What Do You Believe?

A beloved Farside cartoon by Whyatt Cartoons

 

August 11, 2024—The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost—Proper 14

2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33
Psalm 130
Ephesians 4:25-5:2
John 6:35, 41-51

 

© 2021-2024 Seth Olson

This sermon was preached at the Episcopal Church of the Holy Apostles in Hoover, AL. A video of this sermon may be found here.

 

Holy God, let my words be your words and when my words are not your words, let your people be wise enough to know the same. Amen.

Perhaps you have seen the signs when driving along the interstate. No, not the Alexander Shunnarah ones. In bold text, an even bolder question, “If you died tonight, where would you go? Heaven or Hell?!!!” When I see such billboards, I lose my temper—I wonder, how can someone short-change the message of God’s love in this way? Reducing the beauty, the complexity, and the immensity of Jesus’ Way of Love into an either-or question leaves me feeling angry. 

Memories from my youth emerge: Walking through southside Birmingham and seeing well-meaning Christians wrapped in fear trying to scare others into believing. Their shouts of “Have you been saved?” or “Do you believe?” crackling from a cheap bullhorn. 

These questions remind me of a Far Side Cartoon. In it two clean-cut, white men dressed in khakis, short-sleeved button up shirts, and ties are standing at a woman’s front door. They ask her, “Have you found Jesus?” In the living room of the home barely visible are Jesus’ sandal-clad feet, hiding behind a curtain for a big picture window. Friends, if you recall nothing else from today’s sermon remember that Jesus isn’t playing hide-and-seek trying to evade you—and a perfectly acceptable response to “When were you saved?” is 2,000 years ago on Calvary when God in Christ fully revealed that nothing separates us from God’s love—not sin, not death, not nothing! (Sorry for the bad grammar) 

All the fear-based yelling of Christians into megaphones has caused a great mess within our society. Or, maybe their shouting has merely revealed the disorder—we are collectively struggling over what to believe. And, belief and believe have become such overburdened words that we may be confused about what it means to believe.

For many of our friends in other parts of the Church belief simply means to give ascent to something—to check off a certain list of criteria about God and ourselves. For many believing means to think the way others do, the way the pastor says to think, or to accept things in the right way as to avoid Hell. Sure, this is what believing means to some, but what did Jesus mean when using this word? What was the Head of Our Church saying when he articulated that believing leads to eternal life?

This morning, we heard Jesus in the continuation of a larger story from John’s Gospel account. The “Bread of Life Discourse” as some refer to it. (Are you sick of bread yet? Got any Gluten-free believers now?) In this conversation, Jesus described himself as the Bread of Life and the Bread of Heaven—using the Hebrew story of the manna from above to elaborate on what he came to do in the world. When Jesus said, “I am the bread of life” this was the first “I am” statement in this Gospel account. He would later state, I am the Light of the World; the Gate; the Good Shepherd; the Resurrection and the Life; the Way, the Truth, and the Life; and the Vine. But if we are to walk in love and into eternity with Jesus, do we have to believe Jesus literally? Was Jesus really bread or a vine? Is that believing?

You may be shocked to hear this, but Jesus was not a grape vine nor a bread loaf. When we go to the altar rail we are not participating in gruesome cannibalism. Jesus spoke in expansive language with many layers. When we meet him in Communion, we do truly take hold of Christ, but there is more happening than we will ever know, or we can even imagine. And so, we cannot take in all that is going on up here at God’s Table. Of course, it is easier to take hold of what is happening together. 

When we gather as a church community, we sometimes say that we are re-membering the Body of Christ. We are putting Christ’s Body back together—sorry, Humpty Dumpty. It’s crazy, but we are constituting the Body of Christ right now. And, at the same time the words that we hear as we stretch out our hands at the altar rail are “The Body of Christ.” You all—the Body of Christ—are meeting the Body of Christ during Communion. Talk about “You are what you eat!” And, there’s even more to this whole believing thing.

 

This is the way, Thomas Merton, the great mystic from Kentucky put it: 

 

The deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. It is beyond words, and it is beyond speech, and it is beyond concept. Not that we discover a new unity. We discover an older unity. My dear brothers [and sisters], we are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.[1]

 

We have to be the Body of Christ—that we already are! I can believe that.

There’s a hymn about this sort of believing. Foster Bailey, the organist at St. John’s, Decatur, often would ask me what my favorite hymn was. The richness of our hymnody is often too much for me to narrow it down to just one, so I would change my answer constantly. Usually whatever I would tell him, would make him roll his eyes. Today, my favorite hymn might just be “The Church’s One Foundation.” For in the last stanza we sing, “Yet she [the Church] on earth hath union with God the Three in One, and mystic sweet communion with those whose rest is won; O happy ones and holy! Lord give us grace that we, like them, the meek and lowly, on high may dwell with thee.” 

I can’t help but get misty eyed when I sing those words. I know that there are those who have joined the great cloud of witnesses who still commune with us. This isn’t a ghost story either, so do not allow the fear from other parts of society soak into us too. The bullhorn shouting about going to heaven or hell distracts us from hearing Christ Jesus reassuring us, “I will raise them up on the last day.” We miss this as we worry: “Do I get to be part of the exclusive club? What if I believe in the wrong way? What if I mess this whole thing up?” We fret about what Jesus said when he talked about belief, but what he meant was not doing a certain set of things or thinking a particular way or consenting to what the preacher tells you to do. Jesus pointed to the non-permanent nature of the manna in the wilderness to drive home the truth of believing. 

To believe—to really eat the bread of life, to be transformed by what happens in mystic sweet communion—to believe is to trust God. To walk in love means to follow Jesus’ example in giving over our whole lives to the Creator of the Universe to be blessed and transformed. This is actually harder than checking off a few things a preacher says to do. That was the case with Israelites. 

Way back when, manna was not the problem. The trouble was that those who were in the desert with Moses did not trust God. They grumbled. They pleaded for more than just the bread that was keeping them alive. And, I don’t want to speak for anyone else, but I often do the same.

When problems arise, I doubt. Which is a natural response and appropriate! God still believes in me, even when I don’t believe in God. But, when I forget, when we forget our true identities as God’s beloveds, that God is holding us up, and that God is with us (all of us, at all times, and in all places)—when we forget this, we can easily turn our religion into a weapon. 

When we disconnect from the truth that we are all God’s beloved children, we can wield Christianity as a sword to beat away disbelief or more troublingly unbelievers. This was not the way Jesus walked. This was not what Jesus meant by believing. And this is not what keeps us in eternal life. 

Jesus showed us a way that was and is different. He did not encourage people to think in only one way, so that they could eat bread that would never get moldy. No, he showed us a more important bread through which we might recover our original unity with God. Jesus showed us the way into eternal life. It is not through accenting to what a fear-filled preacher says, so that you can think that your group is better than others. Instead, we are called into a radical practice of trusting that God’s love for us and for all is infinite. It is eternally expansive and completely comprehensive. God’s love has even dissolved the sting of death. And, as crazy as this sounds with an election in 85 days, God’s love has the power to make us one.

We are called to trust God. That is believing. When we eat the bread of belief, we remember that we are already part of the Body of Christ. What we must be is what we already are.

What do you believe?

---

[1] Thomas Merton, The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7711632-the-deepest-level-of-communication-is-not-communication-but-communion. 

Scared

Is Luke 12:13-21 proposing a theology of fear?

Huge signs are all over the Alabama highways. I think they are produced by one Christian group or another, but I have neglected actually calling the numbers or visiting the websites. Some of them have pictures of a Cross, while others possess a stark, black background with bright white letters, and still others feature a heartbeat reading on them (like the one above). These billboards generally say that each of us has a choice about what will happen when we die. Will we choose Jesus and heaven or instead choose hell? All of these signs, I believe, are meant to do only one thing: scare us.

The prevalence of these signs does in fact scare me, but not in the desired way of those who pay for them to hang over the federal interstate system. I am scared of the way that people see Christians as a result of these signs. The implied belief is that God is a being that sits up in the clouds, stroking his long white beard, and watching as our heartbeats slow to make sure that at the moment of death we do indeed choose Jesus and heaven. Fear-based theology can be traced to a thread of the Christian tradition; however, the Good News of Christ Jesus, the work of the Spirit, and the community in which I have learned about God seem so completely opposed to this way of interpreting what awaits us at death. Also, and this seems obvious, who would actually choose eternal damnation over eternal life and who would worship a God who is so petty that He (and in this view God is definitely a he) cannot love us if we do not make the right choice?

In this coming Sunday’s Gospel lesson (Luke 12:13-21) Jesus speaks with a man who was concerned that he was being cheated out of his inheritance by his brother. At first, Jesus shot down the idea that he would serve as a judge in this matter, then he went further in explaining this sibling rivalry. He told the story of a rich man who had a great year in farming. The man contemplated ripping down his current silos, so that he could store up the abundance of crops. This was and still is wise farming. I run by the Alabama Farmer’s Co-op at least once a week and I imagine if the farming partners produced more they would build even bigger storage containers than the massive ones that already exist. The dilemma with this rich man was not in his agricultural practice, but his intention behind the farming.

While thinking of building a bigger barn the man said to himself, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years: relax, eat, drink, be merry.” The response of God comes off sounding like the scary billboards along our interstates: “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you.” If we stopped reading here, then we could very easily buy into the fear-mongering that is so pervasive in conservative Christianity, American politics, and the entire world at the moment. We could put that phrase up on a roadside sign and believe that we are actually doing the Lord’s work by scaring someone into believing in some perverted view of the divine. God though does not stop here, and God does not leave us scared.

Right after God said, “This very night your life is being demanded of you,” God continued, “And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” The trajectory of Jesus’ parable leads us to wonder not so much about some reward, which we get at the end of life if we made the right choices, but rather to ponder what am I building up in this life, why am I storing it up, and where is my treasure? This passage, then comes off not as a way of startling us into making a choice because we are stuck in traffic and see something on the side of the road, but rather, this passage points to wondering, “Am I rich toward God?”

Rather than attempting to force people to choose God, a tactic that rarely works on a deep level and often does not actually coerce people to follow God at all but quite the opposite, I wonder what would happen if we tried to help one another build up spiritual riches. The grace—that wonderful gift of everlasting life that each of us is given freely by God—allows us not to worry about the results; however, if we dedicated our lives to serving others, sharing how we touch, taste, smell, hear, and see God within our lives, and putting ourselves in contact with diverse parts of the Body of Christ don’t you think that we would all be richer toward God? The billboards are correct about something, you do have a choice. You may choose to live in fear believing that your eternal existence boils down to saying a prayer, believing a certain way, and avoiding a list of sinful behaviors. And, actually this sounds like barricading oneself off from the world like a silo full of treasure. Or, you may choose to reach out and share the riches of grace with all those whom you meet allowing God’s abundance to make all of us rich toward God.

Don’t be scared, be rich toward God instead.

Stop fearing, trust God!

Sermon Audio May Be Found Here!

Immediately. If you have not already noticed the frequency of this word in the Second Gospel you will now. Mark loves immediately. We might translate it as “all of a sudden” or “just then”, as we are sick of hearing immediately, but that’s the word. And back then, just like today, life can change immediately.

The call from the hospital at 2 o’clock in the morning. The knock at the door from an old friend. The news alert dinging on a smart phone. The birth announcement that you never thought would come. Immediately changes everything. Today’s Gospel lesson is all about immediately. Even if you never received the phone call that shook your soul, had your life shatter to pieces right in front of you, or feel a joy that persists even to this day this passage still speaks to the truth of our frail, profound human existence. And yet, it speaks to more than that. In the face of life and death, Jesus immediately changes everything.

Today’s good news floats between two interwoven stories of Jesus’ healing, which fit together into one neat, if a little bit lengthy, package. In the first section a synagogue leader named Jairus seeks out Jesus to heal his daughter from a deadly illness. As the crowd pulses and pursues this traveling teacher Jesus says nothing to the request, but immediately goes to heal the young girl.

All of a sudden, from among the swarm comes a woman who had given up everything in her life to seek wellness. Nothing worked. She spent her last coin to find a cure, but alas sickness continues. Finally after more than a decade of desperation she turns to Jesus wondering, “What will happen if I can just touch his garment?” When she does, she feels the hemorrhaging stop and Jesus is immediately aware of his power leaving. He asks his disciples a seemingly silly question, “Who touched me?” They thought he was crazy. “How can you say, ‘who touched me?’” in the middle of a crowd. The woman though, knowing what had happened, comes up thinking she is busted.

We might not all know what it is like to suffer for twelve years, but we all need healing of some kind or another. Whether mind, body, or spirit we seek wellness somewhere beyond ourselves. For this poor woman the last twelve years of isolation, pain, and ridicule taught her to believe that she is wrong. Her bleeding would have made her impure and her religion would have quarantined her from others. A decade of believing she was immoral for having an illness meant that even when she finds healing from Jesus she responds to his question with fear and trembling and falling down. The healing is not just about her bleeding, Jesus calls her daughter and in this moment she is restored to life in community. Immediately Jesus changes everything for her.

At that same moment, messengers from Jairus’ home came to tell the synagogue leader his daughter is dead. They say, “Your daughter is dead, Why trouble the teacher any further?” This is the type of question that can immediately destroy hope. When Jesus hears it he responds saying, “Do not fear, only believe.” We do not get Jairus’ reaction to this statement. The cynics among us might hear him say, “Sure, I’ll believe when I see my daughter alive.” And yet, Jairus walks with Jesus, Peter, James, and John. So sweetly Jesus speaks to his daughter, “Little girl, get up.” Then, again he makes sure she is restored to her community, as she tells the family to eat something with her. Immediately Jesus changes everything for this family.

A lot is changing in our national landscape. In this week alone a landmark trade bill was passed, the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act and struck down the ban on Same Sex Marriage, and just yesterday the Episcopal Church elected its first ever Presiding Bishop of color. We might be overcome with joy or suffering from grief.

The truth from today’s Gospel story that speaks into our ever changing lives is that immediately Jesus changes everything for us. This story is not just about God helping us get through a tough moment though. There were other women suffering who did not touch the cloak of Jesus who kept on suffering. There were other children whose fathers did not run up to Jesus in a crowd who got weaker and weaker. This story is not about receiving healing for a moment; this story is about our eternal salvation.

Jesus said, “Do not fear, only believe.” If you are already living life afraid it is hard to hear the words “Do not fear,” and do anything but wonder, “How?” Perhaps a better way to understand these words is “From this moment moving forward, do not give into fear, instead trust in God.” of “Give your heart over to Jesus for from God is not just healing but life everlasting.”

We all need healing and immediately Jesus can change everything. For as some of us celebrate this week, others in our land feel bitterness. I clearly see the need for healing not just within ourselves as individuals, but for us as a larger community.

People keep posting “Love Wins” on FaceBook. I do not like that phrase. Not because I do not love Love, but rather because Love does not create losers. As Paul writes to the Corinthians:

"Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends" (1 Corinthians 13:4-8).

We need love. All of us together. Love never ends, nor does it create a winner or a loser, but instead it brings us into the transformation that Jesus showed in the healing of this woman and this girl. And this healing happens when we believe, when we give our hearts over not to fear, oppression, winning and losing, and bitterness, but rather when we trust God giving our hearts to the healing love of Christ.

Do not give into fear, trust in God, for Jesus changes our lives immediately!

The Only Time I Want To Finish Second

Who are you following? (Picture courtesy of Bondiband)

During this Holy Week we have been wandering together as we follow Jesus and pondering together what does it mean to follow Jesus to the Cross?

I feel the need to confess something that may not seem all that sinful to you: I do not like to lose. I never have liked losing. My family knows this. My friends know this. Maybe even some of you know this. Certainly no one likes to lose, but I actively avoid it almost to the point that I have a diagnosable phobia of losing.

Lately though I have been actively trying to push myself to the point of losing. Not just to get over my fear of it, but also because by actually avoiding challenges in which I might fail my gifts and skills atrophy away. Plus, I will never learn how good I might be at something I am afraid to try because I might lose at it. This reminds me of one experience in which failing brought new insight and new growth in my life.

When I was in college I switched from being a life-long soccer player to a first-time track and cross-country runner. I was terrible. Not just bad, but awful. I was the last placed runner for most of the first track season I ran. In the slowest heat of the 800 meter or 1500 meter race I was often a distant last placed finisher too. For some reason though instead of quitting I kept with it.

Eventually I learned to push through what I perceived were my barriers and with the encouragement, advice, and pacing of others I actually turned out to be an okay student-athlete. Yet, what I learned in this endeavor of failing over and over again was not so much my strengths or my weaknesses, but rather the truth from the letter to the Hebrews we heard today.

“Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.”

Running a race with perseverance requires some skills, good training, and sound advice. And yet, some more pertinent pieces, albeit less catchy ones, from the author of the letter to the Hebrews get overlooked. First, we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses. We have help in this race that we call life. People who have gone before us and those alive now can give us aid in this journey.

Next, to run a race with a weight tied to your ankle or strapped to your chest sounds torturous. On this journey of following Jesus lay aside the burden of sin that we so often carry around our necks. In this vein, do not think about the past times of failure either. They have brought you to this very moment.

Finally, and most importantly, you are not running this race without someone who is pacing you, someone who is blocking the wind for you, someone who has run the race before you. Jesus is the pioneer and perfecter of this journey that is our race. Somehow I often overlook the leader who goes before me, instead focusing on how I might fail.

In today’s Gospel story from John, Jesus goes before us in a very direct way. In the synoptic gospels we find Judas to be a traitor who seeks only more money. Yet, here we find that Jesus tells Judas what to do. Even in how he was handed over to torture and death the Son of God remained aware and in control of the race he was running.

We cannot control all things. However, we do have the power to control our interior spiritual life, the thoughts to which we give energy, and the feelings which ebb and flow our mood. Jesus did not let the shame of the Cross destroy him. He knew guilt lay with others and that he was God’s Son worthy of praise and devotion not riotous murder. We too are called to cast aside the shame of whatever it is that haunts us, whether it is the irrational fear of losing, the pain of a bad decision, or something else that clings to us. Within us we have inherit worth for we too are children of God adopted through the all-encompassing love of Christ.

This section of the race brings us every closer to our yearly remembrance of Jesus’ death. Run it with perseverance, or better yet slow down to walk the way of the Cross. For we have been given a perfect pace-setter to follow. And for me, trailing after Jesus might be the only time when I want to follow finishing second instead of leading.

You Might Be Afraid of Public Speaking and Death, But Jesus Isn't!

John 11:1-45

Sermon audio click here

“Just as Jesus has met us at our tombs so we must follow him now to his own.” Meda Stamper

Sometimes I hear people say, “Public speaking is my biggest fear. Most people would rather die than speak in front of a crowd, at least that’s what I read in a study!” As someone who spends a large chunk of time speaking in front of people, and as one who every once in a while finds his foot in his mouth, I tend to say there is not much to fear up here. What I receive in return for any blunders is mostly grace upon grace from those listening. Of course my perspective is limited to my own experience, so I began wondering, “Are people really more afraid of public speaking than death?” What I discovered is there is not much evidence that talking in front of a group is more terrifying than death.

(An old saying goes, “There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics.”) The often misunderstood statistic about public speaking, death and their correlation with fear originates from a 1973 questionnaire circulated by Bruskin Associates. In this study the researchers asked respondents to list their fears. Researchers gave no choices of scary things to select. Instead, those surveyed wrote down whatever came to mind. “Public speaking” was the most common answer. A distant seventh on the list was death, just behind sickness and just ahead of flying. This study with a small sampling size and an open response has made a huge impact on us. Even though it does not say that public speaking is scarier than death. We still believe that speaking in front of groups (heights, insects and bugs, financial problems, deep water, and sickness) are more to be feared than death. Yet what this research shows is that when asked blankly “What do you fear?” we will respond with a commonplace, everyday fear (public speaking or spiders).

Yet the top six responses on this list all have one thing in common. They are preventable or curable. If you are afraid of speaking in public take speech lessons. The King’s Speech chronicles the life of King George VI who suffered from Glossophobia (fear of public speaking). King George overcame this fear to deliver comforting words to England during World War II. If you are fearful of heights, you can avoid them, or get over it by doing a high ropes adventure course. Scared of insects and bugs? Squash them or call Cook’s! Financial Problems? Dave Ramsey would love to help you with that. Deep water? I hear personal flotation devices or swim lessons work pretty well these days. Even sickness has become something that we can almost completely avoid. Yet, there is one thing that is unavoidable on this list… death.

There is a 100% chance everyone in this church will die. I hope that this is not shocking news to you. I love my life. I love my family. I love Kim. I love my friends. I love working at St. John’s Church. I do not want to face my mortal demise, but I know that one day I will meet the cold kiss of Death. Even though I can consciously comprehend this, I still find myself fearful of what lies in death and beyond.

I believe we are all, to some degree, afraid of death, even more than public speaking and spiders. Yet, what happens in Bethany, the place where Jesus’ friends live, (Just like the part of Camp McDowell that is going to be talked about today right after this service at a wonderful lunch!) tells us something very different about this undeniably fearful end that we all must face.

Martha and Mary were all followers of Christ. The sisters trusted in Jesus verbally in today’s gospel lesson. They believed in Resurrection through him. Still there is doubt expressed, “If you had been here, Lazarus would not be dead.” The word here is not just death like the body ceasing to produce breath and life, this dying is all encompassing. Their brother is physically dead, but he is also spiritually dead.

In the total of John’s gospel account we hear of many signs that point to Jesus being the one through whom all things were created, the Son of God, the one coming into the world! We can get so swept up in this that we miss that part of being Incarnate God meant that Jesus was fully human as well as fully divine. Death, even to God, is something that is tragic and depressing. When Jesus walks to the tomb of his friend Lazarus with the beloved Martha and Mary he cannot deny his humanity. Jesus weeps.

I have loved this verse since I was a child because it shows Jesus’ humanity. He is empathic for us human beings because he is one of us. He may know what is about to happen. He may know that everything will be okay. He may know that God will resurrect the Faithful. Still he weeps.

Then, in a way that only God can, he goes further than just empathizing with Lazarus and the bereaved. Jesus goes beyond our human understanding, he responds to this moment of deep sadness with an overabundant love that will remain a mystery to us on this side of the grave. Jesus goes to the entrance of the tomb, the place of a rotting corpse, the mouth of Death, and in this realm of reeking, dark nothingness he calls life. Jesus calls life from death.

Jesus, the God of the living, does not fear death. He walks into his friend’s tomb to be with him in the realm of that unknown mystery that awaits all of us. For those who believe and those, like Lazarus, who are spiritually dead Jesus is always present. He will go walk with us everywhere we go. He will journey with us when we are well, when we are scared of public speaking, and even into our tombs. He is our partner in life and death. As we approach Holy Week, let us respond to his partnership, his walking with us, and let us go with Jesus to his death and tomb. Amen.