Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust

Great-grandparents remember Word War II, when over 400,000 of their friends and family died on the battlefields of Europe and the Pacific. For the rest of us, who were not alive then, we’ve never faced a time like this, when hundreds of thousands of our friends, family, and neighbors are dying. This pandemic has forced each of us to grapple daily with our own mortality, when a visit from a chatty, unmasked neighbor can result in contraction of a deadly disease. 

Fortunately, for those of us who have worshipped on Ash Wednesday before, the church has prepared us for this moment. Each year, you are reminded of your mortality, the sin that is killing you, and the true life that goes beyond death in Jesus Christ. Usually, I will impose ashes on your forehead in the sign of a cross and speak to you the words above from Genesis 3. The sign recalls the cross in water and oil made on your forehead at your baptism; the message is that we will all die, and only in Christ will we truly live.

This year, we are joining together with St. Andrews to celebrate the ritual with an even more ancient symbol. Bishop J. Neil Alexander writes, “It was in England, in the eleventh century, that we have evidence of the sprinkling of ashes on all of the faithful, noted there in the writings of the Aelfric, the Abbot of Eynsham.” Oh, poor Aelfric, I knew him Horacio. In these earliest rituals, ashes were sprinkled on the heads of the people, deeply symbolic of the dust to which we all will return, the dirt that will be shoveled on our graves. 

Being reminded of our mortality can be bleak, but in the context of worship of Jesus Christ, it gives us hope. Our hope is not in our bodies, our capabilities, or our health. Our hope is in the grace of God in Jesus Christ. Our bodies fail us, our wills are weak, and our minds lead us astray. But by God’s grace we can hope to make a meaningful impact on the world, to touch people and show them love that makes a difference. We can have a legacy in God’s love, so that when our bodies rest under the ground, love and grace live on. And our souls rest content in the love of Christ, in blessed hope that we will be resurrected to eternal life with glorified bodies no longer made from earth, but a combination of heaven and earth together.

                                                                            

Vote for Faith, for Dignity, for Love

Once when Joshua was by Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing before him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you one of us, or one of our adversaries?” The man replied, “Neither; but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.” - Joshua 5:13-14

 

Here goes the pastor, being too political again. Here’s the thing, as I see it, politics is just the word we’ve chosen to talk about how we conduct our relationships within the governments we all share. And how we conduct our relationships, whether at work or at home or in the government, is what God is all about. God repaired our relationship to him so that we can be a part of repairing broken relationships in the world.

I don’t think anyone will argue that the relationships in our political system are broken. The question is, what do we, as Christians, do about it? First and foremost, we pray. We can join in the political process, calling our representatives, participating in public meetings. We can peacefully protest. And we can vote. 

Voting is a statement within the political realm that declares all people have an equal voice, all people have an opinion that matters, and all people deserve respect and dignity. It is also a statement of solidarity with one another. As our Bishop Jonathan Holston writes, “Voting is more than simply saying what we believe. It is a sharing of faith, a tangible witness of love of God and love of neighbor. Voting is a way to acknowledge that we are one community, all in this together.”

If we are all in this together, then what side is God on? Are you one of us, or one of our adversaries? Neither, says the Lord. God fought for Joshua and the Jews at Jericho, but he was never on their “side,” as they would learn generations later when they denied justice and peace and suffered his wrath. God is not on human-created sides; God is on the side of justice, righteousness, peace, and love.

So, get out and vote, not because God is on your side, but because you want to be a part of healing the relationships that God so desires in our community, nation, and world.

                                                                 

“Don’t Trust Leaders”

Psalm 146:3–5 Don’t trust leaders; don’t trust any human beings— there’s no saving help with them! 4 Their breath leaves them, then they go back to the ground. On that very same day, their plans die too. 5 The person whose help is the God of Jacob— the person whose hope rests on the Lord their God— is truly happy! 

I’ve heard that there is a battle for the soul of our nation, that our future is at stake. God takes issue with that. Read God’s word above, read it carefully. Then go read the rest of Psalm 146. And rest assured, rest your hope on our God who is faithful forever.

It is true that leaders have a great impact on our world, especially on the vulnerable people that the Psalmist names. Plans made by leaders can help or hurt, give hope or cause despair. In our country as a representative democracy, it is not just our leaders, but everyone who votes who determines our course together as a nation. Yet, the Bible is insistent, we must not put our trust, our faith, in any human beings, not our leaders, not the parties they lead, not majorities, and not ourselves, the voters. Our call as a people of faith is to steadfastly praise and trust the Lord. That means more than voting by our Christian convictions; I know faithful Christians who vote in polar opposite ways. It means that no matter how we intend to vote, our lives and actions in the world must be defined by the Lord our God, who holds our hope, our souls, and our future, who takes up the cause of the the hungry and oppressed, the prisoners and immigrants, the widows and orphans.

Concretely, that means do not post things on social media that suggest our hope and future rests on the outcome of this election. Do read your Bible more often than your newsfeed. Do not name-call. Do pray for peace, justice, and righteousness. If you are anxious about the future of our country, sign up to read to a child at Legacy. And every time a thought of fear or despair enters your mind, especially if it is based in anxiety about the election, examine it to see if its based on trusting in leaders. Then, replace it with specific praise for the Lord, specific thankfulness for something God has done in your life. For as the Psalm says, your hope, your help, and your happiness rest in the Lord.

What Do I Know?

Matthew 6:24-36

I’ve been struggling to write this article for you, because I’m not sure what to tell you. There is so much unknown right now. Did the virus come from a market or a lab? Do our bodies gain immunity if we have it or not? When will there be a vaccine? When will our lives get back to normal? Is there a “normal” any more?

So, I’m going to try to stick to what I do know. I know that we will not return to worship in person until our community has had two sustained weeks of significant decrease in reported new cases. State Epidemiologist Dr. Linda Bell told me that. I know we must continue to be vigilant, wash our hands, maintain our social distance, don’t touch our faces. The Coronavirus Task Force told me that. I know that we must never weigh the lives of vulnerable people against economic prosperity. Jesus told me that.

“You cannot serve God and wealth. Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about you body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” Jesus does not mean that we should disregard the importance of our physical lives and what we need to survive; quite the opposite in fact. Life is more than food, more than wealth, more than the stock market, more than the standard of living in this country. In the Kingdom of God, life is the most precious thing, each human life. So precious that Jesus died for every human life. True living, serving God in his kingdom and living in his righteousness, lives as Jesus lived, putting the lives of the vulnerable first, showing sacrificial love to others, and not worrying about the cost. And when we live that way, we are prepared to receive the true provision of God, the bread of life that will sustain us no matter what..

I know that we all really miss getting to be together. You all have told me that. We all want to follow Jesus; we just don’t want it to be this hard. We must endure and place the needs of our community and the vulnerable among us above our own. For when we stand in grace, “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

The Perils of Comfort

1 Samuel 3:1-18

The old priest Eli is an interesting character. His quote in 3:18 is telling; “It is the Lord; let him do what seems good to him.” That is his response to the impending death of his sons and the impoverishment of his family? What brings a man to that point? We read later that he is old and fat. Now in those days, no one was fat. He had grown fat off the offerings of the people. As a priest and judge, he led his people and taught them the ways of the Lord, but somewhere along the way he grew comfortable. Comfortable in the good life afforded a priest, too comfortable to stop his sons from taking advantage of people and their position, too comfortable even to lament God’s judgement. Too comfortable to repent. He isn’t overtly doing evil like his sons; he’s just grown too comfortable to do good. He is passive before the Lord, blandly accepting judgment as if he has no choice in the matter. 

Contrast this attitude with the parable of the unjust judge and the widow who won’t stop demanding justice from him (Luke 18:1-8). Jesus tells us that we are called to take action, never to stop praying, never to grow comfortable with injustice. Of course, that requires getting uncomfortable. It’s much easier to chalk things up to “the will of God,” when you see injustice, close your eyes, stop your ears, and keep on in your comfort. So, where could you get a little more uncomfortable in pursuit of justice?

Molesters or Sodomites? An Issue of Interpretation

“But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ* for all who believe.” - Romans 3.21-22

*or through the faith of Jesus Christ 

The verse above, from Paul’s letter to the Romans, is critical to Paul’s theology and to the argument of the letter. And yet, in this important sentence, we have an issue of translation. In the original Greek that Paul wrote, the phrase he uses at the end of verse 22, “pisteos Jesu Christou,” is a construction that can mean either “faith in Jesus Christ,” or “faith of Jesus Christ.” Although most modern translations use “faith in” in the text, they include this difference in the footnotes. This verse is incredibly significant for our understanding of salvation, the cross, and a host of other things. Does God’s righteousness come through our faith in Jesus, or through Jesus’ own faithfulness to God? The text of scripture does not tell us here; we must use other parts of scripture and other things we already believe to decide how to correctly interpret this verse.

I am highlighting this particular verse simply to make the point that scripture is not as easy, cut and dried as it first seems. A student of the Bible, seeking to grow in faith and more deeply understand the scriptures, will soon learn of all of the decisions that must be made in the interpretation of these ancient texts. This example is linguistic; there are also cultural and historical barriers to overcome, textual variants to account for, and lots and lots of symbolism.

I want to convince you of this truth not to discourage you from reading the Bible, but to encourage you to read the Bible in conversation with other Christians who have studied it. Resources such as a study Bible can bring you into conversation with scholars and pastors. In the Sunday sermon, I attempt to help you to interpret it according to the Gospel. Ultimately, Jesus is the key to interpret scripture, so the Holy Spirit inside you is also a faithful guide.

Wise interpretation is vitally important in our current discussions about human sexuality. One side will tell you that the other side doesn’t love others and preaches a Gospel of judgment. One side will tell you that the other side has left the Bible behind to follow culture. Neither of these are true. Both sides are seeking to love others; both sides are seeking to faithfully follow the Bible. What we actually have at issue is biblical interpretation. What cultural, historical, theological, and linguistic tools do we need to understand the prescriptions of the law in Leviticus 18:22? What if I told you that 1 Corinthians 6:9 has a long history of being translated “boy molesters,” not “sodomites,” and was only changed to indicate homosexuality more generally in 1946?

But I’m not trying to convince you of my point of view. I’m trying to help you have better conversations about a deeply personal and painful issue that is ripping our churches apart. Please stop saying people are hateful because they don’t agree with your interpretation of the Bible. Please stop saying people don’t follow the Bible because they don’t agree with your interpretation of it. Please study the approximately seven scriptures that are at issue in this debate. Learn the history, learn the culture, learn the language that will help us understand what they are actually talking about. And approach your brothers and sisters with grace to listen and love.

Who Sinned?

One tiny boy that Anna saw in the clinic in Haiti stuck out to me. He was maybe about 4, the same age as Jack but much smaller. His teeth were rotten; four molars and four front teeth to be extracted. If sin is the corruption of God’s good creation, then why is there this effect of sin in his mouth? In John 9, the disciples asked Jesus, “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” So, who sinned, this child or his mom? On the surface, he has cavities because he drinks too much juice. Of course, then, it’s his mother’s fault; she sinned, she’s the one who lets him drink the juice. That’s how I was raised to think about sin; it’s all about individual choices. Her sinful choice to not properly take care of her child caused his teeth to rot. 

I no longer believe that the answers are so simple. When you look beneath the surface, you realize that tooth rot was not as big of a problem in Haiti until little plastic bags of sugar water became cheap and easy. Companies, some from the US, exploit the poor by selling sugar that rots their teeth to children and parents who don’t know any better. They don’t know because they have little to no education. His mom didn’t have Health Ed in school; she doesn’t see a dentist regularly. How is she to know that drinking juice causes cavities? Now deeper. Economic inequities cause her lack of education; there is no free public school in Haiti. Corruption in government and economic sanctions over the years, including a crippling debt load that drives inflation, destroyed Haiti’s economy. Racism and fear are part of that, as well as greed and abuse of power. 

So who sinned? The UN and IMF, the US government, the juice companies, the corrupt Haitian government, the mom, or the bacteria? Rather than looking for who is to blame, like the disciples and the Pharisees, we must learn to recognize the greater forces that shape individual decisions. People are caught up in destructive systems created by a thousand little individual choices of unkindness and self-interest, “systems of sin”. The Bible refers to this as “powers and authorities.” (Eph. 6:12) Systemic sin is impossible to avoid and difficult to overcome. “We are all sinners” not simply based on our choices, but also based on systems we participate in and prop up because we don’t know, don’t care, or think we don’t have the power to break. If you are involved in the system of capitalism and international free trade, like say you order things off Amazon; if you enjoy the freedom and wealth of the US built at the expense of our neighboring countries, then you are culpable in this system of sin. We are all sinners in need of grace.

Jesus derails the blame game by pointing instead to an act of mercy, “that the works of God may be revealed in him.” Jesus heals the blind man in Jerusalem and thereby reveals God’s work in opposition to the hypocrisy of the Jewish government that values safety over justice and adherence to rules over mercy. When Anna pulled this baby’s teeth, she showed that an act of mercy is more important than following systems that value safety over mercy and that say who deserves mercy. Such an act is God’s work to oppose systemic sin in Haiti. It is only possible by God’s grace. Grace forgives us for our complicentcy in sin, grace enables us to do works of mercy, and grace empowers us to work against the systems of sin in our world. A thousand little acts of mercy, made possible by God’s grace, is our best hope for overcoming sin, for joining in as God brings the reign of God on earth, as it is in heaven.