Luke 18:18-30
David A. Davis
March 11, 2018
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I wonder if he heard it. The promise I mean. The ruler. The certain ruler who was very rich. I wonder if he heard the promise, if he heard from Jesus about God’s grace. I sort of don’t think so. I don’t think he heard it. Maybe he was gone by then. Maybe he walked away. Stormed away. Or in all the sadness, the shock, the grief that washed over him, he just couldn’t hear it. He certainly didn’t like the answer Jesus gave and I bet he never heard the promise.

According to Luke, the ruler was listening to Jesus tell a few parables. Jesus told the one about the persistent widow who kept coming to the judge for justice. “And will not God grant justice to God’s chosen ones who cry to God day and night?” Jesus said. And Jesus told the parable about the self-righteous, arrogant Pharisee and the humbled tax collector who went into the temple to pray. Jesus said, “For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” Then all these people started bringing babies to Jesus so he could touch them and the disciples sternly ordered to stop. Jesus said “no, no” and waved in the parents carrying the children. “Truly I tell you whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”

It was then that the ruler asked Jesus, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus corrected his theological grammar before he tackled the question as he pointed out no one is good but God alone. Don’t call me good. Now that’s not the first theological corrective that comes to mind here. After all, Jesus’ identity and relationship to God is rather…complicated throughout the gospels. When it comes to the “fully God” part of Jesus, well, “good” seems appropriate. The ruler’s word choice that Jesus chose not to pick up on right away was the “what must I do” part. The “do” part. Jesus could have said to the man, there is nothing you can “do” to inherit eternal life. You cannot earn it.

Jesus rattled off a few of the Ten Commandments, a few intended to represent all. “You know the commandments” Jesus told him. Of course the man knew the list. He knew them all. He knew the Ten Commandments and told Jesus with confidence that he had kept all of them since he was a kid. He’d kept them since he’d learned them. I’ve got them covered. I’m batting a thousand. I’m a A plus when it comes to the Ten. Ten for Ten. I’m 100. “It’s all good, then”, he said to Jesus. Actually, it was more than good for the ruler, for the rich ruler, for the very rich ruler. Life had treated him very well. He was very successful. He was doing just fine. That’s how he knew he was okay when it came to the Ten. That’s where his confidence came in responding to Jesus about the Ten. Because by all measure, God had blessed him. God had rewarded him for killing it with the Ten. God had blessed him because of his piety. His wealth was a sign of God’s favor. Tucked inside this account of the rich ruler’s conversation with Jesus along the way is a biblical example of what we call now “the prosperity gospel”, the “health and wealth gospel”. In his case, the prosperity law; keep the Ten and God will make you rich. So, yeah, “Teacher, I’ve kept all those since I was a kid. See?”

“When Jesus head this, he said to him ‘there is still one thing lacking. Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven: then come, follow me.’ ” When the man heard that, when he heard Jesus refer to his money, when he heard Jesus starting to mess with his stuff, when Jesus started meddling, when the “Good Teacher” talked about the poor, when the man heard Jesus mention “wealth redistribution”, when he heard Jesus tell him to sell everything and give it to the poor so that he could have treasure in heaven, the man “became sad….for he was very rich.”

Sad. What an odd expression. He was sad. The word doesn’t come up all that often in the New Testament. Sad. When Luke tells of the Risen Jesus approaching the two men along the Emmaus Road, when Jesus asked them what they had been talking about along the way, Luke writes that that “they stood still, looking sad.” But that’s a different word in Greek. They had a gloomy look on their face. The word here for the rich ruler indicates he was deeply grieved, stricken with grief, he was overcome with grief. Sad doesn’t really begin to describe it. Mark uses the same word to describe King Herod’s reaction to his daughter asking for the head of John the Baptist on a platter. The bible says “The king was deeply grieved.” Both Matthew and Mark use the word to describe how Jesus was feeling in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus told the man to get rid of all his riches and even at the thought of it, he was as distraught as if a loved one had died. He wasn’t just sad.

“Jesus looked at him and said, ‘How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.’” Others of course were listening in on the conversation. Others who must have known the rich ruler who was now doubled over in grief. Others who cut their own teeth on the “keep the Ten and you too can be rich” approach to life and wellness and success. Others who were trying to wrap their heads around the camel and the eye of the needle thing that Jesus just said. Others suddenly worried about what it might all mean for them, for their salvation, for them and God? If not him, if not this guy, then who, then what about us? “Then who can be saved?”, they said.

So this is what I don’t think he heard. I don’t think the rich ruler heard it when “Jesus replied, ‘What is impossible for mortals is possible for God.’” Abraham and Sarah heard it when the Lord told them they were to have a child even when they were old. “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” was what God said to them. Mary heard it from the Angel Gabriel. “For nothing will be impossible with God.” Only God can save and with God nothing is impossible. Drowning in his own complete heart break when it came to the things of this world, the man must not have heard the promise, the promise from Jesus, the promise about God, the promise of salvation. “What is impossible for mortals is possible for God.” He must not have heard it because that’s right when he would have said to Jesus, “So you’re telling me there’s a chance!”

Whether or not the rich ruler heard the word about grace, Peter heard it and apparently didn’t like it. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Look we have left our homes and followed you! We dropped everything! Everything! And your telling us that rich guy has a chance? Salvation could be his as well?” Peter heard about the impossible saving grace of God, a suggestion that God’s saving grace reaches beyond what even the closest followers of Jesus can imagine. And he didn’t like it. He suddenly worried about what it all meant for him, for his salvation, for him and God. And he was… sad. First Jesus disappointed the rich ruler and then he disappointed Peter.

Jesus said, Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not get back very much more in this age, and in the age to come, eternal life.” There is no one who makes a sacrifice for the kingdom of God who will not get back very much more in this life and in the life to come. There is no one who takes a risk for the kingdom of God now who will not get back very much more and then in the world to come, all the more. No one who gives of themselves for the kingdom of God will be lost in this life or in the life to come. “For nothing is impossible with God.”

Jesus, the rich ruler, and the camel going through the eye of a needle. I wonder what those fundamentalist, scripture is infallible and you better take it literally preachers do with these bible verses? They must give mulligans for this one too. The truth is, though, preachers and theologians have been working pretty much since the Apostle Peter to explain it, make it more palatable, more understandable for life and faith. There was that historical effort to argue for an actual city gate called “the eye of the needle” where a camel might actually be able to walk through. Or there is the overly spiritual approach that would offer a pat on the shoulder and something like “now, now don’t worry about your money, it’s more about whatever holds you back, whatever hinders your relationship with God. For some of us it would be that Reformed theology on steroids approach that affirms that at the end of the day that its not about your wealth at all but any part of you that falls back into that trap of thinking you can earn, or merit, or deserve God’s saving efforts. Don’t worry about the money its grace alone!

Of course, there is always the cut and paste approach. The just ignore it approach. The try to pretend “Jesus talked more about your sexuality than your money approach.” This story of Jesus disappointing both the Ruler and Peter with his comments about riches, it appears in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And in the three year lectionary cycle of assigned Lord’s Day gospel readings, it appears only once. Mark’s account. Once. Luke’s rich ruler never gets a shout out, nor Mathew’s. Just once in three years. And that’s probably a good Sunday to preach from the Epistles or the Old Testament. Jesus so disappointing that we pretend it just isn’t there.

I’m not a literalist but I’m not going to just explain it away either. Sometimes you just have to sit with the most difficult, the most challenging parts of the teaching of Jesus. You just have sit and stew with it, stew in it. I can’t just explain it away. I can’t just make it all better. Mostly, frankly, between you and me, I can’t just explain it away because I’m just trying to think of the last time I sacrificed anything, anything, for the kingdom of God, the last time I took any risk for the kingdom of God, the last time I really gave anything of myself for the kingdom of God. How about you? How about us?

© 2018 Nassau Presbyterian Church
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Luke 10:38-42
David A. Davis
March 4, 2018
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When Jesus stays for dinner in the gospel of Luke, chances are its going to get uncomfortable. You remember the Risen Christ walking with the two men along the Emmaus Road in the very last chapter of Luke. When they came near to the village the two urge Jesus to stay because it was getting late. And they still didn’t know, then, that it was Jesus. So he stays for dinner. As he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them, it was then that their eyes were opened and they recognized him. Jesus vanished but they stayed at the table talking about how their hearts had been burning within as he taught along that way. Hearts burning. Eyes opened. But in Luke, when Jesus stays for dinner, it’s not always like that.

Early on Levi the tax collector, the one whom Jesus had just called to follow him, gives a great feast for Jesus in his home. The table is full of tax collectors. The religious leaders get in the face of the disciples complaining about him eating with tax collectors and sinners. “Those who are well have no need of a physician but those who are sick. I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance,” Jesus says. And that’s when one tax collector must have turned to another and said, “Did he just call us sinners?” The Bible doesn’t say that, but right then, that moment, that dinner, it must have been… awkward.

A few chapters later Luke reports that one of the Pharisees asks Jesus to eat with him. So Jesus goes to the house and takes his place at the table. A woman in the city, one who Luke chooses to tell the reader “was a sinner,” she shows up with an alabaster jar of ointment and sits behind Jesus at his feet weeping. She bathes his feet with her tears, dries his feet with her hair, kisses his feet, and anoints his feet with ointment. Not surprisingly the Pharisee host has a concern.

After a brief give and take between Jesus and the Pharisee about debt and forgiveness, Jesus turns toward the woman but says to the Pharisee, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet but she bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven, since she has shown great love.” Ouch! That dinner was uncomfortable.

Then there’s that night when Jesus goes to the house of one of the Pharisee leaders for a sabbath meal. Right away Jesus notices how the guests all chose the places of honor to sit. Yeah, that didn’t go so well for the seat-choosey guests. “For all who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted… When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will blessed,” Jesus said.

Or the time when a Pharisee invited him to dine after he finished speaking. That meal kind of went south quickly with Jesus saying, “Woe to you Pharisees!” not once, not twice, but three times. A lawyer who is at the table says to Jesus, “Teacher, when you say these things, you insult us too. And Jesus said, ‘Well, woe to you lawyers too!’” Luke writes that when Jesus left that dinner, “the scribes and the Pharisees began to be very hostile toward him and to cross examine him about many things, lying in wait for him, to catch him in something he might say.”

Every time Jesus stays for dinner, according to Luke, every time except for Emmaus, every time Jesus stays for dinner, he stirs the pot. That includes the Last Supper, which from Judas’ perspective had its own share of moments. So you and I shouldn’t be surprised when a bit of discomfort stirs within as you read about Jesus staying for dinner at Martha’s house. Apparently, he is not the easiest of table guests.

Beyond Jesus’ dinner tour in Luke, if you stop and think about, when you invite Jesus over, when you invite Jesus in, when the gospel of Jesus Christ draws near in your life, there is bound to be times when he makes you uncomfortable. There ought to be times when his teaching makes you uneasy. There better be times when you hear the gospel teaching of Jesus and compare it to your life, times when awkward doesn’t even begin to describe it.

As Otis Moss III has said more than once in his preaching, “People want their pastors to preach Jesus, they just don’t want them to preach what Jesus preaches.” If some part of the gospel doesn’t convict you, cause discomfort, frustrate you, mystify you, humble you, you ought to have Jesus over more often.

Martha welcomes Jesus to her home and goes about the tasks of hospitality and preparation that would, of course, be expected by all, including Jesus. Mary chooses to rather boldly take a place at the feet of Jesus and to listen to every word. Mary takes an uncommon place. Mary takes her place. Martha is distracted. She’s too busy to listen. She worries about getting everything right.

Here’s where maybe Martha could have thought of a different approach. Here’s were Martha, if she could have it all back, she might have handled it differently. She asks Jesus to intervene, to tell Mary to help her in the kitchen, to tell her to get back to her “right place.” Martha asks Jesus to put Mary in her place. Jesus answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried about and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

When Jesus stays for dinner, and says your name twice, what comes next is probably going to be hard to hear. You know Jesus had more to say. Luke just doesn’t tell us. Darn it, Luke. No takeaway. No one-verse definition of the one thing, the better part. No memorable parting shot like Jesus usually offers to the Pharisees at the end of dinner. This dinner just ends with the one thing. Jesus, Mary, and the better part. That’s it.

It’s good to know they all got together again; Martha, Mary, and Jesus. There were more dinner parties. The Gospel of John tells of Jesus coming back to their house after Lazarus died. Then John tells of another meal a few days later with Lazarus now out of the tomb. Martha served dinner for Jesus too. But no word of judgment. No questioning of Mary. Probably less banging of pots. So there were more conversations, times together, more dinners. I wonder if Mary ever cooked? So Martha could find that place. Her place. The one thing. The better part.

Trying to find the one thing. It’s not just about polishing one’s spiritual disciplines or stepping up when it comes to devotions, or trying to be more religious (heaven forbid). It’s less, much less about perfect attendance here and much more about how easily we are distracted out there. Distracted until you eventually care less, or you don’t care at all. You take Christ’s love for you for granted. Forget about God’s promise of you. And scoff at that kingdom vision of a more excellent way.

Is there a greater threat to faith and practice and community and witness than people who just don’t care? A greater threat than when God’s people move from distraction to nothingness? Those called by God who come to the point where they just couldn’t be bothered anymore? That’s the antithesis of the one thing, the opposite of the better part. The opposite of Mary’s one thing is not Martha’s distraction. It’s not getting lost in the tasks of hospitality. The opposite of the better part is becoming one with a world that is oblivious to the presence of God and the way of Jesus. A world whose powers and principalities work against the kingdom way, a kingdom life.

One thing. To walk along this discipleship way, this way with Jesus that takes us from the Galilee of teaching to the Jerusalem of cross and resurrection, to travel this journey with Christ Jesus, the journey that is our lives, and to find somewhere along that way to sit at his feet and listen, to find somewhere along the way when you can take your place. One thing.

To yearn to hear a Word, the Word, the Living Word that tells you again and again of God’s love for you, and God’s vision for the kingdom, and God’s promise to be with you, through it all. One thing. To attend to the transforming presence of God in every corner of your life, and to attend to it with urgency. One thing. To be caught in the swirl of the world’s chaos, knowing yourself to be a bit out of control to, a sense that the ground under your own feet is shaking, and yet finding a way to turn to, fall before, sit at the feet of the Rock of our Salvation. One thing.

A figure–ground relationship where God is at the center. One thing. To smash the idol of compartmentalization, as if your faith can be kept safely here, here in the pew to be picked up each week and then left behind for the next time. One thing. Tending to the presence of God in your life, at work, in your home, in your relationships, in your finances, in your politics, in your recreation, in how you give back.

One thing. To understand somewhere deep within that you can never sustain the pace of life, the mountain of responsibilities, the ever-mounting worries without returning to, finding that place again and again.

When you hear the story of Martha and Mary again, a story of Jesus staying for dinner, it’s uncomfortable, a bit awkward, and raises more questions than answers. That’s okay. It’s not surprising. It’s kind of expected when Jesus comes for dinner. But the take away, the prayer, it’s not that hard at all. “Jesus help me find my place at your feet. Oh, Lord Jesus, put me in my place. The place you have for me.”

© 2018 Nassau Presbyterian Church
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Luke 8:43-48
David A. Davis
February 25, 2018
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We are spending these Sundays in Lent together in the Gospel of Luke. We are looking at some conversations Jesus had along the Way. This morning’s conversation is actually a conversation within another conversation. In the eighth chapter of Luke, it is a story framed by another story. One healing tucked inside Luke’s telling of another healing. Though the healing story appears in all three synoptic gospels and is surrounded in each gospel by the other healing, it is, nonetheless, a unique literary form, technique. A rather striking literary device: a healing within a healing.

Our text from Luke’s gospel this morning tells of the healing of the woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. The healing that brackets these few verses you are about to hear is the raising of the daughter of Jairus. Jesus had just returned from the other side of the Sea of Galilee where he had healed the Gerasene demoniac and sent the poor heard of the pigs over the cliff into the water. Upon his return there is a crowd waiting for him. A synagogue leader named Jairus comes to Jesus, falls at his feet, and begs for Jesus to come to his house and heal his twelve-year-old daughter.

Along the way, and after Jesus stops for the other healing, news comes that that the girl has died. When Jesus hears it, he tells Jairus and probably anyone listening, “Do not fear. Only believe, and she will be saved.” They get to the house now filled with grief and Jesus announced that the girl is only sleeping. Through all their tears the family members and friends laugh at Jesus because they knew she had died. Jesus takes her hand, calls for her to get up, and Luke writes, “Her spirit returned, and she got up at once. Then Jesus directed them to give the girl something to eat.”

Our reading for this morning begins in the second part of the 42nd verse of Luke, chapter eight. It begins just as Jesus was on the way to the home of Jairus.

[Luke 8:42b-49]

Jesus noticed her. Jesus noticed when no one else did. She had been sick as long as that little girl had been alive. Twelve years. She had spent everything she had on trying to get well. That’s all detail that the reader is given. That’s it. Sick for twelve years and nothing left to live on. No reference to family, whether she ever had children before the bleeding that wouldn’t stop, whether she was married. No age. And of course, no name. Just another face in the crowd.

Just a few chapters earlier, Luke mentions the crowds, how they were coming from all over, even Jerusalem. “They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.” (6:18-20) Crowds. Healing. Power coming out from him. Luke doesn’t say anything there about Jesus noticing any of them, Jesus noticing anyone. Just her. And she’s just one of the crowd.

When Matthew and Mark tell her story they want to make clear it’s about her faith. Both record that the woman said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.” Not so much in Luke. She was sick. She had nothing. She had nothing because she had already been to every doctor she could find. Jesus wasn’t her first try. She had tried everything. Luke is rather mum on any presumption of faith on her part. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t pray anything. She didn’t tell herself anything in Luke. She just came up behind him and touched the fringe of his clothes. And Jesus noticed.

Theories abound about any meaning that might come with this unique literary structure of an embedded healing. On the face of it, Jesus stopping to heal the woman and the resulting delay sets up the much more described, more detailed, and therefore seemingly more important raising of Jairus’ daughter. Perhaps it is a kind of stacking of meaning for emphasis. Both instances involve healings of those who are ritually unclean. It’s Jesus crossing a boundary times two. Jesus healing a female times two. Jesus healing someone who was sick for twelve years, healing someone who had been alive for twelve years. Biblical number twelve. Twelve. Two healings intended to signal all healings.

But with her healing stuck inside the telling of the healing of the daughter of the synagogue leader whose name is Jairus, it is sort of like the gospel writers don’t really want the reader to notice her either. Or when you do notice, it is as if she is an interruption, a distraction, an intrusion, a bother, a nuisance. She interrupts Jesus along the way when he certainly just could have kept going. Peter just tried to move him along, “Master, the crowds surround you and press in on you.” Let’s just move on. The crowds. All the people. It could have been anybody, anybody who is a nobody. Touching. Pressing. Surrounding. But still, Jesus noticed.

As Luke writes it, Jesus noticed the power had gone out from him. “Someone touched me; for I noticed that power had gone out from me.” That sounds like such Bible-speak. Such a “gospely,” first-century kind of expression. It makes Jesus sound like some sort of superhero who knew his secret power button had been switched on. Like his x-ray vision had been invoked, his super-duper strength had been called upon, some kind of healing magic balm suddenly leaked from the fringe of his garment.

He knew that power had gone out from him. Mark puts it this way: “Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in then crowd and said, ‘Who touched my clothes?’ ” But Matthew, for Matthew, Jesus just turns and sees her. Matthew refers all through his gospel to Jesus’ deeds of power. But when it came to her touch, all he did was turn and see her. Nothing like, “I noticed the power had gone out from me.”

It is fascinating in Luke to read that before Jesus notices her, he notices himself. He became aware, self-aware of some kind of emanation, something coming from him. So that, before it was about her, for Luke, it was about him. To put it more plainly, he didn’t notice her, he noticed himself.

You see the irony? That this Jesus of the gospels, this Jesus who taught so much about caring for the other, and putting others first, and being a servant of all,  this Jesus who was ultimately to deny himself and give his life for others, this Jesus, who “though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave…” (Philippians 2) — that this Jesus would notice himself and not her, notice himself first before her?

No, that makes no sense. No theological sense. No “this is the Christ of the gospels” sense. How about Matthew? Matthew with the unadorned language and little worry about the power. Jesus turned and saw her. That was it.

It’s more than being theologically, Christologically inconsistent, that Jesus would notice something about himself first, notice himself first before noticing her. It’s how you know that the gospel writers and the scribes that came after were men. Because they wanted to make sure their reader noticed him, not her. And they wanted to so minimize her agency in the encounter and so maximize his.

They want to skip over her and get to him. They portray him as being stopped by a nameless woman in need who has nothing and is little more than a face in the crowd, him being interrupted by someone who dares to reach out in a culture that has already made her disappear, and yet thinking of himself first, his own power first. Well, that’s sort of a guy thing. Thinking of yourself first, your own power first, apparently that’s a guy thing that never stops.

The Jesus of the gospels that we have come to know was indeed tempted in every way as we are, but was without sin. So yes, I go with Matthew on this one. Matthew’s minimal, non-editorialized description. Jesus turned and saw her. He noticed her. Jesus noticed her when no one else did. There was something about her. About her.

When Jesus noticed her, she came out trembling, and fell before him. According to Luke she “declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him, and how she had been immediately healed.” She didn’t just say it, she declared it. She announced it. She proclaimed it. This wasn’t just the woman now telling her story. This was more like a testimony. Her testimony. She declared in the presence of all the people.

I, for one, have always thought of and preached about the women at the tomb as being the first proclaimers of the message about Jesus. How they went and told the disciples that “Christ has Risen!” We long ago figured out what such a broad swath of Christian tradition today has yet to figure out that the first preachers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ were women.

But before there was Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, before those three that first Easter morning, there was her. She wasn’t just telling her story, she was preaching. She declared. In the presence of all people. She declared all that Christ had done. “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace,” Jesus said.

And to think how easy she was to miss. How unbelievably easy she was to ignore. How pretty much everything in her world and in the world of the Bible was set so as not to pay attention. How everyone else was not going to, was never going to, would never have noticed her. But not him. He noticed. Jesus noticed. Jesus noticed her. Because she wanted to be well. Because of her suffering. Because she had nothing. Because she had no one. Because she was invisible. Because no one would listen. Because she was so vulnerable. Because she was sick. Because she was in need. Because she needed help. Because she was bold. Because of her courage. Because of her persistence. Because she was there. Because of her reach. Because of her touch. Because of her.

The invisible. The suffering. The sick. The ones who have so little or even less. Those who have no one. The ignored. Those no one wants to listen to. Those everyone wishes were not around. Those who others wish would just stay quiet. Those who just feel like an interruption, an intrusion, a problem that won’t go away. Those left behind by this system or that. Those whom everyone just passes by. Those nameless who don’t even qualify as a face in crowd. You have to notice. Because he noticed. When you walk along this way with Jesus, you have to notice and then work for, pray for, speak for, advocate for, long for a kingdom where all are served and made whole.

That was going be the end of the sermon, right there. That you have to notice because he noticed. But actually, here’s a better ending. If you were listening closely, you will agree with me, I think. To a better last thought.

When you walk along this way with Jesus, you have to notice and then work for, pray for, speak for, advocate for, long for a kingdom where all are served and made whole.

You have to notice because of her.

© 2018 Nassau Presbyterian Church
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Luke 7:1-10
David A. Davis
February 18, 2018
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It is difficult to imagine Jesus being amazed by much anymore. This week the Jesus that fills my heart and nurtures my soul, that Jesus can’t have much to marvel at. Amazed, marveled, astonished. Those aren’t the adjectives that resonate when pondering the Risen Jesus, Son of God, Savior, Messiah, when pondering Christ cradling the world in his arms these days. The Christ who slings our humanity over his shoulder like the shepherd who left the other ninety nine and went out and found that one lost sheep. Amazed. Filled with wonder. Breathlessly in awe. No. Not now. Not this week.

Heartbroken seems more like it. 17 more. 17 more killed at school. Kids just like our kids. Alyssa. Martin. Nicholas. Jamie. Luke. Cara. Gina. Joaquin. Alaina. Meadow. Helena. Alex. Peter. Carmen. Different backgrounds. Different ethnicities. Different faiths. And then the teachers, coaches, administrators just like ours. Chris. Aaron. Scott. Wrestling. Football. Cross Country. I watched a gut-wrenching video clip of the first vigil that was held with tears in my eyes. That father whose daughter was killed, half shouting, have crying, mostly pleading, “I am broken”, he said. He is every father, every mother. Jesus must be heartbroken, just like him, just like them.

Heartbroken…and irate, and angry, and completely fed up. So much more angry than when he tossed the tables on the money changers in the temple. So much more disgusted than Moses must have been when he saw that golden calf and smashed the law tablets there at the foot of Mt. Sinai. The utterly sinful worship and idolatry of the Second Amendment. A lust for violence that infects everything in the culture from film, to video gaming, to sport, to social media. The unbelievably magnified selfishness that fuels the all about me paranoia that someone is coming to take all my guns away. Jesus must be angry. When leaders of a nation clearly going the wrong way on the crisis of gun violence continually offer a call to prayer rather than acting themselves and then act deaf to a people’s plea for help as if their hearts must be harder than Pharoah’s, whose vindictiveness leaves hundreds of thousands of our own young people who have lived in this country pretty much they’re whole lives now living in fear and hopelessness, whose professional life and election depends on money given always for self interest rather than the common good. A system so broken. Jesus has to be something other than amazed by it all, by all the brokenness. The absolute brokenness of humankind.

Truth is, Jesus is not amazed all that often in the four gospels. There is this occasion from Luke that I read to you. One other time in Mark. When Jesus went to his hometown of Nazareth and the whole town took offense at him and Jesus said “Prophets are not without honor except in their home towns, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” Mark records that Jesus was amazed at their unbelief. If I did all my homework, that’s the only other time Jesus is amazed in the gospels.

The gospel writers often write of Jesus’ reaction, his thought, his emotion. Matthew tells of Jesus being moved by compassion when he saw all the crowds and the disease and the sickness. He had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless. John writes of Jesus being greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved as he saw Mary and Martha weeping at the death of their brother Lazarus. When the man with the withered hand came to Jesus on the sabbath in the synagogue, Mark describes Jesus as being angry with the Pharisees because they were trying to trip him up on sabbath law and Jesus was grieved at their hardness of heart toward that man in need of healing. Plenty of adjectives, emotions, reactions attributed to Jesus, just not much amazement.

This morning in Luke, Jesus finished offering that long stretch of teaching and proclamation called “the Sermon on the Plain”. Jesus then heads into Capernaum. There in Capernaum, a centurion (a Roman, gentile soldier with a rank that had him in charge of others) had a servant who as very ill and close to death. He had heard about Jesus and he knew some well-connected leaders in the Jewish synagogue. He had quite a network. So the centurion asks them to ask Jesus if Jesus would come to the house and heal the slave. The Jewish elders go to Jesus, and in a kind of unexpected way, they vouch for the centurion, for his character, for his love for the people, for all that he has done for the Jewish community in town. Jesus starts to follow them on the way to the centurion’s house. For whatever reason, maybe he was embarrassed to even ask, or he didn’t want to put Jesus out, he didn’t want put Jesus in an awkward spot religiously, or he hadn’t cleaned up his house, the centurion has some hesitation about the actual visit and he sends some other friends to interrupt that journey toward his house and to tell Jesus that he didn’t have to go the trouble to coming all the way over. Because this Gentile knew he certainly wasn’t worthy of the visit. As a military guy, he understood authority and how it works, and he knew that all Jesus had to do is say the word, and it would happen, it would be done. It was a chain of command kind of thing. When Jesus hears that, hears the message about what the centurion was thinking, hears what the centurion wants him to know, hears what the centurion believes could happen, hears that all he wants is for the servant to be healed, Luke tells us that Jesus was amazed. He was amazed at that man.

That’s all it took. That’s all it took for Jesus to be amazed. No loud shout out like one of those from the demons who recognized Jesus. No strong affirmation of faith from the Gentile soldier “Jesus Son of David, have mercy on me, a sinner”, just a few words about command and authority. No extra effort of cutting a whole in the roof or reaching out for a garment, just a humble “no, you really don’t have to come all this way” second thought. Not much at all from the Centurion. And Jesus was amazed. The servant was healed.

When it comes to the four gospels, Jesus wasn’t amazed all that often and as it turns out, when he was amazed, it didn’t take all that much. Just the Centurion’s slight inkling, kind of half-baked notion, something other than a full formed expectation that somehow this Jesus could make that servant whole. Jesus could heal. Jesus could heal what was broken. Jesus would care for what is broken. Jesus was amazed that a far from religious, foreign, powerful, man with authority could show some sign, some intuition, some nudging inside, some belief still not put into words that Jesus and brokenness go together.

That conversation with the Centurion along the Way, it is the gospel attestation, the good news of the gospel, that this Christ send from God above, this Son of God and human brokenness, they were meant for each other. It’s not a coincidence that Jesus was astonished at the selfless, compassionate, empathetic longing for wholeness for the broken, dying, nameless, other. Hearing about the heart of the Centurion, that’s sort of, kind of like Jesus looking in the mirror. Jesus was amazed.

God, Jesus, and the brokenness of humankind. God sending Jesus smack into it all. It’s what John Calvin refers to as God’s accommodation. God in Jesus Christ coming all the way down to our humanity, all the way down to the sinful brokenness of it all. For Calvin, that’s why God through the command and promise of Christ, instituted the sacrament of communion and baptism. Because our faith itself is part of that brokenness. As Calvin writes “Our faith is slight and feeble unless it be propped up on all sides and sustained by every means, it trembles, wavers, totters and at last gives way.” So God, by God’s mercy, and in God’s infinite kindness, so comes down to us, so tempers Godself to our brokenness, that God provides this means of grace, this taste of God’s promise, this elixir of Christ’s presence. To lift us and heal us and fill us, when all is so broken.

Calvin defines a sacrament as an outward sign by which God seals in us the promise of God’s good will toward us in order to sustain the weakness of our faith. And, for Calvin, it is the chance for us, in turn, to attest to our faith. That partaking in this meal is actually an act of faith. And opportunity to attest to our faith before God, before the Savior who invites us to this Table, and indeed before the world. To attest and lift our feeble, not yet fully formed faith, our wordless, meager inkling, half-baked notion of faith, to lift our hearts before God in our eating and in our drinking. If only to show that intuition, that nudging, the longing deep within us that Jesus cares for what is broken in our lives, in our world, in our humanity. That Jesus and all this brokenness were meant for one another. That he was meant to heal all this.

Years ago after I first came to Nassau I remember a conversation with a member who wanted to express concern about communion and how we were going about it. It was actually a concern about how I was leading and inviting and directing. To be fair, it was a lovely, warm, non-critical, non-judgmental conversation. As I had always done when celebrating communion in my first congregation, I invited the congregation to hold the elements so that we might all partake together. The Nassau member wanted to point out to me that the prayer time after taking, eating, and drinking was a significant part of communion and when we partake together we sort of move on too quickly. Point well taken. In a light hearted, pastoral way, I sort of joked that you could offer the prayer before eating and drinking. “Oh, it’s not the same!” was the gentle response that came with a wave of the hand.

After this week and all the suffering and the heartbreak and anger, after the Centurion and his far from fully developed acclamation, or acknowledgment, or testimony, or prayer…after Jesus and his amazement at the slightest yearning for him to make us whole, don’t you think that eating and drinking itself is the prayer? That when nothing else comes, nothing else can be said, our eating and drinking itself is a sign of our belief, our feeble, trembling belief, that Christ comes all the way down. That Christ was made, was sent, for our brokenness.

It’s difficult to imagine Jesus being amazed by much anymore. So would you please, please, please, take and eat and drink… until he comes again.

© 2018 Nassau Presbyterian Church
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Mark 9:2-9
Hminga Pachuau
February 11, 2018

Audio only available.

© 2018 Nassau Presbyterian Church
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Mark 1:21-28
Lauren J. McFeaters
January 28, 2018

© 2018 Nassau Presbyterian Church
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Psalm 62 and Matthew 7:24-29
Mark Edwards
January 21

Let’s talk epistemology for a little while. Epistemology is, as many of you know, that branch of philosophy that wonders about how we know the things we know. It is especially concerned with the goal of clarifying how what-we-think-we-know can be shown to be accurate, true, and trustworthy.

For instance, the famous philosopher Rene Descartes writes Rules for the Direction of the Mind in 1628.

Rule 1: The aim of our studies should be to direct the mind with a view to forming true and sound judgements about whatever comes before it.^[1]

“True and sound judgements.” Certainly this is a wise and prudential activity. And for those in our community who are about to go through driver’s education, we especially commend this one. May you learn to form “true and sound judgements about whatever comes before…” you and your bumper.

Rule 2: We should attend only to those objects which our minds seem capable of having certain and indubitable cognition.^[2]

“Certain and indubitable cognition.” Now that is a bit higher of a bar. We should only aim for that kind of knowledge? Yes. In his comment on this, Descartes notes, “it is better never to study at all than to occupy ourselves with objects which are so difficult that we are unable to distinguish what is true from what is false.”^[3] Following this line of reasoning, Descartes concludes, “we ought to concern ourselves only with objects which admit of as much certainty as the demonstrations of arithmetic and geometry.”^[4]

Rule 3: We ought to investigate what we can clearly and evidently intuit or deduce with certainty, and not what other people have thought or what we ourselves conjecture.^[5]

Now we are getting into the real meat of modern philosophy and Enlightenment thinking: break out from the bonds of oppressive thought structures that have been foisted upon you; be skeptical of what others are telling you; seek certainty for yourself. In the words of Immanual Kant’s famous essay, “What is Enlightenment?”, “Sapere aude! (Think for yourself!)”

“Have the courage to use your own intelligence!” is therefore the motto of the Enlightenment.”^[6]  In bold style, Kant charges that “because of laziness and cowardice… it is so comfortable to be a minor! […] Minority is the incapacity to use one’s intelligence without the guidance of another. […] If I have a book which provides meaning for me, a pastor who has a conscience for me, a doctor who will judge my diet for me, then… I do not have any need to think.” Sapere aude! Think for yourself! Have the courage to use your own intelligence!

Three rules for thinking: Seek true and sound judgements, go for total, indubitable certainty, and don’t trust others. What Descartes initiated, and what Kant promulgated, is now the base assumptions of a town like this, in a day like this. Most of us probably think this way, and most of us probably teach others to think this way too.

And yet, sometimes the world is not always so simple and tidy. Sometimes, no matter how much we want it or seek to grasp it, doubt overpowers certainty. Sometimes we must trust others to give us what we can’t secure for ourselves. Sometimes we encounter people, experiences, emotions, questions of faith, that are, well, just a bit more complex, strange, and curious than “arithmetic and geometry.”

Take my friend Martha Beck and the life-flipping experience she has of carrying a child with Down’s syndrome. In Expecting Adam, she documents a life being inverted. The book opens:

John and I disagree about the precise moment we lost control of our lives. He thinks it was the car accident in New Hampshire. I say it was two weeks before that, when Adam was conceived. Either way, it was sometime in September of 1987, which ever since has been known in our family history as the month ‘It All Went to Hell.’^[7]

Beck’s book is a wonderful tale of how a life built around Descartes’ rules of rationality and control gets inverted by an unknown God and a very special child.

Let’s talk epistemology and faith for a little while. Martha continues:

By the time I left for Harvard [as a high school graduate], I was an atheist. I had come to agree with Albert Camus that the only significant decision left in a godless universe was whether or not to commit suicide. The decision was pretty close to a toss-up for me. It had weighed so heavily on my mind that I took the next year off from Harvard and read a lot of Western philosophy, from the pre-Socratics to the postmodernists. Then I read the basic texts of several world religions and finished off with a layperson’s tour of theoretical physics. I was looking, in case you haven’t guessed, for the Meaning of Life. I couldn’t find it.

I did come out of that year with a new life philosophy, a kind of skeptical relativism […] I respected my family and friends’ religious beliefs, in a detached, social-sciency sort of way, while secretly believing that faith in God was not only the opiate of the masses but the refuge of people too craven to accept the fact of their own mortality. In short, I belonged to the same religion as everyone else I knew at Harvard.

…just then Adam landed a solid kick to my kidneys, and I was struck all over again by amazement at what was happening to me.

Over the course of two or three days, I gradually revised my own conception of reality. I did not come to any firm conclusions… Until that point, I had followed good old Baconian logic of refusing to believe anything until it was proven true. Now I decided that I was willing to believe anything, absolutely anything I heard, saw, or felt, until it was proven false. If this doesn’t sound like a major life transition to you, it’s because you’ve never done it. With this single decision, I expanded my reality from a string of solid facts, as narrow, strong, and cold as a razor’s edge, to a wild chaos of possibility.^[8]

A wild chaos of possibility? Sounds like the Biblical God might be involved.

The problem with trying to live according to a world that fully fits within our understanding, and which plays according to our rules, is that we will always be shaken.

The world, our families, life, The New York Times will always confront us with things we cannot control, situations we do not understand, and emotions that overwhelm. If we lean on our understanding, how long before we are simply knocked over?

As we read in Psalm 62:

How long will you assail a person, will you batter your victim, all of you,
as you would a leaning wall, a tottering fence?

Can I withstand the assaults the world will throw at me? If I try, will I ever be shaken? How long might I fend off the fears, anxieties, depressions, and angers that assail and consume so many?

Can you withstand all the assaults the world will throw at you? If you try, will you ever be shaken? How long might you fend off the fears, anxieties, depressions, and angers that assail and consume so many?

I will admit that it doesn’t take a whole lot to shake me up. Some bad news in a single email often does it.

I will admit that it doesn’t take a whole lot to make me anxious. Sometimes 26 characters about “My nuclear button is bigger and more deadly than your nuclear button” tend to do it.

I will admit that it is not infrequent that the news is just so sad and depressing: news about what’s happening in Myanmar with the Rohingya, a cross sampling of America’s cultural woes and challenges as found in the headlines of NJ.com, or just recalling our friend David Bryant, who is going in for his 43rd year of prison for a crime that it looks like he did not commit. These can be so depressing.

As we read in Psalm 62:

For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation.
[God] alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall never be shaken.

How could we ever really say that?

Perhaps through experiences like Ann Lamott’s. Maybe you know her book, Traveling Mercies, a wonderful tale.

I thought about my life and my brilliant hilarious progressive friends. I thought about what everyone would think of me if I became a Christian, and it seemed an utterly impossible thing that simply could not be allowed to happen. I turned to the wall and said out loud, “I would rather die.”

…This experience spooked me badly, but I thought it was just an apparition, born of fear and self-loathing and booze and loss of blood. But then everywhere I went, I had the feeling that a little cat was following me, wanting me to reach down and pick it up, wanting me to open the door and let it in. But I knew what would happen: you let a cat in one time, give it a little milk, and then it stays forever. So I tried to keep one step ahead of it, slamming my houseboat door when I entered or left.

And one week later when I went back to church, I was so hungover that I couldn’t stand up for the songs, and this time I stayed for the sermon, which I just thought was so ridiculous, like someone trying to convince me of the existence of extraterrestrials, but the last song was so deep and raw and pure that I could not escape. It was as if the people were singing in between the notes, weeping and joyful at the same time, and I felt like their voices or something was rocking me in its bosom, holding me like a scared kid, and I opened up to that feeling and it washed over me.

I began to cry and left before the benediction, and I raced home and felt the little cat running along at my heels, and I walked down the dock past dozens of potted flowers, under a sky as blue as one of God’s own dreams, and I opened the door to my houseboat, and I stood there a minute, and then I hung my head and said, […] “I quit.” I took a long deep breath and said out loud, “All right. You can come in.”

So this was my beautiful moment of conversion.^[9]

Will we open the doors of our hearts and minds to the peace that passes all understanding? Will we find certainty, safety, a wild chaos of loving possibility in Christ? Or will we try to prop ourselves up and keep our walls from falling over?

Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise person who built a house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. [Matthew 7:24-25]

As we read in Psalm 62:

For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation.
[God] alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall never be shaken.

Who is this God? Who is that “he”?

Now this sermon was entitled “Rock Climbing” and since I’m preaching, I’d better say something about it. I used to do a lot of rock climbing. Big mountains, airy walls, splitter cracks, tiny crimpers. It’s bit hard to talk about why I love(d) climbing so much, I’m not sure I fully understand it myself.

But here’s one reason:  you could be absolutely up there, nothing but beauty, air, death, and fear all around you. And yet, you could be gripped, jammed, crimped, or frictioned onto some absolutely solid rock and not have a fear or care in the world. That total paradox — of being in such a wild, dangerous, and threatening place, and yet being so calm, confident, and content because the rock you were on was so obviously solid and strong and reassuring — was, well, a bit addictive. You just always wanted more. Don’t you wish you could go through life that way?

As we read in Psalm 62:

For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation.
[God] alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall never be shaken.
Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us.

If you are looking to never be shaken, if you want a fortress, if you think this place needs salvation, if you just wish your soul would wait in silence, if you just wish you had something totally solid and indubitable and certain to cling to, then you need a rock.

Let’s put epistemology and faith and verification together for a moment: David Bryant. Forty-three years and counting in jail for a crime that by all reason, rationality, evidence, and logic he did not commit. And yet he writes:

I am fine, my heart is holding up under all of this Difficulties, But God has seen a Way, And all is Good, so He say’s, Wait Patiently!, And So we Do… I have Faith and Belief.. With No Questions, what more needs to be said. Just the Fact!^[10]

Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise [David Bryant] who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock… Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded. [Matthew 7:24-25, 28]

For God alone my soul waits in silence; from Christ comes my salvation.
Jesus alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall never be shaken. [Psalm 62]

I invite you all to “climb on.”

^[1] Rene Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes: Volume 1. Trans. by Cottingham, Stoothoff, & Murdoch. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 9.

^[2] Descartes, 10.

^[3] Descartes, 10.

^[4] Descartes, 12-13.

^[5] Descartes, 13.

^[6] Immanual Kant, What is Enlightenment? in Basic Writings of Kant. Ed. by Allen Wood. (New York: The Modern Library), p.135

^[7] Martha Beck, Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic. (New York: Berkeley Books, 1999), 9.

^[8] Martha Beck, 169-170.

^[9] Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith. (New York: Anchor Books, 1999), 50.

^[10] David Bryant, personal letter of Monday, March 13, 2017. See: http://centurion.org/cases/bryant-david/

© 2018 Nassau Presbyterian Church
Contact the church to obtain reprint permission.