A sermon by Benjamin J. Newland

Exodus 3:1-15
Psalm 105: 1-6, 23-26, 45c
Romans 12:9-21
Matthew 16:21-28
So Moses is just walking along, minding his own business, in this case is business being his father-in-law’s sheep, when an angel of the LORD appears. You would think that an angel of the LORD would be enough to get his attention, but on such an important occasion I suppose God didn’t want Moses to miss anything, so he provided the angel with a burning-but-not-burning-up bush. In fact, in movie versions of this story that I have seen the angel is usually deleted in favor of the more spectacular bush. Personally, if I were an angel of the LORD I would be a bit resentful that I was called on to play a role in the first intervention of God in the Exodus of the Hebrew people and then was upstaged by flaming shrubbery. Then again, angels are probably immune to resentfulness.
Once Moses’ attention has been fully captured, the bush calls out to Moses, who responds with prophetic, “here I am.” God then informs Moses, once again through the incendiary topiary, that he ought to remove his shoes for the voice of the bush is none other than God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and therefore also of Joseph and the poor enslaved Hebrews in Egypt, and also thereby, of Moses. Once God has dropped all the appropriate names, God informs Moses that God has had enough of his people’s enslavement and that it is time to get them free and set them up in a nice little promised land of their own. If you were here a couple months ago you’ll remember how God promised Abram that his descendents would have a promised land. God neglected to mention the part about the years of enslavement in Egypt which would come first. Well, now the years have passed and God is about to make good on God’s covenant with Abraham. Unfortunately for Moses, God is going to make good on said covenant using Moses.
I say unfortunately because Moses seems immediately aware that this job will kill him. As soon as God stops speaking out of the burning-but-not-burning-up bush Moses objects, saying, “who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” It’s a pretty weak objection really, because unless the DreamWorks animated movie “Prince of Egypt” lied to me, Moses was raised as the then Pharaoh’s adopted brother, so who better to go to Pharaoh demanding unreasonable things like the freeing of valuable slaves? Moses’ real objection to God’s call is that it is a threat to his life. Moses knows instinctively that getting God’s work done on earth is dangerous business, and he wants no part of it.
You and I know, and Moses probably knew too, that saying no to God isn’t that easy. The flaming voice of God doesn’t even address Moses’ concerns directly, just reasserting the divine prerogative. Moses demands a name, and God responds with the famous, “I AM WHO I AM,” which has been discussed and analyzed a thousand different ways, none of which yield results that are really much good when you have to ask the leader of the most powerful nation in the world to do something he doesn’t want to do. God is God, and that will have to be good enough for Moses who, it is clear now, doesn’t have much choice.
Meanwhile, a few thousand years later in the aforementioned promised land, an itinerant rabbi sits teaching his followers essentially the same lesson. Last week Peter made a breakthrough and recognized Jesus as the Messiah. This week he proves that he hasn’t really learned much at all, because he tries to take Jesus aside and tell him how this new idea about his getting killed isn’t going to bring in a lot of new disciples and maybe he should take a softer line. Jesus dramatically rebukes Peter and then drives home the lesson Moses instinctively learned when talking with God.
There is one way to follow me, Jesus says, one way to be a child of God, and that way is with everything you have—with everything you are. What good will it do you, Jesus askes, to save your life for something not worthy of life? Better to give your life to God, to take up your cross. It might kill you, but it will also give you life like nothing else can.
If we learn nothing else from the person of Moses we ought to learn that being called by God is life changing. Further, it is life changing in a way that we often water down in contemporary Christian dialogue. We often say that God is calling us to something, but we seldom mean that word to be as serious as it often is in the Bible. Moses is not worried because God’s call means he is going to become a priest instead of a lawyer. Moses is not concerned because he was counting on a high paying corporate job and God wants him to work for a non-profit. Moses is scared because what God wants him to do will very likely put him in a great deal of personal danger if it doesn’t outright kill him. Moses’ life will be physically and concretely different because of God’s call. This is not a matter of quiet introspection or reading self-help books. This is immediate intervention by the sudden awareness of a higher power, and God has demonstrated that God is happy to act in such drastic ways on more than one occasion. AMEN.

View archived copy here.

The Friday Letters
29 August 2008

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

This past Monday, Jieun and I traveled to Seattle to explore a new portion of the city. We stopped for lunch downtown then made our way to the Freemont neighborhood. Technically, I’d been there before, at a diocesan event held at our Church of the Apostles (COTA) which lives within the old Freemont Abbey. On that occasion, however, I’d seen nothing of the neighborhood except that church and some pretty heinous parking.

Upon arrival we traversed Freemont Avenue North and South looking for something worth exploring by foot. We found it at the bottom of the hill sloping down towards Lake Union. Freemont has a reputation (cultivated, I’d imagine) as a funky neighborhood, and it lived up to said reputation admirably. They have an old missile which was purchased surplus, painted, and erected on top of a building. This, apparently, makes it a “modern landmark”. I learned all this by reading the plaque at the edge of the sidewalk below. It was like being on a nature walk except instead of describing a tree or shrub the plaque was telling me about this old rocket that someone (coyly referred to as a “Rocket Scientist”) had stuck on the roof of a historic building. See? Funky.

Besides funkiness, Freemont also has lots of stores that sell old things. In general I like these kinds of stores. Jieun and I walked through one place that was basically a permanent multi-family garage sale. In Puyallup they call this an “Antique Mall”. In Freemont it’s called a “Vintage Mall”. Vintage Mall, while certainly more pretentious, is also accurate, as the place was full of kitsch from the 50s and 60s, none of which was venerable enough to claim the word “antique” in my opinion. I didn’t see anything I could live just as well without, so I saved my twenty dollar bill for something else.

While Jieun looked over some “vintage” clothes, I made my way into my favorite kind of store which sells old things: a used book store. This one is called Ophelia’s Books, and is  a prime example of it’s species. I was greeted at the door by a friendly black cat (bookstore cats are almost always a good sign in my experience). The shop was on three levels, the upper and lower of which were as far from ADA accessible as you can reasonably get. A tight, spiral staircase led into a basement level while a converted ladder could be climbed to reach a loft where only those under 5’10” might stand upright. It was up in this loft, neck cocked over to one side, that I met my new favorite children’s author.

Frances Hardinge (and no, I don’t have any idea how to pronounce her last name) wrote Fly By Night in 2006, just long enough ago that a nice hardcover edition was sitting on the bookshelf waiting for me. If you read enough novels, comb enough dusty shelves at used book stores, you begin to develop a sixth sense for books you might like. With this novel it was nothing more than the heft of the thing, plus the descriptive text that indicated the antagonist was an independent minded young girl with a homicidal pet goose. I mean seriously, how could a story with a homicidal goose be bad?

My sixth sense for used books isn’t perfect, but in this case it picked a winner. Besides the author’s devotion to wonderful and uncommon words, and her imagined world’s population by little tiny saint/gods called the Beloved (our heroine is born on the day of Palpittatle, the Beloved responsible for keeping the newly dead out of villages by squirting berry juice in their eyes), the goose turned out to be a real character; he single handedly (single wingedly?) commandeered three separate boats during the story.

I suppose that recommending a children’s novel is not strictly the point of these Friday afternoon missives I write each week. Still, there is for me something spiritual about a really great story. It is this reverence for the power of creative storytelling that draws me to the Bible, and to its dazzling collection of irregular histories, prophetic poems, and slippery parables.

It used to bother me that the Bible was so scattered. If Homer could write a cohesive, integrated story hundreds of years earlier, I reasoned, how come the Biblical authors couldn’t get their acts together and tell a single, unified story about God? That doesn’t bother me anymore. I’ve come to like the scattered, unreasonable stories more and more over time; the Biblical ones as well as the ones that get put into novels. Besides, God is far too wild to fit within a single, unified story. The Bible, with it’s wild, scattered, and occasionally dark tales seems a much more fitting place for the God I’ve come to know.

Besides, can you imagine if, during the story of Pentecost, when the Disciples were speaking in all their various Spirit-inspired languages, what would have happened if someone let loose a homicidal goose in the crowd? Now that would have been a good story.

Peace,

Ben.

A sermon by Benjamin J. Newland

Exodus 1:8-2:10
Psalm 124
Romans 12:1-8
Matthew 16:13-20
Why did Jesus tell the disciples to keep their mouths shut? I mean, Peter had just figured the whole thing out, right? He’d answered the million dollar question correctly, and it was time to walk home with all the cash and prizes. “Who am I?” Jesus asks, and while others think he might be John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or maybe some other prophet, Peter comes up with the right answer, and Jesus is obviously pleased. But then he lays some seriously heavy responsibility on  Peter and tells them all to keep quiet about the whole thing.
Before we get to Jesus’ cover-up, let’s look at the rest of the story. There’s actually quite a bit going on here, so let me break it down for you. First off, did you notice all the name changing? Simon, son of Jonah, gives Jesus his new last name of Christos by recognizing Jesus as the Messiah the Jews had been waiting for all this time. Jesus returns the favor by giving Simon the new name Peter, and calling him the rock on which the community of Jesus was to be built. Much trouble has come of both these new names. Peter may have been the first to recognize the Messiah in Jesus of Nazareth, but for a long time he was one of only a very few who did. The people who didn’t see it Peter’s way beat up on him and his friends until there were more of them, then Peter and friends beat up on the other guys for awhile. And even among those of us that think Peter got it right, Jesus making him the rock of the church has been the subject of numerous and bloody disputes over the few hundred years we’ve had to think about it. New names for new people, or just a recognition of what they already were? Probably the latter. Peter the Rock, and Jesus the Christ. The secret’s out.
Immediately following all this name changing, Jesus tells the disciples that the very gates of hell cannot stand against the church. This metaphor has been seen historically by Christians as an image of their church, or their faith, being under siege by the powers of death and hell. The City of God stands shining on the hill, surrounded by the forces of darkness. But that’s not what Jesus said. He said that the gates of hell couldn’t stand against the church. If hell were attacking the church, why would it be beating at us with its own gates? That doesn’t make a lot of sense. It’s actually the church that’s beating at the gates of hell, taking the fight to the enemy, not standing surrounded. If all this metaphorical talk about cosmic battles between good and evil leaves you cold, then think of it this way: Jesus said that the People of God would have the power, the authority, and the courage to fight against the things of death. Things like despair, and loneliness, and hate. We are not under siege; we are charging in.
And the last piece of this puzzle before we get back to  undercover Jesus, is this idea of the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Jesus tells the newly named Peter that he’s going to give him the keys of heaven. In most of the ensuing theological discussion, and all of the ensuing bad jokes about getting into heaven, Peter is thought of as hanging out next to a podium, standing on a cloud in front of the incredibly tall pearly gates, interviewing folks who have died and want in to heaven. Since Peter has the keys, we figure he must be the one who lets people in.
It’s an understandable mistake, and it may not even be a mistake. One reason to have a set of keys it to keep things locked up, to keep what you want in, safe from what you don’t want in. Keys lock doors that keep things in. There is another side to this though. Instead of thinking like the jailor, try thinking like the unjustly jailed. Keys may lock doors that keep things in, but they also unlock doors, and let things out. Maybe that’s what Jesus meant. Maybe he didn’t want Peter to keep heaven and the church locked up so that only certain people could get in. Maybe instead he wanted Peter to unlock everything and throw the doors wide open. Maybe the gates of the kingdom of heaven were meant to be unlocked. Maybe Peter was supposed to be a liberator, not a bouncer. And maybe the gates of heaven aren’t tall and pearly, and floating on a cloud. Maybe they are gates on our hearts, and they need to be unlocked and opened, not closed and secured.
So what about Jesus trying to cover up the newly released secret of his Messianic nature? Why did he tell the disciples to keep quiet? I think it has to do with the heavy responsibility he lays on Peter, and on the disciples, and on us. “…whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Think of this as a continuation of the keys idea. It’s not so much the binding that we need to be concerned with. It’s the loosing. We are not called to go around tieing everyone up with our moralizing and our rule-making, and our certainty that we know who gets into heaven. We are called to be loosers. Peter, the disciples, and we are sent out into the world to set loose the kingdom of God. And we are sent under orders. That’s the heavy responsibility part. Peter figured it out, and we still believe it. It’s our job to set the whole thing loose.
So why did Jesus tell the disciples to keep quiet? Honestly, I don’t know. That was just a tease to get you to listen to the whole sermon. I don’t know why Jesus wanted the whole thing kept under wraps. Maybe he didn’t think the disciples were ready. Maybe he didn’t want to get too famous too fast. Maybe he was just offering them a preview. I don’t know. And it doesn’t really matter. The things that matter are these: Jesus is seen for what he was, Peter is given the keys to set us all free, the church is given the power to fight death and win, and we are given the command to run around loosing the kingdom of God like crazy. So go forth and see if you can’t loose a little bit yourself this week. AMEN

The Friday Letters
22 August 2008

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

When preparing a sermon, I like to combine the lessons of the day whenever possible. If I can’t get them all in there, I try to at least use the Old Testament and the Gospel lessons together as a way of highlighting each one. Usually I can at least mention the Epistle. Sometimes, however, a particular reading will demand its own full treatment, leaving little time or space for the other lessons, particularly when trying to keep things short and sweet on warm summer Sunday mornings.

This Sunday’s lessons include the Exodus story of Moses’ birth. I’m planning to preach on the Gospel lesson, and so Moses is going to get ignored. Instead of leaving him out completely, here are a few thoughts on this story for your Friday afternoon.

We begin by being told that there is a new Pharaoh, one who did not know Joseph. Last week we heard the end of Joseph’s story, and though details were pretty skimpy, when we last heard from a Pharaoh he held the Israelites in high esteem because of Joseph. The new Pharaoh isn’t so kindly disposed toward his resident slave population, and is worried about one of them rising up to revolt against him. He orders all the male Hebrew babies killed as they are born. This death sentence has resonant echoes with the same order that will be given to start the Exodus itself and inaugurate the events of Passover. It also foreshadows for us Herod’s order at the time of Jesus’ birth.

The midwives of Egypt are more merciful than Pharaoh it seems, for they could not carry out the orders of death, claiming instead that Hebrew women were too hearty for them and always gave birth before a midwife could arrive. So it is that Moses’ unnamed parents are given a boy, whom they keep only days before his mother has to hide him and send him away in hopes that he’ll survive.

If you’ve seen any of the movie versions of this story, either live action or animation, you’ll know what happens next. Moses is found by Pharaoh’s daughter and raised amongst the Egyptians. Thus he too, like Joseph before him, rises to a place of power within the dominant society even though he himself is a slave.

There are similarities between Moses’ birth story and Jesus’. I mentioned the death order for children as being one. Another is simply the significance of the stories; Moses was a very important figure for the Hebrew people, therefore he had a very important birth story. Jesus was a very important figure for the early Christian community, therefore he had a very important birth story. I’m claiming cause and effect or anything, just that these two have another similarity in their profound and meaning-laden entry into the world. (You can say the same thing about Julius Caesar, as a matter of fact, who was apparently conceived by his mother and a god in the shape of a snake.)

The most significant similarity in my mind, between the birth of Moses and the birth of Jesus, is the women in the stories. Moses’ mother is given a male child that she will have to give up, just as Mary will have to give up Jesus to the purpose he was born to. It is the kindness and mercy of the midwives and Pharaoh’s daughter that enable Moses to grow up and do what God intended for him to do, just as Jesus is often sustained and comforted by the women around him during his ministry. Moses sister will at times be a thorn in his side, spurring him on, just as Martha and Mary must have done for Jesus hundreds of years later.

It is a good story, this Exodus tale that we are about to embark upon. I didn’t want to let the first installment go by unnoticed. See you Sunday, where we’ll talk about the Gospel lesson, wherein Simon is renamed and Jesus tells everyone to keep their mouth shut about it.

Peace,

Ben.

View archived copy here.

A Sermon By Benjamin J. Newland
Genesis 45:1-15
Psalm 133
Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32
Matthew 15: 21-28
I have to tell you that this is one of my favorite Gospel lessons. I know I say that all the time, so maybe you think they’re all my favorites. Maybe I’ve cried wolf too many times on great Gospel lessons. Still, this one really is one of my favorites, and it’s hard to apologize for liking Gospel stories.
The reason I like this one so much is because of the woman, and because she makes Jesus look bad. Jesus has been looking pretty good lately too. He fed five thousand people, he taught the disciples an object lesson on faith by walking on water. He can defeat the religious leaders of the day in argument at any time. He can make the blind see. And then he meets this woman who is a Canaanite.
He tries to ignore her at first. A good ploy, usually, but she is too persistent. The disciples get annoyed and ask Jesus to send her away, so he tries. He tells her that his mission is only “to the lost sheep of Israel”, making the excuse that as she is not Jewish and he is a Jewish holy man, his abilities are not for her. Still she persists. He tries one of those lines that make him such a great teacher of parables: he says that it is not fair to take food from children (by which he means other Israelites) and give it to the dogs (by which he means Gentiles, Samaritans, and most especially Canaanites).
This time she does not simply beg him again. Instead, she answers him as he has spoken to her. She does what the Pharisees have not yet and would never be able to do: she beats him at verbal fencing. “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”
I think there should be a pause there. If the Gospel was written with stage directions there would be a line right after the woman speaks asking for at least five seconds of silence because it is in that gap between what the woman says and Jesus’ answer that most of the action of the story takes place. It takes place inside of Jesus’ head and we are left to guess at what he was thinking, but whatever it was it was the most important part of this story. Was he angry that this woman wouldn’t leave him alone? Was he frustrated by the perpetual demands on him and his abilities? Did he at some point realize that he was wrong, and that the woman was right? He must have, for he changed his mind.
By admitting to him that she was no better than the dogs in his analogy but still insisting that she deserved his mercy anyways that nameless Canaanite woman showed Jesus that he was acting just like the people he spent his time ridiculing. “Woe to you, Hypocrites!” Jesus likes to say, and this time he has to say it to himself. Yes, Jesus was a Jew, and sent first to the people of Israel, but his message was bigger than just Israel, bigger than just the first century world he occupied. Hadn’t he been telling people that God could do anything? That there was no such thing as a limited amount of Grace? That even the smallest amount of faith could move mountains? Surely then there ought to be enough for this woman too.
It takes a big person to admit that they are wrong. It takes an even bigger person to realize they are wrong on the spot, while being embarrassed in front of their friends, and to then make it right immediately. This is just my read on the Gospel, you know. If you don’t like the idea of Jesus being wrong there are other ways to work on this story. It doesn’t make me think less of Jesus to know that he was wrong once in awhile though. In fact, it makes me love him more.

The Friday Letters
15 August 2008
St. Mary, Mother of Jesus

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

It is too hot today. Too hot for me, and too hot for my poor fluffy dog. I at least can escape to the air-conditioned sanctuary of the coffee shop or library.

On hot summer days like this I tend wake up early and get as much done before lunch as possible. It’s just too hot in the office to work all afternoon. Siesta is the rule of the day, and then back to work in the evening. I know I’m lucky to have that kind of flexibility. Then again, if I was an office drone chained to my desk from 8 to 5 each day I’d probably be working in an air-conditioned cubicle. I’ll take a too-hot attic over and air-conditioned cubicle any day.

This weekend is going to be a busy one, hot or not. We have a wedding here at the church, which means rehearsal this evening and the ceremony tomorrow. I get to attend a family dinner tonight after the rehearsal, and then meet with our Sr. High youth group after that. In the morning is our regular bike ride, and once we get back from that there’s a construction party at the Cornerstone Garage to put some workbenches and shelves in, along with other necessary accessories for bicycle repair (like, you know, lights). Wedding Saturday night, and church Sunday morning, after which I’ll probably need a nap, but I’m thinking about driving across the mountains to the hotter side of the state to see a friend who’s on vacation.

I good week, all in all, and a good month even with the heat. Attendance at church is low, as it often is during vacation months. That always makes me a little sad, not because I want people to feel guilty about taking time off, but because I miss seeing folks when they’re gone. Absence makes the heart grow fonder though, as they say, and it’s always fun to see people again when they pop back up after a vacation. I hope you’ve got somewhere cool to be this afternoon, and I’ll hope to see you Sunday.

Peace,

Ben.

View archived copy here.

A Sermon By Benjamin J. Newland
Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28
Psalm 105: 1-6, 16-22, 45b
Romans 10:5-15
Matthew 14:22-33
It is the nature of human beings to operate under general assumptions. This gets us into trouble sometimes, but it is also a necessary and efficient way to operate. You don’t need to know the exact weight and speed of an oncoming car in order to calculate its momentum (mass times velocity, as you may remember from High School physics class) to know that it is a bad idea to step out in front of that car as it roars down the street. It is enough to know that cars are bigger than you, and harder than you, and that getting hit by them is bad. You don’t need any particular knowledge about the specific car in front of you to make a decision based on general assumptions.
In this sense, assumptions are good. You’d never get far if you had to have exact and specific knowledge about each and every situation you were faced with during the course of a day. Your brain would overheat from thinking and you’d end up paralyzed at the edge of the sidewalk, never able to cross the street.
Then again, our generalizations are also capable of getting us into trouble. Occasionally into pretty ugly trouble. Stereotypes regarding people are some of the most dangerous assumptions, leading to racism, classism, sexism, and all kinds of other horrible patterns of behavior. We need assumptions to function efficiently, but we need to be careful with them as well.
One of the assumptions that Christians operate under too often is that the Bible is a Book. That it is The Word of God. Neither of these is true, either in general or in specific. To be picky, the Bible got started before anything book-like existed. At best we’re talking scrolls here, more likely we’re talking stories told and retold through generations of people. Each piece of the Bible comes from a different source: a different community, a different time, a different situation. It is not a book. This is confusing to us because every time we see it it looks like a book. Yet there is nothing singular about this text. Our scriptures are a collection of very different stories about God and God’s people.
So, the Bible is not a Book, but you could say that the Bible is books. You can say that I’m splitting hairs here, and maybe I am, but it seems to me like there’s a pretty big gap between the singular and the plural in this case, and that operating under the wrong assumption is going to lead us into trouble with God. And I’m going to split exactly the same hair with that other phrase, The Word of God. The Bible isn’t the Word of God as much as it is the Words of God, or even better, the words about God. Not that God didn’t speak or intend these words, but that whatever their source they are human words about the divine.
If there was any evidence needed to convince you of this claim, surely today’s set of lessons would be sufficient. From the one Bible we have 1) a story of fratricidal plotting, 2) a well reasoned argument for evangelism, and 3) an account of defying the laws of nature as a method of teaching. To assert that these three lessons are from some kind of single and unified treatise from God is to claim that God is schizophrenic.
Whew. Six hundred words and I’ve only now gotten to the lessons. I’m not even sure there was a point to all the rambling about assumptions and the multiplicity of biblical viewpoints except to say that whatever else God might be, God is capable of using a man sold into slavery by his brothers, a Greek rhetoritician, and a miracle worker, all on the same day, as a way to come after us. God’s pursuit of us is bound neither by a single source nor by the conventions of this day or any other. Nothing God does ought to surprise us, but because of the assumptions we make it invariably does.
My favorite assumptions in today’s lectionary comes from that master assumer, Peter. First, seeing Jesus on the water he assumes he’s seen a ghost. Then, having been disabused of that notion, he assumes that he too can walk on water, if Jesus will let him. I love that about Peter: he never tries to save face, least of all his own. And he doesn’t do too badly either. He starts to sink, of course, but Peter has taken more steps across water than I have, so I can’t criticize him for getting scared and failing. That’s the thing about the spiritual quest: even when you are walking right at God there’s a pretty good chance that you’ll get wet. Only take your eyes off for a moment and you can fall. Jesus manages to catch Peter though, and I like to make the assumption that they all got in the boat and headed for shore to have a nice breakfast of grilled fish, and to laugh over Peter’s failed attempt at water walking.
AMEN.