Living the Word: Jesus and His Weird Friends

THE CHURCH'S CALENDAR always sits at odds with the world’s. In the world, the season of light is Christmas. And that’s long since gone by now. But in the church, the season of light is Epiphany, when God gives us a glimpse of all the strange people who will be drawn to Jesus. We gentiles rejoice. Jesus is bringing all his weird friends over for dinner. So maybe there’s space at the table even for us.

Think of every dark place in our world. Every frightened child. Every violated person. Every victim of war or hunger. The darkness growls with endless hunger. Epiphany says this: God’s light will shine and swallow up that darkness and make all things into unending day. Hopefully God will do that sooner rather than later—through our efforts, through the church, through our elected officials. But if not, God will bring the kingdom Jesus preached, one day. And there will be unending light for those who’ve faced the most darkness.

Epiphany is a good season in which to concentrate on the church—Jesus and all his weird friends. The lectionary showers us with stories from Matthew and the psalms and Corinthians about how odd and distinctive this community is. Ministers have the inestimable privilege of serving God’s people. What joy! What light! What a marvel is the church of Jesus Christ.

[ February 5 ]

Now and Not Yet

Isaiah 58:1-12; Psalm 112:1-10; 1 Corinthians 2:1-16; Matthew 5:13-20

CHRISTIANITY IS A religion of grace. We don’t get what we deserve, thank God. We get so much more. And being people of grace, we try to show forth God’s mercy in our life together—to show the world it is made and sustained in existence by a good, good God.

Sometimes when we tell our story that way, we sound like we don’t care how we or anybody else acts. And yet scriptures like those for today show that God cares profoundly how we act. The prophet Isaiah screeches against religious observance not matched by passion for justice. The psalm promises unimaginable blessings for those who cherish God’s law. Jesus insists he has no quarrel with the law. He has come, if anything, to observe it, enhance it, fulfill it—and if his people’s observance doesn’t exceed that of the Pharisees (that is, the professional law-abiding people), they’re not his people at all.

So—are we a people of grace, or a people of works? The argument has thundered back and forth across the fault lines of the Reformation between Protestants and Catholics for the half millennium we have known those names. Yet our text from Paul suggests both answers are wrong. We are people of Christ. No one should be more committed to justice than us. And yet we don’t pursue justice to make ourselves look good. We do it for Christ’s sake—and for the sake of others.

The psalm stands out in this text. The righteous in this world simply do not receive all the great things they’re promised. There must be a new world coming where they do. Matthew describes a church that is not yet: salt to salt the world, light to illumine it. There must be a church coming that does. Paul describes a church and a world that very much are here now. We preach Jesus and the world thinks we’re fools. But God has more good things in store for the church and the world than anyone can yet imagine. You’ll see. Then we’ll fast and pray and God will listen—and light will dawn on all.

[ February 12 ]

Eyes and Hands

Sirach 15:15-20; Psalm 119:1-8; 1 Corinthians 3:1-9; Matthew 5:21-37

"YOU HAVE HEARD it said ... but I say to you,” says Jesus in Matthew 5. Barbara Brown Taylor says this text shows the limits of textual literalism. Even the most fundamentalist congregations are not full of eyeless skulls and handless limbs.

And yet scripture intends to be taken with deadly (if not self-mutilating) seriousness. There are two ways in life, the psalm says, and we can choose which way to go. If we want, we can behave, Sirach insists. It is not too hard to follow God’s good way. It is, in fact, the best way to live.

This literalism thing is tricky. Some of Jesus’ most dramatic turnarounds of existing tradition are here in Matthew: You have heard, but I say. It’s where we get Christianity’s most distinctive teaching: that we shouldn’t hate our enemies, but love them. Throughout the history of the church, we have had sophisticated strategies to avoid reading these passages literally. But Jesus seems to mean it—else why the dramatic introductory locutions? And perhaps the more troubling portions of the passage have another literal sense. Matthew’s church seems to have eventually and painfully removed those who were unrepentant sinners (see chapter 18). That’s a sort of removal of a limb, loss of an eye. You don’t resort to amputation hastily, but if it saves the whole body ...

Don’t curse people—don’t call them names. If you have a problem with a fellow Christian—leave your gift at the altar, go make amends—reconciliation trumps piety. Don’t get divorced. Don’t even swear. There is a rigorous moral life outlined for Christ’s people here. Not a literalistic one. But a rich and deep one.

I worry that we so quickly denounce literal readings of Jesus’ most dramatic words. Couldn’t we take them in a literal sense as playful as Taylor’s and as serious as, well, Jesus’? To have no truck with evil, not even a glance, not even an inner curse, not even the tiniest oath? Sounds like more than an impossible possibility. It sounds like the gospel.

[ February 19 ]

Social Holiness

Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18; Psalm 119:33-40; 1 Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-23; Matthew 5:38-48

I SAID ABOVE that love of enemies is Christianity’s most distinctive teaching. The very next lection has proved me wrong. There is nothing here that Jesus couldn’t have learned while bouncing on Mary’s knee. And nothing she couldn’t have learned from Leviticus.

Our churches don’t plan sermon series on Leviticus very often. The book contains few of the pet texts to which we preachers turn to by rote. And yet here it is, counseling love of enemies, the end of hatred, the absence of grudges. I remember hearing The Late Late Show host Craig Ferguson tell his guest Desmond Tutu that bitterness is like “drinking poison and expecting someone else to die.” The Nobel laureate cooed in response: “That’s good!” It didn’t start with Jesus. It started with Leviticus.

Grace is as old as the oldest portions of our Bible. Leviticus goes farther, giving a plan for social holiness and justice that goes beyond our most ambitious ideas. When you plow, do it in a way that blesses the poor. When you make money, do it in a way that leaves some for the least. Don’t put a stumbling block before the blind. And don’t even favor the poor at court! God has a preferential option for the poor, sure, but even the rich deserve justice. What a moral feast here in Leviticus! Shame on us Christians for ever suggesting otherwise!

Paul’s friends in Corinth have divided into factions. It’s what we Christians do. (There’s a joke about a guy on a desert island. His discoverers ask why he’s built three dwellings. He replies: That’s my home, that’s my church, that’s the church I used to go to.) Corinth was in shards over which teacher to follow. But Paul tells them every teacher is for them. And they’re for Christ. And Christ is God’s. All the teaching in scripture and tradition is for the church, so the church can be for Christ. And Christ is God’s way of making the whole universe whole.

[ February 26 ]

Great Visions?

Exodus 24:12-18; Psalm 2; 2 Peter 1:16-21; Matthew 17:1-9

TRANSFIGURATION CROWNS this season of light. Jesus goes up the mountain the way Moses once did. But Jesus takes three followers with him on the way. Epiphanies are usually between one great leader and God. Here, that great leader, who is also God, takes three friends. They mess it all up—they always do, so do we, whoever “we” are. Jesus is not surprised. He restores them to fellowship, the way he does with all of us.

What do we do with visions like this?

One approach is to delegitimize them. This was just a grab for power by someone in Matthew’s community. Nah. Doesn’t explain how a faith starts with unlearned fisher folk and now fills the globe. Others naturalize them. Every mountain seethes with smoke and fire and is filled with the thundering presence of the Lord. Sure, in one way, all creation sings God’s praise. In another, nah. The average leaf watcher or skier or sailor loves the outdoors, but doesn’t come back with new, life-changing information directly from God’s mouth.

My preference is to let the experience be weird. Peter, James, and John got a glimpse of a world that is not yet. Had we been there, we’d have blubbered something as inane as Peter did, and wasted the experience as fast as the sons of Zebedee did. But they told the story after he rose. The church wrote the story down. So now we give thanks that in one instance Christ peeled back the veil over creation and showed us the way things really are: shot through with glory, filled with unimaginable beauty, reverberating with God’s personal presence. We won’t likely have that in this life—and pastors know to worry about the mental health of any who claim otherwise. But this life isn’t the only life there is.

" Preaching the Word," Sojourners' online resource for sermon preparation and Bible study, is available at sojo.net/ptw.