Good Friday

Jesus of Nazareth challenged the ruling authorities, drew dangerously large crowds, made inroads among leadership, remained blameless before the law yet a threat to the standing order because he would not stop challenging the sinful domination system:  after months of plotting they executed him.  It was government sanctioned political assassination.  No remote God was happy or felt avenged.  The God who had drawn near in this humble, poor Jewish man knew sorrow and was acquainted with grief at the betrayal and rejection of relentless love.

Simeon's Story

This is a narrative sermon delivered in the Shaw University Divinity School Chapel service on March 23, 2013.  It is both an preaching text and a teaching exemplar.  In this particular instance, I had to create imagined characters who could give first person accounts as observers of the events in the biblical account.  

While narrative preaching may not be the bread and butter of the pulpit, it can be a valuable contribution in a number of ways.  In this case, a narrative sermon provides an imaginative alternative for high holy days such as Palm Sunday when the preaching text may be similar from year to year.  The different approach allows a preacher to enliven a text in new ways across many years of ministry.  

Secondly, a narrative sermon series can offer a unique way to develop sermons on a set of characters from scripture or a series of stories in a book of the Bible.  

Additionally, preachers will find that occasional narrative preaching can also assist them as readers to see more deeply into texts, as for instance the very brief comments made by the gospel writer about the disciples coming to pick up the colt with the simple statement, "The Lord has need of it."  What sort of background made that easy to do?  Alternatively, was it more complicated than the gospel account explains?  Asking these probing questions assists preachers to seek richer and fuller understanding of the text.  

Finally, I would also say that retelling a scripture narrative as a sermon also opens the door for teaching scripture in context.  The retelling can weave surrounding chapters and pericopes into the text being examined, using cultural, geographical, and social background as well as including details from other adjacent stories to elaborate the more focused narrative.

Luke 19:28-40  (Liturgy of the Palms)

I started the day looking for that son of mine.  He went outside early, as expected, to do his chores.  It is the day after Sabbath, so there is a little extra work to do with the animals—a little extra cleaning the messes they make, a little extra stocking the mangers with feed, a little extra spreading of straw on the ground.  

I was saying morning prayers, planning my day, waiting for Elazar, that’s my son’s name, to share breakfast with me.  When he did not come inside, I finally stepped out to see whether he was having a problem with his chores.  To my surprise, he was nowhere to be found.  And the donkey’s colt he loves so much was gone as well.  I wondered if the colt had run away.  Maybe Elazar had to go searching.  The mother donkey was happily chewing her food and did not seem to be bothered at all.  I decided I had better start looking for them myself.

I stopped by my neighbor Asher’s house first.  Asher is a tailor who makes and repairs fine cloaks and other garments.  Of course, most of us do our own basic sewing and make our everyday work clothes as best we can.  Still, Asher makes a good living selling fabric and garments for all the special occasions when people may not have time or skill to make their own.  

Asher said, “Peace be unto you, Simeon.  Come into my home.  It’s very busy now as so many travelers are coming to Jerusalem for the Passover.  In these festive seasons I make much of the income I need to feed my family for the year.  But I always have time for my good friend Simeon.” 

I got right to the point to ask if Asher had seen Elazar this morning or might have any idea where I might find him.  Asher said, “I did hear some conversation outside in the early morning.  I thought Elazar might have been talking with you, Simeon.  But if it were not you, then I suppose some other man must have stopped to talk.  Simeon, I’m sorry, but it seemed normal, so I did not bother to check.  Wait, my boy Zachary is helping me this morning.  Maybe he saw something.  Hey Zach, come speak with Simeon and me for a moment.”

A small boy appeared carrying a large stack of folded fabric.  Peeking over the top of the cloth, he listened to his father ask, “Did you see Elazar going anywhere this morning?  Simeon can’t find him or the young colt.”

Zachary replied that his mom had sent him outside early to sweep off the threshold and the front yard. He added, “I saw Elazar and my big brother, David, talking with two men.  The men had come to borrow the colt.  When Elazar asked why they wanted the colt, they said, ‘The Lord has need of it.’  Right then, Elazar and David got so excited.  They did not even think to come in and tell anyone what was happening.  They just asked those men, ‘Can we come along?’  That’s when they all left, heading back into the direction of Bethany with the colt.”

I looked at Asher, and he looked back at me.  We paused a moment to collect our thoughts.  Then Asher said, “Simeon, we knew this day was coming, but we did not know when.”  

You see, Asher and I had been following the news of Jesus of Nazareth.  Not so long ago, we had gone out into the wilderness by the Jordan to hear the preaching of John.  We were convicted by his words, so we were baptized for repentance from sin.  Later word came around that John had announced Jesus as the promised one that we should follow.  Ever since, we began to take whatever opportunities we could to see him, to hear him, and to learn about him.  

For a few months now, a small group of people here on the edge of Bethpage and Bethany met together occasionally to tell each other what we have heard and seen.  We talk about the things Jesus is teaching and the mighty works he has done.  Recently, some of his close followers dropped by our meeting to let us know that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem.  They said that when he came, he would need our help to carry out his plans.  They asked us to be ready to do what Jesus would ask us to do.  So our families had agreed to be ready.  Elazar is still a by, but at his age he is also a son of the law.  Like his elders, he has been drawn to Jesus.  That’s why this morning, he knew to be ready.

I felt a rush of joy to know that our humble family could now be of service to Jesus.  We are simple people.  We keep animals.  I hire out my service to haul goods with my donkeys.  This young colt had never been ridden and never carried a heavy load.  He was almost ready for joining the working stock.  Yes, he was ripe for work.  But why would Jesus need this colt?

Remember Asher pointed out that next week is Passover.  Of course, that is the time when our children ask a question at the Passover table, “Why is this night different from every other night?”  I have to say the question came a few days early for me.  Why was this first day of the week different from any other day?  

For a long time it seems, Asher and I stood together pondering this news.  But soon we began to hear the sounds of a crowd coming out of the direction of Bethany.  We went outside to get a view of what was happening.  In the distance, there were people walking in the road, and more people walking along beside the road.  They were shouting and laughing.  Some seemed to be singing.  As they got closer I could make out what they were saying.

“Hosanna!  Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!  Hail the Son of David!”  People were cutting branches from the palm trees and waving them.  It was as if a sea of green banners were waving and washing down the road--green waves of hope, waving above our heads, signaling that change is coming.

In a way I was confused about the words people were saying, even though I knew about Jesus and had high hopes for what he might do.  What marvelous words these were!  Who would say such things as these?  Of course we all hoped for the Messiah.  Asher and I grew up studying the Torah and the Prophets, and we had sometimes disputed what signs of the Messiah’s coming we should be watching for.  Now, all of a sudden, right by my humble home, people were shouting as if the Messiah was about to pass by.

Then, as I peered at the approaching tumult, lo and behold, I saw Elazar, walking along leading our colt.  On the back of the colt sat the great teacher Jesus.  Just as the Prophet Zechariah had said, he was riding into Jerusalem on a donkey’s colt.  I was so proud to see Elazar there with him.  And David, Asher’s older boy, was running back and forth with many others, placing their outer garments on the road as a carpet in front of the colt.  It was a kind of moving carpet, as they waited for the donkey to pass, then gathered the garments and ran carrying them again to put them on the road ahead of Jesus.  

I burst inside to get Rachel, my wife.  I told her to grab her tambourine, come to the street, and join the people celebrating as Jesus rides into Jerusalem.  When we got back outside, we found Asher and Zachary, and Asher’s wife Sarah, carrying beautiful garments to spread on the road in front of our simple little colt.  

In the crowd I saw familiar faces of the fishermen, scholars, workers, and of course the women of every status, disciples who had traveled with Jesus, had followed along to learn and assist him in his work.  Right beside the colt was a beggar, shouting loudest it seems, calling Jesus the Son of David and telling everyone that on this very morning he had been blind, but Jesus gave him sight.  Running along behind was a very short man in the finest of clothes, trying to keep up.  I heard someone say he was a tax collector who was giving back the money he stole from people.  Women were playing their finger cymbals, jingling their bells, and beating their tambourines.  Children ran and played in all the excitement.  It seemed that everyone was joining the great parade of people praising God and following Jesus.

We made our way into Jerusalem, and the crowd continued to swell into a great multitude.  Those who realized what was happening would join in the celebration.  Others followed along to gaze at the spectacle, mostly out of curiosity.  Such a scene attracted the attention of everyone, including the authorities.  Roman soldiers watched suspiciously, and I saw them send a messenger toward the Prefect’s court.  I’m sure Pilate was not pleased to hear what was happening.  Soon from the direction of the temple I could see officials of the Sanhedrin and their temple guards hurrying in our direction.  That made some people afraid, and the crowd thinned out a little.

Those Pharisees and Sadducees went straight up to Jesus and told him he should make all of us stop saying what we were saying.  They had hated him for a long time, and this big show of popularity and symbolism made them livid.  As usual, Jesus had a strong response ready.  He said if the people stopped shouting these things, then the very stones of the road and the stone blocks of the structures would take our places crying out in praise to God.  What a thing to say!  He never seemed afraid to get right in the faces of those pompous windbags.

I kept thinking about the other times I had seen and heard Jesus.   There were many times before that it seemed Jesus did not want to be called the Messiah.  But for some reason today was different.  He did not hush it up.  He did not deny it or give some kind of vague and confusing explanation.  He was willing to accept the title.  He was even acting it out from the teaching of the prophets.

Some were shouting, “Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”  It was like the story they tell about when Jesus was born.  They say shepherds heard angels saying those very same words.  So much of what had gone before seemed to be coming to fruition on this day, in my town, in front of my house, and including my little donkey.

However, I noticed as we got right up to the city where Jesus could look out across the temple, the buildings, the streets, and the people, that Jesus’ face clouded up.  He seemed to be weeping.  Elazar later told me that Jesus had said something about the people not knowing the way to peace.  They were crying out peace, but they did not know peace.

After taking a few moments of reflection and resolve, Jesus gathered himself and went into the temple itself.  He began to confront the merchants and the temple staff.  He quickly took charge of the place.  Many of the crowd continued to cheer his actions.  Others watched in amazement or fear for what the guards might do.  Jesus activity on that day was relentless, it seems.  But the moment was passing, the excitement waning.  

People got tired or hungry.  Slowly, the crowds of people began to go back to what they had been doing.  Rachel and I gathered the family and the colt, and we headed back home.  We found Asher and Sarah preparing to wash the garments from the road and getting back to their work.  But none of us could keep from stopping in the midst of our work to talk about what had happened.  We kept puzzling over what it might mean.  

Jesus did not gather weapons and utilize the crowd to rush the centers of power and take over Jerusalem.  Some thought he would do that.  I don’t know why he didn’t.   But he also did not send us away and say we had gotten him all wrong.  I think he was accepting the title Messiah, but just what kind of Messiah is he?

I keep thinking about that moment when he stopped to survey the city.  What hurt him so bad that tears filled his eyes in the middle of his great day of triumph and celebration?  I would have expected him to beam with joy and to bask in all that glory.  But Elazar said Jesus was feeling sad for the way that God’s blessing for Jerusalem and for the people would soon be thwarted.  He was seeing that these enthusiastic crowds would be disappointed.  He said that the people did not understand or recognize the visitation of God.  He incited a multitude, yet he was disappointed by the response he got.  What a strange reaction to the day’s marvelous events!  I just don’t understand.

Jesus had asked for the colt so he could ride into town.  That must mean that he wanted to stir the crowds to action.  Yet he is showing no sign of organizing his forces for battle.  If not battle, what kind of action does he want to see?  I wish I could understand what this man has planned for us.  I am sure that he comes from God.

The words I’ve heard him speak stir my heart.  They make me yearn to know God better.  They raise hope for a better life and a better world.  What will the next days bring?  Will he now show us the way?  What does he want from us?  If not taking up arms, then what means  does he plan to use for transforming the world?
       As this day is closing, God, I am calling out to you.  Show us the things that make for peace.  Visit us and make yourself known.  Make us ready to follow Jesus wherever he may lead.  Make us ready to become who you want us to be.  Amen.

Everly's Blessing

 Originally posted on CaringBridge.org

Today our pastor, Dr. William C. Turner, Jr., took his text from Isaiah 44:2-3.  It is a promise of water in the desert, of the Spirit of God upon the people.  He pointed out a significant distinction that many of us may miss.  When God blesses us, the blessing is not for us.  God blesses us that we will bless others.  This particular text says that the blessing will be for the offspring and descendants of those who first receive it.

The sermon sent me to thinking about the blessing of Everly.  A little more than thirty-six years ago, in the fall of 1976, Everly arrived in Waco, Texas, to start her higher education at Baylor University.  Within a few days we met one another as part of a leadership group recruited and sponsored by the Baptist Student Union.  Everly had been recognized by her peers and teachers at the very large J. Frank Dobie High School as perhaps the strongest leader in her graduating class.  She was expected by them to go far and accomplish great things.  I was a small-town boy with an over-estimation of my importance in the world.

It was a couple of months before Everly and I began to get to know one another.  She endured what women in our culture often endure--listening to men talk excessively about themselves (in this case, I was the blabbermouth).  Even with that, she detected something in me worth sticking around to discover.  I was especially drawn to the joyfulness she brought when we were together.

As we grew to be a couple, we had lots of long talks.  One of the early memorable conversations had to do with Everly's calling to teach.  She did not begin her university studies with plans to be a teacher, and some important people had steered her away from it because they thought she could aim for something "better" or "higher."  However, her first year of studies was leaving her with a feeling of something missing.  She was becoming sure that she should be an educator.  Everly did not see a need to separate high achievement from a vocation that would allow her to serve the community and use the gifts to teach that had already appeared.

Most of us who have lived long enough know that the actual path our lives take is far more complicated than we might have imagined at the outset of adulthood.  Everly finished Baylor with little inclination to ever go back to school again.  She immediately became a teacher, and in the course of a few years taught math at most levels from middle school to high school seniors.  It only took about a year of teaching--a year of wondering how it is that some children learn a concept and others don't, puzzling why some strategies work with one child and not another, reflecting on the processes children develop on their own to figure things out--before Everly started recognizing her drive toward further study.  A masters degree in math education from the University of Texas followed.

Then more years of teaching took Everly through Irving, Texas, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and Durham, North Carolina.  As a lead teacher, a department chair, a Presidential Award Winner, and a visiting professor at the University of North Carolina, Everly's vision of better classroom teaching expanded and began to make its mark.  Eventually she moved to district-level curriculum leadership in Durham Public Schools, gaining national recognition for her work, including the Outstanding Young Alumni Award from Baylor University.  And during those years she began work on her doctoral degree from the University of North Carolina.

From Durham she advanced to state leadership as the Director of Mathematics for the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction.  Having made a lasting mark on that state, she most recently moved to lead mathematics curriculum for the Texas Education Agency.

This is a story that many of you already know.  But for me it is a way of showing how Everly has understood deeply from a very young age that the blessings she has received are for others.  She had dedicated herself to understanding young minds, developing strategies for instruction, and uplifting all students to realize success in mathematics.  Her bountiful intelligence, enthusiasm, organizational insight, and compassion are blessings she received to share with others.

Another way of saying this is that Everly is our blessing.  We have received her into our lives as she has poured herself out, doing good.  She has done good to teachers by recognizing their centrality and power in education.  She has done good to students by never giving up on their capacity for higher math.  She has done good to bureaucrats and politicians by helping them direct their ambition and power toward better curriculum and schools.  She has done good to her colleagues by finding their best qualities and helping them to grow in those ways.

I guess I got the best of the blessing.  I got to live with Everly and share my life with her all of these years.  She is my supreme blessing.  From the time of her first years of teaching, the two of us have had an unending conversation about math teaching.  She has hammered out her ideas, her experiments, her theories, and her resolve in long talks as we drove to work, did the laundry, picked up the kids' toys, sat down in the evening, and just about any time or any place. 

As I said earlier, I probably started out with an over-inflated sense of my own importance.  We intellectual and academic types are prone to such delusions.  I have had a very satisfying and enriching career as a professor, so I'm not belittling that. 

But I also have come to understand that God blessed me with Everly not to have her only for myself, but so that I could play a part in giving her the strength to bless the world.  Reading so many of the comments on CaringBridge has further confirmed this is true.  Everly's influence is deep and wide, and the people she is touching, working with, and serving are blessed beyond measure.  Wherever she has gone, people and institutions have changed for the better.  I'm thankful that I am sharing in such a powerful life of blessing in this world.

For I will pour water on the thirsty land,
and streams on the dry ground;
I will pour my spirit upon your descendants,
and my blessing on your offspring.

I am a witness.  This is what God has done and continues doing through Everly.  All praise and glory be to the Holy One of Israel!  Amen.

Faith and Faithfulness, Having Faith and Being Faithful

Listening to conversation about Hebrews 11 drove home the need for better training in Bible reading.  The verse under discussion was 11:7:

By faith Noah, warned by God about events as yet unseen, respected the warning and built an ark to save his household; by this he condemned the world and became an heir to the righteousness that is in accordance with faith (NRSV).

It could have been most any verse in this chapter my Dad often referred to as "the roll call of faith."  Here, looking back at the story of Noah, forms of the Greek pistis occur twice, and some translators add a third implied "faith."  The noun is here translated "faith."  The verb form, pisteuo, is usually translated "believe." 

In the contemporary church, perhaps especially in the traditions born of the Enlightenment and the United States "nation with the soul of a church," these terms faith and believe take on a highly intellectual aspect.  That is, we tend to think of faith as believing in something, or in other words, accepting certain statements to be true.  Sometimes this aspect of faith is called "assent" to propositions or confessional statements.  Faith or belief, in this way, is a mental act, a matching of mind to concepts embedded in sentences.  "Jesus is the Son of God" is such a statement.  Popular notions of faith might tend toward, "Yes, I buy that.  I accept that.  That is what I think.  Thus, I have faith in that."

Greek (and Hebrew for that matter, if I were to go into another ancient language of scripture) do not make such an easy distinction.  I'm not going to cite numbers of New Testament and extrabiblical texts to provide statistical support, but let it suffice to say that very few, if any, uses of these words in Greek literature indicate this kind of mental act of assent.  Faith as assent is an emptying out of scriptural reasoning and replacing it with something alien.  For scriptural reasoning, faith or belief takes on richer meaning that may require more than one English word to adequately express.

For those who think I am being excessively picky or misrepresenting the churches' conversations about faith, let me first acknowledge that I would be lying to say that many preachers, teachers, and other church folks have regularly pointed out to me that faith means "trust," and believing means "trusting in."  The Hebrews text above makes this very clear through contextual analysis, without even having to look beyond the single verse.  Warned by God, Noah respected the warning.  That respect was trust in what God had revealed to Noah.  Faith in God means trust in God.  Trust in God means putting one's life in God's hands.  Trust in God means accepting as reliable what God has said.

This is more than simple assent.  It is relying on God.  It is resting and moving within the embrace of God, walking on the ground laid out for us by God. 

And this relying, resting, walking, and moving presses our understanding toward the additional aspect of scriptural reasoning with the words faith and believe.  Trust is nothing without acting on it.  Faith is nothing without faithfulness.  Noah's trust included a confidence to act on God's guidance, even against the conventional wisdom of his day.  As the Hebrews text says, Noah respected what God had said and built an ark on dry land when there had been no rain since who knows when.  The righteousness (or justice, an other word for another post) that comes by faith is not based on a person's knowledge, or intellectual assent.  It is not a mental righteousness.  The righteousness that comes by faith is demonstrated in faithfulness.  It is the confident action that comes from trusting God.  It is the life lived as God has called.

This complexity is why I encourage my seminary students, and my Sunday school classes, to exercise discipline as Bible readers.  When they come to the words "faith" or "have faith" or "believe," they should practice substituting that additional aspect of pistis and pisteuo which does not come through in contemporary English:  faithfulness or be faithful.  Thus, after reading Hebrews 11:7 in the NRSV, I want to go back and reread

By faithfulness Noah, warned by God about events as yet unseen, respected the warning and built an ark to save his household; by this he condemned the world and became an heir to the righteousness that is in accordance with faithfulness (NRSV, adapted).

It emphasizes the acting in confidence based on trust that is crucial for a biblical understanding of faith.  Moreover, the discipline reminds me that Bible reading is more than first impressions.  It is more than making a scriptural text conform to my cultural biases and mean whatever pops into my head.  It is disciplined work, and there are great mysteries to be unfolded as I continue to search this deep sea of divine wisdom passing through and into earthen vessels.

Just for the sake of expanding this point, let me give a few other examples.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who is faithful to him may not perish but may have eternal life (John 3:16, NRSV, adapted).

For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who is faithful, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.  For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faithfulness for faithfulness; as it is written, The one who is righteous will live by faithfulness (Romans 1:16-17, NRSV, adapted).

Just as Abraham was faithful to God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness, so, you see, those who are faithful are the descendants of Abraham.  And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faithfulness, declared the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, All the Gentiles shall be blessed in you.  For this reason, those who are faithful are blessed with Abraham who was faithful (Galatians 3:6-9, NRSV, adapted).

How else would Abraham's belief appear than in his faithful obedience to God's call to go to another land?  Those who by faithfulness are righteous shall live.  To do what God commands demonstrates the trust that encompasses the life of faith/faithfulness.

Just Peacemaking

Just peacemaking is the name for the body of work and writing by Glen Stassen, as well as an approach to peace and justice shared by many others with whom Glen has worked over recent decades. Recently Daniel Schweissing wrote an interesting post about his own interest in the just peacemaking paradigm. He links to more extensive writing by Michael Westmoreland-White discussing the principles of just peacemaking. I encourage you, as I am, to take some time to learn more about this important intellectual project and witness to Christian ethics.