Satan, Baptism, Death, Oh my: June 25, 2023

 Year A, Pentecost 4                             Romans 6:1-11                                                                                

            Normally we are not fortunate enough to have a reading coincide with baptismal themes.  For instance, if you were listening when I read the Gospel, you probably found that language about setting a man against his father and a daughter against her mother less than appealing for a baptism. I read that and thought, well that’s a horrible text for a baptism.  I mean, I could probably find some connections if I tried really hard, but it would have been a stretch. I was relieved when I saw that Romans actually talked about baptism because that meant I had a legitimate reason to choose Romans rather than the Gospel.  Then I read Romans carefully and I was sad again…because it’s a complicated reading.  It was a real roller coaster of emotions for me.   Our readings rotate on a three year cycle and coincide with whatever is going on in the church year. It’s called the lectionary.  It’s inconvenient at times to have such limited flexibility in terms of what we hear on Sunday.  At the same time, it means that our Bible reading is uncensored in some respects.  The preacher can’t just choose the safe readings.           

            I always like to go through the baptismal liturgy line by line when I meet with the parents and godparents of the child about to be baptized.  We have a saying in the Episcopal Church—that praying shapes believing.  In others words, what and how we pray shapes and in some ways shows what we believe.   If you read our whole baptismal liturgy, you will get a really wonderful overview of what we believe in the Episcopal Church. That said, there are a few places when it’s obvious to me that Iose the parents and godparents.  The first is when we talk about renouncing Satan. Obviously, no one is interested in approving of Satan, but people are confused as to why we are talking about Satan during a baptism when we don’t talk about it in any other worship service.  I will come back to that.

            The 2^nd place in the liturgy where I see people squirm a little is in the section called “Thanksgiving over the water,” specifically when we talk about what the water symbolizes and the role water has played in critical moments in the Judeo-Christian story.  We say, “In it we are buried with Christ in his death.”  Now you see why I was so excited that we had this reading from Romans today.  #1—this is proof that the Book of Common Prayer is based on the Bible.  #2. We get to see that some of what we believe about baptism comes directly from the Apostle Paul.  In our reading from today, he wrote, “Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death…” I know what you are thinking, well now it all makes perfect sense. Obviously, this is why we talk about death when we are baptizing an adorable baby. No?  Not yet clear?  Well that’s ok, because that’s what I want to talk about. I am going to tell you why death in this context…is good news.

            For Paul, the death he was talking about was a figurative death.  It was and is dying to sin.  It’s the idea that sin no longer has control over us because Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice when he died for us.  When he died for us, he was wiping the slate clean for all God’s people.  This is a major tenant of our faith but one that I think a lot of modern Christians struggle with.  Why did Jesus have to die in order that we might live? I am not sure.  Tomes of theology books are written on the topic, but I am not yet convinced as to why it had to be that way.  What I know is that Jesus died because it was the only way for him to be the person God called him to be. His goodness, his divinity, offended the people in power. He wasn’t willing to back down.  He wasn’t willing to be someone else.  So they killed him.

            That sacrifice, that determination to be his authentic self, allowed Jesus to show his love to people who were hell bent on rejecting him.  It’s what separated him from the false messiahs, of which there were many.  It was a demonstration of such immense love, that it broke the chains that enslaved God’s people.  It allowed God’s people to be free from sin.  It’s what I talked about last week---it’s grace. It’s the free gift that we didn’t deserve or know we needed. 

            Does that mean that now we are all sin free?  Clearly not. We all know that we sin.  However, what makes us free is not that we never sin, but that sin doesn’t define us.  It’s part of who we are, but it’s not all of who we are.  One of the last things we do in the baptismal service is anoint the individual with oil and proclaim, “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.”  Baptism is about a new identity, it’s an identity where you can truly be yourself because you are created to be good and loving. You are created to love others and to love God and you can do that because you have gone through this figurative death.

            Now, Edie is young.  While she certainly has character and her own unique identity, no one would label her as a sinner in need of redemption.  At the same time, sin is inevitable and this baptism gives her freedom to always be defined not by her faults or sins, but by the grace that God has given her.  It’s the job of the parents, godparents, family and all the people in the church to remind her that her identity as a baptized child of God is steeped in goodness, and that is a goodness that can never be taken away.

Photo by Jon Tyson 

            So back to the devil thing.  Why do we renounce the devil in baptism? I think it’s to remind us that while we have been freed from sin, sin is still a relentless foe.  Evil is around us.  We can’t ignore it.  But we also can’t internalize it.  We can’t let it fester in our souls.  We must remember that evil is the enemy and it has to be renounced because our identity as children of God is goodness and light. Again, that doesn’t mean we are perfect. It means that we not defined by our imperfections.  We are defined—no---we are loved---by a God who refused to let the evil of this world change his identity. No matter what God’s people did, God’s reaction was to forgive and to love.  That was true when Jesus died and rose again.  It’s still true today.  God is a God of love and forgiveness and we who worship that God, we are people of love and forgiveness as well.    

Be Part of the Redemption: Sept. 9, 2018

Year B, Pentecost 16                                                
Mark 7: 24-31                                                                                   

 

            This Gospel reading is a troubling one; partly because it forces us to ask some tough questions about who Jesus is.  There is nothing more fundamental to our faith than Jesus, which means this text can be complicated…really complicated.  The problem is that Jesus is mean in this story.  He calls a woman, who is begging on behalf of her sick daughter, a dog.  A dog. There is never a good time to call someone a dog.  While it was not unusual for Jesus to criticize men in power (like the religious authorities we talked about last week), he was usually compassionate toward anyone on the margins, which often included women.

            For centuries, preachers and theologians have been trying to justify Jesus’ words.  Maybe he was testing her.  Maybe the word dog was meant affectionately, more like a puppy, and he said it with a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye. Perhaps she was even in on the joke.  No.  Calling a woman a dog in any culture at any time period is always bad.  So why did Jesus do it? 

            There was a great deal of friction between the Jews and the Gentiles.  Jesus was a Jew and as a Jew, he had been taught not to interact with Gentiles.  Gentiles were unclean.  Typically Jews did not even travel in Gentile territory.  Yet the first sentence of our reading tells us that, “Jesus set out and went away to the region of Tyre.” This was deep in Gentile territory.  The fact that Jesus went there tells us something was shifting in his ministry.  We saw that shift begin in our reading last week.

While there was animosity between the Jews and the Gentiles, you might remember that in last week’s Gospel reading, Jesus declared that there was no food that was unclean.  This was a big deal because the distinction between food that was clean and unclean was a huge point of contention between the Jews and Gentiles. But according to Jesus’ statement last week, things once considered unclean were now acceptable.  This shift laid the groundwork for the people he encounters in today’s reading.  If he could declare unclean food acceptable, perhaps he could do the same for Gentiles who were previously considered unclean.  

            However, the Gentiles weren’t just unclean.  The Gentiles were hated.  They were commonly called dogs.  Jesus didn’t just randomly call this woman a dog; that is was what Jews called Gentiles.  This woman in our Gospel reading was a Gentile.  It is obvious that she had heard that slur plenty of times because she did not even bother denying it.  She just accepted the slur and used it to effectively state her case.  Therefore it is understandable that Jesus would call the woman a dog--- or is it?  He should have known better.  This is Jesus, the Son of God. He should have known better. This is where things get complicated.  If we say that Jesus didn’t know better and his heart was changed by his interaction with this woman, then are we saying that Jesus was wrong in the first place?  And if he was wrong, is that the same thing as saying he sinned?  One of the fundamental views of many Christians is that Jesus was sinless.  He was perfect. 

            That’s true.  But he was also human.   This got me thinking about how we define sin.  Think about it for a moment.  If I put you on the spot right now, how would you define sin?  I bet you could think of lots of examples…but what exactly is sin?  The catechism in the back of our prayer book defines sin as, “seeking our own will instead of the will of God, thus distorting our relationship with God and with other people and with all creation.”  By that rationale, Jesus could not sin because he was God which meant his will was the same as God’s. 

            Yet still, I am troubled by his treatment of this woman.  Then I am reminded that by becoming human, Jesus took on our frailties and to some degree our limitations.  What he knew, what he had been taught from his birth, was that Gentiles were less than. His ministry was for the Jewish people.  What made Jesus divine was his ability to let go of these human prejudices with relative ease. He was able to see past the slurs and see this woman for who she was—a child of God.  While most (if not all) religious leaders would have simply dismissed her words, he listened to her response.  He let her response and her compassion for her daughter change him.

He was able to see past the distortion that sin had created.  Remember how our catechism defines sin---“it distorts our relationship with God and with other people.” It was sin that had distorted the relationship between the Jews and the Gentiles.  Jesus was born into a world of distortion.  Unfortunately we all are.  As a result, we are programmed to see people who are not like us as “the other.” We can either accept that, or we can learn from Jesus’ model and listen to “the other.” 

            Right now, our world is dominated by sound bites, memes and 280 character tweets.  As long as those remain the parameters of how we know a person or learn about an issue, we will never actually learn anything new.  We will never be pushed outside of our comfort zone.  Virtually every time someone has explained to me how their views shifted about an issue or a group of people, it was from knowing someone who thought differently or was different.

In high school, I fell into a quirky and diverse group of friends.  They were diverse religiously more than anything. Several were Hindu.  One was Muslim. One was Jewish.  There was a Catholic, an Episcopalian and a few agnostics.  My Muslim friend was the one who taught me the most.  She also happened to be the most devout of the group and so we talked a lot about our faith.  This was before 9-11 and we were not yet living in the culture of fear we now live in.  But after 9-11, I remember feeling grateful for having her in my life, because Muslims weren’t a group for me, there was a face I associated with that faith. I know that face.  More importantly, I know her heart.

            I think we can all agree that what is going on in our world right now (the suspicion of people who hold views different than our own, the name calling, etc) is causing far more harm than good.  It is so easy to judge people now.  Recently I was behind a car and they had all these bumper stickers.  I remember thinking, I definitely would not like that person. Then I saw their Episcopal shield and I thought, huh, well I guess I can get past those other stickers.   

While judging people based on things like bumper stickers or ethnicities is wrong, it’s part of human nature.   It comes from living in a world full of distorted relationships.  Fortunately, because of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, we have endless opportunities for redemption.  That redemption comes in the form of relationships, relationships with people who would be a lot easier to judge if we did not know them.  For Jesus and this woman, it took one sentence. She said, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” However, most of us need more than a sentence. Most of us need a relationship.

 I want to challenge you all this fall to seek a relationship with someone who is different than you (a different socio economic class, religion, political party, ethnicity, etc.)  Don’t enter the relationship trying to change them, open your own heart to a potential change.  We can’t just complain about the lack of kindness or civil discourse in our country.  Gandhi once said that you have to “be the change you wish to see in the world.”  We all have that opportunity.  Not only can we be part of the change, as Christians we can be part of the redemption.

Unlimited Mulligans: March 5, 2017

Year A, Lent 1                                                                        
Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7                                                                       

            I was a fairly regular church attendee through my youth, college and even after.  However, for some reason, Lent always came as a surprise to me.  I would come to church one Sunday and I would think, “Why is everyone so depressed? Why is the music so sad?” Then I would look at the altar hangings and see the purple, I might notice something in the bulletin and it would click.  Or right…it’s Lent.  How long is Lent again?  Of course Lent was also identified as the time I gave up something which was never particularly fun.  I am afraid that is how many of us think of Lent…oh that again.  In some ways we treat it as this time we have to get through to get to Easter.  The readings don’t help much. They are all about sin and judgment. 

            Let’s start with the first reading, which we are told--is all about the first sin, when sin entered our world.  Here they were, Adam and Eve, sitting in paradise. They had no 9-5 job dragging them down.  The weather was probably perpetually sunny.  They got along all the time.  God was talking to them, caring for them.  They could eat the fruit from any tree….any tree but one.  So of course they had to eat from that one tree.  For millennia people have blamed this transgression on Eve and I have addressed that in other sermons. The blame doesn’t belong on Eve, at least not entirely. 

There is the serpent of course; we could put all the blame there.  He was crafty.  He took God’s words and twisted them. He appealed to human pride.  However, the blame does not rest on any one person or animal and trying to determine who is to blame is at best useless and at worst detrimental to understanding the text. It’s true.  They committed a sin.  God had given them everything and they jeopardized all of that in the hope that they could be more like God, more like the creator than the creature. 

            Thus, they were expelled from the garden, from paradise.  As a result of this expulsion, instead of being more like God, they were further from God.  They could still communicate with God, but it was harder and seemed to get even harder for every generation thereafter, at least until Jesus came.  While God punished Adam and Eve, he let them live.  They still had food.  They had shelter. They had one another and the promise of children.  While there time in paradise ended, they had a new beginning. They had an opportunity to start over.

            Today we began the service with something called an “Invitation to the Observance of a Holy Lent.” This is part of the Ash Wednesday service, but I find it appropriate for the first Sunday of Lent as well.  The last paragraph reads, “I invite you … to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word. And, to make a right beginning of repentance…let us now kneel before the Lord, our maker and redeemer.”  Some of those things sound ok.  Self-examination, prayer, reading the Bible…those things are fair expectations of Christians.  But repentance, fasting, self-denial…those things do not sound appealing at all.  Those are the reasons that people do not like Lent. 

            Going through Lent without the repentance, confession and self-examination is kind of like expecting to lose weight by reciting body affirmations but not exercising or eating right.  In order to really transform your body, you have to do the work.  Sometimes that work is miserable, but sometimes, it makes you feel really good.  It’s the same with confession, repentance and self-examination. It’s hard to be honest about yourself.  It is hard to do the work that will make you a better person and a better Christian. It is hard to acknowledge your sins and weaknesses and ask God and others for help.  But all those hard things allow you to become a better person.  Confessing your sins and working hard not to sin again doesn’t just make you a better person, it brings you closer to God.  Even though it seems that you are doing all this work for yourself, you are really doing it for God.   Repentance is not merely the acknowledgment and condemnation of our sins…it is a process of renewal.  It literally means to turn around and reorient ourselves. 

            We don’t know what happened to Adam and Eve after they left the garden.  While they certainly felt guilty for offending God---sinning against God, it is not clear that they repented.   We don’t get the end of the story.  It is not until Jesus comes that we get the rest of the story. In many ways that is why Jesus is often referred to as the new Adam.  He provided the opportunity for humanity to begin again.  While the first humans (Adam and Eve) rejected the limitations of their humanity by trying to be like God, Jesus purposefully took on the limitations of humanity by becoming a human.  By becoming human he not only took on the limitations, he felt the effects of our sins. He had to resist sin and temptation. 

            The story of him in the desert with Satan is dramatic and powerful.  We see Jesus standing up to Satan and refusing to prove his divinity.  However, just because he withstood this temptation in the desert does not mean that he lived a life free of temptation and trials.  Much like us, he was faced with temptation every day.  Every day, he had to do the hard work of resisting sin. While he did not sin, he still experienced the effects of the sins of others.  He went through the agony of betrayal, abandonment and even death on the cross.  Because he went through all of that, he was given an opportunity to start over. His resurrection was a new beginning.  It continues to be a new beginning for us all. 

            It would be helpful if we could find a way to think of Lent not as a dreary time full of sadness and gnashing of teeth, but a new beginning.  I am not a golfer, despite the efforts of my grandparents and father.  However, I am going to attempt a golf analogy.  A mulligan is a free shot you get after you have a really bad shot. It does not count on the scorecard.  It is not a real rule, but is often used in more relaxed settings.  But here is the thing about a mulligan.  You still have to swing again. Someone doesn’t just say, you missed that one, let’s move your ball right next to the hole.  No, you get a chance to start over.  In starting over, it is usually most helpful if you avoid doing what you did the last time.  You want the next shot to be better than the last. 

In golf, you usually only get one mulligan per game.  However, in our Christian journey, we get many opportunities to start over without any penalty.  In our invitation to the observance of a Holy Lent, the last line calls us to kneel before our maker and redeemer.  Our maker and redeemer.  Lent is our opportunity to be made a new, to be redeemed by a God who loves us and cares for us.  It’s true.  We still have to do the work and that is not always fun.  But the end…the end is forgiveness, redemption and a new beginning.  That is not something that should make life dreary.  That is a cause for joy.