Disruption

Sermon on John 21:1-19 offered to the people of the Church of the Redeemer in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

The presidential campaign of 1920 introduced a new word into the American lexicon. After years of political turmoil at home and abroad, Warren G. Harding promised that his presidency would signal a “return to normalcy” in the United States. No longer would Americans have to worry about world wars and Leagues of Nations; instead, they could return to what they knew before the world fell apart. Americans responded enthusiastically to this neologism: Harding earned 60 percent of the popular vote and 404 votes in the Electoral College. For a time, it seemed that Harding’s pledge came to fruition. The Roaring Twenties were a time of economic growth and relative domestic tranquility. Though the twenties failed to roar for farmers and racial minorities, many people assumed that Harding’s promised “return to normalcy” was a permanent state of affairs.

Before long, however, it became clear that this was an illusion. By the end of the decade, the stock market had crashed, touching off the worst economic crisis in the nation’s history. Meanwhile, military dictators took power in Europe and Asia, setting the world on an inexorable path toward yet another global war. In some ways, it was actually the world’s haste to get back to normal that precipitated these crises. In the end, our collective desire to return to normalcy became part of the endless cycle of violence and retribution that has characterized all human history.

Returning to normalcy is what seems to motivate Peter and the other disciples in our gospel reading today. After years of following a charismatic and unpredictable teacher, the disciples returned to what they knew before they met Jesus. They returned their easy lives as fishermen. This is not to say that the life of a fisherman was easy in the first century: it was backbreaking, difficult work in which the line between starvation and subsistence was incredibly thin. The ease of this life could be found in its predictability. There was something familiar, almost comforting about the drudgery of mending nets, the stench of decaying fish, and the disappointment of a night without a catch. Peter and the other disciples understood how to deal with these challenges. As fishermen, they would not have to wrestle with the question of God’s purpose for them. They could live the rest of their lives governed by a predictable and timeworn routine.

Jesus disrupts this familiarity when he calls out to the disciples from the shores of Tiberias. Though they are initially excited, they become quiet when Jesus invites Peter and the other disciples to join him for breakfast by a charcoal fire. John implies that Peter and the other disciples eat their bread and fish in silence. Of course, there’s probably very little small talk to be made with someone who has been raised from the dead. There might be a deeper reason for this silence. Peter in particular may have been silent because the last time he saw a charcoal fire, he was in the courtyard of the high priest, the place where he denied Jesus three times. Peter had returned to his life as a fisherman to escape his rejection of Jesus, only to have Jesus return, reminding Peter of his faithlessness.

When Jesus finally disrupts the silence, he does it in the most revealing way possible. Fully aware of Peter’s guilt, Jesus turns to him and asks pointedly, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Jesus doesn’t call Peter by his nickname; Jesus uses the name Peter’s mother gave him. Three times Jesus asks this question and three times Peter responds. The implication seems clear: Peter erases his triple denial with a triple confession of love. While this may seem obvious to us, Peter doesn’t seem to get it. John tells us that he was hurt, that he was grieved by the repetition of Jesus’ question. On one hand, this may be a classic example of Peter’s thick-headedness: perhaps he just forgot what happened on that fateful night before Jesus died. On the other hand, we human beings have an extraordinary capacity to remember the times we failed. How often do we worry about how our relationship with someone has changed because of something we have said or done? Peter does not feel hurt because he has forgotten his failure; Peter grieves because he is apprehensive He is waiting for the other shoe to drop, he is anticipating a torrent of vengeance and righteous indignation from man he had so recently scorned. Peter wants to get these questions about love out of the way so that he can receive the judgment he so richly deserves. What Peter fails to understand, what we fail to understand is that the Resurrection is the judgment of God. What we fail to understand that the resurrection is the fullest expression of God’s love. In a way, the questions that Jesus asks Peter are irrelevant. It doesn’t matter whether Peter loves Jesus or not; what matters is that Jesus loves Peter. I don’t mean for that to sound glib, because it is of ultimate importance. Jesus loves Peter and all of us with a fullness that transcends all of our expectations. We would expect Jesus to punish Peter for rejecting him. We would at least expect him to require some extraordinary act of penitence. In the resurrection, however, God disrupts our assumptions about repentance and divine punishment and announces that even our rejection of God can be redeemed. In the resurrection, God liberates us from the endless cycle of vengeance and retribution and offers in its place a love that restores and renews all things.

This resurrection appearance is not just about Peter’s restoration. In his anxiety, Peter failed to recognize the true purpose of Jesus’ questions, which was to call Peter to a new vocation. Peter’s vocation changes in the other gospels, but only in its direction and emphasis.“You’re a fisherman? Follow me and I will make you fish for people,” Jesus says at the beginning of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In John’s gospel, however, Jesus invites Peter into an entirely new vocation: “If you love me, take care of my flock.” In light of the resurrection, Jesus instructs Peter to shift his vocation from that of a hunter to that of a shepherd, from one whose work depends on violence to one whose work is shaped by love. What difference does the resurrection make to us? How will this redemptive and restorative love change our vocation?

Our world once again seems to be falling apart. Between war, terrorism, economic disaster, and climate change, hardly a day goes by without reminders of how fragile life is. In the face of these calamities, it would be tempting to proclaim that we would like to go back to the way things were before everything fell apart. But that is not the gospel. The gospel calls us to come to terms with the realities of our fallen world. Indeed, the Church’s vocation is not to call for a “return to normalcy.” Our vocation is to proclaim the endless cycle of death has been marvelously disrupted by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We are called to lift our hearts above shame, guilt, and resentment and embrace the resurrection love that Jesus shows Peter, a love that reorders and renews all things.

Saving our Lives

Sermon on Mark 8:27-38 offered to the people of the Church of the Redeemer in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

In 1954, producers Harold Hecht and Burt Lancaster had an enviable problem. Put simply, their movies were too successful. Hecht-Lancaster Productions made so much money 1954 that the studio was concerned about the size of its tax bill come April 15th. They came up with an admittedly creative solution to this predicament. They decided toproduce a movie that was guaranteed to flop, so that the production costs could be written off as a capital loss. In theory, the plan was airtight: Hecht hired a relatively unknown writer to adapt his failed TV script into a full length feature, and Lancaster cast what he described as “two ugly people” in the lead roles. The producers were so confident that the movie would fail that the studio had an accountant on the set specifically charged with ensuring that the production lost enough money. When Marty was released, Hecht and Lancaster were sure that they had accurately understood the moviegoing public, that no one would be interested in watching two ordinary people fall in love.

As you probably know (or have at least guessed), the studio could not have been more wrong. Indeed, Marty was adored by both critics and the public. Not only was it a smash hit, it earned an Academy Award for Best Picture and became only the second American film to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Marty established Paddy Chayevsky, that unknown screenwriter, as one of the most talented screenwriters in Hollywood and made Ernest Borgnine, one of those two ugly actors, a household name. As it turns out, audiences found Borgnine and his co-star Betsy Blair far more relatable than typical Hollywood stars. Moreover, they were compelled by the film’s ultimate message: true love really is for anyone. Even though the producers thought they understood the public, their expectations were confounded. Even though their plan was, to their minds, foolproof, things turned out precisely the opposite way they anticipated.

Our reading from Mark’s gospel this morning reminds us that ours is a God who confounds expectations. While Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Messiah is an important moment in all the gospels, it is of particular significance in Mark. This is the pivot point of Mark’s gospel: not only is this the moment that the disciples finally recognize Jesus for who he is, it is also the moment that the narrative begins its inexorable progression toward Jesus’ passion and death in Jerusalem. It’s clear that this is not at all what Peter or any of the other disciples expect. When Jesus asks, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter sounds supremely confident: “You are the Messiah.” There’s no hesitancy, there’s no equivocation. Peter is sure that Jesus is the anointed successor of David. So it’s no surprise that Peter bristles when Jesus tells the disciples that the Messiah “must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed.” Mark tells us that Peter rebukes Jesus, presumably saying something to the effect of, “No no no Jesus; you have it all wrong. The Messiah isn’t supposed to die! What’s the matter with you?” Peter cannot imagine that the redemption of God’s people could come through rejection and death. Peter cannot conceive of a God who would reveal himself on a Roman cross. Peter, in other words, cannot fathom the paradox at the heart of the Christian faith: that an instrument of shameful death has become for us the means of life.

Needless to say, Peter is not the only one who has had difficulty understanding this paradox. Indeed, Christians have wondered for centuries how Jesus’ identity as the Messiah is related to his passion and death. Jesus begins to illuminate this relationship when he says to the crowd, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Now traditionally, this text is read as a call to martyrdom, a proclamation that Christians must be willing to lay down their lives for the gospel. Those who embrace this reading are continually on the lookout for a cross to bear, a burden that they can ascribe to their discipleship. But this interpretation ignores the fact that Jesus Christ is the one who bears the cross for our sake and for the sake of the world, that he has accomplished something that no one else can. Jesus explains what this is in the very next sentence: “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?” More than calling his disciples to die for their faith, Jesus is affirming that the more we try to control our lives, the more out of control they will feel. The more we try to maintain our conception of what our life ought to be, the more unable we are to live the life that we have. This statement of Jesus recognizes that when we strive to preserve the life we have at all costs, things will turn out precisely the opposite way we anticipate. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ have liberated us to appreciate that life is not a commodity to be hoarded, but a gift to be fully experienced.

This is more than a metaphor. Last year, Atul Gawande, a surgeon and bestselling author, published a book called Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. Gawande’s simple, yet powerful thesis is that over the last century, medicine, for all its advances, has failed to prepare people for the reality of death. Too many have ended their lives in agony, undergoing treatments that offer only a sliver’s chance of benefit. In many cases, focusing on survival leads people to forfeit the life they have remaining. To illustrate his point, he cites one study of patients with terminal cancer in which those who went on hospice tended to live longer than those who continued to receive treatment. As he puts it, “the lesson seems almost Zen: you live longer only when you stop trying to live longer.” We might put it another way: “those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

This gospel is profoundly countercultural. We live in an age and in a culture in which acquisition is of paramount importance. Our culture demands that we accumulate in the name of security, that we always think about what to acquire next, that we see everything in our life as a commodity to be collected. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ call us to recognize that when we live our lives this way, things will turn out precisely the opposite way we anticipate. Rather than preserving our life, our preoccupation with acquisition leads us to squander what is truly important. We are called to let go of those attachments that draw us away from the love of God and live gospel-centered lives. One of the best ways to do this is to be disciplined about focusing on what matters most by making a rule of life that allows us to experience life as a gift. Rules of life can be simple or complex, but they all have the same purpose: to help us stop the endless and ultimately fruitless cycle of striving for whatever comes next. Intentionally making room for God and for what matters most allows us to live our lives more fully than we ever thought possible.

Wonderland

Sermon on Matthew 17:1-9 offered to the people of the Church of the Heavenly Rest in Abilene, TX.

Though there’s nothing terribly impressive about the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority, there is one thing about it that is almost impossibly romantic.  You may be wondering how there can be romance in a mass transit system; I will explain.  You see, the T, as it’s known, is comprised of five different lines, each designated by a different color: red, orange, green, silver, and blue.  On four of these lines, the names of the stops are fairly straightforward: they describe the location above drily and accurately.  On the blue line, however, the names of the stops are imbued with a romance that is unparalleled in any of the country’s other mass transit systems. From the jauntily nautical “Aquarium” to the pastoral sounding “Wood Island” to the impossibly exotic “Orient Heights,” the names of the blue line stops bring to mind images far more beguiling than the world we typically inhabit. Appropriately, the most romantic name of all is reserved for the end of the line: “Wonderland.”  The very thought of that name invites the rider of the blue line into a reverie of possibility and beauty, into a world that far exceeds our limited imagination.

Now, it probably won’t surprise you to learn that Aquarium is not actually filled with giant fish, Wood Island is not a primeval forest sprouting from the middle of the sea, and Orient Heights is not filled with pagodas and rickshaws.  And while one knows intellectually that these stops could not possibly live up to the romance of their names, it is still incredibly dispiriting to discover that they are like any other place.  All of these stops are disappointingly mundane, featuring the same shops, same people, and same challenges that characterize the rest of Boston and the rest of the world.  Most disappointing of all is Wonderland.  Though the name evokes images that transcend even our wildest imaginations, Wonderland is, in fact, home to a run-down amusement park and a dog track. When one emerges from the depths of Wonderland station, there is a moment of spirit crushing self-realization as one thinks, “Is that it?  Is that all it is?”  It is one of those disappointments that makes you want to go back in time and pretend you don’t know what you know, to remain on the subway car and dwell in the safety of your imagination rather than face the cold certainty of reality.

Today we celebrate the Transfiguration, the commemoration of the time Jesus took Peter and James and John up a mountain, was physically transformed in front of them, talked with Moses and Elijah, and then returned down the mountain as if nothing happened.  It’s one of the stranger moments in the gospel account, not because God’s presence is made manifest to mortals (that actually happens with some frequency in Scripture), but because it has so little to do with the rest of the story.  The Transfiguration is an event that takes place in nearly all the gospel accounts, and in none of them does it seem to be a terribly important part of the narrative.  This is strange, because these moments when God is made manifest to mortals, known as theophanies, are usually hinge points in the lives of those who have these experiences.  After Moses experiences God in the burning bush, he embraces his responsibility to lead his people out of Egypt.  After Elijah experiences God in the still small voice on the top of Mount Horeb, he sets off to find the remnant that had not bowed the knee to Baal.  After Jesus experiences God during his baptism in the Jordan, he enters the wilderness to begin forty days of fasting, prayer, and discernment.  Theophanies are typically moments of transformation, so it is strange that not much seems to change in the lives of Peter, James, John, or even Jesus after the Transfiguration.  In the very next passage, we find the disciples complaining that they are unable to cast out a demon, which is what we have come to expect from the often-clueless disciples; nothing seems to have changed.  This is made all the more confusing by the fact that the word we translate as “transfiguration” is literally “metamorphosis.”  The whole story seems to hinge on this notion of change, and yet we are told that things have quite deliberately remained the same; Jesus even tells the disciples not to say anything about what happened.  The Transfiguration is a deeply perplexing moment in the life of our Lord: Jesus is literally transformed in front of his closest disciples and yet doesn’t seem to want anyone or anything changed as a result.

Why is this?  Why would Jesus, who is so utterly focused on conversion and amendment of life, be so uninterested in the transformative effects of arguably the most dramatic moment of transformation in his life and ministry?  It might be helpful for us to consider the story from Exodus we heard this morning.  The echoes between the story of the Transfiguration and the story of Moses ascending the mountain to receive the tablets of the Law are obvious.  In both cases, people are enshrouded by cloud on a mountaintop.  In both cases, Moses figures prominently.  And in both cases, mortals encounter and experience the living God.  There is one distinction, however, that seems to be of particular significance.  In the reading from Exodus, notice how many times we hear that people had to wait.  God tells Moses to wait, Moses and Joshua tell the elders of the people to wait, Moses waited six days before he ascended the mountain, and the people of Israel waited as Moses remained on the mountaintop for forty days and forty nights.  All of this waiting serves to underscore the significance of what was happening on the mountain.  The waiting allowed Moses and the people of Israel to anticipate what was coming.  The waiting represented a time of expectancy and hope, an awareness that this encounter with God, that this moment on the mountain was going to change everything.

We can actually see Peter exhibiting this familiar sense of anticipation and expectancy in Matthew’s account of the Transfiguration.  As soon as Moses and Elijah appear, Peter seems to recognize it as a theophany, a moment when he will encounter the living God, and he makes appropriate plans: “Moses is here?  That must mean we’re doing Exodus all over again!  We may be here forty days!”  His exuberant reverie is interrupted, however, by a voice from heaven that says, “This is my Son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased: listen to him.”  After falling on the ground (which is the appropriate and expected response to hearing the voice of the Lord), Jesus taps Peter on the shoulder, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.”  I can’t help but notice that at the first opportunity the disciples have to listen to Jesus, to obey the command of the very living God, Jesus gives them the surprisingly mundane instruction to “get up.”  Immediately after that, he tells them to keep their mouths shut about the events that have transpired.  Surely Jesus could have used the opportunity to impart some timeless spiritual truth or to issue some complicated command.  After all, the disciples were probably more than ready to listen after God himself told them to do so.  Instead, Jesus uses his newly imparted authority to get the disciples off the mountain, to point them away from the theophany, to point them towards the next steps of their journey.

In many ways, it’s not at all surprising that Peter wanted to linger on the mountain.  After all, just prior to the Transfiguration, Jesus informed his disciples that he would undergo great suffering and be crucified at the hands of the authorities.  Just before his Transfiguration, Jesus had just made it abundantly clear that his glory would be revealed in the agony and humiliation of the cross.  So when Peter saw Jesus’ glorious transformation on the mountaintop, perhaps he wondered if another way was possible.  Perhaps he wondered if Jesus could bypass the cross by revealing his glory surrounded by cloud and situated between the symbolic arbiters of the Law and the prophets.  It seems that Peter wanted to stay on the mountain because he was afraid of what waited for him at its base.  It seems that Peter wanted to maintain his illusions about Wonderland and ignore its cold reality.  I think that all of us can sympathize with Peter.  All of us know what it feels like to put our efforts into hiding ourselves from the frightening realities of the world.  All of us know what it feels like to spend our time worrying about risk rather than trusting in possibility.  All of us know what it feels like to live lives shaped not by hope, but fear.  But by taking hold of Peter and telling him to “get up,” Jesus tells us that the glory revealed on the mountaintop is fleeting, but the true depth of God’s glory is revealed on the cross.  By taking hold of Peter and telling him to “get up,” Jesus tells us that true transformation does not occur through cosmic special effects, but through God’s self-emptying love. By taking hold of Peter and telling him to “get up,” Jesus tells us that true theophanies occur not only on the mountaintop, but also on street corners and at homeless shelters, at rundown amusement parks and dog tracks, at places called the Skull.  By taking hold of Peter and telling him to “get up,” Jesus is telling us that we experience the way of life and peace not by dwelling in the safety of our limited imaginations, but by sacrificially risking ourselves in love for others and by refusing to be afraid of failure.

We are about to embark upon the season of Lent.  More than anything else, Lent is an opportunity for us to take those risks to which Jesus invites us as he tells us to “get up.”  It’s an opportunity for us to get out of our comfort zones, to step down from our hiding places on the mountaintop and encounter God in a new and perhaps surprising way.  It’s easy to slip into the fallacy that the season of Lent is a reset button for our New Year’s resolutions or a “spiritual Olympics” when we prove just how holy we are.  But attitudes like this miss the challenging beauty of this season.  At its best, Lent is about disturbing us in our complacency and impelling us to meet God in the unvarnished reality and brokenness of the world.  As we descend from the mountaintop and enter the holy season of penitence and renewal, I pray that all of us will have the grace to see Lent as an opportunity to embrace the hard realities of this world and experience the God who far exceeds our limited imagination.

Nonsense

We have arrived at the day for which we have been preparing for the last 40 days.  It is Easter Day, the day of Resurrection, the day when we remember and celebrate the fact that the women went to the tomb and found it empty.  And yet, despite the season of preparation, despite our disciplined efforts to make room for God in our lives, despite the fact that we have been looking forward to this celebration for weeks, we may still feel unready.  We may still feel unprepared for this celebration, because the Resurrection challenges our assumptions and transforms the way we look at the world.  Even as we celebrate the fact that Christ has been raised from the dead, we may have lingering doubts.  After all, people do not rise from the dead in our experience.  In spite of all our preparation, we may feel unready to proclaim that Christ is risen.

We are not the first people to have these doubts.  Luke’s gospel tells us that the women went to tomb early in the morning, only to find the stone rolled away and the body of Jesus gone.  After two men in dazzling clothes asked why they were looking for the living among the dead, the women rushed to tell the apostles, who dismissed it as “an idle tale.”  This word that Luke uses can also be translated as “foolishness” or “nonsense.”  For the apostles (and probably for the women who went to the tomb), the idea that someone could rise from the dead was ludicrous.  First-century Jews knew just as well as twenty-first century skeptics that people do not rise from the dead, that death is the end of the story, that talk of resurrection is nonsense.  The apostles had the same doubts that many of us have.  The tomb may had been empty, but that doesn’t mean that Jesus’ followers were ready to proclaim that Christ is risen.

Nevertheless, even as the apostles dismissed the women’s story as nonsense, one of the apostles ran to the tomb to see if it was true.  I can only imagine what Peter’s inner monologue was like as he rushed to the place where Jesus had been buried: “This is so stupid.  Those women must have been seeing things.  Maybe the gardener was messing with their heads.  Anyway, there’s no way that Jesus’ body is gone.  There’s no way that he rose from the dead.  Things like that just don’t happen.”  Peter was among those who confidently dismissed the very idea of resurrection, and yet as he approached the tomb, doubts may have crept into his mind.  What if the tomb was empty?  What if he really had risen from the dead?  Luke’s gospel provides a wonderful detail: as Peter arrives at the tomb, he has to stoop to look inside.  As he approached the tomb, he had to slow down and pause at its entrance.  He had to take a deep breath and stoop to peer into the gloom, terrified of what he would (or wouldn’t) find.

Even in the midst of our doubts, even in the midst of our confident belief that the very idea of resurrection is nonsense, Easter challenges us to take a deep breath and stoop to peer inside the empty tomb.  We may look to satisfy our morbid curiosity, we may look to prove our skeptical neighbors wrong, we may look because we are desperately in need of God’s promise of new and abundant life.  Whatever our motivation, Easter challenges us to look for new life even in those places that have known only death and despair.  We may have our doubts, but Easter challenges us to look past our doubts and embrace the possibility of resurrection, the possibility of transformation, the possibility that this life can be renewed by the power of God who loves us.  When we stoop to peer inside the empty tomb and embrace the possibility of resurrection, we can proclaim to this world that God’s love and faithfulness have the power to transform a world that his enslaved to death and despair.  When we embrace the possibility of resurrection, we are given the opportunity to live resurrection lives of love and service to others.  Resurrection is more than an empty tomb; it is a promise that the world can be transformed, that the evil powers of this world are no match for the love of God, and that we have the ability to make this world a better place.  Even if we are afraid of what we will find when we peer inside the empty tomb, we are called to proclaim the resurrection by working for the transformation of the world.