Words from Zebedee

 The Third Sunday after the Epiphany

Isaiah 9:1-4
1 Corinthians 1:10-18
Matthew 4:12-23
Psalm 27:1, 5-13

Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Jesus saw … James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.

          Close your eyes and pretend that I have a beard and a deep voice; listen to me as I imagine the words of old Zebedee, sitting alone in that boat, almost buried in a pile of discarded fishing nets.

          “I’m going to have to come in at some point, I guess, and try to get help pulling this old boat over to the shore, but it’s like I’ve turned to stone. I can’t lift my legs, and my arms just hang down like floppy nets on a hook. I know that people must be staring as they walk by, wondering what I’m doing out here in shallow water in a boat by myself. I know that Salome is going to get worried when I don’t show up for dinner. But I just don’t know if I can go forward yet.

Blessed Lord God of the Universe … O why? Why did both of my sons go away with that rabbi, that Jesus fellow? They didn’t talk with me about their decision. They didn’t even look back. What if they don’t come home? What if they get into trouble with the authorities? What if they end up like that wandering Baptizer and are thrown into prison--or worse? I don’t think that I could stand it,  Lord God. And their poor mother …. I couldn’t stand to see her bent with grief in the shadow of a Roman cross, looking up in horror at their twisted bodies.[1] No, Holy One! You couldn’t do that to us! I have been a good father, doing the best I can for the both of them, teaching them my trade, teaching them to live faithful and obedient lives. Please, the sons of Zebedee deserve better than the shame of a cross!

“Honor your father and your mother,” it says in the Words of the Covenant. How can my boys forget your Teaching? How can they forget me, and their mother? They are good sons. They have to come back—If I wait here just a bit longer, they will come back. They’ll be laughing about the joke that they played on their old abba, and they’ll pick up the nets again, and everything will be alright, just like it was before.

Were things really alright before, though? Things haven’t felt alright in a long time. Maybe I don’t blame my boys for wanting to find a new life. Fishing is such brutally hard work: Year after year, rowing this boat out onto the lake, tossing the nets out into the water and pulling them in, tossing them out and pulling them in, over and over, day after day, breaking your back in the hot sun or the cold wind or the dismal mists. And then there’s the net-mending. That’s just as bad. These big nets are always getting snagged and torn on things. So we keep tying the smelly old ropes back together. Such boring work. So tedious. It’s like life, though, isn’t it? Making, marring, and mending: over and over again.[2] Just like Creation.

Sons, you can’t escape the rhythm of creation! You don’t have to leave to find God! God is right here with us. But what happens when it’s so dark that you can’t see God’s face? The world’s a dark place these days, I’ll have to admit—much worse than it was when I was their age. Just look at these empty nets: even the fishing isn’t good anymore. Oh, we try to blame the weather; the authorities try to pretend that we are just imagining it. But I know what I see. The fish really are disappearing, and it’s getting harder to pretend. We’re ruining your Creation, God, and it’s all because of Rome, of course! Those bloody Romans gobble up our fish faster than we can haul them to shore. They say that in Rome, everybody wants their salted fish from the Galilee.[3] But what will happen when the fish are gone? The Romans won’t care … they’ll just go to some other poor place and eat up all their fish, too. Lord of the Seas, what will we fishermen do then? What will Galileans eat?

It’s not like we’re being paid right, either. Maybe it’d be worth sucking up all the fish from the sea if I were making a fortune at it! My grandfather was able to buy the rights to this boat with the money that he saved up. But me? I haven’t seen savings for years. With just two sons, I have to hire extra guys to manage the heavy nets, and boy, that eats up almost all my profits. There should be ten of us out here working together, yet we have to do the work with only five or six pairs of arms and legs. Father, if you had given me more sons, maybe James and John would have stuck around! Maybe I worked them too hard?

It’s those dirty collaborators, of course, Jews who join the Roman system for their own benefit. They’re the ones who manage the fishing cooperatives that we have to join in order to survive. They’re the ones who are making all the money! And the number one traitor of all is that nasty, power-hungry, puppet king, Herod. And he calls himself a Jew! He uses what should be our due to keep his power, to pay tribute to Caesar. [4] Herod and the Romans have the power. They make all of the decisions and take all of the cash. Me and my sons, we’re nothing. And we’re stuck being nothing, too. There’s nothing we can do about Rome, or about Herod, or about the fish prices, or about the empty nets. Sometimes I feel like we’re the ones caught in those nets. It’s like somebody has thrown huge nets over our beautiful Galilee, and we’re flopping around in one miserable pile, waiting to be hauled onto the boat and pickled.

Maybe my sons are right? Maybe it is too late to mend our nets. Maybe we just need to get up and throw them into the sea in order to be free. I know that you will save us, Holy God. The Prophet Isaiah even wrote about us, right? I heard it read just recently, and I remember. The land of Zebulon and Naphtali, that’s us.  There’s something about the yoke of our burden being removed and the oppressor’s rod being broken. There’s something about foreign army boots no longer tramping across our land. Maybe there’s something about the nets of oppression being lifted, too? I long for that day, Lord God. It’s way past time.

Maybe my sons are right? I’ve heard that this Jesus fellow is a miracle-worker who speaks with real authority.  One of the hired hands told me just the other day that he has cured the sick and even driven out demons. I know that people are curious, following him all around from town to town. Right before my sons left, I heard Jesus offer to make us “fishers of people.” Ha, I wonder if we’ll start salting and shipping off human beings for Rome’s dinner plates once the fish are gone?! What does a fisher of people do, anyway? What kind of work is that? Oh, it can’t be a real job. It can’t put food on the plate, anyway, that’s for sure. But maybe it just means healing people? Freeing people from demons, like that Jesus does? Gathering people up in your net, God, rather in than Rome’s? I’d go for that—if I could stay here with my boat, that is.

Maybe my sons will learn something from this Jesus and then come home to me. Maybe they’ll do a miracle that will put fish back into the lake? Maybe they’ll be leaders and teachers in the community when they come back, full of fancy words like Jesus? Yes, you’ll send my sons back to me, won’t you, God? You can’t expect a father to give up his sons, now, can you? After all, you didn’t make Abraham sacrifice his son. You stepped in and stopped him. Maybe this is just a test for me. Yes, a test! Maybe I should go see what this Jesus is all about. Maybe I’m not too old to learn to fish for people, too?  No, you wouldn’t expect a father to give up his sons. Not even You, Most Holy God, would give up a son, not even to save the whole world, now, would you?

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[1] Tradition has it that Salome, mother of James and John, was one of the women who witnessed Jesus’ death on the Cross.

[2] Words used by Johanna van-Wijk Bos to describe the pattern of Genesis in class at Louisville Presbyterian Seminary, 2005.

[3] Don C. Richter, Mission Trips that Matter (Nashville: Upper Room Books, 2008), 99.

[4] K.C. Hanson, “The Galilean Fishing Economy and the Jesus Tradition,” found at http://www.khanson.com/ARTICLES/fishing.html

Coach Jesus, Coach Paul, and Coach Isaiah before the Annual Meeting

                                                                         

 The Second Sunday After Epiphany

Almighty God, whose Son our Savior Jesus Christ is the light of the world: Grant that your people, illumined by your Word and Sacraments, may shine with the radiance of Christ's glory, that he may be known, worshipped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Isaiah 49:1-7

1 Cor 1:1-9

John 1: 29-42

I was pondering today’s lessons in light of our Annual Meeting  (and procrastinating by perusing Facebook) when I came across the post of one of our talented parishioners, Bob Valvano. Bob’s words jumped out at me in their truth and wisdom. (Plus they provide what is ever-elusive for me as a preacher—a good sports reference!)

          Bob explains that in playing sports, and in life in general, the challenge is not just to know WHAT to do, or even to know HOW to do it, but it is to know WHY you are doing what you do. And then the even deeper challenge is to know WHO you are while you are doing these things. We all already know, or can find out easily, what we need to do to win a game or to get better grades in school or to live a Christian life, for that matter. But sometimes it is difficult to know HOW to execute that winning play, or how to make myself study more, or how to organize my finances so that I can tithe. Great coaches, Bob continues, don’t just tell their players what to do, or even just how to do a play. Great coaches get their players to want to do things by leading them to the WHY, to the reasons for doing things a certain way.

Coach Jesus seems to be asking the disciples that WHY question in today’s Gospel: “What are you looking for?” he blurts out as they follow him around silently. He doesn’t want them to stop following—indeed, he invites them to “come and see” firsthand what he is all about—but he also wants them to ask themselves why they are following him. The answer makes a difference in commitment and mission. Have you ever heard Jesus asking you the same question? Perhaps other people have asked you that question for him? WHY do you believe? WHY do you go to church? WHY did you give money to that homeless man? WHO is Jesus calling you to be? These are all important questions for each of us to ponder as we live our lives as Christians. The Church could also perhaps do a better job in coaching us through them.

What struck me today, though, in reading our lessons and in thinking about our own parish, is that the WHY and WHO questions are just as vital to Christian communities as they are to individuals. Religion is such individualized business in America these days. We speak in terms of my call, my gifts, my walk with Jesus. I ask myself what I want in a parish, how it best suits my family’s needs. We often forget to consider the community apart from ourselves and our spiritual journeys. Even when we do think about the church as a whole, our fear pushes us to obsess over the WHAT, or perhaps the HOW of our community’s role in the world: What does the church need to do in order to grow? What does the church need to do to get young families in the pews? How do we get more money? How do we get our message into the community? And so on and on and on… Book after book. Consultant after consultant.  I’m not saying that these aren’t good questions to try to answer, but as Bob points out in his reflection, they are not the questions that truly bring new life.

When Coach Paul gives advice to the church in Corinth, however, it is interesting to note that he doesn’t even try to give any instruction to this cantankerous bunch of Christians without first naming WHO they are.  Right off the bat, Coach Paul names this little group of squabbling believers as nothing less than the church of God, the church that belongs to God. Just as God grabs Saul the Pharisee and turns him into Paul the Apostle, God brings together this particular bunch of individuals in Corinth and makes them God’s assembly.[1] It is this assembly that Paul will later describe as Christ’s Body. We sometimes forget, don’t we, in asking ourselves WHO we are as a church here at St. Thomas, that it is God who calls us together, out of the separateness of each of our lives, that it is God who makes us “church,” that it is to God that this assembly belongs? This assembly doesn’t belong to one age-group; we don’t belong to one service; we don’t belong to the rector, or to the vestry; we don’t belong to the group with the loudest voices or the most money. This assembly belongs to God. And as such, shouldn’t we find reassurance that, given half a chance, God wants to sustain us, here, together?  If we in this place are God’s assembly, it will certainly take more than the waning tide of mainline religion to wipe us off the map. If we truly know and accept WHO and WHOSE we are, I wonder if we would be free to act with greater courage and creativity?

Look at the community of Israel that Coach Isaiah is working with in our first reading. He’s talking to a nation who is about to return to its own land after generations in exile. The people think that they know WHY they are heading home: to rebuild their city and to settle back into the same kind of life that they had before the destruction of war. But Isaiah is telling them that God’s answer to the WHY question is different than they imagine it to be: As far as God is concerned, they are returning not to get comfortable again, but in order to bring God’s salvation “to the ends of the earth.” God is asking them to reach out beyond themselves, beyond putting things back the way they were. Isaiah’s words remind us that, as one scholar writes, “God’s [WHY] is always bigger than ours, holding our stories within God’s life and weaving them into the wide-open future.”[2]

Coach Paul will eventually give the Corinthian Christians some advice about HOW to be church, but he too first insists upon the WHY of the assembly. For Paul, the church gathers because the people have been “made holy in Jesus Christ.” They have been set apart in the service of the living God, through baptism into Christ.[3] I was interested to learn that “calling upon the name of Christ” does not mean praying to Jesus for help in getting what we want. It means confessing Jesus as Lord.[4] It means that we live self-giving lives and die self-giving deaths with our Lord Jesus, and that we rise again with him out of the waters of baptism.

When I was reading Bob’s article, I realized that I probably never got into playing sports as a kid because no one ever bothered to show me either the HOW or the WHY of physical activity. I was born klutzy and slow. I wasn’t naturally good at catching or throwing balls or doing anything, really, with my weak little body. So I couldn’t find joy in sports by myself.

“Who wants to run around in the heat after some dumb ball?” I scoffed, not knowing the skills involved. “Who wants to watch a bunch of cheerleaders waving pompoms around when you can be reading a good book?” I wondered.

“Just get out there and be normal!” yelled my mother and lots of very scary PE teachers over the years.

But no one ever took me kindly and firmly by the hand and said, “Here’s HOW you can kick that ball if you are having trouble. Here’s HOW you can get stronger.” No one ever let me experience the WHYS in the value and camaraderie of teamwork or in the joy of making physical strides. I never developed an identity as a “player of sports” and my life is less rich for it.

When outsiders look at us, the Church, or even when we look at ourselves, running around and tripping over each other, trying to be Christ’s Body like an amateur basketball team trips and scrambles in the sun, it is easy for the observer to scoff, “Who would want to be doing that? What’s the point?” And when those who are supposed to help us just holler, “Get out there and act like Christians, for goodness’ sake!” that doesn’t help us at all. Yet God has given us an identity and a mission. Christ has given us a Body. We need to hear the words of Coach Isaiah, Coach Paul, and Coach Jesus, coaches who take our struggling Body gently by the hand and remind us that our Body is a beloved and blessed servant of God. We need to feel these coaches leaning over to us as we try to follow and whispering, “WHY are you following me? Come and I’ll show you.”

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[1] Raymond F. Collins, First Corinthians  (Sacra Pagina), (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1999), 45.

[2] Amy Oden, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1939

[3] Ibid., 46.

[4] Ibid., 47.

Pretending to Bathe

        

First Sunday after the Epiphany

The Baptism of our Lord Year A

Isaiah 42:1-9
Acts 10:34-43
Matthew 3:13-17
Psalm 29


Father in heaven, who at the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan proclaimed him your beloved Son and anointed him with the Holy Spirit: Grant that all who are baptized into his Name may keep the covenant they have made, and boldly confess him as Lord and Savior; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

         When I was in elementary school, I was supposed to be in charge of my own nightly bath, as is any eight-or-ten-year-old child.  I didn’t put up a fuss when it was time to get ready for bed. Without arguing, I would head for the bathroom. But I rarely took a bath. Oh, I would run the water—long and loudly, at full tilt—so that my mother would hear it coursing through the pipes in the house. I would even splash around in it for a minute with my hands or kick at it with my feet, in case someone was listening at the door. I would certainly remember to wet the washrag and the soap. But I spent my whole bath time sitting cross-legged on the bathroom floor, fully clothed, reading a book. “Why should I actually get in the water?” I reasoned. “I’m not really dirty. I don’t smell. I’ve just been sitting at my desk at school all day. What I really need is to finish this chapter in my book! And this next chapter. And this next.”  I took really long “baths.” I don’t think my mother ever caught on.

           For first-century Jews, baptism was a purity ritual, a “bath,” if you will, that would wash off not just the dust of the road but the sins that cloak the heart, as well. John baptized “with water for repentance,” for amendment of life, so that one would be clean for the Day of the Lord, for the Day of Judgment that was coming. But here’s the problem: If baptism was about purification, why, early Christians wondered, would Jesus need to take a bath like this? Jesus, the sinless Son of God, the pure and perfect Victim—why would he need to be baptized for the forgiveness of his sins? Why on earth would scrawny John the Forerunner ever consent to baptize the powerful Son of Man? Why didn't Jesus baptize John instead?  Why couldn’t spotless Jesus just sit down on the banks of the Jordan and read a good book while all of the dirty people bathed? Was he just pretending to wash?

          Each Gospel writer answers that question a bit differently, but for Matthew, Jesus participates in the bath in the Jordan as an act of humble obedience to God and to God's teaching. Jesus and John together "bring to fulfillment all righteousness” as they proceed to wash God the Son in the river. Not only does Jesus agree to take a bath that he does not need, he enters and arises from the water as the suffering Servant, in a reference to our Old Testament reading for today. When Matthew explains that God announces, “This one is my beloved Son in whom I have taken delight,” he is paraphrasing the words called out to Isaiah’s beloved servant, using Isaiah’s words to identify Jesus as one who is so gentle that he will not even break a bruised reed or cry out in the streets, yet as one whose obedience will bring about such powerful outcomes as justice for the captive and healing for the blind. Moreover, when Jesus is baptized, the perfect sphere in the heavens, the dome that holds up the sky, is pierced like the Temple veil at the moment of Jesus’ death. A tear is made in the barrier that divides humankind from God, and God’s love comes pouring down—first on Jesus, God’s beloved and obedient Son, and then later on us, beloved of God in Christ.[1]

          We modern Christians are perhaps less concerned about Jesus’ sinlessness than we are about knowing what Jesus’ obedience means for our own Christian lives. What does it mean for us to follow a Lord who paradoxically washes to become unclean with the unclean? What kind of righteousness, or “right relationship” does Jesus expect then from us?  We know, of course, that baptism in Christ is a gift, a gift of God’s grace. It is not something that we earn, but something that God pours over us like living water. That’s why little babies can be baptized before they even know what's going on; they aren’t able to do anything but snuggle in their parents’ arms, yet God fills them with new life in baptism. But baptism also eventually demands some kind of response, a conversion of life, a time of learning and a decision to accept the Baptismal Covenant as our own. When babies are baptized, their parents and godparents carry this part of the meaning for them until they are old enough to assume it themselves. But God expects the baptized to walk in the ways of righteousness, to learn and grow and act as Christ-followers in the world.

          Two examples of humble obedience really brought home to me this week what kind of righteousness Jesus fulfilled for us.

          First, I read that in the Eastern Orthodox Church, Christians celebrate and remember Jesus’ baptism by a big Church procession to the nearest local body of water. The Bishop or Patriarch then throws a cross out into the water, and the faithful jump in and race to see who can rescue it first and return it to the church official (a chilly proposition in places like Russia in January!) Such public processions, however, are downright dangerous in parts of the world where Christians are still persecuted. In Turkish-controlled northern Cyprus, for example, where only a few Christians live, the ceremony was allowed this year for the first time in almost 40 years. Danger, relative obscurity, and small size do not deter these Christians from remembering publicly the baptism of our Lord. Just as impressive, though, is that Patriarch Bartholomew, the senior official of the Orthodox world, tends to conduct this Epiphany water-blessing ceremony not in nearby rivers but in unlikely places all around the world, including in the Amazon basin, or on the melting coast of Greenland or at the oily Gulf of Mexico. These rituals, he explains, have become part of a campaign against water pollution and other environmental problems.[2] (Do you think that he showed up in West Virginia this year, perhaps?) In any case, what struck me was the paradox that the leaders of these small, weak groups of Christians, nevertheless hold positions of global importance. As one writer put it, “The ‘weakness’ part does nothing to diminish their moral authority. Rather the opposite, in fact.”[3]   ….Just like Jesus humbling himself in John’s baptism. How do we use our weakness as strength? How do we let God use us on a global scale, despite small size and obscurity?

          The other image that stuck me this week is from the movie, Blue Like Jazz. It is the story of a pious young Southern Baptist from Texas who rejects his religious upbringing and joins in the agnostic mockery of ultra-liberal students at Reed College in Oregon. One of the scornful rituals at Reed is for the students to elect one of their most anti-religious members as “pope” each year. The school’s “pope” wears a cope and miter and, the night of his election, must enter a fake confessional booth and perform absolution upon the crowds of drunken students who enter one by one to confess their sins. It’s all supposed to be a parody, but when Don, the young Texan, is elected Pope at the end of the movie, he is starting to understand what real Christianity is all about. In the final scene, we see crowds waiting outside of the confessional, just like the crowds were waiting on the banks of the Jordan. Like Jesus, Don puts on the cope and miter that he has been given and looks like he is merely going to play the game… Yet also like Jesus, he changes the game around. Instead of pronouncing mock absolution, Don asks each student, in full humility, to forgive him, as a human being and as a representative of the Church, for all that he and the Church have done to hurt that student. And he begins by asking the forgiveness of a man who has suffered sexual abuse at the hands of a priest. After a long hesitation, the abuse victim forgives and receives some measure of freedom.  By humbling himself, by turning the ritual inside out, Don leaves room for the Spirit to come in and make true forgiveness possible, even in the hardened hearts of those deeply wounded by the sins of the Church. When the world lifts us up in positions of power, can we lower ourselves to let God’s love transform and even break the very structures that support us?

          Or do we pretend to be dutifully scrubbing away at the sins of the world and at the smudges on our own skin, when we are really still fully clothed and doing what we want, sitting cross-legged and comfy on the floor beside the tub?

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    [1] Gordon Lathrop, Holy Ground, 22.

[2] http://www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus/2014/01/christian-rite-many-meanings

[3] Ibid.