Martyrs & Witnesses

Acts 7:55-60 (NRSV)

But filled with the Holy Spirit, he [Stephen] gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. "Look," he said, "I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!" But they covered their ears, and with a loud shout all rushed together against him. Then they dragged him out of the city and began to stone him; and the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. While they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." When he had said this, he died.

Martyr.  It’s a word which evokes a variety of emotions and connotations though has a fairly straightforward meaning.  Martyr, of course, means giving one’s life for one’s faith or beliefs.  The origins of the word are a little less straightforward.  Martyr comes to us from the Greek language via Late Latin and Old English.  Originally it meant “witness.”  That’s all.  Someone who witnesses to their faith.

Today we heard about the first Christian martyr, Stephen, who was indeed a witness but truly a martyr in the narrow sense of the word.  Stephen had just preached a sermon that was quite inflammatory.  His hearers, including the Sanhedrin Council, were incensed and quickly moved to action.  In fact, the verse just prior to our reading this morning says, “When they heard these things [i.e. Stephen’s sermon], they became enraged and ground their teeth at Stephen.”   It’s a short distance, evidently, between teeth grinding and stoning someone.

Standing there, it’s interesting to note, was a young man named Saul.  Saul became the coatcheck for the teeth grinders and stoners but would have been more than pleased at the scene before him.  At this point, Saul was a zealot for chasing down and condemning the Jews who were following this resurrected Christ.  Saul later changed through a rather miraculous event and became a zealot for the same Christ he had been persecuting.  He had a name change through it all and became known as Paul, the same Paul who wrote several of the letters that are in the New Testament.  But back to Stephen.

Did Stephen know he was going to get in such trouble as he preached to the Sanhedrin Council that day?  Did he really expect that he’d be stoned to death because of what he said?  Who knows?  I tend to doubt it.  I think it all took Stephen by surprise and in a whirlwind of activity it was all over.  But it wasn’t over before he saw the heavens open presumably to receive him and he had the chance to utter his last words, words of forgiveness for those who were about to kill him.  Echoes of Jesus’ baptism and crucifixion there as the heavens opened for the first event and Jesus said the same thing almost word for word on the cross as Stephen said as the rocks came flying.


Earlier this week, Allen and I watched a PBS program on the Freedom Riders, those brave souls who fifty years ago struck out to break down the segregation and Jim Crow laws of the deep South at the time.  In the early 1960s, buses in Alabama and Mississippi were segregated; the front of the bus for whites and the back for blacks.  There were also separate waiting rooms for the races, as well as separate drinking fountains and separate rest rooms in bus and train stations.  The Freedom Riders were both Euro-Americans and African-Americans who rode the buses together ignoring the segregation rules.

If you know your history, this did not sit too well in the deep South.  Almost immediately, upon crossing the state line into Alabama, there was trouble.  Buses carrying the Freedom Riders were surrounded and attacked.  The Riders themselves risked their lives as the buses were fire-bombed and they themselves were beaten and assaulted.  The police colluded with the attackers, who were sometimes dressed in Ku Klux Klan garb.  There was no protection for the Freedom Riders from police or the government.

Another pastor, Alvin Jackson of Park Avenue Christian Church in New York, wrote in a weekly email newsletter this week about the Freedom Riders.  He wrote:

When the bus reached Jackson, Mississippi, Peter Stoner rose and walked toward the exit. He was scared, but he was determined to keep a brave face, if not for himself, then for the other riders.
     As he walked off the bus, he counted down the steps: 3, 2, 1. Finally 
his feet felt the streets of Jackson, Mississippi. Police officers were waiting for him. The images of earlier Freedom Riders who were caught by the police and beaten until their faces streamed with blood flashed before his eyes. Stoner stood on the street dazed, wondering, "Will they beat us, too?"
     From May until November 1961, more than 400 black and white Americans risked their lives -- and many endured savage beatings and imprisonment -- for simply traveling together on buses and trains as they journeyed through the Deep South.
     Deliberately violating Jim Crow laws, the Freedom Riders met with bitter racism and mob violence along the way, sorely testing their belief in nonviolent activism.
     Stanley Nelson, in the PBS documentary, Freedom Riders, says that the lesson of the Freedom Rides is that great change can come from a few small steps taken by courageous people. And that sometimes, to do any great thing, it's important that we step out alone.

“Will they beat us too?” is a thought I would have thought myself had I been there.  Standing up for rights and freedom is not always an easy task, as the Freedom Riders found out fifty years ago this month.  They were breaking the laws and more importantly they were disturbing the social norms and mores of the time.

One thing I noted in watching the PBS program was that faith was clearly a part of the lives of these Freedom Riders.  I noted that several had gone into the ministry since their time as a Freedom Rider.  Additionally, when the community of Birmingham, Alabama met to support them, it occurred in a church with several clergy leading the meeting including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Were the Freedom Riders martyrs?  None of them, to my knowledge, did lose their lives because of what they did.  In the narrow definition of martyr, they weren’t then.  But in the broader definition, where we think of those who witness, they were definitely martyrs.

No one sets out to be a martyr.  I think of other 20th century martyrs, such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Oscar Romero, and Martin Luther King.  None of them set out to be martyrs.  None were planning that they would die because of their faith.  They were simply witnessing to their faith which brought about their martyrdom. 

I do wonder how any of us here today would react if martyrdom or even violence were facing us because of our faith.  I’m not calling for martyrs here.  We don’t really need anyone to set out to be a martyr.  But how many of us can claim that broader definition of martyr; how often do we witness to our faith?  How often do we take our faith into uncomfortable situations? 

I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t raised to be a martyr and I don’t intend to be one.  But, God helping me, I was raised to be a person of faith who witnesses to that faith in my actions and my words.  The opportunities to witness as the Freedom Riders did may be fewer and further between since the Jim Crow laws and segregation are officially behind us.  But that doesn’t mean that racism is dead.  And there are hosts of other problems that face us that demand a response based on our faith.  Issues such as homophobia or welcoming the immigrant stranger.  These issues and many others face us today and seek witnesses to our faith to respond and react.

I pray that none of us ever needs to give our life for our faith.  I hope we all live out relatively happy lives until our final days arrive.  But in the meantime we must be prepared to witness to our faith, in the tradition of Stephen, the Freedom Riders and all the other martyrs who surround us.

Finding Emmaus

Luke 24:13-35 (King James Version)

Note:  To celebrate the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, I read the scriptures from that version in worship.  Following is the KJV of the scripture. 
¹³And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs.
 ¹⁴And they talked together of all these things which had happened.
 ¹⁵And it came to pass, that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them.
 ¹⁶But their eyes were holden that they should not know him.
 ¹⁷And he said unto them, What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad?
 ¹⁸And the one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering said unto him, Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days?
 ¹⁹And he said unto them, What things? And they said unto him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people:
 ²⁰And how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death, and have crucified him.
 ²¹But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel: and beside all this, to day is the third day since these things were done.
 ²²Yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which were early at the sepulchre;
 ²³And when they found not his body, they came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said that he was alive.
 ²⁴And certain of them which were with us went to the sepulchre, and found it even so as the women had said: but him they saw not.
 ²⁵Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken:
 ²⁶Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?
 ²⁷And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.
 ²⁸And they drew nigh unto the village, whither they went: and he made as though he would have gone further.
 ²⁹But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And he went in to tarry with them.
 ³⁰And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them.
 ³¹And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight.
 ³²And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?
 ³³And they rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together, and them that were with them,
 ³⁴Saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon.
 ³⁵And they told what things were done in the way, and how he was known of them in breaking of bread.

The road to Emmaus.  This well-known story of a post-resurrection appearance of Christ is a favorite of mine.  It’s like we’re behind the scenes and know what’s going on when the actors don’t; we know it’s Jesus the two disciples are talking to and they are blissfully unaware.

As we learned from the King James Version of the Bible today, Emmaus sits about threescore furlongs away from Jerusalem.  Actually it’s about 60 stadia.  That helps, right?  Well, for those of us who aren’t up on our furlongs or stadia, it turns out that it is about seven miles from Jerusalem to Emmaus.   On a map, Emmaus doesn’t look that far, but 7 miles is not particularly a distance that most of us would be walking these days.  I figure that it’s about as far as it is from here to John and Grace’s home in San Mateo.  Jesus had a lot of time on that road to explain the scripture that led up to his death and resurrection, which is exactly what he did.

So we have these two disciples, one of them named Cleopas and the other unnamed.  Just as a side note, maybe the unnamed person was one of Jesus’ disciples who was a woman, do you suppose?  Since Luke bothered to name the one disciple but not the other, perhaps there was a reason.  Women could not testify in court during this period of history since their testimony was considered invalid and not to be trusted.  So it might be natural for Luke to just leave off the name of the second disciple if she were a woman so the reader of the period wouldn’t discount the testimony of the disciple.  So it’s conceivable that the second disciple in this story was a woman though it would be impossible to prove it one way or the other.  But since I’d be willing to wager that most of us pictured two male disciples in the story this morning, I thought it would be good to expand that vision a little bit.

So our two disciples are leaving Jerusalem.  In the past few days, they watched their teacher being crucified, a humiliating and excruciating death.  Then there were the astounding reports that he wasn’t dead but had resurrected and been seen by some of the women and other disciples.  It was confusing at best; a real roller-coaster ride, though they didn’t have roller-coasters back then to my knowledge, so they would have had to come up with another metaphor.  But they had gone through the depths of despair followed by inconceivable glimmers of hope and joy.  Surely those two disciples’ minds were on these things as they met the Christ on the road.

We have no idea why they are going to Emmaus.  Perhaps it was to get away from this place of despair and sorrow, of unbelievable stories and wild speculation.  Perhaps they fled in fear for their own lives, apprehensive lest the authorities would come after them, this crucified one’s disciples, too.  Whatever the reason, they were on the road, they were fleeing and seeking a place perhaps of refuge, perhaps a place of calm, perhaps a place of familiarity.

We all have had times when we’ve sought out our own Emmauses; places to go when life is too chaotic or jumbled or unfriendly.  Our Emmauses may not be physical places, they likely, in fact, are not places we can find on a map.  More than likely our Emmauses reside within us and we travel the well-trod road to them inside ourselves.

Emmaus, though, is always a journey away;  being there is important, but in some ways getting there is even more so.  The journey is more important than the destination.  And it’s the companions we journey with who are important.  Our fellow journeyers may be those we know well, or they may be someone we think we don’t know but who brings a wealth of information and teaching with them.  We don’t have to journey to Emmaus alone; we can go with others.

Where is your Emmaus?  How do you get there?  Where do you go when the despair and the hopelessness seem overwhelming and all there are are strange glimmers of stories of hope.  Who accompanies you as you flee that place of anguish and questions?  It may be different people for different occasions and the route that takes you there may be well-traveled or it may seem unfamiliar.  It doesn’t matter, because you know as you journey one thing: that you need to reach Emmaus. 

You need to reach Emmaus because the place you’re in is too confusing or difficult or frightening or filled with desperation.  You’re fleeing because you are scared or baffled or just plain worn down.  The journey ahead is long but you have companions along the way.  You aren’t alone as you head for your own Emmaus.

When you reach there is when things become really interesting though.  There you’ll encounter Christ or God and you’ll recognize that the Divine had been with you all along and you may not have even known it.  And the other interesting thing is that, just like the two disciples in our story this morning, your encounter with the Holy ends almost as soon as you recognize it is happening.  And at that moment you need to return to where you came from.  Because you have news to spread; good news.  News that you have encountered the Holy One and broken bread together.

It’s amazing; your eyes will be opened and you will find in that instant that you have to return to the place you just fled from.  Yes, to the place of chaos and despair and fear.  Because others are there still, not having made the journey to Emmaus and they need to hear about the good news that you have just experienced. 

We each have our own Emmaus; a place where we go to get away from whatever we need to flee.  But Emmaus is not a place for us to stay.  We are to take our experiences on the road with our traveling companions and then recognize the Divine as we stop to nourish our weary souls and then journey back to where we came from. 

Go to Emmaus as you need to but remember to come back.

Fear & Joy

Matthew 28:1-10

After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.’ This is my message for you.” So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

Just imagine trying to preach on this auspicious day.  Imagine trying to find a new way to tell an old, very familiar story.  Imagine facing a large room of people all expecting to hear good news in a fresh and exciting way.  Not that I’m looking for any sympathy, but that’s what I’m up against right now.

The Easter story is one that most of us could tell without even opening up a Bible, couldn’t we.  But could we really do that?  Because there are several versions of the story out there, all telling of resurrection and new life but each with it’s own twists and viewpoints.  Each gospel writer has a slightly different take on what happened that morning.  Mark’s gospel is sparest, telling of that first Easter in only eight short verses.  Matthew and Luke, who both used Mark as a source for their own writing, added details to the narrative.  And John has an entirely different perspective.

Today we heard Matthew’s version.  Matthew has two women approaching the tomb, not with spices to anoint the body as in the other versions.  Why not?  Well perhaps because Matthew earlier tells the tale of the woman who washed Jesus’ feet with expensive ointment that he declares was his anointing for death; a precursor of his death that Matthew includes.  So anointing is not necessary for Matthew; it had already occurred.  Plus the women knew that a heavy stone was over the tomb and they wouldn’t have access.

One major difference between Mark’s and Matthew’s gospels is the ending.  Mark’s tale ends in fear; the women who came to the tomb ran away frightened and Mark ends there.  Did you notice though that Matthew acknowledged the fear but added on to it?  He writes that the two Marys “left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy.”  Fear and great joy.  There’s something about that phrase that caught my attention.

I can understand the women’s reaction of fear and great joy.  This is something brand new; resurrection is a whole new event so there’s a naturalness to their fright.  But I like the fact that Matthew added the “great joy” to the story that Mark doesn’t include.  It speaks of more emotion and a truer emotion than just leaving off with fear.  In spite of how crazy this whole resurrection thing might seem, it is cause for joy, gladness, elation.

So with this mingling of emotions the women set out to tell the others of what has happened.  It’s incredible, it’s amazing, it’s unbelievable.  I don’t blame them for their fear.  It’s a natural reaction to an implausible event.

And those are the elements of a resurrection faith: fear and great joy.  It’s okay to have the first and it’s necessary to have the second if you’re going to believe that new life is possible.  It’s what we’re called to in this resurrection faith: fear and joy.

It’s an interesting mixture of emotions, if you think about it.  On one hand there is the gut-wrenching that comes with the fear but the release that comes with the joy. 

We certainly might be fearful in this time of great uncertainty in which we live; it’s natural to have some fear in the midst of all that’s going on around us.  With America’s longest war still in progress and partisan politics seemingly at its sharpest edge in the midst of a sluggish, at best, economy, there are many reasons to be fearful.  I don’t have to give too many examples of why we might fear in this day and age.  We all know them.

The great joy can be the difficulty though, as it certainly was for the women leaving the tomb.  But a resurrection faith calls for it; demands it even.  Sometimes we have to seek out the  joy; work to find it.  But our resurrection faith requires it.  Joy is necessary if we are to claim the name Christian.

True it may be difficult to be joyful in the midst of the overwhelming fear we may feel.  But if we truly believe that resurrection is possible, we must know joy and need to exhibit it to others.

Too many who call themselves Christian get stuck with the fear.  You know them--those who are always predicting gloom and doom.  They want you to believe that the world will end on a certain date and use fear to convert others to their way.  Or they want you to think that if you don’t believe exactly as they do, you’re condemned to the fiery pit.  They use fear as an evangelism tool but never get around to the joy part.

 But Easter is at time of joy:  we celebrate resurrection and believe that new life is not only possible is required.  The women at the tomb were joyful because they had evidence that their teacher, the one of whom they were disciples, was not dead but alive even though they stood and witnessed his crucifixion just a few days earlier.  When something in our lives that once was dead, be it hope or dreams or whatever has gotten you to this point, is found to be alive, we can grasp onto that joy.

Easter does not erase the fear; we still have to deal with it and experience that emotion.  But Easter allows us to mix that fear with the joy of believing in new life.  Practice resurrection faith;  from the midst of your fear, find the joy.

Hope Amidst Dry Bones

Ezekiel 37:1-14

In the year 586 b.c., Jerusalem was in trouble, big trouble.  The Babylonians had laid siege to Judea and Jerusalem and t he tiny realm was crumbling, both physically and metaphorically.  Babylon, the big power of the time, had come to town and they were taking over.  As part of their conquering strategy, they took in exile all the elite of the city:  the thinkers, and doers, the cream of the crop, including religious leaders.  There were waves of exile and in the very first wave was a priest and a prophet by the name of Ezekiel.

We know little about Ezekiel beyond that he was a priest and a prophet at the time of the exile to Babylon.  But he was a prophet of his time, called to speak a new word to a weary and shocked nation.

In their capturing of Judea, Babylon had leveled Jerusalem and in particular destroyed the Temple.  To the Jews of that era, the Temple was where God lived; it was God’s abode and without it God was essentially homeless.  And how does one worship a homeless God?  How does one properly venerate the One who is no longer there? 

Yes, Judea was in a state; a state of confusion and depression and downright chaos.  It’s capital was leveled, its leaders were carried off and its God no longer had a home.  It was as close to being a dead country as you can be.  They knew it and God knew it.

Ezekiel, off in Babylon, knew it too.  Those in exile were no doubt in as much shock as those left behind.  Judaism was at a crux point; if something weren’t done, it would likely die out completely…forgotten totally except in some dusty old history books.

So God brought forth Ezekiel, the priest, as a prophet and gave him words to speak to a wondering people.  And what an image God gave Ezekiel, the image you heard this morning of resurrection and life anew.

Ezekiel saw a valley of bones; human bones that had been long dead.  These bones had lost all their connective tissue and muscle and skin and had in fact been bleached white by the sun.  They were bones that hadn’t flexed or jumped or walked or done anything a body would do for a very long time.

And Ezekiel was called to prophesy to them; he was called to speak God’s words of truth and love to these dry, dusty bones.  And as he did, a miraculous thing happened: the bones began to move.  They began to connect up once again with each other.  And they developed sinews and tendons.  And muscles formed on them and skin formed over them. 

But there was something missing:  their spirit was missing.  So God had Ezekiel prophesy to the breath of God and call it forth.  In Hebrew the same word, ruach, means wind or breath or spirit.  So the wind blew and God’s breath flowed and into these once dry bones came the spirit that they had been lacking.  They lived again, as alive as you and me sitting here today.

If ever there were a people who needed to hear that dry bones could live it would be those in Judea during this time.  They needed to hear the word of God in a new way.  They needed to know that their God still lived and hadn’t been destroyed along with their Temple and city.  God knew it and said as much to Ezekiel:  “Mortal,” God says, “these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, 'Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.'”  God knew the state that God’s people were in.  Their hope was gone and the land that had been theirs since the time of Joshua, hundreds of years prior,  and promised to ancestors even further back, was overrun. 

The thing to remember, too, is that for a priest, such as Ezekiel, being in a place of dead bodies is impure.  Priests avoided contact with the dead.  We can’t begin to imagine how much this prophesy offended and affronted both Ezekiel and his hearers.  And yet, this is where God was found speaking to Ezekiel.  This is where the word was coming through.  So this is a time of contrasts:  the pure and the impure; the holy and the profane; God absent and God present.

So out of those contrasts comes the hope that is to give life again to a battered and shattered nation.  From the midst of chaos and confusion comes the hope of resurrection, not on a personal level, but on a national level. 

This is a new way of thinking.  This is completely foreign to the Hebrew people.  Because God resided in the Temple, they always assumed that the Temple was safe; protected from harm.   But God, Ezekiel’s prophesy is saying, lives outside the bounds of the Temple, outside the borders of Jerusalem; even beyond the boundary of Judea.  God lives on whether the Temple exists or not.  God lives through chaos and destruction.  God lives on through hopelessness and despair. 

Where is our hopelessness and despair today?  Do you think God lives through it or do you feel an absence of God in the midst of it?  Do you believe in resurrection; that dry, dusty, old bones can live again?  Or does your imagination prevent you from adding sinews and muscles and skin to the bones that inhabit our world?

There is, without a doubt, much reason for hopelessness and despair these days:  from a personal level as we continue to consider the future of a congregation that has meant so much to each of us here today to a global level as we see hatred grow and ongoing war become the norm.  Those, and everything in between, are our dry bones today.  That is our valley of death that we must wander through.

Hopeless and despairing?  Perhaps, but do you believe that God still lives and still practices resurrection?  If you don’t, then Ezekiel’s prophesy was just a rambling vision of a desperate priest two and a half millennia ago.  And I don’t know what you’re going to do in a couple of weeks when we celebrate Easter.

But if you do believe that it is God’s breath which breathes new life into situations of despondency and desolation, then you have reason to hope.  Your work is cut out for you though.  For you are called to be the breath of God, breathing life where there is no life; hope where there is no hope.  

Right Relationship

Matthew 5:21-37 (NRSV)

"You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, 'You shall not murder'; and 'whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.' But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, 'You fool,' you will be liable to the hell of fire. So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell.

"It was also said, 'Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.' But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

"Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, 'You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.' But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let your word be 'Yes, Yes' or 'No, No'; anything more than this comes from the evil one."

Okay, now that I’m preaching every other week, you’d think the lectionary texts would align themselves so I don’t have to deal with the tough passages, wouldn’t you.  But here we are, on this 6th Sunday after Epiphany dealing with all sorts of unpleasantness in the gospel reading.

People disagreeing…divorce…murder…adultery.  You name it, it’s probably in those 16 verses that Lisa and I read to you just moments ago.  It sounds more like the headlines from the magazines at the grocery store checkout line than words from scripture.  So here I am, all ready to bring the good news and I’m stymied by the Bible of all things.  Go figure.

These verses that we heard are part of Jesus’ sermon on the mount.  We’re in the midst of a lectionary run on the sermon on the mount that begins with the beatitudes.  And here we are facing some of the most difficult of Jesus’ sayings this morning.

I’d be willing to bet that the warnings about not murdering apply to none of us in this room this morning.  But how about anger?  Or insulting someone else?  Jesus pushes the edges here and throughout the reading.  He goes to extremes and forces us to reexamine who we are and how we behave.

When you look at these verses from a distance, without starting to beat up on yourself for being less than perfect, you’ll see that they are all about relationship; right relationship.  Through these five to seven admonitions that Jesus tags onto previous laws we see him go deeper into how we are supposed to behave with each other. 

Forget about murder and adultery and divorce; remember how you’re supposed to act with each other on a day-to-day basis.  That’s the crux of living the live that Jesus calls us to.  And that’s what Jesus is doing in this sermon on the mount:  he’s calling us to live a life that follows his example.  We would call it a Christian life, though of course, Jesus would never use that terminology: the term “Christian” is still years to come when he stood up and preached his sermon.

So we struggle and wrestle with this scripture, trying to coax out the good news.  Murder, to look at the first instance Jesus uses, is serious business.  Jesus isn’t denying that at all.  But he is saying that anger is serious too.  Both murder and anger are important enough to garner God’s attention in our lives.  Murder and anger may be two sides of the same coin. 

From these pronouncements that Jesus made that day on the hilltop, we can get an idea of what might have been going on in the first-century Near East.  In that crowded, bustling area, brutally controlled by Rome and trying to keep religious laws that originated centuries earlier that were for an agrarian, nomadic people, Jesus was trying to point out that you have to go beyond the law and create law that governs how you interact with those who are right around you.

Of course, for any society to survive, there have to be rules and laws.  Laws about murder, rules about divorce, and so on.  But Jesus was saying that we have to go deeper than the humanly-created rules and laws and think about reconciliation.  Yes, that’s right, reconciliation.  Because if God is going to go to the trouble of reconciling us to God, we have to make the effort to reconcile ourselves with each other.  And that means paying attention to things like anger.

Now, in this day and age of the 21st century in North America, I’m not about to stand up here and say that anger, in and of itself, is a bad thing.  Of course, we get angry and sometimes that’s actually a good thing.  If I don’t encounter injustice and get angry, there’s something wrong.  But what we do with our anger is what’s important.  If we allow it to fester and boil over and ruin a relationship that we have with someone, that’s when we’re no longer reconciled to our brother or sister.  If anger is all we feel in our relationship with someone though, we are missing something; something important.

We’re not that different from those who were struggling to survive some 2,000 years ago you know.  Yes, Rome isn’t such a big deal anymore; it’s no longer the seat of an empire.  And we no longer follow the religious laws that regulated life for the 1st century Jew.  We are bound however by laws that go beyond what our current empire demands of us.  Yes, we pay taxes and we don’t murder but nothing out of Washington is going to tell us how to be in right relationship with each other.  It isn’t illegal to be angry or to feel lust, thank heavens.  But it’s our Christian calling that keeps us in right relationship and tells us how to deal with the anger or lust or any other number of feelings that we might be having.

Because that’s the thing.  Jesus only scratches the surface here if you think about it.  There is a passel of ways that we can damage our relationships with each other.  And if we allow such things to get in the way, we need to reread that sermon on the mount and pay special attention to the passage we heard this morning.  We, being the inventive humans that we are, have found all sorts of ways to alienate ourselves from each other.  We seem almost limitless in our abilities to cause a rift in the fabric that binds us to each other. 

So when these rifts occur, we are called to mend them as best we can.  Whatever it is that comes between us and another needs to be addressed.  Through our ministrations to our relationships we can bring about true reconciliation with each other and therefore with our God.

Jesus’ words this morning may have been hard to hear but if we look behind them we find that there is an attempt to cause right relationship.  If we are indeed to answer our call to live the Christian life, we must begin with our relationships with each other and seek true reconciliation.  For through those relationships we find the glimmer of truth that is our relationship with God.

Emmanuel

Matthew 1:18-25

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
"Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
   and they shall name him Emmanuel,"
which means, "God is with us." When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.

I get an email five days a week from an organization called DelanceyPlace.com.  The email contains an excerpt of a nonfiction book:  some interesting nugget of information about history or business or some other aspect of life on this earth.  I’ve learned a lot, most of which, unfortunately, I’ve already forgotten.

Today’s reading from Matthew reminded me of an email I got from DelanceyPlace.com this past week excerpted from a book called Euphemania.  The excerpt was about euphemisms, those clever little phrases we all say to hide what we actually mean to say but can’t or won’t or don’t because of social strictures.  Did you ever hear the phrase “born on the wrong side of the blanket?”  Evidently, it was a euphemism popular in the late 18th century for...well, you can imagine what it was a euphemism for.  We all use euphemisms at one point or another to cover our meaning or avoid saying something directly.

Matthew’s writing this morning was heavy with euphemisms, at least part of it was.  Mary, he writes, was “found to be with child.”  In this instance we know exactly what Matthew is saying:  Mary was pregnant.  When we come to the words that Joseph planned to “dismiss her quietly” though, we’re not quite sure what Matthew meant.  Did it mean that he was going to send Mary away from her home and family to avoid the disgrace of being pregnant without being married?  Or did it mean that he would save her the horror of being stoned to death but still have her killed quietly?  We don’t know because that euphemism is lost to us now.

The words in Joseph’s dream are direct and to the point though.  They tell Joseph exactly what to do without any euphemisms or wavering in their meaning.  This clear message comes to Joseph via an angel.  Even though the angel is unnamed, I like to think it’s Gabriel again, the same angel who brought the news to Mary that she was going to bear Jesus.  That would make a nice symmetry: Gabriel, your all-purpose nativity angel.

What’s interesting about Matthew’s account of the birth narratives is that, unlike Luke’s account, this is told from Joseph’s perspective.  And this is the last we see of Joseph in the scriptures.  He disappears after this without a trace and is not mentioned again.  But Matthew, eager to settle in his Jewish readers minds that Jesus is a legitimate heir of David, gives us the genealogy from Joseph’s side and then tells the story of Jesus’ birth from Joseph’s viewpoint. 

God, through the angel, had to intervene to prevent Joseph from dismissing Mary quietly.   Without Mary, of course there would have been no birth.  But without Joseph, according to Matthew, there would have been no legitimacy to David’s throne.

Matthew is quick to quote Isaiah’s passage, the very one that we heard this morning in our Hebrew Bible reading.  In its original context, that reading was assuring a Judean king, Ahaz, that his line would continue with the birth of a son.  But Matthew uses that scripture in the context of Jesus’ birth, again adding in legitimacy to a Jewish readership that would know the original scripture well.   Matthew, from the very beginning is working to prove that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah who has come to save the world from itself.

Of course, the Jewish folks of the first century, who would be reading Matthew’s gospel and were Matthew’s intended audience, were looking for a political Messiah, who would free Israel.  But by the time Matthew wrote his gospel, there was already a split between Jews and Christian Jews, such that the Christians were no longer allowed in the synagogue.  So they were ready to accept a spiritual Messiah, one who came and conquered not Rome but death and sin.

The angel, back to our reading this morning, spoke directly to Joseph:  don’t be afraid; Mary’s baby is from the Holy Spirit; name the baby Jesus; Jesus will save the people from their sins.  That’s the summation of the angel’s message and Joseph took it to heart.  The name “Jesus” by the way is the Greek form of the Hebrew name “Joshua” which means “God saves.”  Thus the addition of the fact that Jesus will save the people from their sins in the angelic proclamation makes sense with the name, Jesus.

And that’s how we like our communications from God, isn’t it?  Direct and to the point without any room for equivocation.  Except when we’re looking for another answer than the one we got; then we want wiggle room, of course.  But when God sends an angel to deliver the message, you know that you’re going to get it direct and true.

Matthew was making a point here by focussing on Joseph.  If you think back through the Hebrew Bible, there was another famous Joseph, one who was known for his dreams, who traveled to Egypt and was known to be righteous, just as we were told Joseph is righteous.  Matthew’s Jewish readers and hearers would certainly make that connection between the more recent Joseph and his ancestor in the faith.  Again, a link to Jesus’ Jewish past is established through Joseph.

Matthew, in quoting Isaiah, gives Jesus a second name:  Emmanuel.  Emmanuel is a Hebrew name which does in fact mean “God with us.”  And that’s what the nativity stories are all about, aren’t they:  God entering into humanity as God has never done before.  God being with us in new and exciting ways. 

In fact, the whole of Matthew’s gospel is working to show that God was with us in the person of Jesus Christ.  In fact, if you jump ahead twenty-eight chapters to the closing verses of the book of Matthew, you’ll find “God with us” there again if you look closely enough.  For there at the very end of his Gospel, Matthew tells us of Jesus’ promise to be with us to the end of the age.  Emmanuel.  God with us.  Always.

This birth narrative from Matthew sets his readers and us up for the continuing story of God’s presence among us both now and for all time.  Jesus came, we are told from the very start, to save the people, not from Rome or from any other earthly power but from their own sins.  And, as we journey through Matthew this coming year, we’ll hear how God remains with us and will remain with us forever.

[Painting is The Vision of St. Joseph, by James Tissot.]

Blossoms in the Desert

Isaiah 35:1-10

Using a favorite phrase of my friend Nancy, we have heard from a veritable plethora of prophets this morning.  There’s John the Baptist wondering if his prophecies about Jesus are true.  We hear Mary singing that the world is going to be a better place because of the son she is carrying and if that’s not prophecy, I don’t know what is.  And then we have Isaiah bringing hope to a captive people.  With so many prophets at hand, how is a preacher supposed to choose?  How do we focus our attention with so many working to grab that very attention we seek to focus?

Well, being a visual person, I went with the prophet who used visuals in his message and that of course is Isaiah.  Right there in the first sentence, Isaiah had me: “the desert shall rejoice and blossom.”  It didn’t take long for my imagination to get rolling.  In fact, my imagination didn’t have to come into play; I had my own memories to draw on.

During my time in Australia, I ventured forth into the great center of that continent, to the huge red desert that makes up a large majority of the land mass.  I went in winter, which meant that the temperatures were bearable.  But it also meant that in some of the places there had been some rain, an extremely rare occurrence, which I didn’t experience myself but which had preceded me.

Thus I got to see the desert in bloom, which I was told only happens once every six or seven years.  I counted myself lucky to see this rare event and it is permanently etched in my memory.

That’s what prophets do; they jog your imagination and stir up your memory and by bringing up the past show off the potential of the future.  Isaiah does that in spades in this verse and it’s needed in this instance.

This portion of Isaiah was written after the great exile of the people from Jerusalem to Babylon.  In fact, a generation or so had passed since that terrible event when the Babylonians had swept in, destroyed the holy city Jerusalem, and taken many of the city’s inhabitants as captives, transporting them to Babylon.

This prophet, whom we call Second Isaiah, came along and wanted to keep up the Jewish people’s interest in their land.  Second Isaiah was a cheerleader of sorts for the old country.  Memories were fading and Isaiah found it his job to remind the people what they had left behind.  Some of the folks were getting too comfortable in Babylon: some were attaining positions of importance and marriages were occurring between the Jewish people and the Babylonians.  Isaiah worked to remind them of the place they had left, which had long ago been promised to them.

Isaiah was stirring the people’s memories and inciting their imaginations so that they could envision a future in which they returned to their land.  Between them and their home though lay a vast desert.  A way had to be made there so that the return would be not only safe but also pleasant.  So no wild animals will attack and yes, there will be blossoms to make the way agreeable.

Isaiah knew his audience.  That vast desert between the exiles and home had to be made  traversable.  And it was God who was going to do just that; God would make the way back to Jerusalem available to all who wanted to return.  Not only that, the lame wouldn’t just be able to walk, they’d be leaping.  The speechless wouldn’t just talk: they’d be singing out in joy.  All manner of miracles will take place when God gets involved.  And God is definitely getting involved here.  After the hardship of exile, God is ready to renew God’s relationship with the people of Judah.  Isaiah was talking about restoration.  Justice. Healing.  Joy.  Words that seem impossible to a people in exile.  Are they impossible for us to hear though?

It is the sort of the thing we need to hear this Advent, isn’t it?  Though we aren’t in exile, it feels like we might be in some sort of spiritual exile, doesn’t it?  For instance, across the globe there are many who need a simple thing like water in order to survive, but who won’t get it.  Our war in Afghanistan goes on without any resolution or completion in sight.  The economy remains stubbornly lackluster leaving many un- or underemployed.  And here in our dear community of Chalice, we are facing 2011 with many questions about our future and how we shall remake ourselves.  If ever we needed God’s involvement and attention, as a church, as a nation, as a world, it is now. 

God doesn’t create lush gardens in the desert however for people who don’t want to return.  God doesn’t give sight to the blind who don’t want to see.  That’s why the prophet, Isaiah, needed to get the Jewish people into a state where they wanted to return.  Because if they were going to want to remain an exilic people, God wasn’t going to do those miraculous events for nothing.

Enough of us have to want to return home, to leave exile.  Enough of us have to want to walk again or see again or speak again.  Enough of us have to believe the prophecy that we will be able to go home again, believe it enough to pack our bags and have them waiting at the door, waiting for the desert to bloom and for God’s way to be made through the wilderness.

Yes, our veritable plethora of prophets, headed by Isaiah, all are saying about the same thing: this can be a different world but you need to allow God in and not rely only on yourselves.  Then, when we’ve let God into our lives and allow God to act as God alone can act, will the miraculous happen.  The desert blooming, for instance.