February 7 -- The Jesus Injection (After Epiphany 5B)

Mark’s Gospel is coming at us at high speed — different stories piling up like the snow outside today.  Now, it’s taken us two months to read the whole first chapter of Mark, and we took a week here and there to dip into the Gospel of John and Luke, but just stop and consider for a moment how much and how quickly everything has happened up to this point:

In the very first verses, John first appears on the scene to preach repentance, to baptize and to “prepare the way!” for Jesus.  That lasts about 6 verses.  Then enter Jesus – no birth stories in Mark, no little boy in the temple, just grown up Jesus, ready to go/ready to rock.  And it all starts with a sky-ripping baptism.  That lasts about 3 verses, and then the gut-wrenching temptation in the wilderness.  Matthew and Luke take almost 15 verses to describe what happened to Jesus there; Mark does it in 2.  Then Jesus begins his ministry in Galilee, calls some disciples, and some patterns begin to emerge.  Moving in and out of the synagogue, he preaches and heals, preaching and healing.  We almost settle into a rhythm of this in the book of Mark, and preaching and healing almost become synonymous, and where they happen is not as important as the fact that there is a healthy flow and balance to Jesus’ movement in and out of the worship space (nice reminder for us today).  Whether Jesus is preaching or healing, the end result is that life and health are not just proclaimed gently but injected, like a life-saving shot (in Mark’s almost abrasive style), freely granted, over and against death and all those demonic forces that keep us down.  This just keeps happening, keep watching for it in this Year of Mark.  And let that good message become a part of your movement in and out of your worship space, following the example of Jesus.

“The life and health injection” is certainly the theme on a number of levels in our lesson today.
 
Here in the text, Jesus heals Simon’s mother-in-law.  She doesn’t even have a name.  (It’s not the first time this happens to women in the Bible.  There are countless nameless women who teach us…and that’s the case here.)  Now, I wonder if perhaps you had, like many who read this text today, an immediate and very natural and appropriate reaction when Simon’s mother-in-law is healed by Jesus.  Did you catch what the first thing she does after is?   It said Jesus took her by the hand lifted her up…the fever leaves her…and she began serving them.  You almost get this impression, that the disciples are like, “Hey Jesus, can you fix her because we’re getting hungry in here?”  At first glance, it’s almost like she’s a victim of Jesus’ healing.  

And all that might be true.  But I do think it puts a modern lens on the story.  That’s OK.  That’s what we do.  And I think we should always read with critical lenses around gender roles, sexism, racism, xenophobia, and on...

But don’t miss also some of Mark’s major themes that are emerging, even in this first chapter...namely casting out demons and bread/feeding/eating.

Jesus is constantly trying to teach his male disciples about serving and caring for one another.  Emptying themselves of ego, pride, bluster; and instead embodying love, compassion, service and justice for all.  And Simon’s mother-in-law gets that immediately.  Jesus is constantly trying to get the disciples to respond to the life and health he is injecting.  (We’ll see that they’re not getting it as the Gospel goes on.)  It’s almost like they’ve got a high tolerance to the Jesus injection.  Like the vaccine doesn’t take.  But Simon’s mother-in-law is immediately impacted by Jesus’ life-giving shot.  He takes her by the hand, and “it takes.”  

How’s your immunity to Jesus’ life-giving power?  Is the shot only 50% effective?  Is it taking?  You know, those of us who have been around church for years, who have heard this language about grace and forgiveness ad nauseum, week in and week out — we have a tough task, because I imagine we’ve got a pretty high tolerance to the Jesus injection too.  To hear Sunday after Sunday “How vast is God’s grace, through the power and promise of Christ Jesus our sins + are washed away,” “God gave us a gift to set us free, when the waters were poured down on you and me...”, “the peace of Christ be with you always,” again and again...means we’re in danger of producing some pretty potent antibodies to Jesus’ life-giving power and healing.  So were the disciples.  I couldn’t help but laugh thinking about vs. 36-37, where Simon and the others find Jesus and say, “Hey, everyone’s looking for you.”  Hey, you do it, Jesus.  All these people need help, and they go get Jesus.  Great lesson for us – “You do it pastor, you do it church council, you do it bishop, you do it Mr. President, you do it Congress, you do it doctors, you do it teachers, you do it...everyone’s looking for you.”  All these people need help, and like the disciples, maybe we have the tendency to go get the guru to help them.  (It occurs to me :) we don’t say, “Go in peace, and find somebody else to serve.”)

Well, Jesus complies with their request here, actually.  That’s because we’re still in chapter 1.  The further we get into Mark, the more we get the sense that Jesus is constantly injecting this life-giving power into his disciples — it’s going to take a couple shots — they keep resisting, it doesn’t take right away...  
But Simon’s mother-in-law gets it immediately.  She serves.  It is a fore-glimpse of our ministry in Christ.  She is our teacher.  Immediately, she began to serve them.  (Yes I think there’s some sexism built-in.  Always is.  But don’t miss the transformation, the “immediately”, the fact that Jesus’ healing took.)

The life-giving power of Jesus is what we speak of at the end of our worship:  Go in peace, and serve.  That’s not just some catchy little thing to say at the end, and it’s not code for “Good news, this church thing is finally over now you can go home, go back to your life unchanged” – “Go in peace and serve the Lord” means, injected with God’s life-giving power, injected with healing, injected with Christ-light, injected with the promise of divine presence, injected with a peaceful assurance that the whole world is—in fact—in God’s hands despite all the turbulence (that’s the peace that passes all understanding), injected with Jesus himself in the holy waters of the font, bread and wine, injected with grace, GO NOW and share it with others, GO NOW and serve immediately...like Simon’s mother-in-law.  

Jesus injects us again today with life and health over and against the powers that hold us down.  Jesus raises us from our fevered state so that we too might get it, and serve in response.  
And maybe part of that injection is finding quiet space too.  Maybe Sabbath is part of the injection.  This is a rich text today.  It’s not just go work your brains out for the other.  We also see our lord resting, amen?  Vs. 35: “In the morning, while it was still very dark, Jesus went away to a deserted place to pray.” He’s doing that all the time by the way.  As I hand-wrote this passage this week, I had this thought:  “Wait a second, there were still more people that needed healing!  He wasn’t finished!  Jesus himself is going off to a deserted place to pray?”  

Friends part of the injection is taking the moments we need, the downtime we need — Jesus is modeling it — the prayer time we need.  What a gift the snow can be: it slows us down.  It’s like a reminder from God: “Hey, take a quiet place.”  Jesus is always silencing the demons.  Maybe that’s the voices in our heads that never stop — anxiety about the future, traumatic voices from our past, the good and noble things we feel we have to do, the cries from all the people that need us — can you sense a certain FEVER?  But Jesus models for us going a way for a bit, re-calibrating, praying.  That too, friends, is Christ taking us by the hand, like he did with Simon’s mother-in-law, and lifting us up.  That’s the snow day, everybody needs a snow day...no matter your climate.  It makes the fever go away, you see?

This is our God: Lifting us up, healing us, showing us how to slow down, and calling us, from sabbath, back into Gospel action — back and forth, working for justice, offering peace, living in hope, and sharing God’s joy with this world.  This is our God, friends: sheltering us and holding us in the palm of her hand, this day and always.  

                    Thanks be to God.  Amen.



 

August 16 -- Preaching Up Here, Living Down There (Pentecost 11A)

Especially when our kids were younger than they are now, there were some words in our house that we just didn’t say.  This is still true to some extent, but they’ve learned and understand a lot more now.   But back in the day when they were little…we taught our Micah and Katie that they are words we don’t say under our roof:  We don’t say hate.  “But Daddy other people say ‘hate’ all the time,” Micah questioned, “and my teacher said it’s not a bad word.”  That may be true, Micah, but we don’t use that word.  We don’t say ‘stupid’.  And we don’t say ‘idiot’.  We don’t say ‘shut up’.  And we don’t say ‘fat’, either.  

Somehow, Heather and I in all our parental omniscience from up here came to the conclusion that canceling these words out of our household vocabulary is good thing down there.

The problem is, when we slip.  When I’m watching a Cubs baseball game and blurt out, “Uh, I hate AJ Perzinski!”  When I’m reading the newspaper in the living room, while Katie is doing her homework in the kitchen, and suddenly I completely lose all awareness of where I am, and shout “I can’t believe it!  This guy’s an idiot; I wish he would shut up!  He so stupid, I hate him.”   OK...a bit of hyperbole there.  But you know I slipped up...

And in each of these circumstances we/I then had to engage in the tricky parental activity of explaining ourselves, probably apologizing, maybe making amends or exceptions, but always-always including an affirmation that they’re right, “You’re right, I shouldn’t have said that.”  I said we shouldn’t say those words, and here I am saying them myself...  

Great is your faithfulness to what we said, Micah.  Great is your faithfulness to what we said, Katie.  But here we are: sloshing about.  

It’s one thing to preach it.  It’s something much different to live it.  Good teaching can trickle down from up here.  But great faith sloshes around down there.  

Our Gospel passage today starts out with some great teaching from up here:  Jesus again is crumbling up the Pharisees’ neatly sliced world…this time with a lesson on purity.  It’s not what goes into the mouth that’s unclean.  It’s what comes out of it.  Words.

But Jesus isn’t just teaching us not to swear.
 
Let’s not get too caught up with just bad words like stupid or idiot or fat, and whole bunch of others that unfortunately we all know.  

I’ve known people who “swear like sailors” (some of them are sailors...and have hearts of gold.  [pause]  Their words might be foul but their hearts burn with purity.  Their intentions are compassionate.  Maybe you’ve known people like this too.  While others, proud of their purity and squeaky clean mouths, shoot daggers and explode gossip with their curse-less words.  Sure we should watch our language, but Jesus isn’t teaching us here not to swear.  

He’s teaching about heart surgery.  

The heart, you see, in that culture, was understood to be the source our thoughts and our decisions about how to live in the world.  Jesus is teaching us about slicing away all that harms us and our neighbors and our world.  That’s a good teaching from up there.

But it’s one thing to preach it.  It’s something much different to live it.  The story goes on, in our text today, and it says that Jesus left his pulpit.  He left that place and went away to a different region.  He left the pureness-of-heart-lecture notes on the stand, came down to another region, and this is where it gets sloppy, sloshes around:

A woman approaches, who is not from his tribe.  A strange woman, a Syro-phoenician.  Jesus grew up a neighborhood where such women were despised.

  
They were hated, stupid, idiots who needed to shut up, who were always encroaching on his people – the real chosen Jews, not these half-bred aliens.  Do you see what’s happening here?

And so, Jesus – JESUS, the prince of peace, the one who just got done preaching about purity of heart – calls her a dog:  “It’s not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”  A dog!  Do you know how dirty dogs were then?  Not adorable, housebroken, little pooches that we bless when we do the Blessing of the Animals...dogs as glimpses of God.  No, dogs back then were mangy, flee-bitten mutts, that were as irritating as flies.  And calling a person a dog, that as offensive as a white person calling a black person a word that we won’t even print in the paper.  A dog, he calls her.  

It’s one thing to preach it.  It’s something much different to live it.  

What do we do with this text where our precious Jesus himself is falling for the same old racial slurs, the same old arrogance, the same old self-righteousness, the same old divisions, the same old hatred that has plagued generations and cultures throughout history, and still plagues us today?!  Words escalate to threats; and threats to violence; and violence to wars.  There’s nothing new there.

This is a side of Jesus, that many are tempted either to ignore, or rationalize away, or defend…as if the Savior of the world needed saving.  I can’t explain Jesus out of this offense, out of his calling this woman a dog.

But I can share with you what I see happening, ultimately:  [sloppiness, thanks be to God, even if we don’t want sloppiness—and none of us do, we want neat and tidy, clear cut, like the Pharisees, where life is a set of rules to keep and roles to fill.  But the gift is sloppiness.]  I see Jesus, fully Divine and fully human, coming down from on high…to be in the mix of it all.   Good teaching can trickle down from up there.  But great faith sloshes around down here.  It’s one thing to preach it, it’s another thing to live it.

And in this case, God surprises us again, as a Syrophoenician woman, calls Jesus out.   Watch how she responds; not by hitting back; not by going away:  “Yes Lord,” she says, “but even the dogs eat the bread from the master’s table.”  I might be a dog, but I’m still hungry.  I’m broken alright, which is why I need the bread that only you can give.  She doesn’t fight back with hateful words, and she doesn’t back away either.  

She stands up strong and demonstrates faith.  She makes a statement of faith:  Only you, Jesus, offer the bread that I need, the healing that I need, the salvation which you have prepared.

And something must have snapped in Jesus, for immediately his tone changes and then he affirms her.  (Forget the tricky explaining, like when my child catches me using a word that’s off limits—I can’t explain that.)  We’ll just have to jump to the affirmation.  “Woman, great is your faith.” In a way, I’m not sure who’s helping/forgiving/blessing who.  What is clear, is that Jesus is with her.  Not up there.  He’s in the mix, down here as sloppy as it all can.

And that’s the heart of the Gospel.

Sisters and brothers in Christ, it’s not always neat and clean unfortunately, but we have a Christ who gets close, who plunges into the mix.

We have a Christ who kneels down, who takes our hand and we take his.  We have a God who doesn’t stay up there, but who always enters into the sloshiness of life down here.  Good teaching can trickle down from up there.  But great faith sloshes around down here.  

It’s one thing to preach it.  And I pray daily that we can preach a good thing up here, up at the church.  (But we/I don’t always—sometimes the preacher’s words from up here are winded, or fake, or confusing or sometimes just wrong.)  Good teaching and preaching can trickle down from up here.  But the real action is down there, down in our living rooms and kitchens and basements, down in our offices and stores and on the roads.  Great faith is down there, sloshing around.  And man, it sloshes, it’s sloppy, and messy and soggy.   It ain’t easy— this practice of purity of heart, this discipline of choosing words of compassion not violence.  It ain’t easy staying in touch with each other, in relationship with one another and with the stranger and with the world.  It ain’t easy, remaining faithful, coming back, giving ourselves to the rhythms of the church and nudgings of the Spirit.  And as soon as I’m finished preaching up here, I’m right back down there, sloshing around…and thank God we slosh around together.

And thank God we slosh around with Jesus, who enters the sloppiness of this life and stays, maybe even more than we wanted.  Who banters back and forth with us, albeit sometimes a struggle.  Who names and commends our great faith:  “Women, great is your faith.  Men, great is your faith.  All siblings in Christ, great is your faith. Remember that I’m down here with you, and I’ll never leave.”   AMEN.
—

HoD: ‘O God Why Are You Silent’ from the Lament section of our hymnal.  Woman calling Jesus out, asking for what we need.  Great is her faithfulness and ours too as we sing this with our hearts, and demand Christ’s healing in our lives and our world.  And Christ responds.

August 2 -- Goin' Fishin' (Pentecost 9A)

Thankful and in our prayers, congregations with whom we've connected in July...

-Lutheran congregations across the Black Hills, SD

-Zion Lutheran in Oregon City, OR
-Klamath Lutheran in Klamath Falls, OR
-Shepherd of the Mountains Lutheran in Jackson, WY
-Grace Lutheran in Omaha, NE

--

Grace and peace to you this day.

3 points I’d like to make, in light of this Gospel text:

1) Disciples wanted to send the crowds away.  But Jesus held them together. 

Disciples wanted to keep it simple and neat, but how “keeping it simple and neat” can breakdown community and attempt to edge out God’s compassion. 

This is a text about God’s compassion, God’s justice…where ALL are fed.  All are clothed, all are housed, all are safe and have security.  This includes those who have to wait in the back of the line — in Jesus’ day women and children, in our day black lives, and any who are unfairly discriminated against because of their status or the color of their skin... 

I’ve been wondering this week, as Congress argues again, what God’s stimulus plan would look like... What would God’s health care coverage and education plan would look like?

If we bring something back from the text for our world today, I think we have to look at how Jesus overflows with compassion: All ate and were fed, and there were 12 baskets left over.

Furthermore on this first point: Jesus calls the disciples to that work.  Can’t help but think of John Lewis’ final words, “marching orders,” repeated throughout his funeral service this week:  keep moving.  “You give them something to eat.”  People are hungry.  People are tired.  People are discriminated against. People are hurting.  You do something about it, keep moving, Jesus says…

2) The disciples didn’t think there was enough.  But Jesus turned that which was offered into more than enough.

You know, I don’t like it when biblical scholars and preachers “explain away” or de-mystify the miracles of Jesus (Jesus walking on water/shore).  Rather than scientific analysis, I’d rather focus on what these stories teach us about Jesus and about us... 

That being said, one explanation that I’ve heard about this miracle of the loaves and fish, which I do like…is that the bit that was offered by someone for whom that was all they had —  5 loaves and 2 fish — was such an inspiration to all, that everyone began to gladly share, and suddenly blessings abound.  Loaves and fish abound, and there are even leftovers!

It’s a common phenomenon in congregations, when it comes to offering and tithing, that often it is those with less income who give a greater percentage, like the little one who offered all he had…entrusting it to God, to be blessed, broken and shared (miraculously, in abundance) with the whole.

That’s what offering is!   

Siblings in Christ — I read some years back that when a congregation calls a pastor, one of the things they’re doing is sending that person to the biblical text each week to “fish” — to fish out a word from God for the people.  “What say you, Preacher?  What can you find, a word from the Lord?  Any fish for us this week?”  Well, in my “fishing” this week, I find this text to be calling us to give and keep giving—not just the fraction that we think we can afford.  We are called us to give all we have to God’s work.   It’s all

God’s anyway, isn’t it? 

Jennifer at SVLC saying a prayer and writing the first check of the month to Synod, the church’s tithe.  Whatever we bring to Jesus, let’s take a deep breath of thanksgiving and say a prayer (like p.)...

And may the 5 loaves and 2 fish not inspire us to share our leftovers [pause].  Let’s let Christ deal with those 12 baskets of leftovers.  May God’s Word invigorate us today to bring all we have, lay it in Christ’s hands so that he may bless it, break it and share it with a hungry and hurting world.

With the abundance, Jesus feeds us too!  ALL ARE FED means you and me – we don’t just empty are pockets and go home hungry and bitter.  In this amazing story, messy-spirit-filled-children-screaming-old-people-dancing-everyone-singing-everyone fed-community-in-Christ is the result!  Amen?   ALL ARE FED, you and me included!

3) The disciples want to send them away, but Jesus even feeds the disciples! 

Jesus forms us all into one body, through sharing.  The disciples don’t think there’s enough, but Jesus makes sure everyone is fed, including them, including us!

Friends, we are fed this day—even if and especially when we’re tired, depressed, lost, confused, lonely, wrapped up in conflict, stressed about money, grieving our losses, losing our hope—Jesus doesn’t send us away empty... 

He sends us away fed! 

That’s what what I fished out for this day.  May God take this bit of fish, bless it, break it and share it.  For Christ is the bread of life.  TBTG.  AMEN. 

July 26 -- Baseball and the Realm of Heaven (Pentecost8A)

This year of Major League Baseball has been tough.  Even with the games that are being played now, there’s clearly this cloud over the whole experience, with the empty stands, the canned recordings of crowds cheering, elbow bumps and air high-5s.  I don’t know about you, but I’m concerned for the players’ health.  Beforetimes: the only ones wearing a mask — in the whole stadium — were the catcher and the umpire!

If you’re anything like me, baseball is one of those things that’s down in the bones.  And to not have it, is like a part of me is missing.  Football fans you’ll be feeling my pain soon enough, I’m afraid.  I know it’s a privileged thing to talk about this pain, with so many other things going on.  (And I’m definitely not advocating opening baseball to go back to how it was, pretending like the world hasn’t changed.) I’m just bein’ honest with my grief here: I really miss the game, down in my soul.

So we try to make the best of it.  Some, I know, are trying to look at this year as some kind of building year or sabbath, studying up on the young players with high hopes for next year.  Making the best of this beat-up, half season.

I’ve wondered about a different coping strategy.  I’ve kind of “gone inside my baseball self”, and I’ve slowly been watching my way again through, the great Ken Burns documentary entitled “Baseball”.  Anyone seen it?  It’s 11 episodes, over 2 hours each episode, about the history of the American pastime.  And I love it!  I’ve gotten teared up watching the sections on Jackie Robinson becoming the first African American player to enter the league, Lou Gehrig’s last speech, or interviews of fans and historians recalling their feelings when the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles.

It’s actually an incredibly rejuvenating and uplifting experience for me.  And in the course of watching these episodes, I continue to come across metaphors, words and images, that are helpful in articulating why baseball means so much to me.  Baseball is like community [yeah!]; it’s about sacrificing one for the good of the whole [yeah!]; it’s like refuge from the world; one commentator in the film said that baseball’s “action is in the absence of action”; it’s about losing – even the greatest hitters are successful only a small percentage of the time; it’s about staying the same, through the turmoil of change; it’s about the past, and it is pastoral.”

I don’t always have the words for why baseball is so special, so ethereal, to me...and I’m reminded how we depend on the help of metaphors and images, words.

In our Gospel text this week, Jesus uses words and images, metaphors to articulate to the people of Matthew’s day—not what baseball is like, but what the realm of heaven is like.  Jesus uses things of this earth to give us an idea of the very things of heaven.

In Matthew’s time, the image of a pearl found in a field was big deal, a net overflowing with fish made a lot of sense – these were things that never happened, but things that people could easily see in their mind’s eye, and so these images had Christ’s listeners sitting up and celebrating, their imaginations coming alive...like a Sunday afternoon at the park for me.

Perhaps those metaphors don’t have quite the same effect for us today?

How would Jesus compare the realm of heaven now?

It’s like a perfectly executed double play, like a Roberto Clemente clutch home run, or a Sandy Koufax strike-out.

Or perhaps the baseball images aren’t effective for you...

What metaphors might Jesus use to reach your ears?  The realm of heaven is like a nap in a hammock after a long and trying meeting.  TROHI like getting a raise.  TROHI like getting the perfect compliment.  TROHI like a cool sip of ice tea in the shade, on a humid, Virginia, summer day.  TROHI like a reconnection with a beloved friend, where you realize that time and distance hasn’t separated you at all.  The realm of heaven is like joining hands with all those you love and singing grace before a great meal.  How we miss that, these days!

Today we stop, wherever we are, and reflect on the Word of God, the word of life (as we say each week about these scriptures).  And we are blessed by a Gospel text that fires images at us, words, almost too quickly to catch them all, “like scenes glimpsed through the windows of a fast-moving train” (BBTaylor).  Mustard seed, yeast, treasure, pearl, net full of fish.

I think Jesus does this on purpose…for the realm of heaven hard to pin down to one image, it’s hard to articulate, like my feelings about baseball.  And so we look to words and images of things that are before us – sunsets and smiles and cool drinks and small victories – to point to things that are beyond us.  No image nails it perfectly: God’s holy and loving reign, come down on earth to us.

But even if our language may come up short and incomplete, we realize that God has put so much right before us.  And it’s so good, in fact, that we can even say that the stuff of earth is like stuff of heaven!
The kingdom of heaven is like…a baseball game…a getting together with friends…a warm quilt…a slice of fresh bread...

Indeed the Realm of God is not to be found in metaphors of lofty places, like golden castles in the south of France, or Crater Lake National Park (!), but what’s striking about what Jesus is doing here is he’s using images that are right in front of us, things that we can all imagine quite clearly: fields and fish, everyday women and men, bread.  Parts of our daily routines, eating, working, getting by, being in nature.  Things here and now.  Those simple things are what the realm of heaven is like!

That strikes me on this journey I’m on with my family, this cross-country, work-from-the-road trip.  You know, lots of friends and family, some of you, have been writing and proclaiming to me on this trip, “You’re in God’s country now” — depending on your roots and preferences and experiences, Colorado is God’s country, Wyoming is God’s country, the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone, those glorious red rocks and formations of Utah, Crater Lake, some even said no, Nebraska is God’s country :)

But we don’t have to go to those glorious places to get a taste of heaven.  God shows us what heaven is like in simple things, what’s right in front in front of you.
In this holy space and time of worship, from wherever you are sitting, and not just there, where we worship: but all through this holy world!

God’s kingdom is right here for us!  It’s not something that we must build or create, or search for, or drive across the nation to see, it’s already here for you, in your midst.  The kingdom of heaven is in your midst, Jesus keeps saying in the Gospels.  The simple joys: the breath of fresh air, the cool breeze through the trees, the song of the bird, an honest day’s work, the sweat of the brow.  The warmth of this family of faith.  The gift of this day:
Thanks be to God, thy kingdom has come.

May God continue to give us the wisdom to see this realm come, here and now.   May God continue to give us the creativity of language and metaphor to help one another name this kingdom come, and may God give you the peace and the openness of heart to enjoy this realm of heaven starting today, right where you are, and into eternity.  Play ball!  AMEN.

April 7 -- Fifth Sunday in Lent

What does love smell like?  Our text today taps our senses with this image of a fragrance consuming the room, the whole house actually.

Heather and I have some dear friends from our four years together in seminary in Chicago.  During our first year, one of our friends’ fathers died to cancer, and it pulled her away from our community for a long time, as she journeyed home to be with him for his final days, and then to mourn and plan and be with family in the two or three weeks following.  It was a long time that Sara was apart from us.  And we wanted to do something for her when she returned.  Someone thought it might be nice to simply clean and dust her apartment, so we did that, so that she would have a fresh clean place to come home to…and then another friend of ours insisted that we bake bread in her oven.  So that when she returned from burying her father, at least she would return to the smell of fresh bread.  She still talks about that wonderful fragrance to this day.  She might not remember every comforting and loving word that she received from us in those days, but she remembers the smell.  Love definitely has a certain and wonderful fragrance.

What does love smell like for you?  What are some of the smells that that assure you that you are loved?  When I’ve asked this question before, the smell of good things baking and the smell of flowers both were frequent responses.  Is that true for you?--does love smell like flowers or things baking for you?   As I get to thinking about why those are such high ranking scents, I wondered if maybe it was because those are smells that are so often backed by people who love us and have worked hard for us.  The smell of bread baking in the oven is not just that.  It’s a setting aside of time, it’s a consideration for our well being far in advance, then it’s an outpouring and mixing of ingredients, it’s timing and warming and rising, until at last that wonderful smell reaches our noses.    (I got BLC a bread maker for this very reason.  It just made sense, the Bethlehem the HoB, had a bread maker…) 

A similar thing can be said of a garden that is carefully tended.  A process, a quiet time, maybe even a period of question and doubt—“Will they grow?  Will they bloom this year?”—but then at last, the wonderful smells of springtime blossoms fill the air.  And we know that there is love and that we are loved.  It’s no wonder fresh bread and fresh flowers are often smelled in the days surrounding the death of a loved one —  so that we might know, despite all the tragedy, that still there is love and that we are loved.

And so in our Gospel text this morning, we have again this meeting of death and the overwhelming fragrance of grace and love.  This scene today, we have to understand, follows right after the miraculous raising of Lazarus from the dead.  Can you imagine sitting at a table with someone who was literally dead just days before?  And now there you are having this celebration?  I imagine that there was still a “stench of dead” lingering from Lazarus…but he was on the mend, filling his body with good food and his soul with good company.  Can you imagine what the mood around the table must have been?  Maybe quiet and awestruck, like when you’ve just swerved out of the way of something awful on the road—heart pounding, frantically reflective, thinking, “That could have been really bad.”  The air was probably both electric and shell-shocked with that kind of energy.

Enter Mary.  Who crosses the room, kneels down in front of Jesus, and dumps so much expensive perfumed oil on his feet that the value equated a year’s worth of wages.  Let’s just say the equivalent to $40,000 today.  $40,000 worth of perfume dumped out on Jesus’ feet!  Was Judas so out of line?  [burning money] That’s money she’s wasting!

This text drags us into the challenging territory of worship vs. social action (what’s more important?), praise of God vs. service to world, the vertical vs. the horizontal.  

And we all have our tendencies.  For many years, believe it or not, I couldn’t stand the idea of weekly worship…and that being the defining point of the Christian life.  In seminary we were taught that worship is the heart of the Christian life…and I just thought, NO.  That can’t be, that can’t be the center.   Worship?  What, a bunch of prayers and some rituals and songs?  Really?  That’s the center of the Christian life?  What about how we treat one another for the other 6 days of the week?  What about how we care for the earth that God so loved?  Worship usually drove me crazy.  People in seminary would spend so much time planning and worrying about how they would say or read something.  Practice and practice.  (Then I went to a church where worship, in my judgement, was done “sloppy” — so casually and shallow, it was closer to a rock concert and a social mixer — in my judgement, and it started help me rethink things...that’s another story...)  

For those of you who don’t share my struggle — who have always gotten the importance of doing worship really well —  there are plenty of other Gospel texts and stories in the Bible where you/we get to be challenged—stories about how we treat one another for the other 6 days of the week, how we care for the world that God so loved.  

But today, Mary has something to teach us about worship, as we draw even closer to the highest and holiest days of our church calendar—the looming Passion, death and resurrection of Christ—today we are dragged into the territory of worship.  That is, of kneeling at Jesus’ feet and pouring out that which is so precious—ourselves, our time, our money and possessions.  

Everyone has something significant to offer, and we are called , friends in Christ, to follow Mary to the feet of the One who offers himself first for us.  How might you pour yourself out for Christ these days...and in so doing let the fragrance of love fill the room, that is, this world?  

You see, that’s the thing that I never really got about doing worship well: when we pour ourselves out in worship, like Mary, all the others benefit too.  It wasn’t Jesus who needed that fragrance, but in pouring expensive scents all over his feet, the smell that filled the air, consumed the smell of death, the stench of despair!  (Remember, Lazarus still stunk!?  But not anymore.)    

As we pour ourselves out in faithful worship to the One who first loved us, who first poured himself out for us, who first loved this world with a divine love that we can’t even fully describe, a love that we can most of the time only smell…as we pour ourselves out in faithful worship to that One, like Mary, all the others (in the room) benefit.  The “house” is filled with the fragrance.  Did you know the word “ecology” comes from the Greek words “oikos” and “logos”?  The “house,” the world is filled with the fragrance of our faithfulness.  And ultimately with the fragrance of God’s love.  

Friends in Christ, we’re invited again to be faithful these late Lenten days, to pour ourselves, our time and our possessions out.  But only as a response to the One whose love wafts and hovers and covers this whole world (despite all its tragedy), the One whose love fills you and me as we worship and give thanks in this place.  That love, that divine forgiveness and grace, that fragrance lingers, abides with you now and into eternity.  AMEN.

August 12 -- Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost

Our wedding day was a day to remember.  June 25, 2000, Thousand Oaks, California.  From start to finish it’s one of those days at the top of my list.  It was a Sunday, and our families and friends had started gathering in and around our hometown a few days before – the bachelor party was on Friday, Saturday was of course the rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner, and Sunday was the big day.  

A wise friend of ours – and I can’t even tell you which one – had suggested we stop and take moments throughout the festivities just to take it all in – really intentionally stop and look around or pause and consider all the love and joy that is present.  I had one such opportunity after the Rehearsal Dinner: the older crowd had all gone home to bed, the younger crowd was out dancing at the restaurant next door to where we had the Rehearsal Dinner, and I had decided to leave that party a little earlier to get some rest.  I had walked back to the hotel by myself and apparently that same weekend at our hotel was a big international Irish folk music convention.   In the lobby of the hotel were all these Irish folk musicians – this is a random hotel North of L.A., not the north coast of Ireland, but there they were, circled up, about 30 of them.  The lobby was filled with this beautiful music, so I sat down right in the middle of it to—as our friend said—take it all in, to consider the all the love that was present.  And it was a foretaste of the joy to come.  That was Saturday, the day before I got married.

Then on Sunday, the wedding was scheduled for the afternoon, and so I went to church with my family in the morning.  And we gathered with the faith community around the Word.  Lots of winks and hugs and “see you laters” that morning I remember.  Such a special time and a centering place for me.  I won’t go on and on with the details of the wedding and reception.  But I can tell you, that in the midst of it all there was such great joy and peace that over came us.  The ceremony was beautiful; it was at California Lutheran University’s chapel, where Heather and I had met.  Mark Knutson was our campus pastor and the pastor that married us, so our 2 pastor dads could wear tuxedos and just be dads.  The words and the toasts were all so touching (and appropriately humorous), the pictures turned out amazing, there was dancing and singing – literally: our friends got up and did a rendition of a Jimmy Buffett song in our honor.  We had negotiated to have the hotel ballroom until 1 in the morning, unlike most contracts, I understand.   And people stayed late into the night, talking, and laughing and dancing.  Heather and I stayed ‘til the very end too!  It was all our closest people at the time gathered in one place!  We couldn’t miss it.  

But you know what I didn’t mention in my recollections here?  The food!  Traditionally, isn’t this one of the greatest food days in so many of our cultures?!  I honestly don’t even remember what I ate for dinner!  I’m sure it tasted great.  And I never even had a slice of wedding cake!  I know I ate.  

But when I look back at it all, I think the real food that sustained me that whole weekend, the real food that filled me was the love and the community and the laughter and the joy that had come to surround and embrace Heather and I, as we made our sacred vows to each other...

--

This is my illustration for our Gospel text today.  And my great wedding experience is only a glimpse of the way that God feeds us.  Jesus says, “I am the true bread that comes down from heaven.”  There’s lots to be said of earthly food – and I love it – but when Jesus says he is true bread, we are brought into something much greater than the short-term joy of a good meal or even a wedding feast.  When Jesus offers himself to us as the true bread of life, we are offered a place on the dance floor, a seat in the pew at church surrounded by the faithful, a front row to the swirling melodies of traditional reels and jigs, with fingers and toes tapping along to the rhythm, our bellies full of laughter, our eyes full of tears, our hearts full of joy, and our minds full of peace.  This is what God’s got in store for us.  And it’s offered to us here, in this life, even in this day, at this table!  Christ is present with us, today, offering himself here – in bread, in wine, in water, and in the community of faith and doubt. (reverencing both ways)  

Let us eat of this Bread of Life.  Because it’s so much better than just the bread of lunch or even the fancy breads of dinner.  The Bread of Life gives us the true strength and nourishment and the p-e-a-c-e of God that we need to face our difficult days.  [pause]

Now, we can actually become addicted to earthly bread: to food and other substances, to money, to stuff.  Those earthly breads do comfort us at times, they even give us great joy in the moment...or at least, they numb our pain for a second.  And they’re not all bad.  But all the earthly breads do come up short.  

The real bread, the true bread that comes down from heaven, is God’s Love.  Have you received this bread before?

This is the true bread of forgiveness.  All that you’ve done, all that you’ve failed to do.  Mercy.  ...held out to you this day.

Have you been able to accept this bread before? (dead ritual)

Friends, I want to invite you:  don’t look at the bread and wine that you will receive at this table in a few minutes with earthly lenses.  Everything else we consume, we use our earthly lenses to evaluate it, critique it, quantify it. 

Don’t taste and compare this meal to other breads and wines you’ve tasted before, don’t pay attention to the flavor, with an earthly palette.  Don’t think about digesting with an earthly stomach.  But when you come to this table, you are not receiving earthly bread!  Through faith, through the words of Christ, through this sacred community — you are receiving heavenly bread today!  So see this holy meal with the lenses of faith, taste it with the palette of trust, digest this meal in a body of hope.   

For this is the true bread of justice and compassion!  In a climate of injustice and hatred, Christ is born in quiet, holy ways, in crumbs and sips, and yet fills us to the brim with the ability to open our hearts in care for the stranger, the immigrant and the orphan, the hungry and the sick, and also those we’ve struggled to love and like! – This is the true bread of justice and compassion, and it is offered to you this day.  

This is the true bread of joy and peace.  Calming our anxieties and our cravings for more, bringing a contented smile to our faces and air to our lungs. “Ah,” take it all in, like my wedding weekend.  Joy and peace is offered to you this day, despite all the chaos, all the opposite-of-joy-and-peace swirling around our cities, our nation, our world, our our own hearts — divine joy, peace, the true bread of heaven, Christ himself is for you.

Let us take this bread together.  Let us break it and share it.  Let us eat it in community, with the whole earthly community heavy on our hearts in prayer.  For this is the true bread of heaven that raises us all up on the last day, that draws us to God and therefore to one another and the good earth.  

“Take and eat, this is the body of Christ, 

given for you and for all.”  AMEN.

August 5 -- Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

There’s an organization that our last congregation, Shepherd of the Valley, back in San Diego supports heartily.  The nonprofit is called Third Avenue Charitable Organization — TACO.  It’s located in the heart of downtown SD, and it’s part of the ministry of First Lutheran Church there on 3^rd Ave.  I’m reminded of their story on this, our second “Bread Day” in John’s Gospel.  (Last week it was the feeding of the 5000, where we talked about abundance vs. scarcity mentality.  How’d that go?)  Today, that same crowd is tailing after Jesus, and he’s inviting them to consider what they really need, beyond just reacting to their growling tummies... 

So I want to tell you a little more about TACO in San Diego:  Perhaps there are stories like this here in the DC area, I just don’t know them yet :)  It was the 1970’s and people were moving out of downtown SD to go live in (and fill up the churches in) the suburbs.  White flight.  First Lutheran downtown was panicking:  “We’re loosing people!  We’re loosing kids!  We’re loosing income!  We’re loosing our church, the way it always was!  Death is pressing in on us!”  So — true story — a few of the members (with some gifts and passions for baking and cooking) got together and decided that they would bake bread.  “We’ll bake bread during lunchtime, during the week...and all the doctors and lawyers and CEOs who work downtown will smell our bread and come eat and join our church!”  Do you think they came running?  

Who do you think did smell the bread and come?  The homeless and working poor of San Diego.  So the church got back together, and prayed about this:  It’s not what they were expecting/wanted (?), but they trusted God might be up to something.  It wasn’t going to yield more members or income for the church, in fact it might even cost the church more.  But they trusted that God might be up to something.  God was showing them something, a sign: hungry people on their doorstep... 

Well, that was the birth of TACO, the beginning of a weekly (and it grew to twice a week) meal event, serving 150-200 hungry people on Mondays and Fridays still to this day.   It’s an amazing organization that has grown from just the Bread Days in the 70’s to also offering medical, dental, legal services, acupuncture, and even an end-of-life hospice care program called “Simon’s Walk”!

All from thinking they wanted one thing, but Christ interrupted their plans and their wants with something else!  God needed something else, which ended up being greater than they ever imagined.

Friends, Christ is always opening our eyes to gifts, needs, possibilities greater than we can imagine.  “No one saw that coming!”  Ever felt like that?  

“But God, look!  [panicky] Look at what’s happening!  We want this for our church, for our families, for our communities.  We know what’s best.”  And Christ smiles lovingly and says, “That’s just your tummy growling...”

Have you ever gone grocery shopping when your tummy’s growling?  Do you make good decisions then?  I don’t make any good decisions when I’m hungry.  (Or in our family, we use the term hangry.)  

Those members of First Lutheran in San Diego, back in the 1970’s initially were hangry — they were panicking, desperate, not even making sense.  And that’s OK, God showed up anyway.  God loved them anyway.  God smiled and gave them a sign…and — what I love about this story — is that they paid attention to it and prayed about it together.  (What if we just got together and prayed, every time we faced some difficult things here?)  First Lutheran trusted God, even in their struggling, tummy-grumbling state.

--

How is God showing up anyway for us as a congregation, as Bethlehem “House of Bread” Lutheran Church?  How is Christ messing up our initial plans?  [pause]

How about in your own life — at home and at work?  How are you personally hangry and feeling anxious, like death is pressing in?  

Or in our wider culture and world, how are we getting all desperate and panicky?  Forgetting who’s holding us?

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Friends, Christ is our bread.  And this is not exactly the bread we had in mind!  Remember the Israelites in the wilderness, with the manna comes down from heaven?  Do you know what “manna” means?  It literally means, “What is this?”

Christ is our bread, he offers himself to us freely and in abundance, and we’re like, “What is this?  This is not what I had in mind?”  (It would be fun to hear your stories of ways in your life that God has surprised you:  you had initial plans — thought you should be doing this or going there — but God got in the way, interrupted.)  

How has Christ provided for you, taken you places you never imagined, opened up new opportunities, comforted you when you thought there was no way possible?  ...

...well, one central example takes place right here every Sunday:  Friends in Christ, what we trust about this Holy Meal is that it provides everything we need.  [pause] Do you believe that’s true?

That’s an almost impossible leap of faith in our highly consumerist culture:  “What do you mean some crumbly piece of bread and a drop of wine is all I need?!  That’s crazy talk!”  And yet, this is our confession, the Bread of Life.  In this meal is Christ himself.  In this meal is the forgiveness of our sin, and new life.

It’s absolutely not to say that we don’t need our growling bellies taken care of — we do, and it’s our job to feed and take care of one another — both friends and strangers alike — with earthly bread.  But the bread of heaven: that’s what we can’t provide, that’s what we just have to trust God to provide.  And God does.

All we can do is open our hands to receive it.  Martin Luther’s legendary words, on his deathbed (anyone know?):  “In the end we are all beggars.”  Luther was not a beggar in his earthly life.  He had a great big house, crops, family, education, plenty of food (and beer), lots of friends, music, animals.  But in the end, he prophetically notes, we are all ultimately in need of God’s bread, God’s gracious abundance that comes down from heaven and embraces every single one of us — even you.

Friends, we don’t have to wait for the end of life to open our hands and receive God’s providence, God’s bread, God’s surprises.  Christ interrupts us right now!  It’s right here.  Free for us today.  (Doesn’t matter if it’s a small piece or a large, if it tastes good or tastes terrible, if it’s sour wine or sugary grape juice — it’s not about the physical nature of the bread and wine.  That’s tummy-growling theology! ;)

Friends in Christ, this day God’s bread of life fills you and revives you for serving in God’s hurting world this week.  God’s wine of forgiveness warms you and frees you—you no longer have to carry the burden of guilt and shame.  God’s meal of grace sends us outward to feed others, to house others, to love others, to welcome others...into this place, into this grace.

We are received and nurtured by Christ’s body and blood, and so we receive and nurture this world.  Not what I originally had in mind (like the story of TACO), but that’s our God for us...once again.  

Friends, when you open your hands at this Holy Table, know that you are loved and held in grace, in the name of the True Bread, in Jesus’ name.  AMEN.

July 29 -- Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you and peace from God who creates us, from Jesus who redeems us and from the Holy Spirit who comforts/challenges us.  AMEN.

As my family and I travelled across the country just about a month ago now, I was the traveller who was clearly the most anxious.  I’d get all keyed up about our lodging accommodations, our mileage, our speed, our next stop, our arrival times.  I was always worried about our move, our belongings, our new place, this new job.  “You’re always so worried, Dan.”  We would actually laugh about it all together as a family in the evenings, when we were relaxing with a drink and kids were safely tucked into bed.  Why am I always so worried?  One of the things I keep saying, but don’t learn from is that every single one of my worries, anxieties fears, all through these past couple months, have worked out just fine in the end.  Even the chaos of our moving company: it all works out.  And we have/I’ve had more than enough — an abundance of blessing — more than enough (12 baskets full) to go around.

We sure can get, like the disciples, anxious and scared — anxious before the abundance: “there’s never going to be enough!”  

And even after it all comes in all that abundance, 12 baskets of leftovers to take out and share, still terrified!  Just a few hours later, that evening on a boat: terrified disciples.

We sure can get, like those disciples of old, anxious before the abundance, and terrified after.  

And yet: God provides enough for us — plenty, in fact.  Jesus loves us through our anxieties and the Holy Spirit shakes us free from our paralyzing fears to draw us outward into the ministry of sharing our bread.

So here Jesus has just given them another sign (4th of 7 signs in John’s Gospel, 1st part: Book of Signs):  the feeding of the 5,000.  Just think about that for a moment:  We had upwards of 300 people in here on Wednesday night.  Imagine feeding all of them.  That’s a lot of food!  And Jesus serves 5,000!  

Little aside:  I’d encourage you to have the faith of a child on this one.  You tell this story to our youngest children, and they just take it on faith.  (Oh yeah, he walks on water today too.)  At some point—and it’s happening sooner and sooner—we get this need to rationalize and explain away the miracles.  Even cynical.  (Micah on Noah’s Ark: “Yeah, that never happened.”) Try to hear this story with the faith of a child.  Jesus feeds 5,000 and then he walks on water.  Bask in the truth of that!  [pause]

And now consider the disciples:  they were anxious about all “those” people, I mean that would be like – Philip’s quick math – six month’s wages.  I don’t care if you’re blue collar or white collar – six month’s pay is a lot of money.  But Jesus does it!  He feeds 5,000…with 12 baskets of leftovers!

Scene two: Only hours later:  A storm comes up and the disciples are afraid.  Anxious before the abundance and “terrified” after.  

In the midst of God’s abundance, 12 baskets overflowing, just hours ago, the disciples (like me on the road) get scared again!  

Sisters and brothers of Bethlehem Lutheran, we have an abundance here too.  (scarcity mindset vs. abundance) We have bread to share!  We have able bodies!  We have love and concerns and deep passions!  We have so much facility space!  We have a community around us, that showed up big time for us...and have left a visible mark in our sanctuary — 5000 quilts! ;)  And we have money here! 

Part of it is in our own pockets and in our own bank accounts (like it’s ours in the first place ;)  Part of it is in the church’s bank accounts, with all our assets, with our tithes and our offerings – we have money here!   :)

Which means we get scared.  

Just hours after Christ has “taken the loaves, blessed them and distributed them” and there were 12 baskets overflowing, the fear comes back!  Oh, we can relate to those disciples:  Anxious before the abundance — “How will we ever have enough?! ” — and, like me over and over again these last couple months — terrified all over again, even after so much blessing and abundance and God’s gracious provision…

Friends in Christ — I’m going to say something that I will keep saying over and over again ;) — all that we have and all that we are, comes from God and belongs to God.  (say with me...) 

“So help us, God, to be faithful with your abundance, and trusting in you, even and especially when the storms arise!”  

Friends, God recognizes our fears and our anxieties, our entitled attitudes, our greed, our recklessness, our need to protect ourselves at all costs.  God knows our brokenness.  

And here’s the thing: God loves us anyway! God holds us in compassion, as we journey through all those thoughts and feelings and rationalizations and explanations and cynicisms.  God hears our confessions at the font today:  “Forgive us all our offenses and cleanse us from proud thoughts and empty desires,” we said.  Yeah, we are scared!  Yeah, I am selfish.  Yeah, I can be reckless and even act like I deserve all this abundance.  It’s mine.” And yet God holds us in love as we get knocked around by the waves of this life…Jesus comes out to us and calms us down.

Bethlehem, I’m learning more and more has been knocked around by waves at times, through the years, as the tragedies and declines and disappointments, mistrust, and pains of this world try to erode away our trust in this God of ours.  So easily we can forget who multiplied and blessed the loaves.  But God holds us in love through it all…God holds you.  And there’s more!…

There’s this prayer in Ephesians today: that we be “strengthened in our inner being with power through the Spirit, that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith, as we are being rooted and grounded in love.”  

Not only does God holds us in love; God roots us!  

God plops us down right where we are, into the soil of this earth, in love, so that we may grow outward.  God waters us — rains down so much goodness in our lives, like it’s been pouring rain this week — God nourishes us, drenches us with grace, and then up and out we grow.  We here at Bethlehem are held by God, planted by God, watered and tended by God, through the Holy Spirit.   We are rooted and grounded in agape.   

(Know that word?  Agape is one of 3 words for love in Greek.  Maybe you know this already, but I’ll just remind you: When Ephesians says the word love, it’s agape...)

And so, friends in Christ, [slowly] we don’t need to be afraid any more…not this day, not this season, not ever again.  67x the Bible says “Do no be afraid.” Why?  Because even, maybe especially, when there’s abundance that’s precisely when we get scared. 

But God feeds us full…with the “bread of peace”...and there’s so much left over, God is so good.  So now we can share, we can shake off the fear, and we can move outward into new ventures, rooted in love, ready to serve, ready to forgive, ready to receive.  Friends, today we become what we receive at this table: Christ’s own body for this hurting world. Thanks be to God. AMEN.

July 15 -- Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Sisters and brothers in Christ: grace to you and peace from God who creates us from the clay of the earth, from Jesus who redeems and showers us with mercy and love, and from the Holy Spirit who both comforts and challenges us...and always sends us outward in service to our neighbor.  AMEN.

[whining] “Ah man, we just got started.  And now this?”  Ever gotten going on a project or a job or just a new day and hit a massive speed bump, a real glitch, and stumbled and fallen?

Here we are in Mark’s gospel: Chapter 6.  Last week in the 13 verses that preceded these today, Jesus inaugurates ministry together.  Remember that?  He told the disciples as he sent them out in pairs (no one goes alone): “Take only the basics.  Count on people to welcome you and prepare to receive their hospitality and partnership.  But also, expect resistance.  Shake off the dust from your sandals if you’re not well received. And keep going.  Go!  Be my disciples for the sake of this world, heal the sick, preach the good news, comfort the despairing!” 

And then we have the is interruption, to put it mildly.  What is going on?  “Ah man, we just got started.  And now this?”  Immediately after Jesus has empowered the disciples, this horrific episode takes place in Herod’s palace.  Herod and is wife want John the Baptist dead, but Herod has this fear about John.  But once he’s sunken into a chair belly-stuffed, intoxicated (I imagine), his daughter comes in and dances, old Herod’s fears about John quickly fade into seduction and he offers her “whatever she wants”.  It’s just grimy stuff, at the top echelons of power in Jesus day.  It’s excess and gratuitous and evil. 

Scholars in recent years have named this episode “Herod’s Banquet of Death”.  And it’s contrasted clearly—which is all part of Mark’s narrative arc—against what is immediately after this:  In the very next verses comes, what some have called  “Jesus’ Banquet of Life”...i.e., the feeding of the 5000.  

      “Herod’s Banquet of Death” vs. “Jesus’ Banquet of Life”  

At Herod’s banquet of death, we’re not out in a deserted field, like the feeding of the 5000, we’re in a palace, a lavish banquet hall.  This is where the rich and powerful dine with the king.  A true power lunch, that’s not for the multitude, but a select few.  And there is more than enough for this few.  It’s a feast of excess — excess food, excess drink, excess entertainment, excess space, excess violence.  The select few gorge and imbibe and get entertained as the multitudes starve outside the palace gates, and in the hills and countrysides...  

At Herod’s banquet, women are made to dance and entertain the men.  Women are objects of amusement and pleasure, only to be thrown out with the trash, like greasy paper plates when the pizza party’s over.  Herod’s daughter, it says, pleased him greatly with her dancing...so much so, that in a drunken and reckless state of ecstasy and excess, Herod promises her whatever she wants.  At which point, her evil mother whispers in her ear, “The head of John the Baptist.”

And immediately John is executed and his head is brought in on a platter, like a final course, like a grand finale.  I imagine everyone cheering when the cover of the platter is lifted and John’s head is revealed for the guests to see.  Can’t you just smell the excess -- the sweat, the meat, the death?  This is empire.  

The moral compass has been completely lost to a power-drunk king, and an elite crowd cheers at this retaliatory violence and terror… meanwhile so many others are made to suffer, simply because they are overlooked or not really a concern.  The multitudes of poor and hungry are not Herod’s concern in the least.

The Rev. Dr. Barbara Lundblad asks:  “Is it possible to maintain an empire and feed people who are hungry? [pause] The leftovers of empire have almost always been destruction and death – even in the name of peace and security. There is always enough money for weapons, but never enough to feed those who are hungry. Into such a world, Jesus comes with an alternative vision.”

In the very next verse Mark tells us of Jesus’ Banquet of Life.  This happens, not in palace grandeur, but in the open air — in an open field.  Not lavish but simple.  

In Jesus’ Banquet of Life, everyone is fed; there is enough.  Everyone has enough.  (Do you? Does your neighbor have enough?  What is enough?  Is there bread we can share, like the little boy who shared his loaves and fishes?  These are questions we’re invited to pray about in these days, even and especially here at Bethlehem...where our very name means “House of Bread”.)  In Jesus Banquet of Life, everyone is treated with respect and dignity, men and women, young and old, gay and straight, black and white, immigrant and native, the list goes on...In Jesus Banquet of Life peace and forgiveness, love and justice rule the day, and there is no place for terror and violence.  In Jesus’ Banquet of Love, we trust ultimately in God, not in money or weapons or power or fame.  In Jesus’ Banquet of Love, trust in God always trumps fear.

So what’ll it be for us sisters and brothers in Christ?  Herod’s Banquet of Death or Jesus’ Banquet of Life?  That’s a very Markan question to pose.  Jesus is very clear-cut in Mark.  It’s always this way vs. that.  No fuzzy gray areas: “Well, it’s complicated.”  No!  For Jesus in Mark, it’s either good or evil.  It’s God or the devil.  It’s Jesus’ way or the empire’s way.  It’s bread or weapons.  It’s life or death.  What’ll it be for us, Bethlehem?

Here at Bethlehem, I’m afraid to say, and I’m wondering if you might agree with me: Here in my two weeks already, I’m really sensing, in some ways, death pressing in around us.  Not this extreme, Herodian, debaucherous, banquet of death, but just the attitudes and the fears and the despairs that “death” can bring. 

With all the things that are going on here lately.  With a normal amount of conflict, but conflict nonetheless, in your history here... and now another new pastor.  With steady declines in membership and youth and participation in general: there’s been some mourning over this, I’ve heard.  Others have actually left.  It’s too much for them and they’ve moved on.  

Who doesn’t long for the past if it’s a memory of a better day?  Do you ever feel, with me, like death has been pressing in on Bethlehem Lutheran in Fairfax?    

And of course the rips and tears and broken glass and scratches of hateful words.  There it certainly feels like death, like John the prophet has been taken down and Herod is winning…

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But sisters and brothers in Christ (not in Herod), sisters and brothers in the Gospel of life (not the shadows of death), sisters and brothers of good (not evil) — God has not abandoned us!  

Death does not have the final say here or anywhere...because of Christ.  Jesus is here [table] in our pain and confusion and terror and decline.  The Holy Spirit moves in our midst and fills us with new breath, and with new bread (not the excessive meat and drink of Herod, but the the bread of life and wine of forgiveness, a feast of love and not terror).  God picks us up as we pick up the pieces, even as we may trip and fall, right out of the gate.  “Ah man, we just got started. Now this?” 

Friends, we have a God who is good, with a peace that endures, a Christ who abides, a Holy Spirit that comforts us when we’re down and challenges us when we’re complacent or paralyzed by fear.  

This is our God.  And our God will grant us, each of us, wisdom and courage for the days ahead, for the new directions we take, for the peace and forgiveness we will practice with each other, and for the love that we are called to share.  That love, peace, forgiveness, courage and wisdom is yours now, through Christ who strengthens us, today and always.  

Welcome to Jesus’ Banquet of Life!  AMEN.