A Prayer in the Midst of a Horrifying Night

I've been trying to get through some academic writing, so telling myself I don't have time for blogging.  But tonight I need to write this piece.

On the way to church this morning, I wanted to hear some meditative music, so I started a series of songs from Fernando Ortega.  The first one was a piano instrumental hymn interpretation.  The second one was one I had not heard.  When the lyrics started, they sounded somehow familiar.  Eventually I realized they were the words of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, as he spoke with his closest friends about the burden of his heart.

My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow
To the point of death.
My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow.
Stay with me here.
Stay with me here.
Stay with me and keep watch with me.

The words come from the story that unfolds in Mark 14:32-36.  Another version is in Matthew 26:36-39.  They are the words of a breaking heart.  They are the words of one who has seen what the world and its systems of domination can do to the ones who challenge it, and to the ones it deems disposable.  They are his cry for those he loves to stand by him in these moments.

Jesus had spent his public years fighting the injustices perpetrated against the poor by those who had the power to do so.  Landowners who had accumulate the livelihoods of their neighbors through foreclosures treated their victims as if they deserved their poverty.  So-called decent people ignored the blind, lame, and other disabled neighbors who were marginalized and forced to beg for food. Patriarchal laws and structures forced women into sex work, condemned women for sexual sin while excusing men, devalued women's work, and kept unmarried women in poverty and vulnerable to abuse.  Religious opportunists overcharged pilgrims in Jerusalem, doing dishonest commerce on the very grounds of the temple.

Jesus saw what happened to his mentor, John the Baptist, because he dared to challenge the injustices of the land and its rulers.  They arrested and executed him.  He knew that every time he came to the centers of power, the Sanhedrin and the colonizing Roman leaders began to plot his death.  He knew of the recent arrest and condemnation of Barabbas, another rabble rousing leader among the people.

Jesus knew that the people in power would do whatever they needed to do to keep their power and prosperity.  Their willingness to crush the masses of the poor were evidence of their greed and willingness to abuse power for their own benefit.  They would have no qualms about doing their worst against him if he continued in faithfulness to proclaim the Jubilee economics God calls all people to follow.  His message of liberation would bring their harshest retribution.

In the garden Jesus was exceedingly sorrowful.  His grief was overwhelming.  He had come on a mission to proclaim good news for poor people, release of prisoners, a place for the marginalized, the Jubilee year of the Lord.  He had raised the hopes of the masses, and they had followed him and cheered his entrance to Jerusalem.  Such a crowd of supporters only solidified the intention of the rulers to destroy him.  His heart cried out for someone to stay by him in this hour.

Some would say Jesus failed in his mission.  I have no doubt he was disappointed in the way things had turned.  Yet I also believe he had eventually realized that it would come to this.  If he continued faithfully in his mission, the powers that be would do what they must to stop him.  Committed to a loving path, a non-violent way, Jesus was unwilling to arouse his followers to violence.  He would therefore receive violence without returning it.

Rulers knew what to do with Barabbas's ilk.  Those who raised a violent hand against the system deserved to see the punishing violence of the system.  That is the proof of the system's "justice."  Unauthorized violence must be put down by authorized violence, a paradoxical virtue of good order.  Even the oppressed should theoretically be thankful for an orderly system of violence to prevent the chaos of uncontrolled violence.  Executing Barabbas would be "redemptive violence."

Jesus was harder to deal with.  He did not come at the state with violence, but with the challenge of a social vision of justice and beloved community.  He was hard to battle.  It was not obvious that he needed to be punished.  But he was as great a threat as Barabbas, and maybe worse.  So he must, of course, be stopped.  The people with power must be allowed to define justice, not a small-town outsider who has listened to the cries of the poor and created false hopes in the masses.

Around midnight in the garden, Jesus was grieving the dream.  He would rather have seen the Romans and the Sanhedrin persuaded to begin restoring justice to the land and its people.  He knew that many had been won to his challenging vision of society.  But others had hardened their hearts.  For this reason of power or that reason of power, they would see him dead before they would join his cause.

Jesus was grieving the continued oppression of the poor and marginalized.  He knew that his execution would be intended and used as an example to the poor and the masses.  He would be killed in public view on the highway to show what happens when someone challenges the powerful.  Hearts would be broken and discouraged.  Some would feel like giving up.  The poor would be hung on a cross on that day as every day before.  But not everyone gave up.  Some told and retold the story of his campaign for justice, eventually writing it down and passing it through generations.

On this day in 2019, the shoppers at the most noted low-price store, were greeted with the violence of a system of power known as white supremacy.  That power system directed a young man to find a place where he could execute the enemies of the system, outsiders defined by having a Hispanic heritage.  Mexicans, Salvadorans, Hondurans, Guatemalans, Latinx people of any label, whether US citizens or recent immigrants, became targeted as killable flesh.  The white supremacist cry of, "You will not replace us" echos from Charlottesville to El Paso.  White ownership of the land, white privilege to determine who is acceptable and who is outcast, white power over life and death--this is his mantra and destiny.

In Dayton, after midnight, patriarchal systems directing anger and hatred toward women drove a young man to act upon his fantasies of killing the women he knew and grew up among.  Even his own sister died at his hands.  Misogyny or misanthropy, a fascination with killing drove him to identify women, and perhaps others, as targets deserving to die, if for no other reason than his lust for power through spilling blood, a privilege of white men in a culture addicted to violence.

Around midnight this weekend, Jesus reminds us that his heart, his soul, his deepest being, is overwhelmed with sorrow, even unto death.  Jesus tells us to share this sorrow for the poor and the outcast, the darker skinned, the outsider, the women, the people who have been designated killable flesh.  He reminds us that when we have done this to the least of his brothers and sisters, he has died with them.  Jesus and the poor, the outcast, the women, the person of color, are executed on the public streets again, bodies displayed in public view as a reminder of how the power of this world operates.

If we are followers of Jesus, if we would be like this sorrowing Lord, we must become men and women of sorrow on a day like today.  We cannot set it aside as if this way of the world is inevitable.

We must refuse to believe that this is the only path power can take.  There is a power rooted in love.  There is power that comes by building relationships across the barriers that divide us.  There is power in a vision of justice that includes every brother and sister, every person among us.

We sorrow, and we become defiant.  We will not stand by and let white supremacy be the truth of our communities.

There is a truth of beloved community, and we will live in it.  Stay with me here.  Stay with me here and keep watch with me.  Stay with me here.  Live in this vision, in this justice, in this world of love, this world as it should be.

Death Behind Us, Death Before Us

This sermon for the Lenten season was first preached at Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church on April 2, 2017.  It seems highly relevant for Good Friday or Holy Saturday.

Ezekiel 37:1-14
    1 The hand of the LORD came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones.  2 He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry.  3 He said to me, "Mortal, can these bones live?"
    I answered, "O Lord GOD, you know."
    4 Then he said to me, "Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD.  5 Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.  6 I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the LORD."
    7 So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone.  8 I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them.
    9 Then he said to me, "Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord GOD: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live."
    10 I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.
    11 Then he said to me, "Mortal, 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.'  12 Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel.  13 And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people.  14 I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken and will act," says the LORD.

John  11:1-45
     1 Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.  2 Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill.
    3 So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, "Lord, he whom you love is ill."
    4 But when Jesus heard it, he said, "This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God's glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it."  5 Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, 6 after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
    7 Then after this he said to the disciples, "Let us go to Judea again."
    8 The disciples said to him, "Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?"
    9 Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. 10 But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them."  11 After saying this, he told them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him."
    12 The disciples said to him, "Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right."
    13 Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep.  14 Then Jesus told them plainly, "Lazarus is dead. 15 For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him."
    16 Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with him."
    17 When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days.
    18 Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, 19 and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother.
    20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home.  21 Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.  22 But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him."
    23 Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again."
    24 Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day."
    25 Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"
    27 She said to him, "Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world."
    28 When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, "The Teacher is here and is calling for you."
29 And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him.
    30 Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him.  31 The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there.  32 When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."
    33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.  34 He said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see."
    35 Jesus began to weep.
    36 So the Jews said, "See how he loved him!"
    37 But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?"
    38 Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it.  39 Jesus said, "Take away the stone."
    Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days."
    40 Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?"
    41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, "Father, I thank you for having heard me.  42 I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me."
    43 When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!"
    44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go."
    45 Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.

    We already heard the reading from the prophet Ezekiel.  I’ve had a special affinity for Ezekiel, for his many acted out prophecies and for the pathos of his life as a prophet who was rejected among his people.  Ezekiel’s visions, another sermon for another day, make a crucial theological turning point, along with the other great prophets of his era–Jeremiah and the Exilic Isaiah.  They reshape the vision of a people under God who are not dependent on an earthly army or king, or even on a land of their own.  They elevate the doctrine of the Hebrew God to One who is not limited to land or ethnicity, but rules in all places and among all peoples. 
    This passage in the 37th chapter, one of the most famous ones from Ezekiel, is a text I have preached more than once.  I want to highlight the first verse before I read from the gospel text.  If you want to turn to the 11th chapter of John’s gospel, I will start there in the first verse.  But first, let me repeat the first verse of Ezekiel 37.  “The hand of the LORD came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones.”
    Now if you will join me in the Gospel reading from John, chapter 11.  The lectionary selects verses 1-45, telling a familiar story of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus.  I will narrow the focus to the first 16 verses.  John 11:1-16.... 
    And look again with me at that final verse, 16.  “Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.’”
    Join me today as we consider these two passages on the theme, “Death with us; death behind us; death before us.”  Death behind us. Death before us.
    The first thing to strike me about these lectionary readings for the Fifth Sunday of Lent was the pervasive presence of death.  The prophet Ezekiel was carried away by the power of the Spirit and set down in a place of death.  It was some kind of historic battlefield scene, but one in which the traditional practice of burying the dead must have been too overwhelming.  Instead, a field of dried, bleached bones lay scattered before the prophet.  As so many other times in his prophetic ministry, Ezekiel found himself overwhelmed.  Here he stood, surrounded by the signs of death of so many who had lived before his time.  He was immersed in the memory, or perhaps it was the forgotten memory, of so much death behind him, so much death that loomed heavy behind him.
    Then we look at the Gospel text and find another very familiar story in which Jesus initially feels no pressure to check on his friend, only to find out soon that Lazarus had died. I was struck by more death.  With his disciples, he has to face going to the home of his dead friend.  Moreover, his disciples are concerned that to take this journey could also mean the death of Jesus and even their own deaths.  In the midst of their work of ministry, they are looking down a road toward death.  Death looms before them.
    My mind quickly jumped to a famous Irish prayer associated with St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland.  One of the most remembered sections of the prayer repeats one affirmation after another about the presence of Christ:

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ where I lie, Christ where I sit, Christ where I arise...

But my mind replaced the affirmation of Christ with the recognition of the presence of death. 

Death with us, death before us, death behind us,
Death in us, death beneath us, death above us,
Death on our right, death on our left,
Death where we lie, death where we sit, death where we arise...

I admit it’s not a pleasant set of thoughts.  We live in an age of denial.  We like to call our denial positive thinking.  We think we can mentally hide from the realities of life.  So faced with the pervasive presence of death, we are most often inclined to say to ourselves or to one another, “Why don’t we change the subject?  Let’s talk about something happier.” 
    I’m not criticizing that strategy.  Sometimes that’s the best way to cope with some of the hard truths of our existence.  But we should not confuse coping through occasional denial with opening our hearts to the truth about what people face every day in our world.  We, as Ezekiel and as Jesus, live in a world where death surrounds us.
    Many of us have in recent months had to entertain the possibility of death’s presenting itself in our families as national leaders threatened to eliminate health insurance for millions of us.  What kind of logic, or should I call it greed, drives people to believe it’s acceptable to cause the deaths of many thousands of fellow citizens by taking away access to health care?  What does it mean to call health care a responsibility and not a privilege, when at least half of workers make such low wages they could never take the responsibility to purchase health care on their own?  Death with us, death in us, death where we lie down.
    I’ve heard people say that when I preach they know to expect a social justice sermon, a sermon about ministry in our community.  I don’t mind that reputation.  I hope that along with that reputation I can also have a holistic faith and ministry that touches all kinds of needs and hopes of God’s people.  But I don’t apologize for always seeking to look beyond our inward well-being toward the well-being of the world God loves.
    Yet today I want to say that while there are obviously social justice implications for this message, it is also an attempt to delve into the depths of what it means to live and love, to lose and die, and to be God’s creatures, to be human in this marvelous and mysterious world God has made.
    In day-to-day living, we don’t always have time or energy to think about the mysteries and marvels.  We stay busy putting one foot in front of the other.  We count on the continuity of having the people around us present today and tomorrow and next month and next year.  Jesus probably felt the same way about his friends in Bethany.  When he got word that Lazarus was sick, maybe he did not initially take it very seriously.  Everybody gets sick now and then.  I had a head cold this week.  Some of you may have had a rougher time with the flu recently.  We think of getting sick as something to endure, with the assumption that “this, too, shall pass.”
    A couple of days later, Jesus decided it was time to go to Bethany.  Had another person come to give him a message?  We don’t know that, but we soon find out that he had somehow come to know that Lazarus had died.  Maybe he had a vision or an intuition.  Moreover, John does not give us much insight into his mood or feelings at this point.  Later we learn how sad he was about Lazarus’s death.  At this point we only know that he has made up his mind to go to Bethany.
    His disciples are pretty upset about this plan.  They have been doing their work farther north, and across the Jordan, outside of the jurisdiction of the Jerusalem authorities.  The reason is that Jesus has not always been respectful and diplomatic in his dealings with the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the Herodians, and the Roman authorities.  During his last visit to Jerusalem, of which Bethany is a near suburb, a mob had actually picked up stones to kill him.  Jesus and his buddies slipped away before the stoning could happen, and they had stayed far away ever since.
    Now Jesus is facing the death of his beloved friend Lazarus down the road, near Jerusalem.  The disciples are thinking about that angry mob with the rocks.  We know from the other three gospels that Jesus has warned his disciples that when he goes to Jerusalem, the rulers there are going to kill him.  Their strategy has been to keep their distance.  They are not sure Jesus is thinking straight.  He insists on going, so Thomas gives a plainspoken response–“I guess we can all go die together.”
    Under the rule of empire, the residents of Palestine were acquainted with death.  They had the experience of harsh treatment by the Roman overlords and the Herodian interloper kings.  They could not get out of their minds the image of their friend John who had been beheaded because he would not mince his words.  And they had seen the way crowds can shift to mobs in a moment when the conversation turns an unpopular way.  They weren’t ready to die, and they were not convinced they or Jesus needed to die.  If Jesus would just get organized for battle like a real Messiah was supposed to do, they could gather enough fighters to sweep into Jerusalem and take out all the enemies of the people.  But Jesus showed no interest in being a Messiah under those conditions.  So maybe they were doomed to die together.
    The slogan Black Lives Matter is a response to the pervasiveness of death in times and places where it just should not happen.  The former president stood in the role of every person when he confessed that in the killing of Trayvon Martin it was clear that the boy could have been the son of any black parent, including himself.  The blood of Trayvon, of Michael, of Sandra, of Freddie, of Rekia, of Jonathan, of José, of Uniece, and of so many more cries out from the ground.  How many deaths until young people’s lives matter?  How many killings until accountability becomes a reality?  Death on our right side, death on our left side, death where we rise up, death where we sit down.
    The rest of the story from John 11 is very familiar.  Jesus goes on to meet Martha and Mary.  He weeps over the death of his friend.  And God performs a powerful sign through the Incarnate Son to demonstrate that there is nothing out of the reach of God’s power.  The story of Lazarus’s coming forth from the grave is a powerful moment in the gospel account of Jesus’ life.  It foreshadows something even greater to come when Jesus comes out of his grave.  In and of itself, this event does not abolish death.  Lazarus went on to die at a later time, as did his sisters and everyone else gathered in Bethany that day.  And so we still find ourselves living in the midst of death, as did Jesus and his disciples and friends in this story.
    I stumbled upon a book of poetry by Audre Lorde this week as I was preparing for this sermon.  The title of the book is Our Dead Behind Us.   I decided I needed to understand what she meant by that title, so I got a copy of the book and started reading the poems.  I was not too surprised to find that title phrase in the first poem, one called “Sisters in Arms.”  It is a poetic narration of two women who find themselves in a crisis.  Both live as expatriates from different societies–one from the USA and one from South Africa.  The South African woman gets news that in a horrific and violent series of repressive acts, her fifteen-year-old daughter in South Africa has been murdered by the police forces.  In the same sequence of events, elementary school children have also been massacred for protesting against injustice and apartheid–six-year-olds, nine-year-olds, even a three-week-old infant.
    The mother heads to South Africa to bury her daughter and join in the struggle.  The other woman remains behind, and in her pain and anger is working in her garden.  Let me quote a few lines from the poem,

my hand comes down like a brown vise over the marigolds
reckless through despair
we were two black women touching our flame
and we left our dead behind us

The power and pain of death, even in their sympathy and care for one another, was breaking them down and breaking them apart.  Their lives kept going on, and their dead were left behind them.  This experience is not far away from many people throughout this world in which we live and die.  Death before us, death behind us.  We don’t escape it if we live in this world.
    God has made us finite beings.  We are born, we live, we die.  Even Jesus’ coming into the world has as a crucial part of it his full sharing of our existence, all the way to the point of death, and more specifically an undignified death. 
    By the time most of us reach middle age, we have become far more acquainted with death than we wish.  Grandparents and parents whose love filled and shaped our lives leave us in this world without their presence.  Too many of us lose loved ones far too early for their time.  The mystery and grief of their absence weighs heavy on us.  We sometimes are tempted to join with the writer of Ecclesiastes and wonder if all of life is in vain.
    I do feel some trepidation in taking you down this difficult road of thinking about death today, but I can’t help but testify to the light the Spirit has shed on these texts.  From Ezekiel to Lazarus, even when we walk with Jesus, we walk amidst death in a dying world.  Part of what we must recognize in Thomas’s remark from John 11:16 is that if we are going to be faithful to Jesus, we may even have to challenge death.  The way of Jesus, we see now in hindsight, is a way of the cross.  It is a road to execution.  It is a pilgrimage of standing strong for God and God’s justice even in the face of those who would kill us for doing so.
    Many of us have grappled in recent months with the likelihood that struggling for justice may become harder in our time.  It may not be adequate to call the congressional representative or write a letter in support of some legislation.  It may not be adequate to have celebratory marches in which we are happy to be together in the cause of justice, then stop off at our favorite restaurant on the way home.  It may be that we will have to face down harsher opponents in our time.  We may begin to catch on that when our young people are beaten and shot in the streets, we cannot keep telling ourselves that it was because they were not acting respectably enough.  In some circles and places, the forces of evil are gathering their strength.  They are already lashing out at Muslims and refugees and transgendered persons.  They are looking for ways to cut away the safety net for the poor, for the elderly, for school children, and for children of immigrants. 
    Protecting the vulnerable may become costly for us in ways that it has not been.  Standing up against official injustice, against warmongering, against government sanctioned discrimination, against unfair voting practices–these may become as dangerous as it was for children in Birmingham, for citizens walking on a bridge in Selma, and for Dr. King organizing with sanitation workers in Memphis.
    I’m not predicting these things will happen to you or to me.  I am simply reminding myself and all of us that when we take up the calling to follow Jesus, a cross may be near in our path.  If any of you would follow me, you must deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow me. Anyone who would save his or her own life will lose it, but all who would lose their life for Jesus’ sake will find it.
    There is a deep logic of death and resurrection in the very nature of the church.  Our sacramental practice of baptism articulates that logic.  We ought not to be unfamiliar with death, but we ought to be able to see it differently than the world does. 
    For part of the reason that Jesus was ready to head to Bethany was that he had become convinced by his faith in God that death was not final.  He had come to realize that even if he were captured and executed as an enemy of the state, that God still had a purpose for him beyond that moment of death.  Moreover, his dying as an act of defiance and protest to the injustice of the empire would be far greater than the regime’s acting against one person.  He had come to realize that the death he would endure was one which would encompass the deaths of all of us.  In his role as the Second Adam, he would be recapitulating, reconstituting, rebooting humanity into a new creation.  This is what he tried to explain to Martha later in Bethany--he himself is the resurrection in which we also share.
    Paul wrote about this logic of death and resurrection often.  In Jesus we all die, and in his resurrection we all are raised.  In his death, our past inadequate way of living passes away.  In his resurrection a whole new life already has begun in us.  He, who is our Savior, is our new life.  As Paul wrote in Galatians, I am crucified with Christ, yet nevertheless I live.  But it is not I who live, but Christ lives in me.  And the life I now live in the flesh I live in faithfulness to the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.  He reminds us in Romans that we die and are buried with Christ in our baptism.  We rise from the waters of baptism into a new life.
    So there is another sense in which we might say without despair, and perhaps even with rejoicing, that death is behind us.  Although Ezekiel looked at the bones and saw death in its brutality in the history of that valley of bones, his eyes were opened to see that those parched and desiccated bones can live when God raises them to new life.  Jesus, on the road to Bethany, can face the likely wrath of the powerful in Jerusalem because he has fixed his eyes on the joy that is before him.  He is willing to despise the shame of the cross, of the jeering crowd, and of the mocking crown on his brow.  He can endure the cross for the sake of the new creation.  He can endure death because he will bring us all through it with him.  Oh, Death, where is your sting?  Oh, grave, where is your victory?  In bringing all of us together into his death, Jesus puts our deaths behind us.
    Now some of you may rightly want to complain that it’s not quite right, Rev. Broadway, for you to lay on all this thick death conversation and then try to turn it around to be happy in the last minute or two of the sermon.  Let me say that I also hope I know better than that.  It ought not to be a rule that we have to leave church feeling giddy and happy all the time.  Sometimes we may have to leave with some burdens to bear.  So I’m not going to try to dress up death in a pretty outfit so you can forget about what these texts teach us.
    What I do want to say is that in our baptism, we are united to Jesus in his death.  We undergo the death of our sinful ways.  The death of our rebelliousness and rejection of God is accomplished.  The old short-sighted and egocentric self dies in order to be joined to the new self, the true human self, the Second and True Adam, Jesus.  Our new humanity is constituted by being joined to him.  We live in Christ.  Christ lives in us.  We are made new.  This is great and wonderful news.  But that is not the same as saying that we no longer have to face the troubles of the world. 
    I think there is something to be learned here from Jesus’ baptism.  The gospel accounts tell us of the remarkable experience of his baptism in which all three persons of the Triune God are made manifest together as the Son is baptized.  It is a crucial moment of Jesus’ life and ministry, and yet he comes up out of the water only to face some of the greatest trials he ever had to face.  He goes alone, driven by the Spirit, into a deserted wilderness, and great temptations befall him.  He struggles with his mission and Messiahship.  How should his life count in the world?  What kind of Messiah should he be?  It was not easy for him, and it will not be easy for us.  Yet still, because of his example in baptism, and because of the way he embodied that baptism through faithful life, death, burial, and resurrection, we have become united to God through him.
    Would you go on living on your own, alienated from God, if you knew that you could have your life joined to God for every moment and every day?  Would you seek to have the courage to face whatever troubles and trials come, knowing that in all of them, Christ is living in you and you in him?  That is what God is offering to each of us today.  If you have not yet answered the call to unite your life to Jesus, to follow in his way, and to enter with him into baptism that demonstrates our passage from death into life, then there is no better time than today for you to follow Jesus.  Follow him through this vale of tears, through the pervasiveness of death, with hope that God is at work even now to transform this world we live in to become the Kingdom of God, the beloved community, a land where peace and justice reign in the lives of women and men.  Follow Jesus today.  Pass from death to life in him.
    There may be some present today who are struggling with loss and grief.  You have lost a friend, a family member, a spouse, a parent, or some other loved one to death.  You know you are supposed to acknowledge that such a death is a mere passing on to another dimension of life, an entry into the presence of God even more fully than we know on this earth. Still, it does not take away the emptiness and hurt you feel on this side of that transition.  Perhaps you need to turn toward God and ask for comfort and healing as you continue on the road of life that remains for you, before and until the joyful reunion you long for beyond the grave.  If you need to come and cry out for God’s Spirit to fill and heal you, then now is the time to come.  Don’t be embarrassed for having grief.  It means you are human and that you know what it means to love and be loved.  God is a healing God.
    If you live in Durham, but you are not currently united with a congregation, take a moment now to call on the Holy Spirit for guidance.  It may be that God has brought you here today because you should be united to this local body of Christ’s followers as we fight against the pervasive power of death and shine the light of life in the world.  If you feel the calling to join with us in the ministry that God has called us to in this city and this neighborhood, why not go ahead and join with us today.  Amen.
**********
An addendum:  a few words from Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

Whoever enters discipleship enters Jesus’ death, and puts his or her own life into death; this has been so from the beginning. The cross is not the horrible end of a pious, happy life, but stands rather at the beginning of community with Jesus Christ.

When Jesus Hung Out With Zack

This sermon was first preached at Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church on October 30, 2016.

I was drawn to the lectionary text from the Gospel telling a familiar story that is often overlooked for its significance in the themes of economic justice.  Yet it is also rich with personal and relational insight into the love of God revealed in Jesus.  A wonderful young man at Mt. Level goes by the name Zack, and I expected to see him in worship on this day.  That gave me an extra motivation to shorten the name in the title to "Zack," as a way to honor my friend's presence and faithfulness. 

When Jesus Hung Out with Zack

Luke 19:1-10

He entered Jericho and was passing through it.

A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way.

When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him.

All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.”

Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.”

Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”

I want to speak on the subject today, “When Jesus Hung Out with Zack.”  Do you mind if I teach for a while today?  I suspect you are used to that.  It is the way of this pulpit.  I’m going to elaborate on the interpretive process as I start out.  Sometimes we leave that work in the background.  Today, let’s bring it to the foreground.

When we read the gospels from the vantage point of the twenty-first century, we tend to receive them as a complete package.  We often blur together the differences between the four gospels, and we just assume all the parts fit together easily without paying much attention to how they fit.

More careful reading of the gospels would lead us to think about the relationship between different parts of a gospel.  There is a flow of the stories, conversations, and speeches.  One part leads to another; one section lays the groundwork for understanding another. The one we read today is a narrative about Jesus’ travels, and in this narrative we find a conversation between Jesus and a man named Zacchaeus.  There is also a third party to the conversation, who are the rest of the crowd who saw this conversation happening in public.

The gospel does not tell us all the details of Jesus’ visit to Jericho on that day.  So to be good readers of the story, we should pay attention to the details which it does provide.  For instance, it says Jesus came to Jericho.  Jericho was a major city in the Jordan River Valley, northeast of Jerusalem.  This detail links the story of Zacchaeus to the longer narrative of Luke.  It tells us that Jesus is making progress on his final trip from Galilee to Jerusalem.

Jesus has explained to his disciples that it is finally time to bring his ministry to its climax of standing up to the empire and the Judean ruling elite.  The conflict between the Jerusalem elite and Jesus has been growing ever since he began to preach and minister to large crowds.  He has had to stay away from Jerusalem in order to be able to teach and serve more people.  He has discouraged people from saying in public that he is the Messiah.  His colleague in ministry, John the Baptist, was arrested and executed, and he knew the powerful people who opposed John would love to do the same thing to him.  So for a time, he did his work at a distance from the capital.  He was training his followers, getting out his message, clarifying his mission, and building a movement.  Eventually, he determined that the preparation was complete.  Rather than stay indefinitely in the remote villages of Galilee, Jesus decided he should face his enemies and bring his message of God’s Kingdom into public confrontation with the kingdoms of this world.  On his way, he was passing through Jericho.

As this narrative was unfolding in Luke’s gospel, another encounter and conversation occurred on the outskirts of Jericho.  A blind man, who stayed alive by begging on the side of the road, had called out to Jesus, calling him Son of David, a name that showed he recognized that Jesus came as the Messiah.  At this time, Jesus did not tell the man to be quiet.  Many who were skilled in the study of scripture and could watch everything Jesus did, had refused to accept the thought that Jesus could be the Messiah.  This man, unable to see, but trusting what he was hearing, sees clearly who Jesus is, even in his blindness.  This blind man’s story repeats a recurring theme about those who can see and those who cannot see, and the irony is that the ones least expected to see actually see best.  He receives his sight and follows Jesus on down the road.

Zacchaeus also had trouble seeing, we are told.  In the midst of a crowd gathered to see Jesus, he could not get a view.  He had to climb a tree to be able to see.  Told here in a different way, we see an echo of the same theme.  The one who was least able to see may be the one who sees most clearly.

The story also tells us that Zacchaeus was a tax collector, in fact the head tax collector for his locale.  The taxing authority was Rome, an occupying army and imperial power.  Collecting taxes for Rome was viewed by the Judeans as treason.  Zacchaeus had gone over to the enemy.  He was enforcing the oppressive laws of the empire.  In addition, many believed that these tax collectors were dishonest.  They made their living by charging a premium on what the Romans expected them to collect.  Within this system, a tax collector might jack up the rates and overcharge the people as a way to get rich.  The story goes on to say that Zacchaeus was very rich.

In the previous chapter, Jesus had told a story about a tax collector.  Two people had gone to the synagogue to pray.  One, a Pharisee, was reputed to be righteous beyond the average person.  The other, a tax collector, was assumed to be rotten through and through.  But Jesus ended up praising the tax collector, who unlike the Pharisee, knew that he was a sinner in need of God.  That parable about the two people’s prayers again foreshadows the remarkable story of Zacchaeus.

By telling us that Zacchaeus was rich, this encounter becomes linked to one of the prevailing themes of Luke’s gospel.  The gap between the rich and the poor was of great concern for Jesus and for the gospel writer.  Chapter 16 ends with the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, about greed and neglect of the poor.  Chapter 18 includes the story of a rich man who came to Jesus to brag about his righteousness and ask a question about what more he should do.  He may have expected Jesus to say, “You’ve already done it all.  You lack nothing.  Hey, everybody, look at God’s favorite.”  That’s not what happened.  The rich man was disappointed that Jesus wanted him to give away his wealth.  He went away.  Afterwards, the disciples were deeply puzzled by Jesus’ remarks that it is hard for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God.  They thought riches were a sign of God’s favor.

Still puzzling over this, not really understanding how fully Jesus was committed to Sabbath economics and Jubilee redistribution, they entered Jericho.  Jesus went against the expectations of the crowd and singled out Zacchaeus, the tax collector.  Everyone grumbled about Jesus for doing this.  They didn’t anticipate what the result of Jesus’ visit with Zacchaeus would be.  I suspect the disciples grumbled along with the rest of the folks.  You and I would have grumbled, too.  If Jesus keeps criticizing the rich, why is he going to the rich guy’s house?  And if he is going to hang out with a rich guy, why the traitor and cheat, Zacchaeus?  It took them a long time to realize how thoroughly Jesus was turning the world upside down.

Continuing with this theme of unjust economic practices after his visit with Zacchaeus, chapter 19 shows Jesus next begin to tell a chilling story, one that highlights a contrast to what happened with Zacchaeus in Jericho.  It is a thinly veiled account of how Herod’s son, Archelaeus, became king over Judea.  He wanted to be appointed directly by Caesar, but before that could happen, he had to deal with a rebellion among the Jews.  The Herodian family was known for violence and oppressive rule, and he continued that tradition.  During Passover, his police force retaliated against their protests by killing 3000 of the people gathered for the festival.  Having done that, he went on to Rome and got his appointment as king.  Not surprisingly, he rewarded his friends and punished his enemies when he got back to Jerusalem.  Jesus points out in this parable that the opposite of the Jubilee happens in the world of empire and domination.  Those with much get even more.  Those with little lose what they have.  Rulers get rich by taking what is not theirs.  In the midst of this collection of stories, Jesus’ interactions with Zacchaeus represent a contrast.  Zacchaeus is unlike the rich man who came to Jesus, and because of turning to the way of Jesus, he is unlike the ruler who rewards his wealthy supporters.  When Jesus arrives in Jerusalem, he will demonstrate how a king can be an humble servant and a champion of justice.

I’ll finish up this survey of the details from Zacchaeus’s story with a couple more items.  Then we can get to the core of the message.  It says Zacchaeus could not see because of the crowd.  We recall from Jesus’ ministry in Galilee that he was often pressed by large crowds.  When he was tired, he sometimes tried to get away, only to find them waiting for him wherever he showed up.  Jesus’ reputation drew large crowds.  Moreover, as he made this trip to Jerusalem, he seemed to be gathering people along the way.  Remember that the blind man outside Jericho got up and started following him.  Soon in Jerusalem, the crowds will fill the streets with shouts of praise.  With so many people, Zacchaeus faced a problem.  He would have to figure out a way to get a look at Jesus.

The reason it was a problem is that Zacchaeus was short.  In a crowd of average and tall people, he could only see people’s heads and shoulders.  He could not see past them to the center of everyone’s attention.  An unpopular man, he would not be able to get friends to give him a boost.  So he figured out where a tall tree was, a very climbable, very large sycamore tree, and he made a plan to get a view of this famous man coming to town.  No doubt, he had similar questions and thoughts about who Jesus might be as did the rest of the crowd.  He at least wanted to get a look at him.

So we have picked over this story for its significant details.  We have found its links to the longer narrative of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem.  We have identified major themes of the gospel of Luke that play a role in this story.  We have analyzed elements of Zacchaeus’s identity which help us to gain insight into the passage.  Perhaps you already find yourself drawn by the Holy Spirit to see how God can speak to you through these verses from Luke 19.

Still, I would like to hone in on a few relevant aspects of this story for our time and place.  What can the story of Zacchaeus say to us at Mt Level, in Durham, NC, at the end of October in 2016?  Let me offer what I see in this text.

First, this short, disreputable, crooked, despised turncoat Zacchaeus was in almost every way imaginable an outcast in his town.  If he grew up in Jericho, which is likely, then people there knew his family.  There were people he played with as a kid.  There were people with whom he had studied the Torah as a boy.  He and others had been to each others’ Bar Mitzvahs.  Maybe he never quite fit in.  Or maybe there was some turning point when he no longer felt it was worth trying to be part of the “in group.”

I recently heard an interview on the radio about the struggles young people face during their middle school years.  One person talked about the experience of feeling like she was always being left out of the best things that were happening in her school.  Often middle schoolers feel like there is a group of kids who are the cool ones, and then a few other kids who get to hang out with that group.  But many kids have this nagging, persistent feeling of being left out.  They always wish they could be best friends with the cool kids, but they never get in on what those cool kids are doing.  I certainly remember that feeling.  Maybe you do, too.

As the radio program continued, the speaker described her research from talking with other adults about their memories of middle school.  She had concluded that almost all middle school kids had a similar experience of feeling they were on the outside, of feeling left out of the group.  Even the cool kids seemed to have that same set of feelings.

Often, when people feel left out, they try to identify just what it is that sets them apart as strange, different, or unwelcome.  Some might think they don’t have the right clothes.  They might believe they live in the wrong neighborhood.  They might feel too fat or too thin, too short or too tall.

I don’t think we stretch our imaginations too far in relation to this text if we surmise that part of what may have led Zacchaeus to draw back from his neighbors was his experience of being shorter than most people.  I admit to having been pretty mean to some of my short friends back in my teen years, teasing them as a way to make myself feel more important.  It’s not uncommon.  There are even standard prejudices about short people:  some people say they are mean and resentful, or that they are inclined to try to control other people.  Some of us remember the Randy Newman song that satirized the prejudice against short people.

At some point, the boy or the man Zacchaeus reached the point of not trying.  He gave up on changing the way things were for him.  He decided to make his own way as an outsider.  He decided to get his revenge by joining up with a different power crowd.  Like so many young people trying to make their way toward adulthood and maturity, he felt shut out and alone.  All he wanted was to fit in, to be normal, to get to join in when people were having a good time.  Deep inside, he still wanted that, but he gave up on ever getting there.  Really, deep within, he wanted more than to fit in.  He wanted justice.  He wanted things to be set right.  He wanted to be in a world where people treated one another well, the way God made us to be.  But I suspect Zacchaeus had become cynical about all that.  If the others were going to shut him out of the community and friendship he longed for, he would just focus on helping himself.

Just helping yourself, just getting yours, has its rewards.  In Zacchaeus’s case, he figured out how to get rich.  It probably meant he had nicer clothes than most people.  He probably had a bigger house than most people.  He might even have been able to throw some good parties, where all the powerful people would hang out.  But based on this story, he was not satisfied.  Some kind of longing was still there, not too far below the surface.  He had heard about Jesus and wondered if he was the kind of leader who could help change the way this rotten world has turned out.

Zacchaeus showed no sign that he expected Jesus to actually talk with him or visit him or even look at him.   Rather, he seems just to want to get a glimpse of Jesus, to try to measure up what kind of man he was.  Somewhere inside was a glimmer of hope that Jesus’ passing by could be a sign that things would change.  But mainly, he figured that from his tree branch perch, he would at least be a distant part of something big that was happening.

The surprising turn in this story is that Jesus stopped and picked out Zacchaeus for a conversation.  Maybe he asked someone, “Who is that guy up in the tree over there?”  Maybe he figured out what he needed to know by looking Zacchaeus over—nice clothes, by himself, too old to be climbing trees, seems small.  We don’t have that information.  We just know Jesus shocked everyone.

It’s a great big crowd.  There are people there who may have made plans for Jesus’ visit.  Some of Jesus’ enemies were counting on a chance to try to make him look bad.  Some of Jesus’ admirers were hoping to have a chance to hang out and talk.  Some sick people may have come for healing.  It was a big crowd, but Jesus ended up under a tree talking with Zacchaeus.

This is the part of the story we know.  It is the part I was taught to sing as a four- or five-year-old.  Sing along if you know it. 

Zacchaeus was a wee little man,

A wee little man was he. 

He climbed up in a sycamore tree

For the Lord he wanted to see. 

And as the Savior passed that way,

He looked up in the tree. 

And he said, “Zacchaeus, you come down. 

For I’m going to your house today. 

For I’m going to your house today.” 

So what happened when Jesus was at Zacchaeus’s house?  Hospitality would dictate that Zacchaeus provided comfort and refreshment.  Maybe they shared a meal.  Certainly they talked to one another.  If we pay attention to what we have learned about the gospel of Luke and the placement of this story within it, we can probably get a good idea of what they may have talked about.

Jesus was deeply committed to a redistribution of the goods of this world so that there is no need among the people in the community.  This is what the economic system of the Torah had taught.  Moreover, it also taught that when things get out of proportion, as they will, there has to be a plan to set things right.  People who lost their land should get their land back.  People who go in debt and become indentured workers should have their debts cancelled and be set free to provide for their families again.  People who have become wealthy by victimizing the weak and the poor need to return what rightfully belongs to others.  People who have plenty need to share what they have with those in need.  From Mary’s song in Luke 2 after meeting Gabriel, to Jesus sermon in Nazareth in Luke 4, to the Lord’s prayer in chapter 11, and all the way down to chapter 19 and beyond, these economic ideas have been at the center of Jesus’ calling, teaching, and ministry.

We don’t know if Zacchaeus was really ready to hear that kind of talk.  Many people grew angry with Jesus over the months and years of his ministry when he started talking about a revolutionary economic change on the order of the Sabbath year and Jubilee justice.  Zacchaeus may also have resisted.  Today’s Old Testament reading from the prophet Isaiah chapter 1 includes a well known passage in which God is calling Israel to a sit-down conversation.  The King James says, “Come, let us reason together.”  I am drawn to the New Revised Standard translation which says, “Come, let us argue it out.”  Zacchaeus and Jesus may have had some back and forth.  They  may have taken some verbal jabs at one another.  They may have tried to make their case with the best possible arguments. 

Whatever they said and did, however, what is clear is that it ended up with Zacchaeus having an encounter with the Living God.  He came to see that the way of God’s justice is the only path to arriving in that world that he longed for deep in his heart.  If he wanted things to be set right between himself and the people of Jericho, he would have to be ready to take the first step and model the way of righteousness.  The path to a just world is for each of us to live just lives.  Zacchaeus learned this in his encounter with Jesus.  He realized that there could be a better world, and he would need to be the one ready to make it happen.  By aligning himself with the way of Jesus, he would be part of the movement that the Spirit of God was spreading throughout the land.  Although some people in Jericho were sure there must not be any good in Zacchaeus, Jesus saw in him a marvelous creation of God, one whom God declares good from the foundation of the world, and one who by following and uniting himself to Jesus would become a leader of the called out people of God.  The Holy Spirit was able to reach into this corrupted, lonely, bitter, and damaged man to stir up the hope within him and restore the image of God in him.

We live in a world not so different from Zacchaeus’s world.  The gap between rich and poor is wide and growing.  People shut one another out and drive people who are different into dens of loneliness and despair.  Groups try to prevent other groups from voting.  Leaders lie and cheat to get riches and power.  We feel separated from one another and powerless to change things.  Our city is plagued by overpriced housing, low wages, underfunded and unequal schools, and challenges to our systems of policing and justice.  We sometimes feel it’s not even worth thinking about these problems.  We feel weak and powerless.  We feel like giving up and just looking out for ourselves.

But I stopped by today to retell an old, old story of a Savior who walked into Jericho.  It was a divided town.  The relationships were broken and polarized.  People were filled with resentment, hard feelings, and harsh words.  Some had great wealth without justice.  Many were longing for some kind of salvation.  And Jesus came to town and behaved in the most unexpected way.  He found the man most alone, most corrupted, most outcast, least loved—Jesus found the one who felt inside like you and I have felt sometimes.  Nobody wanted Jesus to talk to Zacchaeus, but Jesus does not see the way the world sees.  Jesus does not do the way the world does.  Jesus found this man way up in a tree.  It was a ludicrous situation.  Jesus called him down to stand on his feet.  He went with this man to his house while the town grumbled and griped.  He stayed there until the power of God had won the argument and changed the man.  And he brought him out changed as the leader of a transformation of his city toward justice.

Don’t you give up on God.  God has not given up on you.  Whatever you think can’t be changed in your life, God can make a way.  Whatever you believe can’t change in Durham, in North Carolina, in Washington, DC, remember that God can make a way.  God will come and find you up in a tree or down in a hole or out in a desert.  God has come into the world in Jesus Christ to seek and to save the lost.  You can’t get so lost that Jesus can’t find you.  He came to seek and to save.  Hang out with Jesus and see what happens to you.  Hang out with Jesus and see what kind of change is going to come.  Hang out with Jesus and find out where faith, hope, and love come from.  Zacchaeus tried it, and look who he turned out to be.  Zack tried it, and now his name is in the Bible because he opened his hand and heart to the poor.  You try it.  Have Jesus come to your house.  You won’t regret it.  Amen.

Standing Up When It Seems Too Much: Reposting "Put On the Armor of Light"

I suspect that most of us have arrived at times when it seems that the obstacles are too big for us and the opponents are too strong for us.  In such a time, the Apostle Paul's words to the Roman church become a lively message to us.  In the shadow of a powerful and greedy empire, they read his words of hope that still speak to me in these times that can be very discouraging for people who love justice and pursue the common good.  Respectability politics will not achieve justice, only delay it.

This sermon was first preached at Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church on September 7, 2014.

Romans 13:8-14

Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

             Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires (NRSV).

In the text that was read this morning, the Apostle Paul makes remarks of the same sort that the Prophet Micah did many centuries before.  As Micah had posed the question, “What does the Lord require of you?”, now Paul offers the guidance that we should “owe no one anything, except….”  Micah said that it is really pretty simple.  Do justice.  Love mercy.  Walk humbly with God.  Paul says they should narrow it down to this:  love one another.  That’s all you owe anyone.  That’s what Jesus said really mattered.  That’s what God expects of you.  That fulfills the whole stinking law, every jot and tittle of it.  Of course, you can learn by studying the specifics of the law, but Jesus already told us how to sum it up:  Love your neighbor as yourself.

So in the way that you live with others, if you love them, you will do no wrong to your neighbor.  And the law is largely about telling you what wrongs not to do.  So love, and you won’t do wrong.  That’s why love fulfills the whole law—every bit of it.

Paul was continuing a train of thought from what to us is the previous chapter.  Of course, Paul did not divide his letters into chapters and verses.  Like you or I, he just wrote out his sentences and paragraphs.  The chapters and verses were added later by readers who wanted to be able to analyze and talk together about the books in a systematic way.  That way, you and I can quickly get on the same page for conversation and study.  But Paul did not have chapters and verses.  So I should say he was continuing a train of thought from a few paragraphs before.

In our habit of speaking, in chapter 12, verse 10, he started talking about living toward Christian love with one another as God’s people.  Just before this section, he had written about how everyone has gifts from the Spirit, and we are not all the same.  But each of us has something to offer to one another and to the whole group, like parts of the body all have their function.  He told them back there, “Let love be genuine.”  Those verses were part of the wedding vows Everly and I spoke in 1980.  That short sentence is now engraved on the gravestone where she is buried.  “Let love be genuine.” 

It was a commitment we shared with one another.  In so many ways, we certainly fell short of the ideal, but it was a byword for how we knew we ought to live in relation to the world and the people God had given us.  But it is not a statement specifically about the love of married people.  It is about the love that we have for one another in the church.  It is the love God expects us to have for all God’s children.  As followers of Jesus, married people and families should also live up to this kind of love.  So Paul is making it plain here.  Love genuinely.  Love honestly.  Love thoroughly.  Love wholeheartedly.  Love the lovable people, and love the unlovable people.  Love when you are eager to do so, and love when you are on your last nerve. 

But, we may ask, isn’t there something or someone I can hate?  Paul says to hate evil.  Don’t harbor your evil thoughts.  Don’t plot evil devices.  Don’t fixate on evil responses.  Don’t seek revenge.  Hate evil, but don’t act evilly to oppose it.  Hold fast to what is good.  Keep on imagining the good possibilities.  Look beyond people’s troublesome actions to see the good that is in them.  Think of ways to return good for evil.  Do not repay evil for evil, but put your mind on a noble response to the times when you are wronged.  At the climax of this reflection, he tells them there is a way to fight evil:  overcome evil with good.  Let good grow and snowball and expand and press outward until it overwhelms all the evil it can find.  Don’t let evil overcome you.  You get out there in all the goodness that God can produce in you and let that goodness overcome evil.

Paul knew that the times in which these Roman Christians were living were evil times.  Powerful people wanted to persecute them, put them in jail, fire them from their jobs, take away their homes, make outcasts of their children, drive them out of town.  Rulers were selfish and devious, and so were their assistants and lackeys.  Soldiers and police were directed to obey the whims of the rulers.  They might not have the strength of conscience to realize that the policies of the leaders were twisted and wrong.  Paul was not deceived.  He knew his own life had hung in the balance of unjust laws and unjust rulers before.  So he acknowledged that the times were rife with evil.  He warned the Christians to watch out.  And he taught them that even in an evil setting and situation, God had a different way for them.

He could tell them this because Paul also knew that the time in which these Roman Christians were living were good times.  They were fertile with opportunities for virtuous living.  They could watch the growth of their love touch their neighbors and their neighborhoods.  God was not defeated by the Imperial power.  God was just getting started showing them all that God can do.  So when they come up against violence and wrong, Paul said to live peaceably with all.  He said don’t avenge yourself, but stand up against evil by doing good.  Don’t flag in your zeal.  Be ardent.  Be motivated.  Work it out.  Yes, work it.  Work that goodness that God has placed in you.  Be intense about fighting wrong, but do it with goodness. 

Paul knew that the Roman Christians should have hope.  Knowing that hope, they could rejoice even in hard times.  They could show patience when they suffered because their hope is in God.  They could continue in prayer, knowing that God is with them and guiding them into the next opportunity to overcome.  Love one another.  Show mutual affection.  Outdo one another in doing right and honoring each other.  Make sure no one is in need.  Show hospitality.  Love, love, love, love, love, in word and deed.  Because God created this world to be good.  God’s goodness has been poured out in your lives.  Good will prevail, even if not in every moment, if not in every situation.  Even after setbacks, we can build a better world in God’s power and grace.  Death is defeated.  Christ is risen.  Good will prevail.

Paul had pressed this case hard in that earlier section, the second half of chapter 12.  Then he took a kind of aside.  He chased a rabbit.  He made an illustration of sorts.  He planned to finish his exhortation about love, but there was this little matter of the Empire to deal with.  He started talking about how they should act toward Caesar and Caesar’s minions.  But he talked about it in vague terms.  He talked about his enemies in abstract terms.  He did not say anything about Caesar, per se.  He didn’t name Caesar or any of the lesser officials.  He did not say anything about the Empire or the Senate or the Roman Legions or the Centurions.  He did not name any of the officials or even their offices.

Instead, he talked in broad theological terms about divine creation.  He talked about God’s good work in creating humanity as social beings.  He talked about the concept of authority in the abstract.  He said that having a system of authority is a good thing.  Ruling authorities, in general, help make our lives better.  Human authorities, as a concept, contribute to a better life for us.  In the ideal, authorities reward good and punish evil.  According to its purpose, authority maintains justice. 

But of course, Paul has been talking previously not about theory, but about the facts on the ground.  The facts on the ground were that Roman authorities were prejudiced toward their own kind.  The facts on the ground were that Christianity was an illicit, an illegal community of faith.  The facts on the ground were that everywhere Christianity had raised its liberating message of God’s love for the least and the lowly, people in power had gotten angry.  From the synagogue officials to the Sanhedrin.  From the Proconsuls to the Procurators.  From the Kings to the Emperors.  From the Pharisees to the Sadducees to the who knows who sees you practicing Christian faith, people wanted to shut it down.

That’s what Paul was telling them in the discourse about letting love be genuine, hating evil, and overcoming evil with good.  The facts on the ground were that the authorities, not in concept, but in flesh and blood, were coming down hard on the Christians.  The facts on the ground were that people who in theory were supposed to keep the peace were disturbing the peace.  Officials whose job was to serve and protect were self-serving and destroying lives in the streets.  Paul understood what was what.  He knew that everybody who had a title did not live up to the duties of office.  He knew that power, once it is in someone’s hands, can become a tool of domination.  That is what he and the Christians in Rome saw.  It’s what they knew.  It’s the yoke they felt on their shoulders.

So he said, in theory, they should recognize the goodness of authority.  They should cooperate with authority to do good.  They should not resist authority just to get their own way.  Paul was not being a respectability preacher here.  There have been a number of people lately talking about “respectability churchfolk” and “respectability preaching.”  They mean those people who try to find the fault in an unarmed youth’s behavior for his own death.  They mean those people who say that if the black community could just work harder to stay in school, to dress conventionally, to keep a job and keep their noses clean, then things like Ferguson would not happen.  That’s what they mean by the “respectability” view. 

But Paul was not talking respectability, and neither am I.  Paul was not saying that the answer to our oppression is to be more docile in obeying our oppressors.  He was not saying that the real problem is us, so we need to mend our ways.  No, he knew who was troubling the world.  God was not doing this.  The church’s service to God was not doing this.

If the powers that be want to keep people down, it does not matter how respectably people act.  They will get pressed down on.  So the answer is to press back.  That’s why Paul was saying that they need to get serious about resisting evil in the world.  They should continue their efforts to overcome evil with good by pressing the authorities to do the good they should do.  But he was not fooled into thinking that Caesar or his minions were likely to do the good.  That’s why he reminded the church to go ahead and pay taxes to whom taxes are due and revenue to whom revenue is due.  But then he turns the phrase.  He speaks with irony and from the point of view of faith.  He does not say that some people who demand your respect may not deserve your respect.  No, he is not that explicit.  He does not say that Caesar has not earned the honor that he wants you to show.  No, he is more subtle.  He says to pay respect to whom respect is due.  (Wink, wink.)  He says give honor to whom honor is due.  (“You know what I mean?”)  God deserves our honor.  Caesar probably does not.

But just so we don’t conclude that he means to start blatantly disrespecting the officials, and blatantly dishonoring Caesar, he goes back to his previous theme about loving our neighbors.  Now, we are finally back to the text we started with.  He says owe no one anything except love.  Martin Luther, the 16^th-century reformer translated that verse as a declarative statement, not an imperative.  He said it means that you don’t owe anyone anything, except you do owe everyone love.  God made us for love.  God made us to love one another, to be loved by one another, to receive love from one another—God made us for love.  So even Caesar gets our love.  Even the harassing official on the street gets our love.  Love does no wrong to the neighbor.  Love fulfills all our requirements and obligations.  Not just a feeling of love, but more importantly a way of treating someone.

Having made his case about love that’s genuine, that overcomes evil with good, that supersedes whatever resentments or desires for revenge we may have, Paul then starts talking about how important it is for us to stand strong in the face of evil.  He does not mean for us to sit back in our bedrooms thinking loving thoughts about those who do evil.  He does not mean for us to wait around the kitchen table until the tide of evil forces overwhelms and swallows up our whole neighborhood, our town, our community institutions.  He does not mean hiding behind church doors, shouting and singing while the neighborhood dies.  No we can’t just nap while destruction is happening all around us.  Overcoming evil with good is not a passive admonition.

We have to know what time it is.  It is the time for God’s good news.  It is the time for people to know that we can live together in harmony.  We can live together in love.  It’s the time that no one any longer has to be trying to dominate anyone else.  People can make a life without domination systems.  So if it was not real to you when you first got saved, then it needs to become real to you now that God is not interested in just a little bit of our lives.  God is not interested in just 10% of the church people to be part of the struggle.  God is not interested in just a token commitment.  God wants the whole of us.  God want you, and God wants us, and God wants you and me and us to be building the beloved community.  That is the whole reason God made the world and put us in it.  God wants to see that loving, just community come into the light of day.

Paul tells them to lay aside the works of darkness.  Now somebody might try to twist the term darkness here and make out that dark is equivalent to black, and that somehow blackness is opposed to God.  But Paul was not talking that way, and we know better than to fall into the trap of that kind of thinking.  Darkness here is the absence of light.  Light is the beacon that shines upon the realities of the world and reveals the truth.  Darkness is the world hiding from the light.  What is hidden from the light is afraid, is ashamed, is deceptive, is indifferent.  But in the light of day, we have to take a stand.  We have to show who we are and what we live for.

Paul says that the light is our armor.  Armor is our protection.  Bringing the truth into the light of day is our hope, because Jesus himself is the truth.  The love of God is the truth.  People able to get along and treat one another right is the truth.  Enough good gifts of God to feed and clothe and shelter everybody is the truth.  Letting everyone have a good education is the truth.  Paying people a decent, living wage is the truth.  Finding ways to keep people in their homes is the truth.  Our armor is joining together in the truth. 

You or I alone might try to stand up to the powers that be and get ignored.  But we are not alone.  God has put us together into a holy nation, a peculiar people.  Together, in solidarity with one another and with God, we can stand up to the powers and be heard.  This is the heart of the labor union movement.  The people with the capital, the people with the money—these people know that they need to organize into corporate boards and chambers of commerce and political action committees if they are going to make the world go their way.  Their hope is that the workers and the average people will stay disorganized.  A labor union exists to provide the organization necessary to stand up to the owners and managers who want to be in charge of our lives.  In a way, the church is a labor union of the neighborhood.  We organize together and care for our neighbors with the intensity and capacity to be a union of neighbors, loving our neighbors.  We join Durham CAN to operate as a union of people of faith and people of commitment to press our theoretical public servants toward being actual servants of the people.  The union makes us strong.

What time is it?  Paul says we had better know.  It is a time when people full of fear are trying to shut down and shut out and shout down and shut up the voices of those who are suffering.  They are belittling and humiliating teachers.  They are closing off access to voting.  They are shutting down jobs and taking them places where the poor workers have no protections.  They are refusing to hear the cry of the poor.  They are warehousing the desperately unemployed in prisons.  They are blaming the victimized and the marginalized for all the social ills.  They are shooting down our children in the streets.  They are claiming that the 1% deserve to own half of all the goods in the world.

We’d better know what time it is.  We have to lay aside the works of darkness.  The works of darkness are many.  Hiding out and believing we cannot make a difference is one of the works of darkness.  Get out in the light and stand for truth.  Being satisfied that we have a home and a job and not caring about others is a work of darkness.  Get into the light.  Letting some misguided police (I know it’s not all of them) continue to do whatever they have made it their habit to do, just because they can get by with it, is a work of darkness.  Pressing for reform is our armor of light.  Paul says don’t get discouraged and drown your sorrows in drunkenness.  Don’t go out and party because you think the world is going to hell anyway.  Get into the light.  Shine a light for God.  Shine a light for justice.  He says don’t take up the ways of the oppressors and sink into debauchery.  Don’t say that since the world is all corrupt anyway, I will now join the corruption of licentiousness, and consider that I have a license to do whatever I “blankety-blank” well please. Being free from the law does not mean that each of us can be a law unto ourselves.  Let a light shine into that despair that wants to give up on making things work, and let that light bring the hope of Jesus Christ who showed us another way. 

And don’t slip into the darkness of arguing and quarreling with one another.  We can find a way together to move forward.  It is the deceiver that tells us that it has to be my way or the highway.  Let the light of cooperation and solidarity shine.  And Paul says don’t become jealous of who is getting the credit.  If the Mayor or City Manager can bring a change, then let them claim the credit, even if they did so only because we pushed them and nudged them and scared them into doing it.  If the Police Chief wants to turn around and start policing in a fair and just and transparent and clean manner, then let him have the credit, no matter how slow he was in coming around to the light.  If the legislature wants to do right by our teachers and our voting citizens, let them have the credit, even if they did it kicking and screaming in resistance to the flood of people crying for justice.  Let the light shine above and beyond jealousies.  If justice is done, we don’t care who gets the credit.  We know God is the one who gets the credit.

So dress yourselves up to be the image of Jesus Christ that the world needs to see.  He did not count his own life above others.  He did not let even the small children or the disabled widows be disrespected.  He did not tolerate the poor being mistreated or the haughty and wealthy acting proud.  Paul says we should get dressed in Jesus.  Go to our closets, pull out a hanger with Jesus on it, and put that on.  Wear Jesus out into the wide world.  It’s a graphic image of the deep theological claim that in his life and death and resurrection, we have been united to Jesus.  God has drawn us into God’s own self.  So our image should be a beacon of God in the world.  We are the Jesus the world an see.  Jesus is the light of the world, and we keep on shining that light.  Be a light.  Be a beacon.  It’s a dangerous and troubling time.  But it is a time ripe for goodness.  The harvest is plentiful.  The workers are few.  We must work while it is day. 

Drawing on the words of songwriter Kyle Matthews (“My Heart Knows,” See for Yourself, Benson Records, 2000.)

We’ve thought it through,

And we’ve decided

We’re sure of You,

Whatever happens to us…

Whatever happens to us.

And if you lead

Where there is no path,

Where there’s no way out

And no way back,

We will go where we have to go;

Give what we have to give;

Face what we have to face;

And we will live where we have to live.

Our hearts know where home is.

Our hearts know our home is with You.

The road is rough—

Our courage leaves us.

The way of love

Was never easy for You.

And it won’t be easy for us.

But If you’ll reach down

From time to time

And let us feel

Your hand in ours,

We will go where we have to go;

Give what we have to give;

Face what we have to face;

And we will live where we have to live.

Our hearts know where home is.

Our hearts know our home is You.

Our hearts know, Lord.  You are our home.  So lead us now.  Lead, us Jesus.  Lead, kindly Light.  Lead and we will follow.  Thanks be to God.  Thanks be to God.