Living Stories Part Two

John 6:24-35

I have a friend I’ve known my whole life. When we were children he developed cancer and received treatment for it. But he was over-radiated, which led to all sort of things. In high school he had to wear a back brace. A few years ago he started having heart trouble because the radiation had damaged his heart muscle. He then got married, but the marriage lasted only a few months. A few months ago they discovered cancer, again probably damage from the radiation. He is home in hospice care now.

I have a friend I’ve known my whole life. He was born into a loving and faith-filled family, the child of missionaries. He’s always been aware of the issues of justice and has always known how rich his life is. He played tennis in high school, was active in his youth group, and went to college where he developed many life long friendships. He became a teacher and loved mentoring students. He became active in caring for immigrants in his community. He is dying now, but he is surrounded by his family and friends and his faith community. He says he is blessed, he’s had a good life.

Same man. Same friend. The same story told in different ways.

The story of Jesus is one that is told in many different ways. Each Gospel presents his life with different details, different emphases. I mentioned a few weeks ago about what Matthew Mark and Luke are like - they are the most similar. The Gospel of John, though, has a different emphasis. It is quite different - doesn’t follow the same pattern of the others at all. John is the only Gospel in our Bible to say that Jesus is divine. That is a surprise - but Matthew, Mark and Luke don’t say it. They call Jesus Son of God, which is like how we say Child of God. John, however, is clear about Jesus identity - I am the Way, I am the Bread of Life, I am the Living Water.

Actually, there are several Gospels that the early church had that aren’t included in our Bible. The Gospel of Mary (Magdalene), The Gospel of Peter, The Gospel of Philip, The Gospel of Judas, and the Gospel of Thomas are some. Instead of being Lutheran or Catholic churches sometimes identified themselves as being followers of Thomas, or of Paul, or of John. We can see hints of this in some verses, and some competition between the different leaders.

This was during a very traumatic time for the church. The Christians were hunted and killed, martyred, for a long time. The movement grew anyway, but it was a dangerous time. One leader, Ireneaus, wanted to bring unity to the church - a common desire in times of crisis - and he was concerned about churches following different Gospels. So he put together the “fourfold Gospel,” the four we have today. Competition was especially strong between the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Thomas, so Ireneaus ordered all other Gospels destroyed, especially the Gospel of Thomas. And most of them were, except a group of errant priests took their holy texts and put them in a jar and buried them in the Egyptian desert at Nag Hammadi where they were found just a few decades ago.

I find this all very interesting. It raises some questions, too. One guy decided how many Gospels we should have hundreds of years later? Committees later approved the four Gospels, but that doesn’t make me feel too much better. Did he pick the right ones? Doesn’t this sound kind of political? Why is John so different? What did he know that the other writers didn’t? Do we have the picture of Jesus we need to have in our texts? What does this do to our faith?

I have a few thoughts about this. The church has lived with these Gospels for centuries. We have been shaped by them, by the way they work together as much as by what they are alone. Most of us can hardly tell which Gospel is which, they are all of one piece in some ways. And there’s Paul’s letters, and the other letters too, which fill out our scripture about Jesus. Jesus promised - in the Gospel of John, of course -- that the Spirit would come to us and help us in our interpretation of things. That is some comfort.

I was a Jurisdictional delegate twice, where I went to elect Bishops for the United Methodist Church. One of the elder clergy said to us early on, “You will be shocked by how political this process is. But don’t fool yourself: God works in politics too.”

Back to my friend. I visited him a few weeks ago and he told me how blessed he felt in his life. "I'm so blessed," he said. I've thought about this since then, and I think the reason he can say this must be because of his faith. He has read his story through the lens of the Jesus story. Because his story is seen in the context of Jesus’ story, his own story is changed. He has grown up knowing that God is present in suffering, that in Christ there is new life, and that death is not the end of things. Reading his story through the Christ story he can say, in spite of everything, "I am blessed."

However this book got put together, it works in incredible ways. The brilliance of Ireneaus’ plan is to have four Gospels, four different Gospels that each give us a different picture of Jesus. The Jesus we know is not the Jesus of just one book, but of many. The Jesus we know is made up of all the Gospels running together, and Paul too, and of the space between them. The story of Jesus is a living story, and when the story of our lives encounters it our own story is changed, rewritten, retold into a story of blessing, of walking with God, and of new life. Amen.

Here are some additional readings that I included in our Weekly Meditations this week:

The implicit connection between the feeding of the five thousand and the exodus story is made explicit in John. In his discourse, John explicitly refers to Israel’s ancestors being fed with many in the wilderness. But John’s point is not simply similarity to the exodus; he also emphasizes contrast. While Jesus “gives life to the world” as “the bread of life,” the manna of the exodus did not give life: “Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.” What Moses gave them was not the true bread from heaven. But Jesus is “the true bread” and “the living bread,” and “whoever eats of this bread will live forever.”

Thus in John the point is not really that Jesus now feeds people in the wilderness as God did in the exodus story. The point, rather, is that Jesus provides that which was not provided in the time of the exodus: living bread. - Marcus Borg, Reading the Bible Again for the First Time

“(The Gospel of John’s) Jesus does not offer ethical and apolcalyptic teachings as he does in Mark, Matthew and Luke; he delivers no “sermon on the mount,” no parables teaching how to act, no predictions of the end of time. Instead, in John’s gospel - and only in this gospel - Jesus continually proclaims his divine identity, speaking in what New Testament scholars call the “I am” sayings: “I am the way; I am the truth; I am the light; I am the vine; I am the water of life” - all metaphors for the divine source that alone fulfills our deepest needs. What John’s Jesus does require of his disciples is that they believe: “You believe in God; believe also in me.” …
The spiritual life received in baptism requires supernatural nourishment; so, John’s Jesus declares, “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day, for my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.” Jesus offers access to eternal life, shared when those who believe join together to participate in the sacred meal of bread and wine that celebrates Jesus’ death and resurrection. - Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief

A Kid's Lunch

John 6:1-14
July 23, 2006
(We had worship outdoors today, and passed out baskets of smoked fish and pieces of bread during the scripture reading and sermon. We had some leftover.)

There are many kinds of miracle stories in the Gospels - healings, walking on water, turningn water into wine, and the feeding of the 5,000. This is the only miracle story to be found in all four Gospels - some details vary a bit, but this story appears in all 4.

This version is a bit more detailed - in Matthew, Mark and Luke the disciples say, “How are we going to feed everyone?” Jesus says, go find what you have. Then we have John, where Jesus asks Philip how they are going to feed everyone, to test him. (Notice all through the book of John Jesus says things but the writer reminds you that Jesus knew what was going on and only said things to heighten the drama.) The disciples all come up with the same amount of food - 5 loaves and 2 fish. In John, however, they are from a boy, a lad. They are described as barley loaves, buns, really, and of a poor person -- the poor ate barley and the rich could afford wheat.

Then, with these meager resources, Jesus blesses the food and gives it to them -- sounds like communion, doesn't it? -- and feeds 5000 men, plus those who were with them. And they were full; they were satisfied. And there were leftovers.

We know from many of the miracle stories that Jesus doesn’t work in a vacuum. When Jesus went home (in Mark) he could work no healings because the people there didn't believe in him. He doesn’t, or can't, heal people who have no faith at all. The person themselves, a friend, someone has to believe for the healings to work. Jesus needed raw material to work miracles -- water, faith, a kid's lunch will do.

We have a Covenant Discipleship group at church that meets weekly to offer support and accountability as we try to live out a covenant we made last year. One of the most difficult parts of our Covenant group’s daily practice is to pray for forgiveness for our part of those who starve each day. It is so hard to live with that daily reminder when we are surrounded by good food, and are worried about eating too much food, or just the right kind of food. We all worry, at some level, about the hungry of the world, especially children. We pray, “Lord, feed the hungry of our world.” We pray, “Lord, bless our food, and help the hungry of the world.”

But Jesus needs some raw material to work with. Jesus needs a starter loaf, a crop, a mustard seed’s worth of something. I’m reading a book about hunger by Don Messer, Bob Dole and George McGovern - Ending Hunger Now. It suggests three actions by the Christian to help the world hunger situation: make a commitment to become personally involved; link that personal involvement to your spiritual life by, perhaps, prayer and fasting; and then participate in one of the faith based organizations working to end hunger. Like our work with CHUM, or Heifer Project, UMCOR, or Advance Specials. In other words, do something about it. Give Jesus a little raw material to work with.
We pray, "Jesus, feed the children."
Jesus says, "What have you got? Bring it to me."

I've been at Hope for three years now. It’s been delightful to watch this church gain strength and stability the last few years. That first year was hard -- when I returned from maternity leave we cut the budget, began a building project, found out we had a unbudgeted roof to fix and a new fire alarm system to put in. I wondered how we would gain financial stability. But we have. We have done all right. The congregation gave, a kids lunch at a time.
And when we have ministry that needs to be done, pretty much someone steps up to do it. We could use an extra Sunday School teacher or two right now, but pretty much we have gotten what we've needed. You've given a bit of yourselves to the church.

We say, "Jesus, we’d like the miracle of having our financial problems solved, we’d like the miracle of having a thriving church."
Jesus says, "What do you have? Bring it to me."

We long for miracles in our own lives as well. We long for peace, for love, for security, for health. We long for safety for our children. We long for meaning in our lives. We long for a reason to get up, we long for a community where we can belong.
We pray, "Jesus, make us whole. Jesus, fill us."
And Jesus says, “What do you have among you? Bring it here to me.”

Living Stories

July 16, 2006
Mark 11:27-33

I tried not to major in Religion when I went to college. I knew I wanted to go to seminary, but I thought I would major in English and leave the religion for later. But I took a class my first semester, and then another, and soon I had a religion major. I took several classes from one professor: Tim Polk. Two were Biblical Studies classes - Old Testament and then Gospels. I sat next to Andrew from the Two Harbors church in both those classes; he is pastor of Simpson UMC today. In the Gospels class, several weeks in we looked at each other and said, “Well, we’ve looked at the Gospel of Mark. When do you suppose we are going to get to the other three?” A few weeks after that we said, “Do you suppose we are going to get through all four Gospels or just two?” A few weeks after that we said, “Well, looks like it’s the Gospel of Mark.” Professor Polk should have named the class, “My Favorite Gospel.”

He has a point: Mark is interesting. It is the first Gospel, the earliest one we have. It is the shortest - there is no story of Jesus birth or childhood, and not much about Easter even. It is very focused: sixteen chapters, from when Jesus started ministry to when the tomb was found empty.
Mark is also the basis for Luke and Matthew. Matthew, Mark and Luke are called the “Synpoptic” Gospels because they are so similar, it is like seeing them together. Look at the story for today: the three versions in all three Gospels are nearly identical. That’s because Matthew and Luke, writing ten or fifteen years later than Mark, had a copy of the Gospel of Mark with them when they wrote their own Gospels. So Matthew and Luke follow Mark’s storyline, the progression of Jesus work from the inauguration of his ministry until Easter morning.

Matthew and Luke, interestingly, also used another text when they wrote their books, “Q”, from the German word “Quell” or Source. Take Matthew and Luke and lay them side by side. Subtract Mark, subtract everything else that is different, and you have Q, the sayings of Jesus. (Think sermon on the mount, the light under the bushel basket, the parables.)

But still, Matthew and Luke are different from one another. Matthew is shaped to remind the reader of the Hebrew Scripture - five sections, a sermon on the Mount, Joseph leading the people into and out of Egypt - Jesus is a new Moses in this book. It is also more spiritual: blessed are the poor in spirit. When you pray, go pray in secret.

And Luke - he is more a social gospel, the favorite in places like CHUM - blessed are the poor, Mary’s magnificat with its song about the poor being raised up.
They are so similar, yet so different. Which one is right? Which one is most accurate? Which one tells us really who was at the tomb, who was at the cross, where was Jesus born?

The chief priests, scribes and elders asked Jesus where he got his authority. They shared some bantering, and then Jesus told them, Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.

As I studied the Bible in college and seminary I grew to love it more and more, but I had more and more questions too. Like which Gospel was right, which one was best, what did Jesus really do and say. Who wrote these Gospels, and who picked these four? Why four? Why these?
I’m grateful to be in a tradition that supports questions. John Wesley said, “Work out your salvation in fear and trembling.” This is a rich and complex statement, but I’ve always understood it to mean partly that I need to take responsibility for what I believe, and think about it, and struggle with it, and ask questions.
And I’m grateful that we have more than one Gospel. If we had one we would be tempted to say, “This is exactly what happened.” But we can’t say that because they don’t always agree. There are too many discrepancies to simply say, “This is the way it was.” With four Gospels - we haven’t even talked about John yet, that’s in a few weeks - we have possibilities, questions, intriguing spaces between the details.
So for years my faith life was like Jacob wrestling with the angels, only I was wrestling with questions. Who are you, Jesus?

The chief priests, scribes and elders asked Jesus where he got his authority. Jesus told them, Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.

Eventually my spiritual life took a turn, and I did more than wrestle. I began to pray differently, and instead of questions and a shopping list I came to God in silence. I started listening more. And a surprising thing happened as my faith life grew richer - I still had questions, I didn’t have many answers, but the urgency of them changed. Jesus became real to me. Jesus walked off the pages of the books and into my heart. Jesus, the living Jesus whom the disciples knew in a new way after Easter, doesn’t abandon us to dusty old words, but brings them to life.

If these books were history books, we’d be in trouble. If these books were scientific or sociological or even theological books, we’d be in trouble. If these books were biographies, we’d be in trouble. But they aren’t - they are Gospels, Good News, living stories. We read them in our devotions, we read them with prayer, we read them in worship, we hear them preached, we read our own lives in their light and shadows..

The chief priests, scribes and elders asked Jesus where he got his authority. Jesus told them, Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.

They are living stories, and the living presence of Christ enters into us as we engage these stories. Jesus authority comes from his presence in our heart; he needs no other. Amen.


Readings for this sermon:
Again they came to Jerusalem. As he was walking in the temple, the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders came to him and said, "By what authority are you doing these things? Who gave you this authority to do them?" Jesus said to them, "I will ask you one question; answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin? Answer me." They argued with one another, "If we say, 'From heaven,' he will say, 'Why then did you not believe him?' But shall we say, 'Of human origin'?"--they were afraid of the crowd, for all regarded John as truly a prophet. So they answered Jesus, "We do not know." And Jesus said to them, "Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things." -- Mark 11:27-33 (NRSV)

When he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching, and said, "By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?" Jesus said to them, "I will also ask you one question; if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?" And they argued with one another, "If we say, 'From heaven,' he will say to us, 'Why then did you not believe him?' But if we say, 'Of human origin,' we are afraid of the crowd; for all regard John as a prophet." So they answered Jesus, "We do not know." And he said to them, "Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things. -- Matthew 21:23-27 (NRSV)

One day, as he was teaching the people in the temple and telling the good news, the chief priests and the scribes came with the elders and said to him, "Tell us, by what authority are you doing these things? Who is it who gave you this authority?" He answered them, "I will also ask you a question, and you tell me: Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?" They discussed it with one another, saying, "If we say, 'From heaven,' he will say, 'Why did you not believe him?' But if we say, 'Of human origin,' all the people will stone us; for they are convinced that John was a prophet." So they answered that they did not know where it came from. Then Jesus said to them, "Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things." -- Luke 20:1-8 (NRSV)

(Matthew, Mark and Luke) are known as “the synoptics” because they are similar enough to be seen together (as the root of the word “synoptic” suggests). The reason for their similarity: they have written sources in common. Matthew and Luke both used the gospel of Mark, incorporating most of Mark’s material as well as his narrative structure of the public activity of Jesus…Matthew and Luke also used an early collection of Jesus’ teachings known as “Q.” - Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again for the First Time

Who Knows?

July 9, 2006
5th Sunday of Pentecost B
Mark 6:1-13

I read this story early this week:
One day an old Chinese farmer’s horse escaped into the ills and when all the farmers neighbors sympathized with the old man over his bad luck, the farmer replied, Bad luck? Who knows? A week later the horse returned with a herd of wild horses from the hills and this time the neighbors congratulated the farmer on his good luck. His reply was, Good luck? Bad luck? Who knows? Then, when the farmers son was attempting to tame one of the wild horses, he fell off its back and broke his leg. Everyone thought this very bad luck. Not the farmer, whose only reaction was, Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows? Some weeks later the army marched into the village and conscripted every able-bodied youth they found there. When they saw the farmers son with his broken leg they let him off. Now was that good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?

What I like about this story is that the man stood back a little before deciding what was what. He seemed to know there might be a bigger picture than the one he could currently see. He knew he maybe didn’t have all the information he needed.
This Chinese farmer has been sitting beside me this week as I've read the texts for today, sitting next to me, prodding me with his peculiar wisdom. In today’s story Jesus goes to his home town, enters the synagogue and begins to speak. At first the people are proud of him - doesn't he sound smart? But then their comments quickly shift and they try to put him in his place - isn’t this the carpenter (tekton, which actually means builder, and might mean stone worker), isn’t he Mary’s son? (this is actually a bit of an insult, and he is pointedly not called Joseph's son. In fact, Joseph is not mentioned anywhere in Mark.) In other words, isn’t he getting above his raising spouting off like this? They are so negative he can’t do anything there, although just before this he healed people if they touched his clothes.

We know about this dynamic - we are proud of our children and proud of what they do, although we certainly know what it is they should do. Small towns, communities, neighborhoods, extended families get uncomfortable if the children come home too smart, too different - are they suggesting something is wrong with the way we live our lives? If only that Chinese farmer had been there to say, "Carpenter, prophet, Who knows?" But he wasn't there that day.

Fresh off this experience Jesus sends out his twelve, carrying almost nothing, to teach and heal in various communities. He gives them explicit instructions about how to find a house and stay there, and also about how to leave if necessary. These instructions about shaking the dust off their feet are harsher than we naturally think: it is a sharp sign against them, some say a curse. And when they find places of faith, great things happen, and the disciples are able to heal.

My clergy group discussed this at length this week: do we as Jesus followers’ shake the dust off our feet when our sharing of the message isn’t received? Do we judge others? Is this an easy excuse for us if we don’t want to try anything new, or if people don’t come to our church? (Just shake the dust off. Don’t worry about them.) There is a sense of letting go here, of offering healing and teaching knowing that we cannot control the outcome. We are responsible for being obedient, but the results are God’s. We leave the results to God. Good or bad, who knows? Something larger is at work here than we ourselves.

This Chinese farmer has been bugging me this week, his careful “who knows?” It isn’t a Minnesotan “whatever” but a thoughtful response that suggests that maybe we shouldn’t be so smug about everything. Thinking about him, reading these stories, has pushed me to yet another way of looking at these stories?

Are we sure we know who we are in these two stories? Clergy always think of themselves as the messengers sent out by Jesus, the ones speaking in the synagogue. Is that how you hear them too? Are we the followers of Jesus, the ones full of faith who know so well what Jesus can really do?

Or might we be the folks in the synagogue who think they know this Jesus, who've known him their whole lives, who think they know just what he has to offer, and who aren’t going to be told something new about what God is doing?

Might we be the folks in those towns who don’t welcome the disciples, those new messengers, who have the dust shaken off at us, who think this new way of understanding God is not right, the way we grew up is just fine, thank you very much?

Can we be so sure we know which part we play in these stories? Who knows?

God knows. And we trust that God works in all of it - in what we offer, in what we hear, in how we meet Jesus, in how we offer healing or shut our doors. God’s work never comes to the point where we can say - well; that’s it. It’s all done. That’s over. No. It is always: Who knows? God knows. Amen.

Distractions on the Way

July 2, 2006
4th Sunday of Pentecost B
Mark 5:21-43

A priest was walking down a nice neighborhood of old homes on his way to making a pastoral call on an elderly woman who was planning to make a gift to the parish. It was a beautiful day, and as he walked along he saw a young boy on the top of the steps of a house jumping up and down trying to ring the doorbell. He was in a bit of a hurry, but he stopped and went up the steps, put his hand on the boys shoulder and leaned over to ring the doorbell. “Now son,” he said, smiling, “what happens next?” The little boy, looking surprised, said, “We run like hell.”
The priest got distracted on his way somewhere else.

If you want to be successful you know you are supposed to remove distractions from your path. Clear your desk, don’t check email all day long, turn off the phone. Don’t wander into side topics, don’t let people draw away your energy. Keep focused. No distractions.

Yet I suspect there is something interesting about this idea, distraction, the thing that happens on the way to somewhere else. I asked on my blog if people knew of movies where people were on their way to one place and ended up in another. The new Superman, Elizabethtown, Garden State, Walk in the Clouds…there are quite a few stories involving distractions: the hero is going about his or her life and something happens to distract them from their plan, their path: and then everything is different. It seems to be part of making a good story -- someone thinks they are going one way, then something happens to interrupt them.They got distracted.

So did Jesus. He was on his way to heal Jairus’ daughter when this other woman, who had been sick for twelve years, grabbed his cloak. He stopped to see who it was; his disciples urged him on. Delaying would not help the little girl; they were in a hurry. Who touched me, he said. How could you possibly tell, look at this crowd, the disciples replied. But Jesus stopped, and the woman came forward and told him the whole truth, and he spoke to her gently. “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

But it was too late - while Jesus spoke the woman, saying she would live, others came to tell them Jairus’ daughter had died. It’s not the only time Jesus was too late to heal someone while they were still alive…But Jesus went on, and came to the girl, who was twelve years old, and with a word he raised her. Jesus got distracted, yes. But in the end, two daughters were healed.

Sometimes, God works in the distractions.

In fact, sometimes, for those of us who aren’t Jesus, it seems God prefers to work through the distractions. Maybe we don’t get it right the first time, and we need that knock on the head, the detour, the unforeseen path.
Like Moses, who was distracted while herding sheep on the mountain.
Like the people of Israel, who got distracted in the wilderness.
Like Jonah, who was trying to go the other direction. He got distracted by a whale.
Like Peter, who got distracted from his fishing.
Like Paul, on the road to Damascus. He was going to persecute the Jews. He met Jesus. He got distracted.
Sometimes God works in the distractions.

As a young pastor I was told to watch for the distractions, for they were holy. I was told that, hard as I was working on my to-do list, and important as that was - the one who came in my door to interrupt me just might Christ at the door.

We forget that every daughter is a child of God, every son. We forget that every moment is a gift from God. We forget that the presence of Christ is deep within each person we meet. We forget that in the end, it isn’t just where we got to but who we touched along the way. We forget, but God remembers. And God will find a way to remind us. So we get distracted, and then we find ourselves in the right place at the right time after all, just where God meant us to be.

(Painting is by Corinne Vonaesch, Femme touchant Jésus, 2001)