 This coming Sunday is the festival of Pentecost, the day on which the Holy Spirit descends upon the followers of Jesus in Jerusalem. The Holy Spirit doesn't get as much attention in our (ok, in my) preaching and theology as the Father and the Son, most often appearing as a means to some purpose or as the solution to a problem rather than as a co-equal Person of the Holy Trinity. But we do have this lovely festival, and with it the invitation to hear again what our own words and stories mean. Here's part of the passage from Acts we hear each year on this day: When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. A few verses down, the incredulous festival crowd mistakes the display of foreign tongues for drunkenness (though it's not in this passage, the English use of "spirit" for distilled liquor points to the close kinship of alcohol and inspiration). We hear this in a different way in Paul's letter to the Corinthians: Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans, you were enticed and led astray to idols that could not speak. Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says ‘Let Jesus be cursed!’ and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit. Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. People in the ancient world understood that a variety of external powers spoke through human beings. The first lines of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the most important works of literature in the Graeco-Roman world, consist of the poet asking the "goddess" or the "muse" to tell the story that he will then relay to the audience. An "inspired" person wasn't digging up treasures from within her own mind, but speaking as a medium for something or someone else.
For Jews and early Christians, these "spirits" were typically hostile or deceptive powers. Consulting them was a dangerous business. So the coming of the Holy Spirit, or the Spirit of God, can be heard as a contest between these hostile (or "demonic") spirits and the power of God to produce truth, faith, and virtue in us. In Luther's version of the baptism rite, the pastor says "Depart, unclean spirit, and make way for the Holy Spirit." We aren't empty vessels waiting for God to fill us up; we're the site of many influences working through our words and actions. Paul suggests something a little different. You were "led astray by idols that could not speak," he tells his hearers. The pagan gods aren't voices at all; they're silent blocks of wood and stone that human beings fill up with their own words and meanings. This is not a new idea (we see an entertaining version of this view in the Greek version of the Book of Daniel, in a story called 'Bel and the Dragon'). But it is a powerful one. People looking for a message from an oracle or a soothsayer will be willing to believe even the shoddiest human ventriloquism. By contrast, the Spirit of God reveals and confirms the truth, and activates "gifts" within the believer that she would not otherwise have. If the idols merely speak some version of human conventional wisdom back to us, the Holy Spirit speaks unexpected power. So as we approach this festival, it's worth asking ourselves: what voices speak through us? It can be as simple and obvious as an internet 'meme' that we repeat or vary, pushing along a fragment of thought without weighing it ourselves. Or it can be as subtle and profound as a whole system of assumptions and stereotypes that we pick up little by little and often aren't even aware of. It may also be the voice of charity, mercy, and grace that we know comes from outside and beyond us--the Holy Spirit. And at the same time, we can ask what words do we seek from idols? What are we willing to believe? What gifts do we seek at hands other than God's? Sisters and brothers, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
“For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.” So Peter tells us in today’s reading. We have many lovely images of Jesus as a shepherd. North American Lutherans seem to be particularly fond of this image. We named a lot of our churches “Good Shepherd” or “Shepherd of the Lakes.” It’s common in paintings and stained glass. And this image mostly comes from the passages we hear on this fourth Sunday of Easter, sometimes called “Good Shepherd Sunday.” But to make any sense of the image of Christ as a shepherd, we need to think first about what it means that humans are sheep in this analogy. So a few relevant details about sheep: Sisters and brothers, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
St. Peter writes to the church today: “Come to him,” that is, to Jesus, who is “a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God's sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” This week I was part of a webcast with some local colleagues discussing the plans of Dallas-area churches to reopen for worship. And one of the pastors said something that stuck with me. She said that she and her church are having to think about what it means to be church, and to do worship, without the four walls of the sanctuary. We are so accustomed to a place and a setting for our work and these last two months have forced us to expand ourselves, in a way.  Gebhard Fugel, "Jesus und der Gang nach Emmaus," Katholische Kirchengemeinde Oberzell (Ravensburg) Sisters and brothers, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
In the whole history of humans telling each other stories, there are certain themes or figures that turn up over and over again. One of the most fascinating, for me at least, is the theme of mistaken identity. In one version of the mistaken identity story, a stranger appears as someone familiar or beloved. This is the doppelganger or changeling story. In another version of the mistaken identity story, a familiar or beloved person appears in a strange or unrecognized form. Something in us loves stories of mistaken identity. At least we find it interesting enough that we keep telling over thousands of years, all over the world. They are uncanny. They make the strange seem familiar and the familiar seem strange. We hear both versions of the mistaken identity story in the Scriptures. The devil, Jesus warns, has the power to appear as an angel of light. In another place he warns his friends that false messiahs, or as we’d call them later, “anti-Christs,” will appear, mimicking the words and actions of the true messiah. People will be tempted to follow the false version. In the New Testament, the devil is Christ’s doppelganger. We also hear stories of the true person being hidden or mistaken for someone else. Joseph’s brothers beat him and leave him for dead in a well, but he survives and makes his way down to Egypt. When the brothers come down to Egypt many years later for food during a famine, and Joseph is a powerful man there, the brothers do not recognize him. On the morning of the resurrection, Mary Magdalene mistakes Jesus for a gardener. Long before the New Testament times and far away from ancient Israel the Greek poet Homer told the story of Odysseus. He comes home to his kingdom after ten years of war and ten years of terrible journeys, appearing as a wizened old beggar. His servants don’t recognize him. His son doesn’t recognize him. Even his wife, who has pined for him daily and risked her life to wait for his return does not recognize him. Only his dog recognizes him, knowing his master and hearing his voice. In the Gospel story we hear today, Jesus appears to his disciples. But their eyes are prevented from recognizing him. Last week Thomas saw and believed, but this week even seeing is not enough. As God tells the prophet Isaiah, the people will see and see but not perceive; they will hear and hear but not understand. Have you ever had an experience like that? A time when you could not recognize someone right in front of you? Or a time when you were convinced that a stranger was actually a long-lost friend, a family member, or a lover? These moments are uncanny because they tell us that our memories are not truthful and our perceptions are not reliable. They can make our own identity feel unstable. Jesus appears to two disciples in today’s story as a stranger. As a stranger he hears the story of his betrayal and arrest, the failure of his messianic hope, and the empty tomb. As a stranger he teaches them about the Messiah in the Scriptures. As a stranger he is about to leave them for the night. But they plead with him: Stay with us. It is evening and the day is almost over. Why do they do this? In part they do this, I think, because he is not Jesus to them. He is just another fragile traveler in a dangerous world on a long night. They are showing him the basic human solidarity of hospitality, an obligation so profound in the ancient world that to break it would bring a curse on your head. But in part, I think they do this because he is Jesus to them. They have heard something of Jesus in his words and their hearts have burned within them. In the Word Jesus Christ comes to us as a stranger. He is puzzling, surprising, sometimes shocking in his sayings, his miracles, his terrible judgments. And in his Word he comes to us as a friend: loving, comforting, assuring, healing, forgiving our sins. Our eyes are kept from recognizing him at times. Who is this savior who speaks with such severity, who does such implausible miracles? And yet he walks with us in all these words. We hear them over and over. They change for us because we change. But under all of it we believe he is there. The disciples sit to eat. And in the breaking of the bread, which Jesus does for them as if he is the host. In that moment their eyes are healed and he is suddenly revealed. And just as suddenly vanishes. If Jesus may be either friend or stranger in his words, and was to those around him in his own day, Jesus and those around him were always most at home at the table together. If he shocked and astonished and frightened in his words, he brought together, he put at ease, he showed affection around the table. And the breaking of bread is where he does not just speak to us, but it turns out that in all those meals, around all those tables, with all those people he was preparing to give himself to us. It’s also where he disappears into us, leaving us behind as his Body in the world. Christians have met Jesus and seen Jesus here, together, ever since. Through times of civic strife and violence, through error and conflict in the church, this is where we have gathered to see with our eyes and our hearts, wayward as they may be at every other time, the Christ who gives himself to us. And we have continued here even as we cannot gather as a group. Two are enough, and have been for us for hundreds of years. But we will do that no longer. We should be fasting together if we cannot feast together and I will not do for myself and my household what I cannot do for anyone else. This is a hard thing for me because I have always fled back to the breaking of the bread. When the Word was perplexing or puzzling, when my own journey from one place to another on this road has been vexed or troublesome, this is where I’ve always been able to flee. But it is for all of us, not just those who can safely be here at this moment. So it falls to us to listen for Jesus in his words and to seek for him in those words, in each other, in this world that is under so great a threat for unequal and unjust responses to this crisis. In a world that is so desperate for healing. This will be a time when we let our hearts burn within us. When we let our hearts burn for that justice, that vision of Christ: not simply here in church but in a world that can and must be reconciled. When we can gather again and break bread together again, we will do it with a new appreciation for what God has done for us, and what God may yet do for this suffering world. Amen. As most of you know, in September my family moved here from the Chicago area. Kerry and I had both lived there for almost twenty years, since before we were married, before we even met. Our three children were born there, and we cared for seven foster children there. Chicago was my home in a way that no place else could be. Neither of my parents nor my brother lived in the places I grew up. I turned twenty-one there, in a liquor store on Sheridan Avenue. I became a baseball fan there at the White Sox park, watching Frank Thomas strike out in the bottom of the ninth with two men on. I was ordained to the ministry of Word and Sacrament there at Wicker Park Lutheran Church on the corner of Hoyne and LeMoyne.
I spent one night on the road between Chicago and Dallas. And almost immediately I got to work. When a person died on a Roman cross he or she did not die of the wounds. He or she did not typically die of exposure. A person on a Roman cross typically died of asphyxiation. Once your legs and arms failed to the point where they would no longer hold you up, you collapsed into yourself and you could no longer breathe.
It’s not the worst way to die. But it is a bad way to die. It was meant to be. Crucifixion was not capital punishment in the way we think of it today. It was a humiliation, a horror, a spectacle. It was meant to show people: we can do this to you and you can’t stop us. It was a kind of political theater. Suffering for show. Suffering for control. Suffering to send a message.  Sisters and brothers, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
I have to admit that I have not done a great job of observing Lent this year. Over the years I have become more ambitious and traditionalist in my fasting. I refrain from meat and sweets from Monday through Saturday--at least I do that early in the season. I fast more severely on Wednesdays and Fridays, following monastic practice. I resolve to stop watching shows about murder and instead read books about murder. In years past I have resolved to stop eating out. If I couldn’t plan ahead or prepare my own meals, I should toughen up and wait until I could. The truth is, I’ve always loved Lent. I loved the fasting, loved the restraint in worship, loved the heightened spirituality of the whole thing. Six sober, watchful, reflective, difficult weeks and then the great festival--champagne and strawberries and chocolate after the Easter Vigil and a roast lamb on Sunday.  Athanasios Vasilikos Adaminos - Κειμηλιακό Απόθεμα σε Ναούς της περιφέρειας Θεσσαλονίκης 1846 There is nothing like the acclaim of a crowd. It is a good thing to have the praise of a teacher or a mentor. It is a special thing to earn the regard of a parent. It is a gift to be applauded by a close friend or a spouse.
But the praise of a crowd is different. I grew up doing my share of singing and public speaking on little stages. But I don’t remember feeling that magical connection between me and an audience until I started fooling around with an electric guitar. I was never all that good at it, but I worked hard at soloing, and when I hit a good one--I can still remember the song, it was that old folk song “Hey Joe” that Jimi Hendrix covered--the reaction of the crowd was, well, electric. In my little band there was me, a bassist, a pianist, and a drummer. We told jokes at each other’s expense. How can you tell that a stage is level? Because the drool comes out of both sides of the drummer’s mouth. How does a guitar player change a lightbulb? He holds the bulb and waits for the world to revolve around him.  Paolo de San Leocadio, "Christ with the Host" Please read with me from Matthew's Gospel, the 26th chapter: While they were eating, Jesus took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to the disciples, and said, ‘Take, eat; this is my body.’ Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will never again drink of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.’ When they had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. Let us pray. Merciful God, we do not presume to come to your table trusting in our own righteousness, but in your abundant mercy. Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat and drink the body and blood of your dearest Son, Jesus Christ, that we may live in him and he in us, now and forever. Amen.
Communion and Social Distance During the week leading up to Sunday, March 15 it became increasingly clear to me and many others than celebrating Holy Communion and distributing the Sacrament, however much care we took, would not be safe or advisable. And after that Sunday, we had to cease meeting in person, in our building, altogether. With many other clergy and churches, we had to figure out the best and most faithful way to keep worshiping during a time of mandatory (and entirely justified) "social distancing." And foremost in the minds of many Lutherans and churches in other traditions where the Sacrament is central was the question of how, and whether, to celebrate Holy Communion.  Duccio de Buoninsigna, "The Raising of Lazaraus" (1310/11) Sisters and brothers, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
A couple of weeks ago in Italy, and then last week in New York City, an alarming detail emerged in stories of the coronavirus crisis: hospitals were asking for permission to create makeshift morgues. There were too many deaths to process in the normal ways. There were too many bodies to store in the normal place. Italy had to suspend some rules about handling the dead, including the right of the survivors to have the deceased person buried instead of cremated. There were too many. |
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