Those People

In the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Luke, the Pharisees and scribes complain to the disciples about the behavior of their leader, Jesus. They point out that Jesus eats with "tax collectors and sinners," something that his self-righteous inquisitors would never condescend to do. Overhearing the challenge, Jesus responds that it is the sick and struggling who need him most and who he has come to call to a new life.

There is something important about this passage that is easy to miss, and it is easy to miss because it is an omission. The narrative leaves out a critical detail. And we may notice it only if we read this passage in the context of the many other gospel passages where Jesus offers guidance to those around him.

The gospels describe numerous instances where Jesus spoke to assembled crowds--and the gospels tell us exactly what he said to them. The gospels recount many conversations between Jesus and his beloved disciples--and, again, the gospels give us specifics about how Jesus instructed, corrected, and sometimes even rebuked them. Over and over again, the gospels tell us exactly what Jesus said--to a mob, to his persecutors, to his parents, to his followers, even to Satan himself.

But here, Luke tells us nothing about what Jesus said to those "tax collectors and sinners" when he sat and broke bread with them. In this respect, the story differs dramatically from what the gospels say about the Sermon on the Mount or the Last Supper or even the Crucifixion. Here, the gospels tell us that Jesus joined in the company of those people but are oddly silent about what he said to them--if he said anything at all.

In the course of human history there may have been no better storyteller than Luke and it is a safe bet always to assume that he knew what he was doing. So I want to put aside the possibility that this omission was an oversight or an error. To the contrary, I think that Luke fully understood the significance of leaving out these details. And I t think that, through this omission, Luke intended to convey two messages to us--loud and clear in their silence.

The first message is that what Jesus said to those people mattered much less than that he welcomed the opportunity to sit and eat with them. Through this simple act of grace and compassion, Jesus transformed "those people" into "his people." We can imagine a variation on the moment when his parents found the young Jesus, who had gone astray, teaching at the Temple: "Where else would you expect to find me?" he might ask here, too. Where else but where love is needed most?

And the second message is this: we are among "those people." We are, each and all of us, in desperate need of the sacred presence of forgiveness and acceptance. We are, each and all of us, fighting an urgent battle against the demons around us, within us, before us, behind us. Part of the power of Luke's story here comes from the bristling unease we feel if we align ourselves with the Pharisees and scribes: for those among us who are willing to do the hard work of looking into our own hearts, the very act of saying "I am better than those people" unsettles the possibility that it is so.

The brilliant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr gets at the essential point here in a famous sermon called "The Providence of God." Niebuhr writes: "[Our faith] believes that within and beyond the tragedies and contradictions of history we have laid hold upon a loving heart, the proof of whose love is first impartiality toward all of his children, and secondly a mercy which transcends good and evil." Exactly.

By breaking bread with "those people," Jesus reminds us of his central message--that we must be quick to love and slow to judge. In these, our troubled and divided times, we have become accomplished at getting this formula exactly backward. And we will persist in this tragic error--and will continue in our relentless persecution and sacrifice of love--until we awaken to the fact that "those people," in whatever way we mean that, are his people, are our people, are us.

Amen.

The Lonely Questions

Many people view Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a modern martyr of the Christian faith and, more expansively, of the cause of human freedom. Recognized as a gifted theologian while still a young man, Bonhoeffer could have chosen to pursue his career in the safety of one of the countless American seminaries and universities that would have delighted to include him among their faculty. Instead, he returned to Hitler’s Germany to join in the effort to resist fascism, knowing that he might never again see his family, friends, or fiancé.

Bonhoeffer was arrested in April of 1943 and executed two years later, shortly before the liberation of the prison camp where he was confined. While in prison, Bonhoeffer wrote a number of letters and papers that have been preserved, collected, and published. Together they make up one of the masterpieces of spiritual literature. In these documents, Bonhoeffer models a courage, faith, and uncompromising intellectual curiosity that must amaze and inspire us.

In a letter written to his friend Eberhard Bethge on July 16, 1944, Bonhoeffer says: “If you have to preach in the near future, I should suggest taking [one of the following] texts.” He then lists a number of passages for Bethge's consideration. The list is remarkable for at least three reasons.

First, he lists seven passages. The number eerily—and perhaps not coincidentally—corresponds to the number of passages traditionally known as "the last words of Christ."

Second, he lists six passages from the Hebrew Bible and only one from the New Testament. This is consistent with Bonhoeffer's deep interest in the Old Testament, particularly during his time of imprisonment.

And, finally, he offers Bethge almost no guidance whatsoever as to why these passages matter or what he should say about them when preaching. Because Bonhoeffer was not only a brilliant theologian but an inspired speaker and teacher, it seems fair to assume that he provides no instruction here for a simple reason: he thought it obvious.

These are the passages Bonhoeffer commends to his friend, in the order in which he lists them:

Psalm 62:1: “For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation.”

Psalm 119:94: “I am yours; save me, for I have sought your precepts.”

Psalm 42:5: “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.”

Jeremiah 31:3: “[T]he Lord appeared to [Israel] from far away [and said] ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.’”

Isaiah 41:10: “[D]o not fear, for I am with you; do not be afraid, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.”

Isaiah 43:1: “But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.”

Matthew 28:20: “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

We might gain some insight into Bonhoeffer's view of these passages if we put them in the context of a poem he had written shortly before he drafted this letter. The poem is called Who Am I? and it is stunning in its stark candor. In the poem, Bonhoeffer explored the doubts and conflicts that raged within him and asked:

“Who am I? This or the other?

Am I one person today, and tomorrow another?

Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,

And I before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling?

Or is something within me still like a beaten army,

Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?”

But then he concludes:

         “Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.

         Whoever I am, thou knowest, O God, I am thine.”

Probably as much as anyone who has ever lived, Bonhoeffer understood what it means to be plagued by the “lonely questions,” the uncertainties that hunt us down and seek to devour us, the unceasing and radical instabilities of the human condition. He found his answers in his confidence that God had called him by name, that he belonged to God, and that God would accompany him through his tribulations--the central themes of the seven passages he conveyed to his friend.

It seems to me that our answers to our own "lonely questions" lie where Bonhoeffer found his: in the recognition that God calls each of us, that each of us belongs to Him, and that He will never, ever leave us. On the days when anxieties bedevil us, we can find a saving grace in the knowledge that the most powerful and loving force in the universe summons us, embraces us, and stands with us--now and forever.

         To the end of the age.

         And to the end of the age. Amen.

Candy, Anger, and Sleep

A sermon shared at the Suttons Bay Congregational Church, September 25, 2016

Scripture: 1 Timothy 6:6-19

Hall of Fame catcher Yogi Berra said lots of things that make no logical sense and yet somehow hint at a deep philosophical truth. For example, these days many of us might see some wisdom in his observation that “The future ain’t what it used to be.” And I suppose that every sermon ever delivered—including this one—could be summarized by Yogi’s observation that “You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.”

Even in resisting the notion that he had made many of these quotable statements, Yogi could not help sounding like Yogi. He once remarked with a wisp of merry defiance: “I never said most of the things I said.” And maybe he didn’t.

 

When it comes to never saying most of the things attributed to you, however, the Hall of Fame champion must be the Holy Bible. Surely, no text in the history of the world has so often been misquoted, selectively quoted, quoted out of context, or quoted to advance decidedly unbiblical agendas. In Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, Anotonio declares that “The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose,” and we know that Shakespeare is right (as usual) because we see this happen with unsettling regularity.

This passage from Paul’s first letter to Timothy is one that is often misquoted and commonly misunderstood, particularly the verse within it that is frequently rendered as: “Money is the root of all evil.” This morning, I want to fix the misquotation and put the phrase back into context. I do not want to do this as a nitpicky and lawyerly exercise in getting language right. Rather, I want to do this because I believe that a correct understanding of this passage forces us to confront one of the most daunting and persistent challenges of human existence.

Let’s start with two relatively minor fixes. First, this scripture does not condemn money in and of itself. If it did, then the passage taken as a whole would not make any sense. After all, it urges us to be “generous and ready to share,” which presumably includes the giving of our financial resources. At the risk of sounding like Yogi Berra, if you have nothing to give then it’s harder to give it.

No, the scripture is worried about our relationship with money. It is not money but the love of money that causes the trouble. The scripture warns that loving money and the stuff it can buy leads us into all kinds of traps and temptations that have nothing to do with the life to which Jesus calls us. And the love of money can work against the generosity of spirit and sharing of resources that the passage tells us we need to foster and pursue.

Second, properly translated this passage does not claim that the love of money is the sole root of all evil but rather that it is a cause of many kinds of evil. I doubt that Paul intended to claim that money holds a monopoly on malfeasance. No, we can get there many other ways, including through hatred, wrath, anger, bias, prejudice, jealousy, fear—fear does a lot of work here, doesn’t it?—and a thousand other weaknesses we are heir to.

Beyond these minor fixes, however, I want to suggest to you that neither money nor the love of it is actually the central concern of this text. I think the passage is actually worried about two much bigger things. The first is that—our spiritual aspirations notwithstanding—we experience life as physical beings. Indeed, that’s precisely why money is problematic: it helps us scratch our physical itches and we can fall in love with its capacity to do so.

The second is that our attachment to this physicality accounts for much of our unhappiness. Our selfishness, our grief, our despair, and our (sometimes paralyzing) anxiety often have a lot to do with our clutching at our physical life and at physical things. This is understandable: our physical being is what we know with the greatest immediacy.

I think it was Pierre Teilhard de Chardin who wisely declared: “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” At some level of abstraction we understand that this is so. But let’s be honest: our day-to-day existence inundates us with evidence to the contrary.

Say we are spiritual beings if you like, but the reality is that tomorrow we will experience life physically. We will feel the power in our muscles or the aches in our joints; we will know the pangs of hunger or the taste of good food; we will grapple with the discomforts of illness or enjoy the pleasures of good health; we will look around and find no one beside us or we will delight in the touch of a loved one.

The poet Delmore Schwartz described these bodies of ours as “the heavy bear who goes with [us] … in love with candy, anger, and sleep.” The good news is that we will not go through tomorrow alone: God will be with us. The less good news is: so will the bear.

Now, this scriptural passage does not tell us to ignore our physicality. To the contrary, it recognizes the reality that we need “food and clothing.” And nothing in this passage denies that we may find comfort in physical things. Nothing here denies that some physical experiences can even help usher us toward a more spiritual place: witnessing one of our gorgeous Leelanau peninsula sunsets; watching the shimmering water of the bay on a warm afternoon; listening to the spring birdsong in the woods; laughing with beloved friends over food and a little wine, “for our stomach’s sake,” as that first letter to Timothy says elsewhere. Done in the right spirit there is holiness in the breaking of bread, no less than in the praying over it.

In a poem written toward the end of his life, Jim Harrison—who knew a fair amount about this dear peninsula said: “My work piles up, / I falter with disease / Time rushes toward me-- / it has no brakes. Still, / the radishes are good this year. / Run them through butter, / add a little salt.” I can find no evidence anywhere in the Bible that God begrudges us the pleasure of a salted radish. To the contrary, the radish is one of God’s lovely little flirtations in the grandeur of the divine creation.

The problem, of course, is that the bear has much bigger appetites—that can prove hard to control. And the scripture worries that when we chase the gratification of those impulses we will spend our time in pursuit of the wrong things. It is not just that this will have grave consequences for our fellow human beings, because we will have less to share with them. It is that it will have grave consequences for each of us, because we cannot possibly find peace, contentment, and meaning in the temporary possession of things that we know we are going to lose. “It ain’t over til it’s over,” Yogi Berra said; and when it’s over “we can take nothing out of [the world],” the scripture reminds us.

In this respect, the first letter to Timothy stands in a line of thought that we find across cultures, philosophies, and religions. One of the central tenets of Buddhism is that our anxiety and suffering come from our grasping at and clinging to things that are finally impermanent. And the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca wrote: “For no one is worthy of a god unless he has paid no heed to riches. I am not, mind you, against your possessing them, but I want to ensure that you posses them without tremors; and you will only achieve this in one way, by convincing yourself that you can live a happy life even without them, and by always regarding them as being on the point of vanishing.” Because they are.

This scripture therefore presents us with one of the fundamental puzzles of human existence, a riddle with which our species has struggled for, oh, only about a few thousand years. Yes, we know that our physical existence is fragile, temporal, and short. But it is also our most present reality. Given that, how can we reach for that ultimate and greater reality that a deeply spiritual existence offers?

This scripture provides an answer to this question, although in our preoccupation with its uncomfortable admonitions about money we may miss it. It tells us that the way out of the dilemma—the way out of our very human fixation on our own physicality—lies in our service to others. “Be rich in good works,” the scripture tells us. “That you may take hold of the life that really is life.”

In his famous book Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl recounts his experiences as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp. He describes, in painful detail, how he and his fellow prisoners lost everything that had defined their lives and descended into a place of unspeakable grief and suffering. It was a trauma from which many of the prisoners could not recover, and they withered and perished in their despair.

And, yet, Frankl observed that some of the prisoners endured these horrific experiences in a way that gave their existence continued meaning. Those prisoners found something to do, some work to keep them occupied. And that work was often not for their own benefit, but for that of other prisoners.

Frankl writes: “For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. That truth is that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.”

Love, this scripture tells us, is the greatest thing, the only thing that finally matters. It has been so since before the hidden foundations of the world. It is infinite and endless. And yet, paradoxically, it is possible for us to waste it on the wrong things.

God wastes none of it, even while dispensing it with wild abandon. God showers it upon us in an extravagant and unmerited—almost seemingly reckless—show of delight and forgiveness and peace and grace. God spends love as though it were an inexhaustible resource—because it is.

“Go and do likewise,” a voice says to us, sometimes coming as a still soft voice, sometimes as a thunderous declaration and shaking of us by the lapels. “Go and do likewise. And, if you do, you will dwell within the light of the world. You will spread the light of the world. You will be the light of the world. And you will be so now, and forever and ever and ever.” 

Amen. And amen.