Sermon delivered Sunday, Jan. 8, 2017 (The First Sunday After the Epiphany: The Baptism of Our Lord), at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA.
Sermon Text(s): Matthew 3:13-17
“This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
Fast-forward about 30 years from where we last left Jesus, fleeing with his parents from Herod into the desert and returning to grow up in Nazareth. This week, in an instant, Jesus is all grown up.
We begin the season after the Epiphany, the season after Christmas, with the story of Jesus’s baptism because it marked the beginning of his public ministry as a teacher and prophet. And while we might feel like we’ve gotten a little chronological whiplash from jumping so far forward in the story so quickly, we actually know very little about Jesus’s life between the time of his birth and the day of his baptism. The Gospel writers didn’t include many details about that in-between time, perhaps because from their perspective, this moment, the moment of Jesus’s baptism, is when all the really important stuff started happening. This is when he started publicly reminding Israel of God’s call to them. This is when he began to open himself to be used completely by God to the point of losing his earthly life. This is when the heavens opened a second time, as they did at his birth, and proclaimed him as the one chosen and anointed by God.
Many people in mainline churches today tend to think that baptism is primarily about washing away sin. That understanding is a product of the emphasis the church placed on original sin beginning in the 5th century. The doctrine of original sin stated that all human beings are inheritors of the original sin of Adam and Eve, and we are therefore born in a state of sinfulness, even before we have a chance to actually do anything that might be categorized as sinful. That belief combined with the high infant mortality rate at that time meant that baptizing babies was seen as a matter of life and death. If a child were to die without having been baptized, they believed that child would be condemned to hell based on that original sin with which they were born. But in the first few centuries after Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, baptism wasn’t primarily about saving babies from hell. It was about a conversion of life, a commitment, a choice to follow God’s will.
When John the Baptist began baptizing people in the River Jordan, he called them to come and be baptized “for the forgiveness of sins,” so certainly forgiveness of sin is an important part of baptism. But neither John the Baptist nor the disciples of Jesus who later baptized people in Jesus’s name understood sin as a “thing,” a physical stain that could literally be washed off like a coating of dirt. Sin was a state of being, a way of life. It was about your actions, and forgiveness required repentance and amendment of life. John scoffs at some who come to him seeking baptism as a kind of quick fix, like a “get out of jail free” card. He tells them that it is not enough to go through the motions of a ritual; to truly connect with God, to participate in the life he is offering them, they must “bear fruits worthy of repentance.” Their lives must bear witness to their faith in their actions. Besides, if baptism was ONLY about washing away original sin, why did Jesus, whom the church teaches was “without sin,” come to be baptized?
When Jesus is baptized, he’s orienting the human part of himself completely toward God. He’s affirming all the things that have been said about him since his birth. He’s saying “yes” to God’s call. The baptism Jesus underwent wasn’t a kind of Clorox for the soul, a heavenly stain-remover. It was an expression of commitment, of pledging his life to God, of accepting God’s will for his life.
And ideally, we do this when we are baptized as well. When our Book of Common Prayer was revised in 1979, the theologians who worked on that project intentionally moved us away from the theology of baptism as washing away original sin and back to the much earlier theology of baptism as a sacrament of commitment, a sacrament of conversion. This is why the liturgy itself, the order of the service, sets out adult baptism as the “liturgical norm” for the rite – adult candidates are presented for baptism first, and the entire service is framed as one of commitment, one in which those being baptized take vows to act in a certain way, to live out the faith into which they are baptized in deed as well as in word.
Infant baptism is still the “statistical norm” in the Episcopal Church – meaning that there are more people baptized as infants than as adults in the Episcopal Church – but we do not require that infants be baptized, and the theology of our prayer book emphasizes that baptism is a sacrament of conversion, of commitment, of a public declaration of faith. This is why if we do baptize babies or younger children, we require and take very seriously the vows on the part of the parents and godparents: those people must be wholly committed to the faith themselves and raise the child to know Jesus, so that one day that child might come to affirm the faith that was chosen for them as an infant.
When we are baptized, we say “yes” to God’s call on our lives. We pledge to follow Jesus, to live the way he taught us to live. At Jesus’s baptism, he heard words from heaven that said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with him I am well pleased.” At our baptism, we hear words from the priest that say to us: “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.”
We don’t hear the words “This is my Son or Daughter, the Beloved,” because we are not THE Son in the way Jesus was the Son, but at baptism we become part of the Son. While some of our theology says baptism is the means through which we become “children of God,” I see all people, regardless of whether they are baptized or not, or even whether they are Christians or not, as “children of God.” When someone is baptized in a Christian church, they don’t just become a “child of God,” they become part of Christ, joined to his very life, death, and Resurrection. When Jesus used the term “baptism” in his own teaching, he didn’t refer to when he was washed in the river Jordan, but to his impending death. “Can you be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” he asks James and John when they are arguing over who will get to sit at his right and at his left when he comes into his glory. Jesus understands his baptism to be a baptism of suffering, which is perhaps why John the Baptist says that the one who will come after John will baptize “with fire.”
At our baptism, we are joined with Christ’s resurrected life, but we are also joined with the suffering he underwent at the Crucifixion. The commitment we make is one that may very well bring suffering into our lives, for if we live in the way Jesus lived, we will likely meet the same kind of resistance he did from the forces of this world that, as our Baptismal liturgy puts it, “rebel against God” and “destroy the creatures of God” (BCP 302).
But while we face uncertainty and danger in this life, through our baptism we are given a bond with God in Christ that is indissoluble (BCP 298). We are “sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism, and marked as Christ’s own forever.” Those are powerful words! “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.” The Apostle Paul wrote that “nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus,” and nothing reminds us of that truth like our baptism.
Baptism is about commitment, but it’s also about being given an identity. We choose to follow Christ, and we are marked as “Christ’s own forever.” We become part of that wonderful “paschal mystery;” we are joined to the mystical reality of the living, risen Christ that takes us over, indwelling us, inhabiting our very souls so that we begin to transform more and more into the likeness of him who made us.
We belong to Christ. That is the truth of who we are. And our lifelong task is to claim that identity, to keep reaffirming that identity, to say “yes” to God’s call on our lives by striving to live into the vows we made in our Baptismal Covenant.
Today, in place of the Nicene Creed, we will reaffirm our Baptismal Covenant, in the words of the Apostle’s Creed and the five vows that we took at our baptism. If you haven’t been baptized, you are still welcome to join us in reciting these words if they reflect your true belief and commitment, and we can talk later about baptism if you are interested in making that public commitment. If you have been baptized but you don’t remember making these vows and would like to make them again in an intentional, public way, there are several opportunities throughout the year when you can make a reaffirmation of faith. You can talk with me about that after the service as well.
Now, if you would turn to page 6 of your bulletin for the Renewal of the Baptismal Covenant, and please stand as you are able...
Showing posts with label commitment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label commitment. Show all posts
Sunday, January 8, 2017
Sunday, June 28, 2015
Passing the Love of Women: David, Jonathan, and Same-Sex Marriage
Sermon delivered Sunday, June 28, 2015, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN. 5th Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 8, Year B (2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27)
If you listen to the video, listen all the way to what I said at the announcements after the end of the sermon.
In our readings from the Hebrew Bible over the past few weeks, we have been hearing stories from the life of David. Last week we heard the story of David’s defeat of Goliath and his first introduction to King Saul and his son, Jonathan. Today we read the story of David’s mourning over Saul and Jonathan’s death.
It may come as a surprise to some of you, but readers of 1 and 2 Samuel have long debated whether the relationship between David and Jonathan was more than just friendship. In light of the Supreme Court’s decision on Friday to legalize same-sex marriage throughout the country and the fact that General Convention will be considering changing the canons – that is, our church law – to allow clergy to perform same-sex marriages in states where it is legal – which is now all states – I felt like I couldn’t ignore the “elephant in the room” in our scriptures this Sunday and not address David and Jonathan’s relationship.
Now, I sincerely apologize if this makes some of you uncomfortable or angry. My intention is not to be inflammatory or disrespectful of scripture in any way. I truly believe that the Spirit is speaking through this uncanny series of events – this passage coming up in the lectionary at the exact time as this issue is being considered by both church and state. You all know from hearing me preach for three years that I am a very lectionary-based preacher, as all our clergy are. I always base my sermons on the scriptures for the day, and nothing bothers me more than hearing a preacher get up and preach a sermon that has no connection at all to the scriptures that were just read. So I certainly hope that you do not perceive this sermon in that way. This is truly an attempt to delve more deeply into the scriptures and relate them to our context today, which is what I attempt to do with every sermon I preach.
If you have ever experienced same-sex attraction and are familiar with the story of David and Jonathan, you are likely already aware of the idea that their relationship was romantic. It has been read that way in gay circles for years. But if you have never fallen in love with someone of the same sex, you probably never would have thought to think that David and Jonathan were anything more than close friends. So let me highlight for you the parts of their story that lead some people to think this:
In last week’s reading, we heard this passage about David and Jonathan’s first meeting:
“When David had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. Saul took him that day and would not let him return to his father. Then Jonathan made a covenant with David, because he loved him as his own soul. Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that he was wearing, and gave it to David, and his armor, and even his sword and bow and his belt” (1 Samuel 18:1-4).
This passage is actually one of the scripture options given for use in the liturgy for blessing same-sex unions that General Convention approved in 2012. The intense language in this passage about David and Jonathan’s souls being “bound together” at their first meeting, their making a covenant with one another, Jonathan giving David all his prized possessions, and David moving into Jonathan’s house, are seen by some as an indication that there was more going on here than mere friendship, especially since, as rivals for the throne, David and Jonathan would have had every reason to hate one another.
And in fact, Jonathan’s father Saul does come to hate David. He sees in David a threat to his lineage and is aware that God’s favor has moved from him to David, and he is angry that his son Jonathan will not become king, so he spends the rest of his life trying to kill David. And through it all, Jonathan sticks by David, against the will of his father. He warns David about his father’s murderous plans and reaffirms his covenant with him. In chapter 20 of 1 Samuel, Jonathan says to David:
“‘If I am still alive, show me the faithful love of the Lord; but if I die, never cut off your faithful love from my house, even if the Lord were to cut off every one of the enemies of David from the face of the earth.’” (1 Samuel 20:14-15).
David remains true to this covenant, even taking Jonathan’s son into his own home after Jonathan’s death and giving him all the rights of the royal family that he would have if he were David’s own son.
The scripture tells us that in reiterating and reaffirming this covenant, “Jonathan made David swear again by his love for him; for he loved him as he loved his own life.” (1 Samuel 20:17)
After Jonathan returns home and his father Saul realizes Jonathan is defending David, Saul becomes enraged. The scripture says:
“Then Saul’s anger was kindled against Jonathan. He said to him, ‘You son of a perverse, rebellious woman! Do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your own shame and to the shame of your mother’s nakedness?’” (1 Samuel 20:30)
As one commentary on this text said, “Many gay men have experienced dinner conversations that sounded very similar to this one.” Although it’s probably not fair to make this direct comparison, since it’s not good scholarship to read modern-day experiences into ancient texts, Saul’s outburst does seem to indicate that there was something physical about David and Jonathan’s relationship, with his reference to the “shame of your mother’s nakedness,” since phrases like this often had sexual connotations in the Hebrew scriptures.
And then, in today’s passage from the Hebrew Bible, David says this as he mourns over the loss of Jonathan:
“I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan;
greatly beloved were you to me;
your love to me was wonderful,
passing the love of women.” (2 Samuel 1:26)
Given all the other pieces of the puzzle, many have concluded that David’s assertion that Jonathan’s love was better to him than the love of women was not simply an ancient Near Eastern way of saying “Bros before hos, man,” but an expression of the fact that their love was of the same sort as his love for women, but yet of a deeper or more intense nature. (As an aside, if you’re not familiar with the phrase “Bros before hos,” it’s a saying used often by straight men in my generation or younger to express the sentiment that a man’s male friends (bros) should take priority over whatever woman or women he happens to be in relationship with at the moment (who are, not very flatteringly, referred to as “hos” in this expression), since the male friends will always be there for him, while romantic relationships will come and go.)
Ok, so for every scripture passage I’ve quoted here, there are arguments from the other perspective as to why these passages do NOT indicate that David and Jonathan’s relationship was anything more than a friendship. I’ve read the arguments on both sides and I’ve read the entire section of scripture that deals with their relationship myself (if you want to read the whole thing for yourself too, it begins in 1 Samuel, chapter 17 and continues through the first chapter of 2 Samuel). After taking all perspectives into consideration, I find that I can’t deny that there seems to be something more than friendship going on here, but perhaps that’s because I know the difference between a close friendship with someone of the same sex and something more.
I have many close female friends who are dear to me, but a number of years ago, I began to realize that my feelings for one particular friend were different from my feelings for my other friends. Our friendship was particularly close and intense, and I realized that the way I talked about her and behaved toward her was more like the way I’d talked about and behaved toward the guy I dated in high school, the only romantic relationship I’d had so far in my life. Although I was already supportive of my friends who were gay and lesbian, I never thought that I was in that category, until these feelings started emerging. Nothing ever came of them, because she was already in a committed relationship, and I never told her how I felt. And a few years later, God brought my husband into my life and I fell in love with him and we married. Since I take seriously the lifelong, exclusive commitment of marriage, I know I will never be in a romantic relationship with a woman at this point. But I’ve always wondered how my life would have been different if God had given me a woman to love instead of a man.
I’ve never shared this with anyone outside of a few of my closest friends. Most of my family have never heard this story. I’m choosing to share it publicly with you today because unlike our brothers and sisters who are exclusively attracted to members of the same sex, those of us who have discovered we are able to be attracted to members of both sexes are able to “hide,” so to speak. If we happen to fall in love with someone of the opposite sex, we never have to tell anyone that we once felt that way about someone of the same sex. Kenji Yoshino, a civil rights lawyer at Yale, calls this phenomenon “covering” – anything we do to downplay the “different” aspects of ourselves to fit into the mainstream. For me, it was easier to “cover” than it was to be open. But by doing that, I betrayed my brothers and sisters who cannot “cover,” whose differences are a matter of physical appearance or other qualities they cannot otherwise change or hide.
I am by no means trying to make an argument that there were same-sex marriages in biblical times. Our modern-day understanding of same-sex marriage simply did not exist during that time and it is dishonest scholarship to try to read our current social context into ancient times. And we have no way of really knowing whether the relationship between David and Jonathan was more than friendship or not. But on this historic weekend, I wanted to at least open the conversation about the fact that people who deeply love God and seek to honor and follow him with their lives can and do fall in love with people of the same sex, a love that binds their souls to one another.
The Episcopal Church’s Task Force on the Study of Marriage, which has met for the past three years to study the history, theology, and biblical framework surrounding marriage, has concluded that what distinguishes marriage from other more casual forms of relationship is “the commitment to a lifelong, loving, faithful relationship,” and what makes a marriage Christian is the fact that the members of the couple seek to pattern their lives toward each other and toward the community around them as a reflection of the self-giving love of Christ for the church. What makes a marriage holy is that the two people “see in each other the image of God.”
Now, I understand that some of you will insist that the two people in a marriage should be a man and a woman, and I want you to know that my respect for you is not and will not be lessened if that is your view. I was recently talking with my husband, who has mixed and uncertain feelings about same-sex marriage, and we tried very hard to listen to one another and understand why this issue is so emotionally charged for both of us. The light bulb finally went on for me when my husband said, “It’s like suddenly being told all the rules have changed. Everything you thought you knew and understood, everything you’d always been taught was wrong, is suddenly ok.” I could relate to how disorienting and disturbing that feeling is, and that conversation helped me to understand where he was coming from. In a committed relationship, diversity of opinion is what keeps the relationship growing and alive.
It is my hope that we can have these kinds of open conversations with one another in the coming weeks, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision and whatever General Convention will decide. I hope you will share your stories honestly and from your hearts. I hope you feel safe enough with the community here to have those conversations. And I hope that we all remember that no matter how different our feelings and opinions are on this issue, we are still brothers and sisters in Christ. We still share a common table and a common faith. We all gather here each week because we love and seek to follow Jesus. And after all, our baptism is the most important “marriage” in any of our lives – when we are “made one” not with any human partner, but with Christ. Each week when we come forward to receive the Eucharist, we reaffirm our commitment to that “love divine, all loves excelling,” that is only found in God. May the foundation of all our relationships, romantic and platonic, be always rooted and grounded in God and God’s infinite love for us.
If you listen to the video, listen all the way to what I said at the announcements after the end of the sermon.
In our readings from the Hebrew Bible over the past few weeks, we have been hearing stories from the life of David. Last week we heard the story of David’s defeat of Goliath and his first introduction to King Saul and his son, Jonathan. Today we read the story of David’s mourning over Saul and Jonathan’s death.
It may come as a surprise to some of you, but readers of 1 and 2 Samuel have long debated whether the relationship between David and Jonathan was more than just friendship. In light of the Supreme Court’s decision on Friday to legalize same-sex marriage throughout the country and the fact that General Convention will be considering changing the canons – that is, our church law – to allow clergy to perform same-sex marriages in states where it is legal – which is now all states – I felt like I couldn’t ignore the “elephant in the room” in our scriptures this Sunday and not address David and Jonathan’s relationship.
Now, I sincerely apologize if this makes some of you uncomfortable or angry. My intention is not to be inflammatory or disrespectful of scripture in any way. I truly believe that the Spirit is speaking through this uncanny series of events – this passage coming up in the lectionary at the exact time as this issue is being considered by both church and state. You all know from hearing me preach for three years that I am a very lectionary-based preacher, as all our clergy are. I always base my sermons on the scriptures for the day, and nothing bothers me more than hearing a preacher get up and preach a sermon that has no connection at all to the scriptures that were just read. So I certainly hope that you do not perceive this sermon in that way. This is truly an attempt to delve more deeply into the scriptures and relate them to our context today, which is what I attempt to do with every sermon I preach.
If you have ever experienced same-sex attraction and are familiar with the story of David and Jonathan, you are likely already aware of the idea that their relationship was romantic. It has been read that way in gay circles for years. But if you have never fallen in love with someone of the same sex, you probably never would have thought to think that David and Jonathan were anything more than close friends. So let me highlight for you the parts of their story that lead some people to think this:
In last week’s reading, we heard this passage about David and Jonathan’s first meeting:
“When David had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. Saul took him that day and would not let him return to his father. Then Jonathan made a covenant with David, because he loved him as his own soul. Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that he was wearing, and gave it to David, and his armor, and even his sword and bow and his belt” (1 Samuel 18:1-4).
This passage is actually one of the scripture options given for use in the liturgy for blessing same-sex unions that General Convention approved in 2012. The intense language in this passage about David and Jonathan’s souls being “bound together” at their first meeting, their making a covenant with one another, Jonathan giving David all his prized possessions, and David moving into Jonathan’s house, are seen by some as an indication that there was more going on here than mere friendship, especially since, as rivals for the throne, David and Jonathan would have had every reason to hate one another.
And in fact, Jonathan’s father Saul does come to hate David. He sees in David a threat to his lineage and is aware that God’s favor has moved from him to David, and he is angry that his son Jonathan will not become king, so he spends the rest of his life trying to kill David. And through it all, Jonathan sticks by David, against the will of his father. He warns David about his father’s murderous plans and reaffirms his covenant with him. In chapter 20 of 1 Samuel, Jonathan says to David:
“‘If I am still alive, show me the faithful love of the Lord; but if I die, never cut off your faithful love from my house, even if the Lord were to cut off every one of the enemies of David from the face of the earth.’” (1 Samuel 20:14-15).
David remains true to this covenant, even taking Jonathan’s son into his own home after Jonathan’s death and giving him all the rights of the royal family that he would have if he were David’s own son.
The scripture tells us that in reiterating and reaffirming this covenant, “Jonathan made David swear again by his love for him; for he loved him as he loved his own life.” (1 Samuel 20:17)
After Jonathan returns home and his father Saul realizes Jonathan is defending David, Saul becomes enraged. The scripture says:
“Then Saul’s anger was kindled against Jonathan. He said to him, ‘You son of a perverse, rebellious woman! Do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your own shame and to the shame of your mother’s nakedness?’” (1 Samuel 20:30)
As one commentary on this text said, “Many gay men have experienced dinner conversations that sounded very similar to this one.” Although it’s probably not fair to make this direct comparison, since it’s not good scholarship to read modern-day experiences into ancient texts, Saul’s outburst does seem to indicate that there was something physical about David and Jonathan’s relationship, with his reference to the “shame of your mother’s nakedness,” since phrases like this often had sexual connotations in the Hebrew scriptures.
And then, in today’s passage from the Hebrew Bible, David says this as he mourns over the loss of Jonathan:
“I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan;
greatly beloved were you to me;
your love to me was wonderful,
passing the love of women.” (2 Samuel 1:26)
Given all the other pieces of the puzzle, many have concluded that David’s assertion that Jonathan’s love was better to him than the love of women was not simply an ancient Near Eastern way of saying “Bros before hos, man,” but an expression of the fact that their love was of the same sort as his love for women, but yet of a deeper or more intense nature. (As an aside, if you’re not familiar with the phrase “Bros before hos,” it’s a saying used often by straight men in my generation or younger to express the sentiment that a man’s male friends (bros) should take priority over whatever woman or women he happens to be in relationship with at the moment (who are, not very flatteringly, referred to as “hos” in this expression), since the male friends will always be there for him, while romantic relationships will come and go.)
Ok, so for every scripture passage I’ve quoted here, there are arguments from the other perspective as to why these passages do NOT indicate that David and Jonathan’s relationship was anything more than a friendship. I’ve read the arguments on both sides and I’ve read the entire section of scripture that deals with their relationship myself (if you want to read the whole thing for yourself too, it begins in 1 Samuel, chapter 17 and continues through the first chapter of 2 Samuel). After taking all perspectives into consideration, I find that I can’t deny that there seems to be something more than friendship going on here, but perhaps that’s because I know the difference between a close friendship with someone of the same sex and something more.
I have many close female friends who are dear to me, but a number of years ago, I began to realize that my feelings for one particular friend were different from my feelings for my other friends. Our friendship was particularly close and intense, and I realized that the way I talked about her and behaved toward her was more like the way I’d talked about and behaved toward the guy I dated in high school, the only romantic relationship I’d had so far in my life. Although I was already supportive of my friends who were gay and lesbian, I never thought that I was in that category, until these feelings started emerging. Nothing ever came of them, because she was already in a committed relationship, and I never told her how I felt. And a few years later, God brought my husband into my life and I fell in love with him and we married. Since I take seriously the lifelong, exclusive commitment of marriage, I know I will never be in a romantic relationship with a woman at this point. But I’ve always wondered how my life would have been different if God had given me a woman to love instead of a man.
I’ve never shared this with anyone outside of a few of my closest friends. Most of my family have never heard this story. I’m choosing to share it publicly with you today because unlike our brothers and sisters who are exclusively attracted to members of the same sex, those of us who have discovered we are able to be attracted to members of both sexes are able to “hide,” so to speak. If we happen to fall in love with someone of the opposite sex, we never have to tell anyone that we once felt that way about someone of the same sex. Kenji Yoshino, a civil rights lawyer at Yale, calls this phenomenon “covering” – anything we do to downplay the “different” aspects of ourselves to fit into the mainstream. For me, it was easier to “cover” than it was to be open. But by doing that, I betrayed my brothers and sisters who cannot “cover,” whose differences are a matter of physical appearance or other qualities they cannot otherwise change or hide.
I am by no means trying to make an argument that there were same-sex marriages in biblical times. Our modern-day understanding of same-sex marriage simply did not exist during that time and it is dishonest scholarship to try to read our current social context into ancient times. And we have no way of really knowing whether the relationship between David and Jonathan was more than friendship or not. But on this historic weekend, I wanted to at least open the conversation about the fact that people who deeply love God and seek to honor and follow him with their lives can and do fall in love with people of the same sex, a love that binds their souls to one another.
The Episcopal Church’s Task Force on the Study of Marriage, which has met for the past three years to study the history, theology, and biblical framework surrounding marriage, has concluded that what distinguishes marriage from other more casual forms of relationship is “the commitment to a lifelong, loving, faithful relationship,” and what makes a marriage Christian is the fact that the members of the couple seek to pattern their lives toward each other and toward the community around them as a reflection of the self-giving love of Christ for the church. What makes a marriage holy is that the two people “see in each other the image of God.”
Now, I understand that some of you will insist that the two people in a marriage should be a man and a woman, and I want you to know that my respect for you is not and will not be lessened if that is your view. I was recently talking with my husband, who has mixed and uncertain feelings about same-sex marriage, and we tried very hard to listen to one another and understand why this issue is so emotionally charged for both of us. The light bulb finally went on for me when my husband said, “It’s like suddenly being told all the rules have changed. Everything you thought you knew and understood, everything you’d always been taught was wrong, is suddenly ok.” I could relate to how disorienting and disturbing that feeling is, and that conversation helped me to understand where he was coming from. In a committed relationship, diversity of opinion is what keeps the relationship growing and alive.
It is my hope that we can have these kinds of open conversations with one another in the coming weeks, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision and whatever General Convention will decide. I hope you will share your stories honestly and from your hearts. I hope you feel safe enough with the community here to have those conversations. And I hope that we all remember that no matter how different our feelings and opinions are on this issue, we are still brothers and sisters in Christ. We still share a common table and a common faith. We all gather here each week because we love and seek to follow Jesus. And after all, our baptism is the most important “marriage” in any of our lives – when we are “made one” not with any human partner, but with Christ. Each week when we come forward to receive the Eucharist, we reaffirm our commitment to that “love divine, all loves excelling,” that is only found in God. May the foundation of all our relationships, romantic and platonic, be always rooted and grounded in God and God’s infinite love for us.
Sunday, June 30, 2013
Jesus's encounters with so-called "would-be disciples" actually pose questions for us about the cost of discipleship
Sermon delivered Sunday, June 30, 2013 (6 Pentecost, Year C, Proper 8), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN (2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14; Luke 9:51-62).
In today’s Gospel from Luke, we hear a series of exchanges between Jesus and three unnamed individuals who express a desire to follow him. Traditionally, these individuals have been called “would-be disciples,” because the assumption is that they did not ultimately decide to follow Jesus, but offered excuses rather than commitments when confronted with the demands of discipleship.
But the text doesn’t actually tell us what the motivations of these individuals were – we don’t know for sure that their statements were “excuses” – and we don’t know how they responded to Jesus’s words to them.
We do hear about the response of “would-be disciples” in other parts of the Gospels, like the man who asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life (Mark 10:17-27, Luke 18:18-27). Jesus told him that even though he had kept all the commandments, he lacked one thing – to sell his possessions and give the money to the poor and then come and follow Jesus. This story, which appears both in Mark and in Luke, does tell us about the man’s response: “When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions” (Mark 10:22). It is clear in the story that the man left, that he did not immediately leave everything to follow Jesus. But the text doesn’t tell us anything about the responses of the individuals we hear about today. Matthew’s Gospel includes an account of two of the three individuals we hear about in Luke, but it does not give us any detail about their responses either.
The fact that the writers of the Gospels did not tell us anything about the motivations of these individuals nor about how they responded to Jesus’s statements leads me to think that the significance in this passage is not in what those individuals did or didn’t do, but in the words that Jesus said to them. In including these brief exchanges between Jesus and several unnamed individuals, the Gospel writers were preserving sayings of Jesus that they felt were important to his message and that they wanted to pass on to future generations. The point was not to judge the motivations or intentions of the so-called “would-be disciples,” but to impress upon the reader or hearer of the Gospel texts the cost and demand that following Jesus would place on their own lives. The question is not, “What did those three individuals do?” but, “What will you do?” Not, “Were they ready to be committed followers of Christ?” but “Are you ready to be committed followers of Christ?”
Each of these three statements, isolated as they are as pithy one-liners, tell us something about the cost and demand of following Jesus. The first statement, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head,” alludes to the itinerancy of Jesus’s ministry; he traveled from place to place, always on the move as he brought his message to more and more people in the region. Contrary to some interpretations, this statement probably does not indicate that Jesus was literally “homeless,” since other passages of Scripture indicate that he had a home in Capernaum (see Matthew 4:13, Mark 2:1-2) [1], but it does indicate that following Jesus will not lend itself to a comfortable, stable life. For the earliest followers of Jesus, making a commitment to follow him meant sacrificing time at home with family for time spent on the road. In our own day, touring musicians or authors, business travelers, and deployed military personnel know the personal sacrifice that such travel requires. In the first century, being a follower of Jesus was not a job for the homebody!
In our current context, the lifestyle for most Christians has changed dramatically. No longer is it expected that we leave home or family to follow Jesus; in fact, it is often assumed that establishing a stable home and family is one of the most important things a Christian could do. In the United States, following Jesus does not even require leaving our neighborhood, since there are a plethora of churches available to meet our spiritual needs within walking or short driving distance of our homes. For most of us, becoming a follower of Jesus does not require giving up any material or interpersonal comforts in the way that it did for the first disciples. But throughout the ages, Christians have continued to hear the call to leave the comfortable and familiar and risk a life of constant movement and itinerant ministry in order to serve Christ and share the Gospel. The lives of missionaries and others who have followed this path remain for us an icon of that call to give up material stability that God may still issue to any of us today. As we consider Jesus’s response to the first individual who says he will follow Jesus wherever he goes, we must ask ourselves: If following Jesus meant that we would have nowhere to lay our heads, that we would have to give up the stability and comfort of our homes, would we be wiling to follow Jesus wherever he went?
The second statement, “Let the dead bury their own dead,” has long been a subject of discussion and debate among commentators and scholars. How is it that Jesus could be so seemingly harsh and dismissive of the grief of a man who had lost his father? Isn’t it rather unforgiving and cruel not to allow this man the time to go home and take care of the things required of him by Jewish law and custom? First, it is highly unlikely that this man would be out walking the streets if his father had just died. Traditional first-century Jewish practice was to bury someone the same day that they died, and then not leave the home for seven days during the time of prescribed mourning, called shivah. So, if this man is out walking the streets of society, his father is either not dead yet, as some commentators have suggested, or his father’s body has already been placed in the family tomb but has not undergone the secondary burial that many Jewish families practiced, which involved placing the bones of the deceased in an ossuary a year after their death and burial. This was the final step in the burial practice, and marked the official end of the mourning period for the children of the deceased. [2] If this is what the man refers to when he asks to first go and bury his father, he is asking for a delay of a certain amount of time before he comes to follow Jesus – anywhere between a few weeks to eleven months, depending on how recently his father had died.
In any case, the key request of the man is time – he is willing to follow Jesus, but not immediately – he first needs time to tend to some important family obligations that would have been respected as sacred by any devout Jew. Jesus’s refusal to grant him this time comes not out of disrespect for those traditions, but out of a sense that there is no time. Remember, the beginning of our Gospel passage today tells us that “the days [had drawn] near for Jesus to be taken up,” and “he set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51). Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, where he knows he will be killed. If this man waits to follow him for several months or a year, it will likely be too late – Jesus will already be gone from this world. Given the urgency of the moment, even the most sacred family obligations must be neglected if this man is to join the movement. The teachings of the Apostle Paul and other early church leaders about preferring the single life over marriage came out of a similar sense that time was of the essence. They believed that Jesus’s death and resurrection had ushered in the “last days,” and that Jesus would return very soon for the final judgment of the world, so it didn’t make sense to pursue relationships and marriage – but to stay in whatever state one was in – married or single – and focus one’s attention on preparing for the immanent Second Coming.
As twenty-first century Christians, we no longer feel this urgency about the impending end of time as the earliest Christians did, and thus our understanding of what is most important in our life together has changed. We have moved out of “emergency mode” into stability. But Jesus’s response to the man who asks for time to tend to his family obligations encourages us to ask ourselves: If time was of the essence and we were in “emergency mode,” where would our deepest loyalties lie? If necessary, would we be willing to neglect even our most important family obligations in order to follow Christ?
Jesus’s third statement, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God,” tells us that following Jesus requires total focus and commitment. Again, the sense of urgency and lack of time explains Jesus’s rejection of the man’s request to go home and say goodbye to his family. In order to be ready to follow Christ, we must be entirely forward-looking, not caught up in the past or what our lives were like before we met him. Just as most of us could not drive forward in a straight line if we were turned around looking out of our back window, so a farmer cannot plow a straight line if he is looking behind him instead of forward. In order to do a proper job plowing the field, the farmer must be focused forward, looking ahead of him, not behind, and concentrating solely on his task in the present moment. Jesus’s words invite us to consider: Are we able to be completely focused on the task of following Christ in the present moment? Do we ever “look back” to our past in a way that hinders our ability to effectively do the work Christ has called us to do?
Jesus’s words to these three unnamed men remind us of the cost of discipleship, that following Jesus requires a willingness to choose him over all else. To those who desire to follow him, Jesus asks the same question he asked James and John when they wanted to be close to him, to sit next to him “in his glory”: “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” (Mark 10:38). In other words, “Are you sure you want to do this? It won’t be comfortable and it won’t be pretty. We’re headed to Jerusalem. The road is hard and it leads to death.”
Those of us who are indeed baptized with the baptism of Christ are baptized into his death, as the Apostle Paul said (Romans 6:3). But the good news is that we are also baptized into his Resurrection. In baptism, we are united with Christ’s very body (Galatians 3:27), so that “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). The high cost and demand of discipleship is possible only if we recognize that it is not our ministry, but Christ’s ministry working through us. What discipleship requires, then, is a willingness to surrender, to “let go and let God,” as the saying goes, to allow Christ to live in us and work through us, and then, when the time comes for us to make whatever sacrifice we are asked to make in our journey of faith, we can say with full confidence, “We will, with God’s help.”
[1] For more on the argument that Jesus was not “homeless,” see Dave Barnhart, “Why Jesus Wasn’t Homeless (And Why It Matters),” posted on May 13, 2013 at Ministry Matters: http://www.ministrymatters.com/all/article/entry/3933/why-jesus-wasnt-homeless-and-why-it-matters#axzz2XM2DohAv
[2] For more on secondary burial customs, see Byron R. McCane (Duke University), “‘Let the dead bury their own dead’: Secondary Burial and Matt. 8:21-22,” Harvard Theological Review 83:1 (Jan 1990), 31-43.
In today’s Gospel from Luke, we hear a series of exchanges between Jesus and three unnamed individuals who express a desire to follow him. Traditionally, these individuals have been called “would-be disciples,” because the assumption is that they did not ultimately decide to follow Jesus, but offered excuses rather than commitments when confronted with the demands of discipleship.
But the text doesn’t actually tell us what the motivations of these individuals were – we don’t know for sure that their statements were “excuses” – and we don’t know how they responded to Jesus’s words to them.
We do hear about the response of “would-be disciples” in other parts of the Gospels, like the man who asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life (Mark 10:17-27, Luke 18:18-27). Jesus told him that even though he had kept all the commandments, he lacked one thing – to sell his possessions and give the money to the poor and then come and follow Jesus. This story, which appears both in Mark and in Luke, does tell us about the man’s response: “When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions” (Mark 10:22). It is clear in the story that the man left, that he did not immediately leave everything to follow Jesus. But the text doesn’t tell us anything about the responses of the individuals we hear about today. Matthew’s Gospel includes an account of two of the three individuals we hear about in Luke, but it does not give us any detail about their responses either.
The fact that the writers of the Gospels did not tell us anything about the motivations of these individuals nor about how they responded to Jesus’s statements leads me to think that the significance in this passage is not in what those individuals did or didn’t do, but in the words that Jesus said to them. In including these brief exchanges between Jesus and several unnamed individuals, the Gospel writers were preserving sayings of Jesus that they felt were important to his message and that they wanted to pass on to future generations. The point was not to judge the motivations or intentions of the so-called “would-be disciples,” but to impress upon the reader or hearer of the Gospel texts the cost and demand that following Jesus would place on their own lives. The question is not, “What did those three individuals do?” but, “What will you do?” Not, “Were they ready to be committed followers of Christ?” but “Are you ready to be committed followers of Christ?”
Each of these three statements, isolated as they are as pithy one-liners, tell us something about the cost and demand of following Jesus. The first statement, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head,” alludes to the itinerancy of Jesus’s ministry; he traveled from place to place, always on the move as he brought his message to more and more people in the region. Contrary to some interpretations, this statement probably does not indicate that Jesus was literally “homeless,” since other passages of Scripture indicate that he had a home in Capernaum (see Matthew 4:13, Mark 2:1-2) [1], but it does indicate that following Jesus will not lend itself to a comfortable, stable life. For the earliest followers of Jesus, making a commitment to follow him meant sacrificing time at home with family for time spent on the road. In our own day, touring musicians or authors, business travelers, and deployed military personnel know the personal sacrifice that such travel requires. In the first century, being a follower of Jesus was not a job for the homebody!
In our current context, the lifestyle for most Christians has changed dramatically. No longer is it expected that we leave home or family to follow Jesus; in fact, it is often assumed that establishing a stable home and family is one of the most important things a Christian could do. In the United States, following Jesus does not even require leaving our neighborhood, since there are a plethora of churches available to meet our spiritual needs within walking or short driving distance of our homes. For most of us, becoming a follower of Jesus does not require giving up any material or interpersonal comforts in the way that it did for the first disciples. But throughout the ages, Christians have continued to hear the call to leave the comfortable and familiar and risk a life of constant movement and itinerant ministry in order to serve Christ and share the Gospel. The lives of missionaries and others who have followed this path remain for us an icon of that call to give up material stability that God may still issue to any of us today. As we consider Jesus’s response to the first individual who says he will follow Jesus wherever he goes, we must ask ourselves: If following Jesus meant that we would have nowhere to lay our heads, that we would have to give up the stability and comfort of our homes, would we be wiling to follow Jesus wherever he went?
The second statement, “Let the dead bury their own dead,” has long been a subject of discussion and debate among commentators and scholars. How is it that Jesus could be so seemingly harsh and dismissive of the grief of a man who had lost his father? Isn’t it rather unforgiving and cruel not to allow this man the time to go home and take care of the things required of him by Jewish law and custom? First, it is highly unlikely that this man would be out walking the streets if his father had just died. Traditional first-century Jewish practice was to bury someone the same day that they died, and then not leave the home for seven days during the time of prescribed mourning, called shivah. So, if this man is out walking the streets of society, his father is either not dead yet, as some commentators have suggested, or his father’s body has already been placed in the family tomb but has not undergone the secondary burial that many Jewish families practiced, which involved placing the bones of the deceased in an ossuary a year after their death and burial. This was the final step in the burial practice, and marked the official end of the mourning period for the children of the deceased. [2] If this is what the man refers to when he asks to first go and bury his father, he is asking for a delay of a certain amount of time before he comes to follow Jesus – anywhere between a few weeks to eleven months, depending on how recently his father had died.
In any case, the key request of the man is time – he is willing to follow Jesus, but not immediately – he first needs time to tend to some important family obligations that would have been respected as sacred by any devout Jew. Jesus’s refusal to grant him this time comes not out of disrespect for those traditions, but out of a sense that there is no time. Remember, the beginning of our Gospel passage today tells us that “the days [had drawn] near for Jesus to be taken up,” and “he set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51). Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, where he knows he will be killed. If this man waits to follow him for several months or a year, it will likely be too late – Jesus will already be gone from this world. Given the urgency of the moment, even the most sacred family obligations must be neglected if this man is to join the movement. The teachings of the Apostle Paul and other early church leaders about preferring the single life over marriage came out of a similar sense that time was of the essence. They believed that Jesus’s death and resurrection had ushered in the “last days,” and that Jesus would return very soon for the final judgment of the world, so it didn’t make sense to pursue relationships and marriage – but to stay in whatever state one was in – married or single – and focus one’s attention on preparing for the immanent Second Coming.
As twenty-first century Christians, we no longer feel this urgency about the impending end of time as the earliest Christians did, and thus our understanding of what is most important in our life together has changed. We have moved out of “emergency mode” into stability. But Jesus’s response to the man who asks for time to tend to his family obligations encourages us to ask ourselves: If time was of the essence and we were in “emergency mode,” where would our deepest loyalties lie? If necessary, would we be willing to neglect even our most important family obligations in order to follow Christ?
Jesus’s third statement, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God,” tells us that following Jesus requires total focus and commitment. Again, the sense of urgency and lack of time explains Jesus’s rejection of the man’s request to go home and say goodbye to his family. In order to be ready to follow Christ, we must be entirely forward-looking, not caught up in the past or what our lives were like before we met him. Just as most of us could not drive forward in a straight line if we were turned around looking out of our back window, so a farmer cannot plow a straight line if he is looking behind him instead of forward. In order to do a proper job plowing the field, the farmer must be focused forward, looking ahead of him, not behind, and concentrating solely on his task in the present moment. Jesus’s words invite us to consider: Are we able to be completely focused on the task of following Christ in the present moment? Do we ever “look back” to our past in a way that hinders our ability to effectively do the work Christ has called us to do?
Jesus’s words to these three unnamed men remind us of the cost of discipleship, that following Jesus requires a willingness to choose him over all else. To those who desire to follow him, Jesus asks the same question he asked James and John when they wanted to be close to him, to sit next to him “in his glory”: “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” (Mark 10:38). In other words, “Are you sure you want to do this? It won’t be comfortable and it won’t be pretty. We’re headed to Jerusalem. The road is hard and it leads to death.”
Those of us who are indeed baptized with the baptism of Christ are baptized into his death, as the Apostle Paul said (Romans 6:3). But the good news is that we are also baptized into his Resurrection. In baptism, we are united with Christ’s very body (Galatians 3:27), so that “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). The high cost and demand of discipleship is possible only if we recognize that it is not our ministry, but Christ’s ministry working through us. What discipleship requires, then, is a willingness to surrender, to “let go and let God,” as the saying goes, to allow Christ to live in us and work through us, and then, when the time comes for us to make whatever sacrifice we are asked to make in our journey of faith, we can say with full confidence, “We will, with God’s help.”
[1] For more on the argument that Jesus was not “homeless,” see Dave Barnhart, “Why Jesus Wasn’t Homeless (And Why It Matters),” posted on May 13, 2013 at Ministry Matters: http://www.ministrymatters.com/all/article/entry/3933/why-jesus-wasnt-homeless-and-why-it-matters#axzz2XM2DohAv
[2] For more on secondary burial customs, see Byron R. McCane (Duke University), “‘Let the dead bury their own dead’: Secondary Burial and Matt. 8:21-22,” Harvard Theological Review 83:1 (Jan 1990), 31-43.
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