The Promise of a King and a Lamb

Sunday is April Fools' Day, technically not a holiday recognized by the church. But I think there is something to the fact that Palm Sunday is falling on April Fools' Day this year. Who do you think of when you think of fools, of something foolish? Today, in the workplaces or at school or even at church, we feel shame and humiliation if we say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing. We don’t want to be fools – on April Fools' Day, we want to be the ones playing the tricks, not the ones being made a fool!

Read Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29 and John 12:12-19.

The Gospel reading this week shapes how our Palm Sunday feels. It is mostly a joyful celebration of Jesus as the promised King, Jesus as the one to fulfill the covenant, Jesus as a miracle worker, who can bring life out of death. The people offer a welcoming parade, pledging their loyalty to Jesus as the King of Israel, running after him, stampeding after him. And yet, we end not with their joy, but the Pharisees as they continue to plot, their current plans being foiled yet again. Their presence, however, seems to be an ominous sign that reminds us of what will come later this week: a meal, a betrayal, a trial, a cross, a tomb.  

And yet, somehow, Jesus plays us all. Jesus takes on the role of the fool on Palm Sunday – riding in not on a warhorse but a young donkey, his feet probably dragging on the ground. Jesus the king rides the animal of peace, not the Messiah the people expected to violently overthrow Rome. Jesus lets the people call him king, knowing that later in the week they would be calling for his crucifixion. Jesus turns everything upside down, making wisdom foolish: emptying himself that we might be filled; saying that the last will be first and the first will be last, to save your life you must lose it; feeding multitudes with a couple loaves and fish; healing those who were said to be beyond help; and bringing life out of a dead Lazarus in a tomb. 

In a court, the fool or jester was the only one who could actually speak truth to power, who could actually criticize the king or queen or government, who could mock those in power through the gift of humor. It is said that Queen Elizabeth once threatened her fool because he did not criticize her severely enough! That is the role of Christ on April Fools' Day, on Palm Sunday: to subvert the Roman concept of Lord, to speak to the power of peace instead of violence, to find value in the people who are marginalized and oppressed. As a fool, Jesus invites people to see and live in the world in a different way. For Jesus himself is the stone that the builders rejected – only for that very stone to become the chief cornerstone, the foundation of it all. Jesus fools us, as we are promised a king and are given a sacrificial lamb. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.” Thanks be to God for responding to our Hosannas with the foolishness of the Messiah, the only one who could really save us once and for all.

Grace and peace,

Pastor Kate

Heart-Tattooed by God

Have you been heart-tattooed by God?  Has God written on your heart:  "I am your God and you are my child?"  According to Hebrew Bible Jeremiah in Jeremiah 31: 31-34, God says "I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people." (31: 33b). This is a promise for "days that are coming" (31: 31).  In other words, the timing is uncertain.  This is one of those now, but not-yet passages.  God's work has begun and will be completed in us at some point in the future.  This covenant is the hope of the future and is still in the process of realization. God will make or engrave a new covenant on our hearts instead of the law that is written (and still very much valid) on tablets that can be lost or stolen or broken.

This is another covenant of grace upon grace - grace beyond our own measure of accomplishment.  This covenant - at God's initiative - pours out unmerited favor on those of us who cannot accomplish this ourselves.  We're given help from within to faithfully keep covenant with God.  God will make a way where there seems to be no way - at least according to our own abilities.

There are several amazing aspects to this covenant.  That God will forgive and forget our sin is amazing.  Visualizing a world without sin feels like utopia.  Yet it is a promise from our God who is steadfastly loyal and capable of both writing such a covenant upon our hearts and enabling us to respond.  It's also amazing because Jeremiah makes clear that it's meant for all people:  "they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest." (31: 34).  Imagine our enemies or criminals or people whom we despise or reject or those on whom we deem inferior being tattooed with God's love.  The promise of a God-tattooed-heart takes lots of imagination.

Jesuit priest, Father Gregory Boyle, writes of the power of boundless compassion in his book "Tattoos on the Heart."  As he provides a service to help gang members (homies) have their tattoos of gang membership erased, Father G does the much more important service to restore the homies' hearts into hearts of compassion and love that reflect God's real intent of shalom for the homies.

If you understand yourself to be God-tattooed, how will you share God's boundless compassion to others?  Who will you welcome into God's family with your hospitality and sharing how God has tattooed you?

Grace and Peace,
Pastor Shelley

God-Promises: The Promise through Brokenness

Snakes have always creeped me out. Maybe that’s why I loved living in Ireland during my college years – a wonderful guarantee of no snakes. Legend has it that Saint Patrick banished all the snakes from Ireland after a forty day fast. While that story may be more symbolic than anything, It seems like that is what the people from our Numbers Scripture this week could really use right now.

Read Numbers 21:4-9 and John 3:14-21.

God’s people are not happy. They don’t have any food, and they detest this miserable food. Wait, what? They sound like the child who opens the refrigerator, stares at all the food, and declares that “We have nothing to eat!” Now, the people have been complaining for a while in the wilderness. The Israelites complain about their wilderness experience, longing for the comforts and the certainty of slavery. In the previous chapter, the people spoke against Moses and wished that they had died. In our passage this week, they not only speak against Moses, but they speak against God as well. And rather than instantly providing the solution, as God did with the provision of manna, quail, and water out of a rock, Numbers says that God sent poisonous snakes.

After hearing about the 10 Commandments last week, I would wager to guess that the people have broken the commandment to not use the Lord’s name in vain. As we have talked about God-Promises these past few weeks, we have heard that God is the promise-maker and the promise-keeper, knowing that we are the promise-breakers. And we know that God brings us back into the covenant time and time again. Yet that does not mean that there are never consequences to the breaking of promises.

Brokenness seems to be a state of being for us as individuals, as a church, and as a world. But we do not like to acknowledge it. We want to skip Good Friday and go straight to Easter, we want to skip chemo and be rid of this cancer already, we want to not apologize and just have our relationship go back to the way it was. The truth for us in the Numbers story is that we must admit our brokenness to God and to each other. The truth for us is that sometimes healing and provision is not instantaneous, but a long, hard journey through the wilderness.

But we are not on that long, hard journey through the wilderness alone - God doesn’t leave us in our broken state. God works through brokenness of the body of Jesus to bring us the antidote to sin and death. The Good News from John is that our God turns the ultimate humiliation in death on a cross into a victory over sin and death. The Good News is that Jesus came not to condemn but to save the world. The Good News is that Jesus is lifted high in the wilderness of our lives in Topeka in 2012.

Know that in our brokenness, God is working in us and through us to lead us to the path of shalom.

Grace and peace,

Pastor Kate

P.S. If you are feeling particularly broken, come join us at the service for healing and wholeness on Sunday at 5:00 pm.

Wanna learn how to dance?

Jesus overturns the moneychangers' tables in the Temple courts and starts a stampede of sheep and cattle waiting to be bought with pure, image-less coins so that worshipers can sacrifice the unblemished animals as a worship offering to God.  Before Jesus became OUR Temple, this was a sacrificial system that had been tarnished with corruption.  Read Jesus' dramatic whip-dance in John 2: 13-22.

Although our sanctuary lobbies no longer have sheep and cattle milling around, I wonder which of our automatic-pilot rituals and prayers Jesus would overturn?  Do we worship with our minds on other things instead of focusing on God and neighbor in our worship?  The Ten Commandments in Exodus 20: 1-17 offer us a different way to dance as God's partner not only in worship, but in all of life.  Rather than a list of "you shalt-nots" the Ten Commandments are the dance steps we learn in order to live into God's presence fully and freely.

Using a summary from Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol 2, p 76, 78, by Craig Kocher, the life-giving possibilities of the Ten Commandments are:  "No other gods before me" means money, sex, and power cannot dance as idols onto our altars.  Instead of taking the Lord's name in vain, we honor, praise and give thanks to God for the gifts of the dance.  When we keep sabbath we remember that all creation is a gift and our responsibility is to steward it wisely.  When we honor our parents we remember that we stand on the shoulders of others because we are not independent or self made.  When we say no to murder, we acknowledge that people bear God's image to and for us.  When we refuse to lie, steal, or covet we build up community by speaking the truth of and to our neighbors.

When we dance freely with God and with our neighbor, we commit ourselves to the two greatest commandments:  Love God with all our heart/mind/soul and love our neighbor as ourselves.  God welcomes us to the dancefloor of our community.

Grace and Peace,
Pastor Shelley

    

What's in a Name?

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose - By any other name would smell as sweet," Juliet says to her star-crossed lover, Romeo. Here Juliet tells Romeo that a name is an artificial, meaningless convention, and that she loves the person who is called "Montague", not the Montague name and not the Montague family. Romeo, out of his passion for Juliet, rejects his family name and vows, as Juliet asks him to "deny (his) father" and instead be "new baptized" as Juliet's lover. This one short line encapsulates the central struggle and tragedy of Shakespeare's play. 

The Bible has different take on "what's in a name."  When God re-names Abram to Abraham and changes Sarai's name to Sarah, it is to signify the everlasting covenant that God makes with this faithful but barren couple in their 90's.  God says to them in Genesis 17: 1-7, 15-16:  "You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations." (NRSV, v 4b)  God too claims a new name for Godself:  El Shaddai - God of the mountains - the One who created heavens and earth - God of the highest mountains and the lowest valleys - God of all creation.  In this second covenant of the Hebrew Bible, El Shaddai blesses Abraham and Sarah with the promise of a child and the royal promise that Abraham and Sarah's descendants will forever be God's people.

It's fitting that the gospel lesson  (Mark 8: 31-38) paired with this second covenant is Jesus' answer to the immediately preceding question Jesus poses to the disciples:  "Who do you say that I am?" (Mk 8: 29).  Jesus goes on to foretell his death and resurrection, which will define his disciples as Christ followers:  "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross..." (Mk 8: 34). What does it mean to be named a Christ follower?  How does it change us?

We can begin to claim our identities as Christ followers by trying to understand what it means for Jesus to claim his identity as Messiah - a process Maya Angelou succinctly critiques in response to someone who identifies himself as Christian with "What?!  Already?!"

God took the initiative with Abraham and Sarah.  God names Jesus at his baptism as "Beloved Son."  In baptism God claims us and names us as children of God.  In covenanting with our descendants, our Messiah, and with us, God initiates the relationship with re-naming.  Our challenge is to respond to our new names  as Abraham and Sarah did - fall on our knees and rejoice.  Our challenge also is to avoid responding as Peter did by rebuking and rejecting the servanthood sacrifices Jesus lays out for us.

What's in a name?  The answer:  Our very identity and relationship with our Lord.