. He’s the one who has literally risen from the dead. And, as we will see, he’s not the only one who experiences a resurrection. It’s the evening of the day of Jesus’ resurrection. Mary Magdalene has had her dawn encounter with the resurrected Jesus at the tomb. She’s told the disciples about it. Now, evening has come. The disciples have locked themselves away, John says, “where they had met.”

Diana Butler Bass interprets this to mean they had locked themselves away in the upper room where Jesus had washed their feet and where they had shared a last supper with him.^[2] They are back in the room where Jesus gave them the mandate to love one another. But the doors are locked. They are afraid. John says the doors “were locked for fear of the Jews.”

Bass writes about this, too: “In recent decades, many liberal theologians and mainline preachers have gone to great lengths to minimize the antisemitism of John’s passion narrative, a story full of references to ‘the Jews.’ This year, my own pastor sent out a note to the congregation explaining (rightly) that during Holy Week we’d hear texts that mention ‘the Jews’ but those references really mean the Jewish authorities who collaborated with the Romans. The clarification is now fairly commonplace in mainline churches – which is a very good thing. Not all Jews, [only] certain Jewish enemy sympathizers.

“Thus, the opening words of Easter evening – the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews – are read softly, skipped over, or mentally reinterpreted to say ‘for fear of the Jewish authorities.’ We want to move on quickly, not dwell on this problematic phrase. Much better to put the emphasis on the end of the sentence: Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’

“Whew. Now we can breathe.

“But what if the writer – in this case at least – really meant ‘for fear of the Jews’? Why wouldn’t the author say Pilate’s men or the Roman soldiers if the disciples were afraid of the authorities? There were plenty of bad actors they might have feared.

“Why ‘for fear of the Jews’? That’s odd given the fact that all the disciples locked in the room were themselves Jews. Were they afraid of their own people? Were they afraid of themselves?”^[3]

Are you ever afraid of yourself?

I know there have been times I’ve been afraid of my grief. I’ve been afraid that if I really allowed myself to feel how deep a grief was, I might never surface again. And I’ve been afraid of my own anger – afraid that if I really felt it, I couldn’t control it and that it would explode destructively.

Are you ever afraid of yourself?

My older sister celebrated a 30th anniversary last month. I got her permission to talk about it today. She’s been sober for 30 years. As we looked at the John passage during Monday Morning Bible Study, I wondered if my sister was ever afraid of herself, afraid that she might drink again. So, I called her up and we had a beautiful conversation about it.

Sally, my sister, said the fear she has of herself is not that she’ll drink. Her fear is, as she put it, that she’ll act like a jerk. Let me explain. We’ve all been in situations we can’t control. Sally’s old script – the script that goes back to her childhood – tells her, when she faces something she can’t control, to act out in a way that she subsequently sees as “acting like a jerk.” Then, because she’s acted like a jerk, she feels shame. And when she feels shame, she wants to anesthetize hit. And her anesthetic of choice is alcohol. She knows that when she acts like a jerk, she’ll end up wanting to drink. Thus, Sally’s fear of herself takes the form of fearing that she’ll act like a jerk.

The first three steps of the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are sometimes paraphrased, “I can’t; God can; I think I’ll let him.” More formally, they are (and I’m using the traditional language of AA even though it genders God as masculine):

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

The AA “big book,” as it’s called, offers a specific prayer to help ground the third step: “God, I offer myself to Thee – To build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of Life. ‘

When I told my sister the theme for today was “release,” she immediately thought of this prayer. She thought specifically of the line, “relieve me of the bondage of self.” The line could easily have been, “Release me from the bondage of self.”

Sally says that her sobriety started by her thinking her partner’s alcohol use was the problem. Then she accepted that her alcohol use might be the problem. The breakthrough happened when she realized, “I am the problem. “Not the alcohol,” she told me. “I am the problem. So I need to change. And I can’t change me. God can.” Those are the first three steps. Steps 4 to 12, Sally told me, are all about letting God change us.

I asked Sally what release from the bondage of self looks like to her now. She says it’s about not having undue attention on herself, and she does that by “helping the next guy,” to use her words. In that action, the action of helping the next guy, she discovers the wisdom and truth in one of the lines from the prayer of Saint Francis: it is in giving that we receive.

The fear of the Jews that John says the disciples were feeling that night may have been a bondage of self. They locked the doors to keep others out. And to keep themselves in. Jesus got through the locked doors. And when he did, he stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” And after he showed them his wounds, he said to them again, “Peace be with you.” And he added, “As the father has sent me, so I send you.”

Be released from this tomb. Be released from the tomb of exile. Be released from the tomb of fear. Be released from the tomb of the bondage of self.

“As the father has sent me, so I send you: go and help the next guy.”

In this time of quiet reflection, I invite you to think about the resurrection power of release. Has this look at the resurrection power of release unlocked one of your resurrection stories? How might you speak up and share this good news?

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[1] From a meme quoting Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastrix, (New York: Jericho Books, 2013).

[2] Diana Butler Bass, “The door was locked. Until it wasn’t,” The Cottage, https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/sunday-musings-4c2 (posted and accessed 7 April 2024).

[3] Ibid.

Freed

A sermon preached at Niles Discovery Church, Fremont, California,
on Sunday, April 7, 2024, by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer.
Scripture:  Acts 16:16-34 and Luke 24:13-25
Copyright © 2024 by Jeffrey S. Spencer

The Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber

“The Christian faith, while wildly misrepresented in so much of American culture, is really about death and resurrection. It’s about how God continues to reach into the graves we dig for ourselves and pull us out, giving us new life, in ways both dramatic and small.”^[1]

That assessment from the Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber, is, I think, spot on, and in the course of this worship series, we will get a chance to both hear from others and discover within ourselves the many ways we dig graves for ourselves, and the many ways God reaches into those graves to pull us out, giving us new life.

Take, for instance, Paul. Paul sure ends up in prison a lot. Most of the time it’s for preaching the gospel. Not this time. In our reading from Acts, we hear a story about one time Paul got tossed into prison – well, for a reason I find amusing.

Paul and his entourage have been bopping around Asia minor (modern day Turkey) trying to find people who will hear the good news – without much luck. He ends up going across the sea to Greece and Macedonia, and finally ends up in the city of Philippi. There, he meets some women who listen to what he has to say, and so he hangs out in the city for a while, seeing if he might be able to start up a community of Jesus-followers.

While he’s there, he meets a girl who’s enslaved. This girl has a gift of divination; she was a fortune teller. Apparently, this skill made some descent money for the people enslaving her. Well, this girl starts following Paul around and Paul finds it very annoying, so he casts this spirit of divination out of the girl. Does he stand up for the girl and seek her freedom? No. This “healing” isn’t about justice, and it isn’t about freedom. This healing is about stopping someone who Paul found annoying.

Start digging your own grave, Paul.

Of course, this took away the girl’s ability to make money – not that she ever saw any of the money. It all went into the pockets of the people who were enslaving her. And they did not like that one little bit. Those “owners” [please note the heavy air quotes] marched Paul and Silas into the marketplace before the authorities. The charge? Keeping us from making money. Interrupting the capitalist system. After having them flogged, the magistrates tossed them in jail. They ended up bound by stocks and placed in an “innermost” cell.

The way the story’s told in Acts, they don’t seem to mind being imprisoned. This is the second thing I find amusing about this story. “About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.” Suddenly, the earth shakes, the doors to all the cells are opened and the chains unfastened (which is amazingly precise work for an earthquake).

The earthquake wakes the jailer and when he sees all the prison doors open, he assumes everyone has escaped. He’d better kill himself now. Paul intervenes and stops the jailer from harming himself. This so overwhelms the jailer he asks Paul and Silas what he must do to be saved. Paul and Silas tell him the story of Jesus and he and his household are baptized. The next morning (this part isn’t in our reading), Paul and Silas are freed.

There is, in this story three threads of bondage, three graves for God to reach into. The first is the bondage of the enslaved girl. We don’t know how she ended up enslaved, only that she is enslaved. The second is the imprisonment of Paul and Silas. This is a bondage of their own making.  They are the ones who started digging this grave. The third is the bondage the jailer thinks he’s been thrown into when he sees the prison doors opened by the earthquake. He assumes everyone has escaped, so he was dead anyway. He might as well kill himself.

God reaches into two of these graves, but not the third. God brings a resurrection of freedom to the jailer through the actions of Paul, shouting out that the prisoners have not run off. God brings a resurrection of freedom to Paul and Silas through their own compassion and witness, and how it changes the heart of the jailer. The grave God doesn’t not reach into, at least not at this point in the story, is the grave of slavery. I think that’s because slavery was accepted. No one challenged the institution in general nor the specific enslavement of this girl. God, it seems, wants to use our hands and feet and voices as a means to bring the resurrection of freedom.

I learned recently about a contemporary story of imprisonment, music, and freedom. Do we have any country music fans in the house today? Though I’m not a country music fan, the story of the singer/songwriter Jelly Roll resonates with the story from Acts – and not only because there’s singing in both stories.

Jelly Roll

Starting at age 14, lock-up became Jason DeFord’s (that’s Jelly Roll’s real name) second home. His other home, the one with his parents, wasn’t all that great either. His mother who struggled with drugs and his father who booked bets. Barely a teenager, DeFord was arrested and incarcerated for drug possession, drug dealing, shoplifting, and aggravated robbery. He was in and out of lock-up for the next ten years. When he wasn’t getting in trouble, Jelly wrote songs. Even when he was imprisoned at the Metro-Davidson County Detention Facility in Nashville, he wrote songs.

The CBS show Sunday Morning took Jelly back to the county lock-up as part of a story they did on him. Everything changed for him when he was 24 and learned from his prison guard that he was a father of a baby. At the time, he didn’t even know his daughter’s name: Bailey. Out of prison, DeFord continued recording and distributing his rap music until he experienced a breakthrough in 2020 with an acoustic version of one of his songs that caught the ear of country fans.  The following year, he performed at the Grand Ole Opry. And this past November was twice nominated for Grammy awards – Best New Artist and Best Country Duo/Group Performance.^[2]

Now Jelly Roll’s visits to prison are to speak words of hope to inmates as he shares his story of redemption with them. Though in the interview on Sunday Morning Jelly doesn’t explain how he was redeemed, I think I know part of the story. God reached into Jelly’s grave with the little hand of an infant. It was the resurrection of the Christmas story all over again. Bailey’s birth started the ball rolling. And what redemption looked like for him was freedom from the carceral system.

Now, I need to tell you that it is very unusual for jails and prisons to be vehicles of resurrection. That part of our criminal justice system – the “lock ’em up” part – is not, generally speaking, rehabilitative or restorative. That’s why I’m glad that here in Alameda County there is the Interfaith Coalition for Justice in our Jails. As they describe themselves on their website, the ICJJ “is dedicated to bringing members of diverse faith communities together to achieve transformative change within the Alameda County justice system.”^[3]

The changes they seek include reducing incarceration as a response to social problems the county, working to change abusive and dangerous conditions in the jail, supporting alternatives to incarceration especially for people with mental health and substance abuse issues, and “generally changing the punitive criminal legal system that causes immense damage to thousands of families each year – especially in Alameda County’s Black and Brown communities.”^[4] If you want to learn more about ICJJ, I encourage you to speak with Judy Zlatnik or Randy Fewel.

Now, the freedom that comes through resurrection is not limited to the freedom from literal jails and prisons. The truth is that we often put ourselves in prisons. Jelly Roll imprisoned himself in low self-esteem. The chorus to his breakthrough song, “Save Me,” says, “I’m a lost cause / Baby, don’t waste your time on me / I’m so damaged beyond repair / Life has shattered my hopes and my dreams.”

In a similar way, though they were out on the road to Emmaus, seemingly free, the disciples who met Jesus on the road were in emotional prison. It might have been a prison built with grief over Jesus’ death, or with fear that they could be next, or with their resignation that the Jesus wasn’t the Messiah (or at least not the Messiah they were expecting), or with their anger directed at nothing and everything, or with the simple yet profound confusion that can come with a death. I think one of the reasons they didn’t recognize that they were walking with Christ on that road was their imprisonment.

For them, freedom came in recognizing the presence of Christ in the breaking of the bread. This was an earthquake for the disciples on the road that busted open their prison doors. Suddenly they had hope, and they freed them from their prisons of grief, fear, resignation, confusion, and anger. They were so free, they ran (in the gathering dark) all the way back to Jerusalem.

At Monday Morning Bible Study, I asked what we can do to create the space for resurrection to bring freedom. The ideas that were shared were all about building community. I absolutely agree. “Find something to do, especially for someone else.” “Be with people.” “Look for Jesus in others.”

In the Emmaus Road story, it says that the disciples’ hearts burned within them as Jesus explained things to them on the road. But they didn’t notice that their hearts had been burning – until after they recognized Jesus. And they recognized Jesus when they invited him (still a stranger) into community, to stick around for a meal.

“For freedom that Christ has set us free,” it says in the letter to the Galatians (5:1).

In this time of quiet reflection, I invite you to think about imprisonment and freedom. Has this look at resurrection freedom unlocked one of your resurrection stories? How might you speak up and share this good news?

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[1] From a meme quoting Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastrix, (New York: Jericho Books, 2013).

[2] See https://www.grammy.com/artists/jelly-roll/54236 (accessed 6 April 2024).

[3] Interfaith Coalition for Justice in our Jails website, https://www.icjjalamedacounty.org/ (accessed 6 April 2024).

[4] Ibid.

A Good Enough Faith

A sermon preached at the Niles Town Plaza, Fremont, California,
as part of a community Easter Sunrise Service
sponsored by Niles Discovery Church,
on Easter Sunday, March 31, 2024, by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer.
Scripture:  John 20:1-18
Copyright © 2024 by Jeffrey S. Spencer

I think the first time I saw this particular meme on Facebook as about two years ago. It started cropping up, right on schedule, yesterday in by Facebook newsfeed:  If you church has a sunrise Easter service, only women should be allowed to go to it. Then they can tell the men, who will be so excited that they’ll run to the 10:00 service.

Another one I especially likes says, “In the interests of biblical accuracy, all the preaching about the resurrection this Easter Sunday will be done by women.” My apologies: you’re stuck with me.

In all four gospels, the first people to go to the tomb where Jesus had been buried, the first people to find the empty tomb, the first people to experience the resurrection were women. The names vary from one account to another. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, it’s a handful of women who go to the tomb. In John’s account, it appears to be just one woman who goes to the tomb: Mary Magdalene.^[1] In fact, the one person who shows up in all four accounts is Mary Magdalene. Is it any wonder that she is given the honorific “Magdalene”? Mary, the tower of faith. Mary, the magnified.^[2]

While it was still dark, John tells us, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed. Her heart had been torn out at the execution of her beloved rabbi, and they wouldn’t even leave his body alone. They had come and stolen his body during the Sabbath or in the middle of the night. She ran back and told two of the disciples that Jesus’ body had been stolen.

Peter and the (unnamed) beloved disciple ran to the tomb, and sure enough, just as Mary had described, the tomb had been disturbed, the stone removed, the body missing. All they saw were the linen cloths that had been used to wrap the body. John says that the beloved disciples “saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.” That is a strange statement and I’m not sure how to interpret it. Maybe John was saying that the beloved disciples saw the burial cloths laying there and believed something miraculous happened, and still didn’t understand that was going on. Maybe I’m reading that into what John meant because it rings so true to my experience: belief and not understanding held simultaneously.

The disciples headed back home, and Mary stayed at the tomb. She looked in and saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying. They asked her, “Woman why are you weeping?” and she said to them, “They’ve taken away my Lord and I do not know where they laid him.”

Woman why are you weeping? I love Nadia Bolz-Weber’s response to this question.^[3] “I must confess that I used to hear this as a slightly passive aggressive question, as if the angels were implying that Mary was overreacting. Or this question was the equivalent of sending her some vapid ‘don’t worry, be happy’ meme,… as if Christian faith is mostly a mechanism to bypass negative emotions in favor of delusional positivity.” As if Mary didn’t need to grieve. “Theologically speaking, this is what we call ‘hogwash’.”^[4]

I firmly believe that grief is holy to God. I have come to believe that grief isn’t “the cost of having loved.” Rather, I have come to believe grief is an expression of love. Sometimes our love is so vast, it leaks out our eyes. And when Jesus cried at Lazarus’ tomb, his tears were just as salty as yours or mine.

No, the question the angels ask is not an accusation. The question is an invitation. Why are you weeping. Tell us your story, Mary. Tell us your grief. Don’t bypass the truth of your sadness. Tell the truth of the darkness you’re experiencing. Tell the truth of how you feel robbed. Tell the truth of how “death is a thief we cannot put on trial and punish.”^[5] Tell the truth about how the grief you’re feeling now “has opened the door and let in so much other grief” and that you “don’t know how to uninvite its friends to this party.”^[6]

It’s been almost six years since my best friend died. Every time a member of the church dies, the grief I feel at their deaths invites the grief I still feel from the death of Lizann to make its presence know. I find myself longing to hear her voice, longing to hear her call me by name, longing to see her seeing me in a way that no one else ever has.

Grief is an expression of love, and it is holy to God. “While there are those who would reduce the Christian faith to moralism and delusional positivity, we know that the God we worship is not a shiny toothed motivational speaker churning out cheerful memes in times of suffering. We know that the God we worship is a crucified and risen God. Which is to say, we worship a God that is also not unfamiliar with darkness, a God who comes close to those who mourn, a God who comes close to those who stand outside tombs, a God who is not far off, but who is as close as that choppy breath that falters when you’re sobbing.”^[7]

Nadia Bolz-Weber so eloquently expressed why Mary was weeping. “I think she was crying because, having felt divine love in the presence of Jesus, she knew she couldn’t go back to living without it and she didn’t quite know yet she wouldn’t have to. So she cried, saying they’ve taken him away and I don’t know where he is. They’ve taken love away and I don’t know where it is. They’ve taken kindness away, they’ve taken my own wholeness away and I don’t know where it is. And so, while it was still dark, she went to his tomb thinking maybe the tomb was the end of the story.”^[8]

And then she learned that it wasn’t the end of the story. Turning from the angels and the tomb, she bumped into someone who must have been the gardener. Maybe he knows what’s happened to the body. And then the gardener says her name. The gardener calls her back to herself, and she realizes it’s not the gardener. It’s her beloved Rabbi.

“Go and tell the boys,” Jesus instructs her. Have you ever wondered why Mary Magdalene got this job? “I don’t think it was because she had followed the instructions for how to make herself worthy to witness the resurrection. And I don’t think it was because she fit the high priest description of an ideal preacher. And I don’t think it was because she had pure doctrine. [And] most importantly, I don’t think it was despite who she was; I’m pretty sure it was because of who she was.… I think Mary was chosen because she knew what it was like for God to move, not when the lilies are already out and the lights are on, but while it’s still dark. Because, unlike when the men looked in and saw only laundry, when Mary Magdalene looked in the tomb, she saw angels. Mary Magdalene saw angels because she was not unfamiliar with the darkness. She had the kind of night vision that only comes from seeing what God does while it’s still dark.

“I do not know why this is God’s economy, that it’s while we’re still in despair, while we’re still grieving,… while we are sure that nothing good will ever come – that it’s when we’re faced with the nothingness of death that were closest to resurrection, that while it’s still dark, God does most wondrous work.”^[9]

It’s not because Mary Magdalene had perfect faith that Jesus picked her to be the first one to tell of good news of the resurrection. It was because her faith was good enough.

Even in the darkness (whatever that darkness is for you – fear, grief, anxiety, loneliness) your faith is good enough. So we can say, even if we don’t really know what we’re saying, “Alleluia! Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!”

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[1] I say, “appears to be,” because Mary does use “we” when reporting what happened to Peter and the beloved disciple.

[2] While “Magdalene” has long been assumed to refer to a town that Mary came from, recent scholarship suggests that “Magdalene” is, in fact, an honorific derived from the Hebrew and Aramaic roots for tower or magnified. See Yonat Shimron, Religious News Service, quoted in “Was Mary Magdalene really from Magdala? Two scholars examine the evidence,” Christian Century, 9 February 2022 edition, p. 16.

[3] Much of this sermon has been influenced by (and I’ll be quoting from) Nadia Bolz-Weber’s sermon preached at the funeral for her friend Rachel Held Evans, https://rachelheldevans.com/funeral.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

Speak Up

A sermon preached at Niles Discovery Church, in Fremont,
on Easter Sunday, March 31, 2024, by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer.
Scripture:  Mark 16:1-8
Copyright © 2024 by Jeffrey S. Spencer

It is tempting to think of the Last Supper, that scene in the Upper Room that we remember on Maundy Thursday, as a dreamy, candle-lit fellowship meal, rather than, as Ched Myers has called it, “the conflict-ridden final hours of a fugitive community in hiding.”

Likewise, it’s easy to imagine Jesus praying at Gethsemane in a calm, resolute manner, at peace in his submission to a pre-ordained plan, rather than the deep, sweaty struggle of a man coming to terms with the consequences of his revolutionary vision and calling.[1]

It is easy to hear the story of the so-called trials of Jesus before the Sanhedrin and Pilate and blame all the Jews. The gospels seem to do a pretty good job of this, making it seem as if everyone in Jerusalem was standing outside Pilate’s palace shouting, “Crucify him!” when, in fact, whatever mob might have existed were more likely the sycophantic toadies of the religious elites and collaborators with the Roman occupation.

It is easy to forget that crucifixion was the Roman form of execution, so Jesus was executed by the Roman government, by the Empire, not by the occupied Jews. He was perceived as a threat to the established imperial order, perceived as a threat by the 1% of his day who concluded: Have done with him. Get rid of him. End this threat. So Jesus was executed by a detachment of Roman soldiers on orders from their government.

One chilling part of the story is how Jesus faced this execution alone. One of his disciples betrayed him. Peter followed at a distance, but when pressured to admit his association with Jesus, he denied knowing him. The rest of the male disciples ran off. Only the women and Joseph of Arimathea (who we meet for the first time just a chapter ago in Mark’s gospel) knew where Jesus was buried. There is nothing pretty about the last days of Jesus’ life. Nothing romantic or dreamy or calm. Jesus was cruelly tortured and killed by the Roman government and the powers that be. And one would think that this was the end of the story.

But it’s not the end of the story. The ending of the story, at least as Mark tells it, is much stranger.

Early on Sunday morning, some women went to the tomb where Jesus’ body was buried, but the corpse was not there. “As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed.”[2] Freaked out might be more to the point, though Mark doesn’t say who this “young man, dressed in a white robe” is. He becomes an angel (or two angels) in later gospels (whose writers almost certainly had a copy of Mark’s gospel when they were writing). All Mark tells us about the young man is what he says: “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”[3]

This could be the beginning of a great ending. The women go to the disciples, tell them what they experienced, and then all kinds of wonderful things happen. And that’s not how Mark ends his gospel. Mark ends it with the sentence: “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”[4]

The End. “They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

Dr. Mary Ann Tolbert

New Testament scholar, Dr. Mary Ann Tolbert, says, “To end the gospel on such a resounding note of failure is very upsetting from a modern perspective.”[5] She points out that throughout Mark’s gospel, Jesus has continually struggled to get his disciples to understand his teachings. Jesus predicted his passion three different times and they never really understood what he was talking about. The disciples hear his parables, sometimes even get them explained to them, and they still don’t understand what he’s talking about. They witness him healing people, but they can’t see beyond that happens to that was revealed in the healing. The people (almost always unnamed) who are healed – they get it, and time after time, even when they’re told not to reveal who Jesus is, they go and tell people. But not the disciples.

“Again and again, the disciples disappoint, and so perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that these women who, let’s remember, had the courage to stay with Jesus to the end and then ventured to his tomb to tend him, nevertheless fail like the other disciples.”[6]

There’s a demon in Mark’s gospel who recognizes Jesus, asking, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?” (Mark 5:7). And there’s the Roman centurion, who immediately after watching Jesus die states, “Truly, this man was God’s son” (Mark 15:39). But the disciples? They miss it.

Here we get to the end of the story, when it would be so nice to hear that the disciples finally got it and finally started talking about it. And they don’t. Even the women who have been the most faithful of all, the woman who stayed with Jesus through his crucifixion and burial, “said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

Dr. Tolbert convinced me that “The expectations raised and then crushed by the end of the Gospel are intended to move the hearers of the Gospel to action. If the women do not carry the message, is there anyone else who can? Is there anyone else who has heard Jesus’ preaching, seen his healings, watched his crucifixion and burial, and listened to the wondrous announcement of the resurrection?

“Well, yes! The audience of the Gospel has heard all of this. At the end and indeed by means of the end itself, the audience of the Gospel of Mark … are challenged to become themselves faithful disciples, carrying the message to the world,…”[7]

In other words, the central message of Mark’s gospel is, “Speak Up.” And that message is addressed to you and me. Mark is asking us to speak up.

This ending even makes the beginning of the Gospel make more sense. “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1). What Mark tells us is that his whole Gospel is just the beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ. The story keeps going – if we keep telling it.

And that’s great. Except for one little thing. Speaking up isn’t always easy. The reason why the whole “if I tell him I love him, will it scare him off?” RomCom trope works is because speaking up about something as real as love is scary. Speaking a truth requires of us a level of emotional vulnerability, and who wants to be that exposed?

And what about when the truth you have to share isn’t positive? I think back to the beginning of my ministry when I worked as a chaplain in a juvenile hall. Kids would reveal to me various types of abuse they’d suffered, revelations they had never made before. Sharing that kind of truth required a special kind of vulnerability.

And the truth can, at times, be dangerous to speak. This is especially true for women and people of color. So, while Mark’s gospel calls us to speak up, I don’t think Mark’s gospel calls us to take unnecessary risks in sharing how Jesus is alive today. That said, I asked a group of colleagues[8] if they would share stories with me of times they’d spoken up and it had life-giving results. Here are two of their stories:

Mandy shared a story of being at the beach and noticing that her brother-in-law had a number of, what seemed to her to be, new moles on his back. “We were all in graduate school, and none of us could afford healthcare. I remembered the story of a family that I had babysat for, where the wife pointed out something on her husband’s back and a life-threatening cancer was discovered by their doctor. I told the story to my brother-in-law, and said that I thought he should go to the doctor, now! A month and half later, his wife called me and said, with a quavery voice, ‘You saved his life.’ It’s been 30 years, and with skin surgery, and careful monitoring, he’s still alive and doing well.”

Jim Obergefell

Chris shared, “When Obergefell v Hodges was released [that’s the 2015 Supreme Court case that legalized same-gender marriages], I contacted the paper and solicited an interview because I was happy to do same sex marriages. I also did a video interview with a local news service. This was in an extremely conservative town where no other pastors openly offered this welcome. My own … church folks kind of freaked out at the attention, one member instantly quit, and I got a lot of hate on social media, particularly from a different former member. But, at the same time, scores of people who weren’t themselves churched or Christian spoke up in gratitude to hear a Christian pastor standing with LGBTQIA+ folks. Maybe in that town they hadn’t heard that before.”

Yes, speaking up takes courage. And I believe we can find that courage in the promise of the resurrection. As Bishop Steven Charleston has said, “We are not afraid, even if we have every reason to be. Yes, our eyes are open. Yes, we are aware of the realities around us, the hard realities, but even if the daily news tries to press the hope out of us, still we are not afraid. Why? Because we know every living thing is under the watchful eye of love. Every prayer, ever said, by anyone, is heard and received. Every life, ever lived, is redeemed by a power far greater than even imagination can contain. So, no, we are not afraid.”[9]

Be not afraid. Speak up. Amen.

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[1] Debra Dean Murphy, “Palms and passion,” The Christian Century Blog, http://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2012-03/palms-and-passion (7 April 2012), including the quote from Ched Myers.

[2] Mark 16:5.

[3] Mark 16:6-7.

[4] Mark 16:8.

[5] Mary Ann Tolbert, “Mark,” The Women’s Bible Commentary, quoted in “Mark 16,” Dwelling in the Word, https://dwellingintheword.wordpress.com/2022/02/21/3351-mark-16/ (accessed 30 March 2024).

[6] David Lose, “Just the Beginning,” WorkingPreacher.org, http://www.workingpreacher.org/dear_wp.aspx?article_id=574 (accessed 7 April 2012).

[7] Tolbert, op. cit.

[8] This question was posed in a closed Facebook group. I was given permission to share their stories.

[9] Bishop Steven Charleston, daily Facebook post, https://www.facebook.com/bishopstevencharleston/posts/pfbid06669xRMmwrcd9jzZ55CAtM3tXg7vMYjZDRBDc2xJjMdJsQEohWBbD2BJFv5T2bZpl (posted and accessed 27 March 2024).

Sit Up

A sermon preached at Niles Discovery Church, Fremont, California,
on Palm Sunday, March 24, 2024, by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer.
Scripture:  Mark 11:1-11
Copyright © 2024 by Jeffrey S. Spencer

Image generated by AI

A demonstration on the National Mall today created a tense standoff between government officials and members of a cult led by a self-styled messiah who goes by the name of Jesus. In an unauthorized incursion into the air space around the Capital, Jesus and a few of his close associates navigated a hot air balloon, which they later referred to as “Air Farce One,” to a landing on the mall where a large group of his followers met him with a Volkswagen Beetle, which he rode to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in a mock ticker-tape parade created by his followers throwing confetti. Once at the memorial, Jesus took to the steps where Martin Luther King famously delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech to preach a sermon about what he called the dangerous mix of religion and politics today, including comments about the National Cathedral, which some took to be threat to destroy the building.

Officials at the National Cathedral issued a statement which read, “while we support free speech and diverse religious expression, we cannot dismiss threats to this venerable national treasure and will pursue prosecution to the fullest extent of the law.” National Park Service Police report that in dispersing the crowd they were unable to apprehend the leadership. They are working with the FBI to investigate who was responsible for the demonstration and expect to make arrests by the end of the week.

Ian Lynch,[1] shared that “news story” with a bunch of colleagues and, when I heard it, I knew it would be the perfect opener to today’s sermon. I’ve been preaching about Palm Sunday for 37 years and, as Diana Butler Bass says, Holy Week keep coming around like “liturgical clockwork.”[2] And, while I wonder what I might say this year, like Bass, I often find myself singing the Palm Sunday song from Jesus Christ, Superstar.

Hosanna, hey sanna, sanna sanna ho
Sanna, hey, sanna hosanna
Hey J.C, J.C, won’t you smile at me?
Sanna ho, sanna hey, Superstar.

Maybe that dates me.

This musical setting encourages a mistranslation of “Hosanna.” The joyfulness of the music makes the word sound like it’s another word of praise, similar to “Alleluia!” “But hosanna and alleluia are not the same. Hōsanná is a transliteration of the Hebrew term (hôsî-âh-nā) meaning ‘Oh, save now!’ or ‘Please save!’

“The crowd at the procession wasn’t shouting praises to Jesus. The crowd was begging Jesus to save them.”[3] Knowing that will, I hope, make you wonder, “Save them from what?”

18 years ago, two of my biblical scholar heroes, John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg, published a little book called The Last Week. It starts off with this powerful explanation of what’s going on:

Two processions entered Jerusalem on a spring day in the year 30.… One was a peasant procession, the other an imperial procession. From the east, Jesus rode a donkey down the Mount of Olives, cheered by his followers.… On the opposite side of the city, from the west, Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Idumea, Judea, and Samaria, entered Jerusalem at the head of a column of imperial cavalry and soldiers.

Jesus’s procession proclaimed the kingdom of God; Pilate’s proclaimed the power of empire. The two processions embody the central conflict of the week that led to Jesus’s crucifixion.[4]

While I don’t know what evidence Crossan and Borg have for claiming the processions happened on the same day, I wouldn’t put it past Jesus to schedule his procession for the same day that Pilate brought in his show of force. It is clear that Jesus’ procession was a political act. It was designed to get people to sit up and take notice. It was no accident that Jesus rooted this protest in his faith tradition. He knew he could get the people to see the vision by acting it out for them. Jesus’ procession purposefully utilized images from “a prophecy from Zechariah. In the Hebrew scriptures, Zechariah envisioned a humble king who arrives in Jerusalem on a donkey and a colt. That king will end all war. No more chariots, warhorses, or battle-bows. This king commands peace.

“Of course, Pontius Pilate wasn’t a king of peace. He commanded an army on behalf of Caesar.” [5] And while he thought he was using the army to “keep the peace,” it was a negative peace at best: the absence of “trouble.” There was no justice in Pax Romana, and so it was no real peace. Pilate’s army was there to make sure the Jews didn’t cause any trouble for their Roman rulers during the holy days of Passover – a holiday that celebrates liberation from an oppressive empire. “As his procession made its way to the city gate, most likely no one cheered him. The crowds hated and feared him.”[6]

Bass suggests that there could have been paid supporters “sent out to shout Ave Pilate – Hail Pilate – as he entered – to soothe his imperial ego. Maybe a few powerful people in Jerusalem actually approved of him, or wanted something from him, and shouted their praise. Chances are, however, the road to the west gate was relatively deserted as the Romans approached. The only sounds were the dreaded clomp, clomp of armored horses and chariot wheels traversing the cobblestones. Pilate, in regal splendor, probably wanted to be home in his seaside villa instead of here, with the unruly Jews.

“Meanwhile, at the eastern gate, Jesus’ noisy supporters were crying out Hosanna! Save us! Please save us now! They weren’t asking for some sort of spiritual salvation, for a place in heaven, or for eternal life. They wanted to be saved from Pilate, from the legion entering the other gate, from Caesar, and that faux peace of Roman swords.”[7]

I see a deep and disturbing parallel to the faux peace of Roman swords in the rise of Christian nationalism in the United States. And as I move into this next section of my sermon, let me say that I don’t want to preach it. Christian nationalism is deeply connected to the Republican party and I have no desire to get partisan. But Christian nationalism – regardless of what political party they’re hitching their wagon to – is such a threat to both Christianity and American democracy, I feel compelled to speak.

The United States is not and never has been a Christian nation. The United States is shaped by Christianity, especially by Protestantism. Both of those statements are true. Christian nationalism wants to make the first of those statements false.

In general, Christian nationalism seeks to merge Christian and American identities. The danger here is that by merging Christian and American identities, both Christian faith and America’s constitutional democracy are distorted. Christian nationalism demands Christianity be privileged by the State and implies that to be a good American, one must be Christian. And Christian nationalism almost always overlaps with and provides cover for white supremacy, racial subjugation, and patriarchy.

Here’s how “Christians Against Christian Nationalism” define Christian nationalism:  “Christian nationalism is a cultural framework that idealizes and advocates a fusion of Christianity with American civic life. Christian nationalism contends that America has been and should always be distinctively ‘Christian’ from top to bottom – in its self-identity, interpretations of its own history, sacred symbols, cherished values, and public policies – and it aims to keep it that way. But the ‘Christian’ in Christian nationalism is more about identity than religion. It carries with it assumptions about nativism, white supremacy, authoritarianism, patriarchy, and militarism.”[8] And I would point out that none of those are Christian values.

One Christian nationalist group is the Society for American Civic Renewal. Josh Kovensky wrote an exposé on this group on Talking Points Memo.[9] “It is open to new recruits,” Kovensky writes, “provided you meet a few criteria: you are male, a ‘trinitarian’ Christian, heterosexual, an ‘un-hyphenated American,’ and can answer questions about Trump, the Republican Party, and Christian Nationalism in the right way. One chapter leader wrote to a prospective member that the group aimed to ‘secure a future for Christian families.’”[10]

One of SACR’s objectives is “to have its members form the government of an ‘aligned future regime.’ … Other goals include providing ‘preferential treatment for members, especially in business,’ and to both ‘coordinate allied fraternal networks’ and ‘defend fraternal networks … against attacks by those opposed to civic renewal, and strongly deter such attacks.’”[11] I hear that and think of the Communist Party in China, Putin’s kleptocracy, and how the Nazi’s functioned in Germany as they gained more and more power.

The whole idea of forming a truly Christian nation is a heresy. Christianity has a long history of getting into bed with political power, and when it does, it loses its relationship with God, drunk on political power. I think it is vital that we call Christian nationalism what it is: a heresy.

Two processions entered Jerusalem. One proclaimed the political and military power of empire. The other proclaimed the kin-dom of God. Christian nationalism wants to merge the Christian faith with the power of empire – and the event from the gospel narrative that we celebrate today says that such a merger is impossible.

The crowd that gathered, waving their branches and spreading their cloaks on the road and shouting, “Hosanna! Save us, son of David!” wanted to be saved from the misery of Pilate and Caesar and Rome. They were begging to be rescued from oppression and injustice, from violence and death.

Hosannas! still resound. Even the stones cry out for justice. “Children and teachers die in pools of blood at school, lies pervade and divide a desperate people, the rich steal everyone’s share, courts unwind decades of justice, and even a poisoned earth and sky rage against us.”[12] We have to peal off the mask of the faux peace that is enforced by fear and violence, a peace of privilege and guns. We must shout, “Hosanna, Jesus, hosanna! Save us, NOW!”

“Two processions entered Jerusalem on that day. The same question, the same alternative, faces those who would be faithful to Jesus today. Which procession are we in? Which procession do we want to be in? This is the question of Palm Sunday and of the week that is about to unfold.”[13]

Amen.

---

[1] The “news report” by Ian Lynch was shared in a sermon discussion thread on worshipdesignstudio.com.

[2] Diana Butler Bass, “Hosanna, not Alleluia,” The Cottage, https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/sunday-musings-709 (posted 2 April 2023; accessed 23 March 2024).

[3] Ibid.

[4] John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg, The Last Week (New York: HarperOne, 2006), 2.

[5] Bass, op. cit.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Christians Against Christian Nationalism, “What Is Christian Nationalism?” a downloadable PDF available (at least as of 23 March 2024) at https://www.christiansagainstchristiannationalism.org/learn-more.

[9] Josh Movensky, “Inside A Secret Society Of Right Wing Christian Men Prepping For A ‘National Divorce’,” Talking Points Memo, https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/inside-a-secret-society-of-prominent-right-wing-christian-men-prepping-for-a-national-divorce (posted 9 March 2024; accessed 23 March 2024).

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Bass, op. cit.

[13] Crossan and Borg, op. cit., 30.

Lift Up

A sermon preached at Niles Discovery Church, Fremont, California,
on Sunday, March 17, 2024, by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer.
Scripture:  John 12:20-33
Copyright © 2024 by Jeffrey S. Spencer

“Tea Cakes with Jesus,” by Kate Gaston.^[1]

You’re knocking at my front door.

I wasn’t expecting you, so of course I’m still in my pajamas.

Cracking open the door, I say, “Hi, I think you’re looking for my sister.
She lives down the street at number 31, with her wool and flax and busy hands.”

You remain standing there on my front stoop, unfazed by my awkward greeting.
You want to come in.

I give myself full marks for my tidy doorstep;
it’s well-swept and cheerful; welcoming, even.

But as I swing the door wider to let you in,
I am acutely aware of the mess of things I’ve gathered around me—
dusty participation trophies, moldering stacks of self-help remedies.

You don’t hesitate;
you even remove your boots in case they might dirty my hopelessly smudged floor.

You take the folding chair I offer you;
it’s rusted and uncomfortable;
pilfered from a cold church basement.

I take for myself the seat of honor:
a blue velour La-Z-Boy, covered in cat hair and coffee stains.

My throne.

As I pour you a lukewarm cup of tea,
you talk to me.

My answers are curt, churlish;
much like the way I make small talk after church on Sunday
when all I want to do is put on sweat pants and eat some lunch.

Even so, you’re leaning in like you really might care.

Before I know it,
I find myself telling you the things I think about behind my closed eyelids in the dead of night;
the stuff I’m afraid to whisper aloud lest my life be consumed by heartache, despair, and chaos.

Dear Lord, here I am telling you what I don’t tell anyone;
my deepest carnality passing from my honey-dripping lips into your keeping.

Rather than stiffening in injured propriety like any normal person would, you soften.

Your face assumes that shape which can only be interpreted as compassion.
And are your eyes filled with tears?

For me?

And there I was, so damn certain you were some blank-eyed automaton
handing out bread and fish and platitudes of come-unto-me.

But we just took a face-first swan dive into my heart’s deepest crevasse,
and you’re still sitting there in that rickety folding chair.

I don’t know much, but I do know that platitudes don’t swan dive.

I also know now that I want you to have my recliner, Jesus.

I want to stand up and get out of the way;
I want you to sit enthroned in this rat-nested, broken odds-and-ends, Mad Hatter heart of mine.

You do, oblivious to the cat hair sticking to your pants.

Like any decently-raised southern woman, I want to feed you;
as I bustle to the pantry, I’m aware of all my furniture.

It’s still mine, yes, most of it still dirty and duct-taped,
but it has been changed,
charged with some holy current.

Some gold-veined Kintsugi spell of reconciled redemption
has been injected through the whole thing.

I smile.

I hand you a tea cake—my grandmother’s recipe—and we eat together,
unconcerned about the sweet crumbs sprinkling onto our laps.

John R. Mabry

My friend^[2] who introduced me to this poem calls it “the most beautiful description of prayer I think I have ever heard.” It is, for me, too, a beautiful description of prayer and a wonderful metaphor of the efficacy of prayer, of the transformative, healing power of prayer, of how in prayer Jesus lifts us up.

In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus talks about how he will be lifted up, and that when it happens, he will draw all people to himself. And then John tells us, “He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.”^[3] That line in John’s gospel makes me first think John is focusing on the crucifixion, the “kind of death” Jesus was to die. Sadly, if I go there, I think I miss what John is really saying.

In chapter 11 (our reading is from chapter 12), Jesus brings his friend Lazarus back to life. Then, at the beginning of chapter 12, Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, drawing a big crowd. (We’ll look at how Mark tells that story next week.) The religious authorities find this troubling and John ends his telling of this story with some Pharisees complaining about the crowd Jesus attracts, saying, “Look, the world has gone after him.”^[4]

It’s just days before Passover, so Jews from around the Mediterranean world are gathering in Jerusalem. The crowd includes some Greeks, who want to meet Jesus. Those Pharisees seem to be right. The whole world has gone after him.

This is troubling for the Jewish leaders. And it’s not jealousy. They figure that if the numbers of people following Jesus continue to grow, the commotions he seems to stir up may well attract attention – and even provoke a preemptive attack – from the Roman occupiers, who always seemed to be worried about the potential for rebellion. “Thus, for the authorities, the more Jesus’ celebrity grows (and what’s more spectacular than raising someone from the dead?), the more the temple and the whole people are put at risk.

“Apparently sensing this tipping point when he hears that two foreign pilgrims want to meet him, Jesus declares for the first time [in John’s gospel] that ‘the hour has come’ (12:23). At several points earlier in the story, beginning with the wedding at Cana (2:4), Jesus has said that his hour has not yet arrived – but now it’s at hand. Now he will come fully into view, for all to see. Now he will be ‘glorified’”^[5]

But what does that mean – “glorified”? The Greek, a biblical scholar told me, means to value something for what it truly is, so to glorify Jesus is the value Jesus for who Jesus truly is. Okay … and to be honest, that isn’t especially helpful for me. I like that agricultural metaphor Jesus uses to help me understand: “a grain that falls to the earth and dies, and then grows as a seed grows, bearing much nourishing fruit. In other words, being ‘glorified’ will look like a human life freed from self-centered isolation, a generous life lived for others in community, in which both self and others flourish.”[6] So, the kind of death that Jesus is going to die is a death that can’t be separated from his resurrection. His death will lead to rising, the bearing much fruit, the drawing people to him, to the flourishing of life. That is what being lifted up is all about for Jesus: the flourishing of life.

I’d like to tell you a story (so I’m going to) that illustrates how we can be part of this glorification when we lift up each other. The year is 2007 or 2008, maybe seven years after the attacks of September 11, 2001. The story is Naomi Shihab Nye’s,^[7] and I’ll apologize in advance for mispronouncing some of the words.

Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning my flight had been delayed four hours, I heard an announcement: “If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately.”

Well—one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there.

An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing. “Help,” said the flight agent. “Talk to her. What is her problem? We told her the flight was going to be late and she did this.”

I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke haltingly. “Shu-dow-a, Shu-bid-uck Habibti? Stani schway, Min fadlick, Shu-bit-se-wee?” The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the next day. I said, “No, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just later, who is picking you up? Let’s call him.”

We called her son, I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and ride next to her. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know and let them chat with her? This all took up two hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling of her life, patting my knee, answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies—little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts—from her bag—and was offering them to all the women at the gate. To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same powdered sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.

And then the airline broke out free apple juice from huge coolers and two little girls from our flight ran around serving it and they were covered with powdered sugar, too. And I noticed my new best friend—by now we were holding hands—had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country tradition. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and I thought, This is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that gate—once the crying of confusion stopped—seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too.

This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.

It’s a wonderful thing – to lift up another. And, in my experience, so often when we lift up another, that lifting energy causes us to be lifted up as well. And God is glorified.

Retired pastor Steve Garnaas-Holmes^[8] reminds us:

You are not just one seed.
You don’t have to go and die for Jesus.
You are a whole bag of seeds.
Strew yourself in this world.

With every act of kindness or generosity,
every time you forgive,
another seed slips through your fingers.
Every time you care about someone,
even a stranger, especially when it’s risky,
you scatter a handful of seeds.
Let them go.
Toss your love wildly into this world.

Scatter seeds in good soil and poor.
Many will be eaten by birds
or trampled under foot.
But only the ones you throw away will grow.

You have a whole bag of love. Sow it all.

Amen.

---

[1] Kate Gaston, “Tea Cakes with Jesus,” Rabbit Room Poetry, https://rabbitroompoetry.substack.com/p/tea-cakes-with-jesuskate-gaston (posted 6 March 2024; accessed 16 March 2024).

[2] The Rev. Dr. John R. Mabry.

[3] John 12:32-33, NRSV.

[4] John 12:19c, NRSV.

[5] “The Hour Has Come,” Salt Project, https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/lectionary-commentary-lent-5 (posted 11 March 2024; accessed 13 March 2024).

[6] Ibid.

[7] Naomi Shihab Nye, “Gate A-4,” Poets.org, https://poets.org/poem/gate-4 (© 2008 by Naomi Shihab Nye; accessed 16 March 2024).

[8] Steve Garnaas-Holmes, “Sow it all,” Unfolding Light, https://unfoldinglight.net/2024/03/11/sow-it-all/ (posted 11 March 2024; accessed 16 March 2024).

Raise Up

A sermon preached at Niles Discovery Church, Fremont, California,
on Sunday, March 3, 2024, by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer.
Scripture:  John 2:13-22 and Psalm 19
Copyright © 2024 by Jeffrey S. Spencer

Over the past few weeks, I’ve made pointed out various motifs in Mark’s gospel. That’s because we’ll be spending most of this year in Mark’s gospel. Today, however, we begin a three-week break from Mark to look at some passages from John’s gospel. We’ll be back to Mark for Easter. For now, a little journey into John’s gospel.

The reading from John we just heard probably has some level of familiarity to most of you. At some point or other, you’ve heard about Jesus flipping over the money changers’ tables. It’s a common enough story that someone asked an AI machine to make an image of Jesus flipping over the tables in the temple. This is what the AI created.

From Facebook.

If, when you heard the story read today, you felt something was a little off about it, that’s probably because your familiarity with the story comes from your exposure to the story as told in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In their versions of the story, there’s no mention of a whip (though in the vast majority of the art depicting this story, Jesus has a whip). In their versions of the story, Jesus says the people changing money and selling animals for sacrifice have made the Temple into a “house of robbers” (when John’s Jesus calls it “a marketplace”). And their versions of the story come on Palm Sunday. Palm Sunday is the start of Holy Week, the final week of Jesus’ life. John is telling this story at the beginning of his narrative about Jesus. We’re only in chapter 2 of John’s gospel.

Let me sidetrack for a moment to talk about my approach to John’s gospel. Metaphor, metaphor, metaphor! I don’t think John was trying to write a historical document. John is a theological document. The stories John chooses to include are picked (and placed in the narrative) to make theological points. So, when I’m reading John, I’m asking myself, “What’s the theological point John is trying to make?”

Because there’s a story about Jesus flipping over tables in the Temple in all four gospels, I think it’s likely that something like this happened in history. When did it happen? Given how challenging this action was to the status quo of “the way we do things” in the Temple and Pax Romana, I think it’s much more likely to have happened toward the end of Jesus’ life than to have happened two years earlier.

John mentions the Passover three times in his gospel: Here at the beginning; somewhere around the midpoint; and at the end, days before Jesus’ execution. So that’s two years for the story of Jesus’ ministry to unfold in John’s gospel. And the fact that John bookends his narrative with mention of the Passover suggests to me that there’s a storytelling thing happening here – which is not important for today’s sermon. What’s important for today and for the next couple weeks is to remember that we’re looking for a theological point or two.

“John organizes his Gospel around six miraculous ‘signs’ Jesus performs over the course of his public ministry. These function like signposts along the path, pointing toward primary themes John wants to emphasize about who Jesus is and what his mission is all about. The first of these signs is when Jesus, encouraged by his mother, surreptitiously turns water into wine during a wedding in Galilee. Today’s passage comes immediately on the heels of that wedding story.”[1] The wedding story proclaims that something new, something fine, something that doesn’t follow conventional wisdom is dawning. In today’s reading, we learn about what’s at stake and about what it’s going to take.

Let’s go back to one of the differences I mentioned about John’s version of the story. Instead of accusing those who are selling animals and exchanging money in the Temple courtyard of making the Temple into a “den of robbers,” Jesus accuses them of changing it into a marketplace. Which might make you wonder, “Is Jesus against marketplaces?” I don’t think so. As one commentary pointed out, “Jesus doesn’t go around Galilee and Jerusalem denouncing local markets.”[2] Something else is going on.

The money exchange and the animal sales were all done to make the longstanding sacrificial system run smoothly.  I think Jesus’ anger is focused not on marketplaces in general – or even on corruption in general. I think Jesus, here at the beginning of his ministry, is challenging the sacrificial system itself. “His actions seem to say: It’s high time for that system to end, and for a new era to begin.”[3]

Jesus is in Jerusalem for Passover. Passover is the Jewish festival that celebrates God’s deliverance of the Hebrew people from slavery. I think this makes the story a freedom story, at least at some level. It’s interesting that none of the tellings of the story says that Jesus was angry when he “cleansed” the Temple. There’s an assumption that, if he was flipping over tables, he must have been angry – even though neither Matthew, Mark, Luke, nor John say Jesus was angry.

I wonder if this was planned street theater, an act of civil disobedience carried out dramatically to make a point. There’s merit to the idea that, on Palm Sunday, Jesus’ ride into Jerusalem on a donkey was an act of street theater. It’s as if Jesus decided to make his point by acting out the words of the ancient prophet Zechariah: “Lo, your king comes to you … humble and riding on a donkey” (Zech 9:9).

“Zechariah also speaks of a new age to come when the holiness associated with the temple will pervade the whole world, and “there shall no longer be traders in the house of the Lord” (Zech 14:21). The idea seems to be that the traders are part of a layer of separation between God and Israel that one day will be overcome. Thus Jesus driving the traders out of the temple, like his eventual arrival in Jerusalem on a donkey, is a kind of street theater declaring through action that the long-awaited new epoch has begun. Holiness will overflow conventional bounds, and the-temple-as-we-know-it will give way to a more widespread, accessible, direct mode of encountering God.”[4]

After Jesus’ street theater, the religious authorities demand Jesus prove to them he has the authority to do this. “What sign can you show us for doing this?” they ask. “In veiled and resonant language, Jesus proposes a sign the authorities mistakenly take at face value: ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ They think he’s referring to brick and mortar, but in fact, John explains, ‘he was speaking of the temple of his body.’ Thus Jesus does at least three things at once: (1) he counters the religious authorities; (2) he cryptically predicts his death and resurrection, something his disciples realize only later, ‘after he was raised from the dead’; and (3) he casts a revolutionary vision for worship in the new era. His body is the temple. Those who ‘abide in him’ (one of John’s favorite themes; see 15:4) thereby abide in ‘the house of the Lord.’ This theme will surface again in Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman about worshiping God not in any specific location but rather ‘in spirit and truth’ (John 4:21-23).

“In other words, for John, Jesus’ arrival signals the dawn of a new age, a new intimacy with God, a new conception of ‘the temple’ not as a building but as a person in spirit and truth, Jesus, God’s Word made flesh. The old sacrificial system must end; there’s no need for animals and blood and money changers; in fact, the old system only stands as an impediment to the new day. Drive out the traders! Zechariah’s vision is fulfilled! Fashion a whip out of cords, let a thousand doves arise and scatter – for the hour has come!

“It’s worth remembering here that the Gospel of John was written after the Roman armies had destroyed the Jerusalem Temple, a period when both Jews and early Christians were struggling to make sense of the world without what they had considered its sacred axis. Rabbinic Judaism eventually refigured ‘the temple’ in the home, and early Christians refigured ‘the temple’ as the body of Jesus, which is also the body of the church – and the body of, as John put it, the Logos, the Word made flesh, the pattern underlying the cosmic temple of creation.”[5]

The Psalm reminds us that the heavens and all creation declare the glory of God. Poet and farmer Wendell Berry once said, “There are no sacred and unsacred places; there are only sacred and desecrated places.” The Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann once warned that the quickest way to desecrate a place was to build a church on it – because the supposed ‘holy ground’ of the church would instantly imply that everything outside its doors is profane.[6] (And sure enough, the word “profane” comes from the Latin for “outside the temple.”)

“Like the prophets before him, Jesus can be understood in this week’s passage as challenging our tendency to domesticate God into a temple or a church or a sacred system. In fact, all of creation shimmers with divine glory. When we go to church, we don’t step into God’s presence; rather, we step into a community that, at its best, helps call our attention to the fact that God is present everywhere, that the body of Jesus and the movement of the Spirit are boundless, and so that the temple’s architecture must extend all the way out – all the way to the expanding edges of the cosmos.”[7]

“Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” It is, I think, time to raise up the temple that is the body of Christ – not the body of Christ limited to the church, but the body of Christ that is creation itself.

“This earth indeed is the very Body of God,” writes Fr. Richard Rohr, “and it is from this body that we are born, live, suffer, and resurrect to eternal life. Either all is God’s Great Project, or we may rightly wonder whether anything is.”[8]

“Our very suffering now, our crowded presence in this nest that we have largely fouled, will soon be the one thing that we finally share in common. It might be the one thing that will bring us together politically and religiously. The earth and its life systems, on which we all entirely depend, might soon become the very thing that will convert us to a simple lifestyle, to a necessary community, and to an inherent and natural sense of the Holy.”[9]

May we raise up the body of Christ that is creation itself.

Amen.

---

[1] “Why Is Jesus Angry?” Salt Project, https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2018/2/27/why-is-jesus-angry-salts-lectionary-commentary-for-lent-3 (posted and accessed 27 February 2024.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Richard Rohr, “Creation as the Body of God,” Daily Meditations, https://cac.org/daily-meditations/creation-as-the-body-of-god-2022-01-21/ (posted 21 January 2022; accessed 2 March 2024.

[9] Richard Rohr, “Creation as the Body of God,” Daily Meditations, https://cac.org/daily-meditations/creation-body-god-2016-11-09/ (posted 9 November 2016; accessed 2 March 2024.

Take Up

A sermon preached at Niles Discovery Church, Fremont, California,
on Sunday, February 25, 2024, by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer.
Scripture:  Mark 8:31-38
Copyright © 2024 by Jeffrey S. Spencer

Jesus’ teaching “his disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again” doesn’t come out of nowhere. So I want to rewind a little bit, to tell you what happened right before today’s gospel reading, then to look ahead a bit in Mark’s gospel. And once we’ve done that, we can talk about us.

A little earlier in chapter 8 (today’s reading is the end of chapter 8), Jesus restores sight to a man who was blind. Then Jesus and the disciples head off to the region of Caesarea Philippi. While they’re on the road, Jesus asks the disciple about how the crowd is reacting to his ministry. “Who do people say that I am?” he asks his disciples.

The disciples say there are several theories floating around. One theory is that Jesus is John the Baptist come back to life (we heard about John’s beheading two chapters earlier). Another theory is that Jesus is Elijah, returned from heaven. Some people are saying that Jesus is “one of the prophets,” though it’s not clear to me if they mean that Jesus is a prophet of old come back to life or that Jesus is someone in the same spiritual lineage as the prophets of old.

After hearing their answer, Jesus asks the disciples, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answers: “You are the Messiah” (also translated ‘the Christ’). And Jesus says something that keeps coming up in Mark’s gospel: Don’t tell anybody. This is where we pick up today’s reading.

“Jesus began to teach his disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” This is not the only time in Mark’s gospel that Jesus explains that he is going to suffer and die, and then rise. It happens here in chapter 8 and then again in chapters 9 and 10. And each time it happens, a particular pattern repeats: Jesus predicts his passion and suffering; the disciples misunderstand; and Jesus responds with a discourse on the true nature of discipleship.

This time it happens, I get a little whiplash watching Peter go from understanding who Jesus is (“You are the Messiah”) to becoming Jesus’ adversary (“Get behind me, Satan”) – all within just a couple verses. Now I don’t blame Peter for his reaction. As one commentary put it, “In first-century Palestine, a prevailing view was that the Messiah would come and lead a military triumph, routing the Roman occupiers and restoring the Davidic monarchy …”[1] It’s possible – in fact, I think it’s likely that Peter was thinking along similar lines.

Jesus understands messiahship in terms similar to those outlined in Isaiah’s “Suffering Servant,” a mysterious figure who will deliver God’s people without swords and chariots. Instead, this Suffering Servant will take up great affliction and suffering on behalf of others, and even through “pouring himself out unto death.” Jesus adds one more thing: that death isn’t the end of the story, that three days later, the Messiah will be raised.

And even if this wasn’t a conflict about understandings of what the Messiah’s path of salvation is, Peter certainly had no stomach for the notion that the Messiah would be disgraced by suffering and death. He pulls Jesus aside and rebukes him. “No, no, no, Jesus. That’s not how the Messiah thing works.”

This is a temptation that would be too easy for Jesus to fall for. “Get behind me, Satan,” Jesus says. “You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

If you were worshipping with us two weeks ago, you may remember that we heard the story of the Transfiguration (from chapter 9 of Mark’s gospel). Jesus goes up on a mountain with Peter, James, and John, and while they are there, Jesus is transfigured, and Elijah and Moses show up and have a chat with Jesus. two weeks ago, we focused on how this experienced freaked out Peter, James, and John. I also wonder what it did for Jesus.

This may be a flight of fancy, but come down this road with me anyway. Suppose Jesus had been thinking for the past seven chapters, ever since he heard the voice of God calling him “my beloved” as he came up from the waters of baptism, that he just might be the Messiah. Then Peter calls him that. And it crystalizes, that identity crystalizes for Jesus. And this time when he teaches the disciple that he will “undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again,” he’s telling it to himself as much as he’s telling it to them.

That could be why Peter’s rebuke was so tempting. If there was another way for Jesus to be the Messiah, a way that didn’t require me to take up his cross – his literal cross – should he try it? If he was still wrestling with this, I think it’s pretty daring for him to take Peter (along with James and John) up on a mountain to pray.

That’s the next thing they do in Mark’s gospel. Jesus teaches about discipleship. Jesus says that if we want to follow him, we have to deny ourselves and take up our crosses. He says that the way to save our lives is to lose them. And then he goes up a mountain to pray, taking with him Peter, James, and John. And there he has an intensely holy moment, one that transforms him outwardly for the moment, and inwardly for the journey to Jerusalem.

As storytelling, it’s a pretty good narrative. As discipleship formation, it’s a tough lesson. Jesus says that if we want to follow him, we have to deny ourselves and take up our crosses. And if we want to save our lives, we have to lose them. Though it makes no sense logically, I believe it is true. It’s a wisdom that I think is caught in the second part of a prayer attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi:

“Let me not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born into eternal life.”

It’s worth noting that Jesus does not say, “Seek out a cross and follow me.” This is no invitation to court, intensify, or prolong suffering. Nor does Jesus say, “That suffering you’re going through – physical, emotional, or spiritual – whatever its cause? Suck it up. That’s your cross to bear.”

Jesus says, “Take up your cross and follow me.” There is an element of free will here. Adverse childhood experiences, traumas, chronic pain, disabilities we live with, suffering you did not choose – these are not your cross. They are sufferings that are real, but they are not what Jesus is talking about here. To “take up” anything requires free will.

Jesus also says, “Take up your cross.” Your cross is probably different from my cross. Your cross might even be different from your spouse’s or partner’s cross. And your cross may well change at different points in your life-journey and your spiritual-journey.

The thing that’s the same for all of us is that following Jesus, like any meaningful mission, will almost certainly entail some suffering. The invitation, then, is not to seek out suffering. The invitation is to ‘take up’ the suffering that comes with confronting the powers of empire – however it is you are called at this time to confront those powers. The suffering that will come with this mission isn’t salvific. The violence of the empire is not redemptive. It is the love that is required to take up the cross that saves and redeems.

It is love that saves and redeems.

We are invited “to seize the role of active protagonist in the drama, not the role of a passive victim; and then to follow Jesus along the Way that leads to health, liberation, restoration, and new life.”[2]

Bruce Reyes-Chow

I have a friend, a Presbyterian pastor, who joined 30+ other Christians (mostly Presbyterians) as a delegation to Israel/Palestine for about a week. Bruce, my friend, got home just a few days ago. The delegation went at the invitation of other Christians in Palestine/Israel. Their three-fold purpose was: “to express solidarity with all who are suffering in Palestine and Israel during this time of immense violence; to demand an end to Israel’s genocidal bombardment of Gaza and an end to Israel’s systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and the release of all Palestinian prisoners held unlawfully by Israel; and to call for an end to Hamas’ acts of horrendous violence against civilians and the return of all Israeli hostages held by Hamas.”[3]

The members of the delegation agreed to share about their time in this violence-filled territory, including on social media, and that none of them would do any live streaming. Live streaming, the felt, would be too dangerous for themselves and for the people they met with.

Bruce is about to do a book release – on March 5. The timing was just about as inconvenient as it could be. The thing is, Bruce wrote, “Never before has Kairos time (a right moment) been more evident than in the past few weeks.… but when discussing whether or not I would accept [the invitation to Israel/Palestine], my spouse [and I] both felt the same way, ‘How could I not?’ If we are connected online or in person, you know that I’ve been trying to faithfully and publicly live out what I believe it means to stand on the right side of history when it comes to what is happening in Gaza, and this is one more opportunity to do so.”[4] So he went.

Going to a war-torn region was risky. Sitting with Israeli and Palestinian activists was risky. And I don’t know what repercussions Bruce will face back home as he continues to advocate for peace. Those were risks he was willing to take because they were necessary for the way he is called to follow Jesus.

In a webinar I attended last week, we were asked, “What do you love so much you’d give everything (maybe even your life) to protect it?” When Jesus says to us, “take up your cross and follow me,” I think we can hear him asking us, “What do you love so much you’d give everything (maybe even your life) to protect it?” For me, the answer is, “Creation.” Creation is the thing I need to protect. And that means protecting it from human beings. We are the first species of earth since earth’s formation that is capable of changing the natural systems of the earth. For instance, our actions are causing coastlines changes, deep oceanic current shifts, and species extinctions.

So, here’s the question for today: “What do you love so much you’d give everything (maybe even your life) to protect it?” Take up your cross and follow Jesus. Amen.

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[1] “Cross Purposes,” Salt Project, https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2018/2/20/cross-purposes-salts-lectionary-commentary-for-lent-2 (posted and accessed 19 February 2024).

[2] Ibid.

[3] Bruce Reyes Chow in Palestine – is that a cross he chose to take up? “I am in Palestine,” The Amalgamation,” https://theamalgamation.substack.com/p/brc-in-palestine (posted and accessed 17 February 2024).

[4] Ibid.