A Gospel of Suffering

Psalm 22

For the Greatest Generation, the defining question may be, “Where were you when you heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor?” In my parents’ generation, the question is, “Where were you when President Kennedy was shot?” I had thought that my generation’s question would be, “Where were you when the space shuttle Challenger exploded?” But I was wrong. As it turns out, the question that has been on everyone’s mind has been, “Where were you on the morning of September 11, 2001?”

There are at least three different kinds of Psalms in our Bibles: psalms of praise, psalms of thanksgiving and psalms of lament. The first kind, the psalm of praise, is a song inviting others to praise the Lord for some specific reason: “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his steadfast love endures forever.” The second kind of psalm, the psalm of thanksgiving, thanks the Lord for his help in some kind of trouble: “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.” 

The twenty-second Psalm is a song of lament. Lament psalms are marked by some very specific characteristics. There is a first-person address to God, a petition to be heard and helped, a description of the trouble, an appeal to God’s better nature, a statement of trust in the Lord, and a vow of sacrifice or praise if and when God comes to the psalmist’s aid.

The reason Psalm 22 sticks in our minds and is probably the most excellent example of lament as far as Christians are concerned is that Jesus quoted it while hanging on the cross. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  Why are you so far from helping me?  Perhaps it was while on the cross, bleeding, dehydrated, and in gruesome agony, that Jesus felt the most separated from the God—felt the most human.  O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest.  

Walter Brueggemann, the venerated Old Testament scholar and professor, describes lamentations like Psalm 22 as psalms of disorientation, because they show that the psalmist’s previous theological orientation has been disrupted by life circumstances, leading the psalmist to demand an explanation and rescue. 

We know what it’s like to suffer. We, as a nation, have suffered greatly over the past ten years, largely as a result of the attack of September 11, 2001. And yet, it is but one example of how human existence is a constant struggle. The words of the psalm ring in our ears: God, where are you? Have you forgotten us? Why do you seem so far away? We have been taught—and we believe—that you are a good God… so where are you now? Where were you when we needed you most? The man in the poem Footprints, the man who had the dream, has to ask God, “Where were you when I needed you?” not because he didn’t believe in God’s goodness, but because he hadn’t felt it. In the poem, God’s response, which strikes me as trite and unhelpful, is “It was then that I carried you.” 

“It was then that you carried me?” the man might have replied. “I sure didn’t feel carried.”

Part of the twenty-second psalm’s beauty—and part of its agony—is that it is so intimate. It doesn’t start out by saying, “O God, O God, why have you forsaken me?” It says, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This is a psalm written by someone who has a personal, intimate relationship with the Lord. This makes God’s absence even more shocking and inappropriate.  

The psalmist speaks with a voice so much like our own, not just as a damaged, frightened American people, but as individuals too: My hands and feet have shriveled; I can count all my bones. All my bones are out of joint, my mouth is died up like a potsherd; you lay me in the dust of death. Deliver my soul from the sword, my life from the power of the dog! Save me from the mouth of the lion!

And suddenly in the Psalm, there is a profound silence. For a time, no one speaks. When the psalmist continues, he does so having experienced something amazing, something remarkable, something life-saving. You have rescued me, he says, I will tell of your name to my brothers and sisters; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you. You who fear the LORD, praise him! For he did not hide his face from me, but heard when I cried to him. What could fill this writer, who only a few lines before was begging for the merciful salvation of God, with such joy? What is done, but not spoken of in that long pause of silence? As we shake our fists at the sky and shout in righteous rage, “Where were you? What good God could allow such a thing as this? Where were you?” what can God do to turn us from despair to joy?

Psalm 22 offers an opportunity for deeper, more genuine reflection on God’s perceived absence, and apparent presence, in human suffering than any Footprints poem. It is more like the song One Last Breath by Creed, by any measure a modern-day psalm of lament. In it, lyricist Scott Stapp writes:

Please come now I think I'm falling / I'm holding on to all I think is safe
It seems I found the road to nowhere / And I'm trying to escape
I yelled back when I heard thunder / But I'm down to one last breath
And with it let me say
Hold me now / I'm six feet from the edge and I'm thinking
maybe six feet / ain't so far down

I'm looking down now that it's over / Reflecting on all of my mistakes
I thought I found the road to somewhere / Somewhere in His grace
I cried out heaven save me / But I'm down to one last breath
And with it let me say

Hold me now / I'm six feet from the edge and I'm thinking
maybe six feet / ain't so far down

Sad eyes follow me / But I still believe there's something left for me
So please come stay with me / 'Cause I still believe there's something left for you and me

Hold me now / I'm six feet from the edge and I'm thinking

This song, perhaps more than any other I have heard, captures the angst and fear of the Psalmist’s soul in Psalm 22. I yelled back when I heard thunder, I cried out, “Heaven, save me!” But we’re down to one last breath, so with it, let us say, “we still believe.”

The story, often attributed to Elie Wiesel, is told of a group of young Jews who approached some rabbis who were imprisoned with them. “Rabbi,” they said, “are we not God’s chosen people? Did God not promise to protect us and to never leave our presence? Why, then, is this happening?” The Rabbis held a court of law, appointing one rabbi to represent the children of Israel, and another to represent God. God was charged with the crimes of breaking the covenant of protection and of abandoning his chosen people. The trial lasted for some time, and in the end, God was found guilty.

Perplexed, the people asked the rabbis, “What do we do now?”

The rabbis responded, “Now, we pray.”

“Now we pray”—and to whom? The God who remained so silent? The God who seemed so far from helping, so far from the words of their groaning? Like the lyrics of Scott Stapp’s song, the Rabbi's comment gave voice to a similar theology: we’re down to one last breath, and with it, let us say, “hold us now; we still believe.”

And then, in the psalm, there is silence. Have our words fallen on deaf ears? Is God truly so far from the words of our groaning that they are never heard? In Psalm 22, half way through verse 21, something miraculous apparently happens. What is the mysterious response of God in that long pause of silence? What has God done in that silence to turn the psalmist’s suffering into joy, his groaning into shouts of exaltation?  

In 2001, my life was assaulted and challenged by external events. I had been a pastor for all of two weeks (and not even ordained yet) when, on September 11, the United States was attacked by Al Qaeda terrorists, killing three thousand Americans in Manhattan, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania. I happened to be serving as an associate pastor in a bedroom community for Manhattan, and there was a great deal of near-panic as the pastoral staff worked to track down congregation members. Luckily, no members of our congregation were killed. 

Incidentally, I was married just four days later, on September 15th. In January of 2002, my father-in-law, William Ryan Spence, who was a 52-year-old Marine reservist, who had been trained to fly helicopters during his years of active service, and who had parlayed those skills into his dream job as an medical emergency helicopter pilot, died in a sudden, accidental crash as he lifted off the roof of a Cleveland hospital, en route to a rescue, and his helicopter crashed on the front lawn. 

It was two months after his funeral, at the end of March, that I was preparing for what was only my second sermon since being ordained: a sermon for Good Friday. The lectionary text was Psalm 22.

Preparing for this sermon, I reflected upon how shattered I felt. Three thousand Americans had been mass-murdered and our nation was living in a fear it hadn’t known in generations. Members of my congregation, especially its young people, were turning to me for theological insight in the face of this atrocity. On the heels of this, my own father-in-law died heroically but unnecessarily, and I found myself forced to wrestle with my own grief as well as that of Diane and her family. Reading this psalm, being asked to preach on it, in the context of so much pain, suffering and perceived God-forsakenness seemed like an impossible task. And yet, as I prepared for the sermon, this text ministered to me; the prayer of the psalmist became my own prayer. I was given permission by the author to ask hard questions from a position of faith, rather than doubt. 

So I asked myself, what happened in the middle of verse 21? What happened that caused the psalmist to turn from lament to thanksgiving? Something transformational took place in that break, and when it occurred to me that the “break” was the lynch pin upon which the message of the entire psalm turned, I found myself asking, “What was Jesus telling the crowd of onlookers by invoking this psalm on the cross?” 

Commentator James Mays suggests that by quoting Psalm 22, Jesus “joins the multitudinous company of the afflicted and becomes one with them in their suffering. In praying as they do, he expounds his total identification with them.”

God entered our suffering, knew the heartache and pain, the sorrow and apprehension, and anguish and fear of human existence, and died. Finally, God understood and experienced God’s own curse on humanity, “out of the ground you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” In the long silence of Psalm 22, in the break in the story, in the void where the mystery of God’s action took place, God spoke God’s Word. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” God took the curse which God had uttered against humanity in Genesis, and experienced it for Godself.  

In the death of Jesus on the cross, God died our death; God experienced and reversed the curse of human existence, so that we might live life more abundantly in the certain knowledge that God knows us, knows the human condition completely. Only after being equipped with this knowledge could God conquer the curse of death, defeat the wages of sin. To know death and defeat it, God had to die.

And so, brothers and sisters, like the Psalmist, whose cries of anguish were heard by God, we, too, must tell of God’s name to others. We, too, must praise God in the midst of the people, for God did not hide his face from us; he heard us when we cried out. Like the psalmist, we must vow to share our stories of anguish, of turning to God in our despair. And we must tell of God’s response to our groaning in the ministry of Jesus Christ, who took our curse and died in our place. The great mystery of Psalm 22 is the great mystery of faith: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. The great gift of a lament psalm like Psalm 22 is one in which the words of the psalmist become our words, and are answered by God in Jesus’ saying in response, “Me, too.”

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Jesus, Son of the Father

Matthew 27
(This entry is a first-person narrative.)

I thought it had to be a mistake. A case of mistaken identity or something. The crowd loved me, of course, because I was one of them. I was a Jew who had made a strong case for resistance to Roman authority. I had attracted quite a number of followers, and in the end, I was betrayed by a friend and imprisoned on charges of sedition.

The Roman guard approached my cell and removed my chains. “Follow me,” he said, and I was sure I was being led away to my death. Imagine my surprise when I found myself standing in a balcony overlooking a large crowd of people, next to Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, and some other fellow I didn’t know.

Pilate raised his hands to quiet the crowd. When there was silence, he spoke to the people, his voice ringing out in a courtyard that had been built to amplify his voice. “It is your custom that a prisoner be released in honor of your Passover holiday,” he said. I found this odd. I had never heard of this custom before, and I was wondering what he was playing at. “I present you with a choice,” he continued. “Whom shall I pardon? Jesus, the Son of the Father, or Jesus, your so-called Messiah?”

He was asking the wrong question; it was bound to cause confusion! Even I didn’t know who he was talking about! My name is Jesus, that much is true, and because I was a leader who preached resistance to the Roman establishment, I had been declared the Messiah by some of my followers. That was why I was arrested. But the mistaken identity concerned my last name. See, I was known as Jesus Bar-Abbas, which in Hebrew means “Jesus, Son of the Father.” So was I the messiah Pilate mentioned, or was I the son of the father? I gathered that the other man standing beside Pilate was the other Jesus, but I never talked to him, so I couldn’t get his story.

In retrospect, I don’t think Pilate wanted the other Jesus killed at all. First of all, he tried to talk the crowd out of it. When he first asked the question, “Which Jesus do you want?” the crowd seemed confused. “Do you want the Son of the Father, or do you want the Messiah?” I know I was confused. It seemed to me that I was both. As we stood there, a messenger came with word from Pilate’s wife that he should steer clear of the righteous man, because she’d had some kind of dream about him. Now, if you ask me, I would call myself a righteous man. I wasn’t a violent criminal or anything—I was just trying to win Israel’s independence from Rome. But I knew Pilate’s wife meant the other Jesus. The Romans were pretty clear about what they thought of insurrectionists like me, and she’d never have described me as righteous!

While this was going on, I noticed members of the Sanhedrin working the crowd. Pharisees, temple priests… those sorts. I don’t know what they were telling the people, but the crowd got worked up about something. The crowd, in their confusion, hadn’t given Pilate an answer yet, and I suspect that the members of the Sanhedrin were coaching them on their response. After dismissing the messenger, Pilate turned back to the crowd and shouted, “Well? Which will it be?”

And the crowd shouted back, “Give us the Son of the Father!” The other fellow looked relieved, which only made me more confused. Was this guy also a messiah, or were there two guys named Jesus Bar-Abbas in Jerusalem? If he was a messiah, I had never heard of him. But why the crowd’s asking for Bar-Abbas would make him feel relieved is beyond me, unless that was his name, too.

This apparently wasn’t the answer Pilate wanted to hear, which only added to my confusion. Pilate wanted me dead, no doubt about that. The crowd had asked that Jesus Son of the Father be released. I took it from Pilate’s hesitance that they meant me, and that Pilate wasn’t happy about their decision. But then, that meant the other Jesus was the messiah who would be killed. That should have been great news for me… so why did the other Jesus look relieved? Was he as confused as I?

“Then what should I do with the Jesus you call the messiah?” Pilate asked.

Everyone said, “Let him be crucified!”

“Why?” Pilate asked. “He hasn’t done anything!”

“We don’t care!” they crowd responded. “Just give us the Son of the Father!” The crowd started pressing in on the palace a little then. There were plenty of guards surrounding the grounds, but you could just feel the energy of the throng of people, and I was becoming nervous that things could get nasty.

Pilate stalked into the antechamber inside, and then reemerged with a bowl of water. Making sure that every eye in the courtyard could see what he was doing, he washed his hands in the bowl and wiped them with a towel. “You’re not going to pin the messiah’s death on me!” he shouted. “I wash my hands of the whole affair!”

“Fine!” the people shouted. “The messiah’s blood will be on us and our children!” I started feeling panicky, my palms were sweating, my heart was racing. I looked over at the other Jesus, and he was just standing there, looking calm, though he seemed to have tears in his eyes. I think he thought he was about to be released—after all, hadn’t they just condemned me, the Jesus known as a messiah?

Pilate muttered something to the guard standing behind him; I didn’t catch what it was. But then the most shocking thing happened. The guard approached me, unlocked my shackles, and led me down to the courtyard below, where I was released.

The confusion continued. My friends and followers were clapping me on the back, all smiles, but there were many in the crowd who looked mortified, as if some terrible wrong had just occurred. They kept looking from me to the other fellow, still in the balcony. They seemed to think the wrong man had been released! As for me, what did I care? I’d just had my death sentence commuted—I was saved!

When I turned and looked up at the balcony, it was empty. Pilate and the other Jesus had disappeared. Word spread that he’d been taken to the back of the palace to be flogged. I should have left; I should have been rejoicing with rich foods and fine wines! But I felt sick to my stomach, and I followed the crowd, who had begun moving around the building to watch the goings-on.

We got around to the back, and there was the other Jesus, tied to a post, being whipped by guards. I jumped with every crack of the whip, and I had to stop watching long before they’d finished. And to think, it should have been me tied to that post. It should have been me being whipped. I was the one who had broken the law, not that guy!

They finally finished beating him, and they dragged him back inside. When they came back out again, Jesus was dragging a huge cross, and they headed out toward Skull Hill. I couldn’t watch as they nailed him down to the wooden cross and then hoisted him up into a hanging position, but I heard the hammer and the sound of his screams as they drove the nails. When they were finished, I wandered closer to have a look. They had stripped him; I don’t know what happened to his clothes. It didn’t take long for him to die—a few hours, maybe. Honestly, that’s a mercy. A lot of people hang for a long time before they die; it’s part of the fun for the Romans. As they started pulling his cross back down, and wrenching the nails out of his arms and legs to be reused on another day, I broke down in tears. There was his mother, and some woman who I heard someone call Mary, and a young man whose name I didn’t catch. They had been standing there the whole time, talking to Jesus and trying to reassure him as he hung there. I’m surprised they had the stomach for it. When they claimed his body, they treated it with such reverence, such love. I have loyal followers, but none of them love me as these folks loved him.

Long after it was over, and the crowd had gone home, I continued to be haunted by the look on Jesus’ face when the crowd asked for Bar-Abbas. I still think there was some confusion—certainly the crowd seemed angry when I was released instead of the other Jesus! I was the criminal; I was the wanted man; I was the one who had broken the law. According to the law, I deserved death for what I had done. But that other Jesus died on the cross that had been reserved for me. He didn’t protest, didn’t put up a fight, didn’t point out to Pilate that there must be some mistake! He just sighed and looked at me, as I was led away and given my freedom.


Some time later, I heard a fellow preaching in the courtyard of the temple, and talking about a crucified Jesus. This caught my attention, and I stood close and listened as he taught that Jesus had been crucified to glorify God and as a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the world. This Jesus had died in the place of sinners, the preacher said. “He died for you, and he died for you, and he died for you, so that washed in his blood, you might be forgiven for your sins and be reconciled to his Heavenly Father.”

His Father. He’d called himself the Son of the Father! Then all my worst fears were true! The wrong man had been released! The crowd had been calling for him, and not me! I remembered the words of the crowds as they rejected the so-called messiah, “Fine! The messiah’s blood will be on us and our children!” They were assuming responsibility for what they thought would be the crucifixion of a criminal, but then I’d been released. I thought of what the preacher said: that it was by his blood that the people’s sins were forgiven. They had no idea the truth of what they said, when they shouted, “His blood will be on us!”

As the preacher continued to speak about Jesus as the messiah foretold in scripture—even foretold by David himself—I called out to the man, “Brother, what should we do?”

The preacher looked at me and said, “Repent and be baptized in Jesus’ name, so that you may receive the Holy Spirit. He died for your sins, brother.”

I looked at him in stunned silence for a moment, and then all I could say was, “You have no idea.” And I stumbled away, weeping.Share

The Resurrection IS the Life!

John 11:1-45

Today's scripture reading is, in a way, the climax of the gospel according to John. I know the final act is not yet played: the arrest, the trial, the crucifixion, the resurrection. I know that the story of Jesus isn’t even close to finished, and that the greatest miracles are yet to come. And yet, somehow the raising of Lazarus is a climax all its own.

I say this for two reasons. First of all, the raising of Lazarus is, according to John, the reason the Jewish leadership decides that Jesus has to die. Right after Jesus raises Lazarus, a group of witnesses runs to the Pharisees to report what had happened. A council meeting is convened, and it is decided that in order to stop Jesus’ miracle-working from bringing unwanted attention from Rome, Jesus would have to be sacrificed for the sake of the nation. It was also decided that Lazarus would have to be captured and killed, since he had become such an attraction, and so many Jews had begun to believe in Jesus because of him.

But there is also a second reason why the raising of Lazarus is a kind of climax to the Jesus story. In spiritual terms, this is the story in which faith finally becomes more important than miracles. It’s ironic that on the occasion of Jesus’ greatest miracle—the raising of a man who had been dead for four days—the emphasis of the story is not on Lazarus, but on Martha.

It was Martha who met Jesus on the road to Bethany and chastised him for taking so long: “If you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died!”

“Your brother will rise again,” Jesus said.

“Yeah, yeah. He’ll rise on the last day; I get it," she snarked. "But in the meantime, he’s dead.”

“Martha, I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though the die, will live. Do you believe this?”

Do you believe this? Jesus wasn’t only asking Martha. As far as John is concerned, Jesus is asking us as we read, too. In previous stories, people come to have faith in Jesus because they see him perform miracles. His first disciples believed in him because they knew he had turned water into wine in Cana. The Samaritan woman believed in him, because he was able to tell her everything she had ever done. The man born blind confessed that Jesus was the Son of Man, because he had been healed. But Martha had not witnessed these miracles, and Jesus showed up too late to help her family. Jesus had not come, and her brother had died. She had likely lost everything—a woman without a man to protect her was vulnerable in those days and in that culture. If anyone in John’s gospel had a legitimate reason to turn their back on Jesus, Martha did. “If you had been here,” she said, “my brother wouldn’t have died.”

Then, in the midst of her grief, her pain, her disappointment, Jesus asked her an impossible question: Do you believe?

“Believe?” she might have said. “Believe? I believed you could help when I sent messengers to find you five or six days ago! I believed you would show up in time to save your friend! Now he’s four days dead! In what, exactly, am I supposed to believe, now?”

But if these thoughts raced through her mind, if these doubts raised angry storm clouds in her spirit, she never said so. I imagine there was a long pause. I imagine that Martha stood in the road, staring at Jesus for a long time, before her anger gave way to the truth that she saw before her. “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

She had no reason to think that confessing faith in Jesus Christ was going to save her brother. He was four days dead, and nothing was going to change that. As far as she was concerned, Jesus had screwed up. If there was anything Jesus could have done, he should have done it at least four days ago. And yet she believed in Jesus. No miracles. Just faith.

In this way, Martha showed greater faith than the Samaritan woman at the well, more faith than the blind man who was given his sight. They experienced Jesus at his best—a great teacher, a great healer. Martha, who had already been friends with Jesus, and who might have been justified in expecting a little urgency on his part when she’d sent for him, had received nothing from Jesus—no great teaching; no miraculous healing for her brother. Yet she believed.

Of course, Lazarus was raised, though Martha didn’t see that coming. It wasn’t a resurrection like Jesus’. Lazarus would still grow old, perhaps get sick, and certainly die again. While church tradition has assumed that the disciple who Jesus loved was John, the author of the gospel, it had only suggested this because, at the time, the church believed that the Gospel of John had actually been written by the apostle John. “Maybe this was John’s way of writing himself into the story,” people once argued. The problem is that it’s almost impossible for John to have been written by one of Jesus’ apostles, because it began circulating too long after Jesus’ earthly ministry for it to have been written by an eyewitness. When Martha sent a messenger to track Jesus down, the message she sent was, “He whom you love is ill.”

When Jesus finally showed up, his spirit was deeply disturbed by the scene and he began to weep. The onlookers marveled, “See how he loved him!” And after his resurrection, while conversing with Simon Peter, Peter pointed to the disciple whom Jesus loved and said, “What about him?” Jesus responded by saying, “Even if I told you he was going to remain until I returned, what difference would it make to you? Follow me.” And because of this, people began to believe that the disciple who Jesus loved couldn’t die. Could this speculation have been because Jesus had raised him? I think that what happened was that Lazarus did die again, and it caused people to question what they’d come to believe. So "John" added the conversation between Jesus and Peter to the end of his gospel to explain that while Jesus said, “What difference would it make to you, even if I decided he should live until I return?” that didn’t necessarily mean that Lazarus would never die.

This makes one wonder what this experience would have been like for Lazarus. We know that he had been sick—sick enough to die, in fact. Are we sure he wanted to be raised? I have known people who were so sick, or in so much pain, that they were looking forward to the relief of death. What if, in death, Lazarus had finally found the rest he’d longed for, and being raised was an unwelcome interruption of his eternal rest?

More interestingly, what would being raised from death have meant for Lazarus? We have heard people say that because they didn’t die when they probably should have, they felt like God was giving them a second chance in life. Near death experiences are often occasions of religious awakening, as people seek to make sense of why they are alive when they should be dead. Well, no one had more cause to speculate about this than Lazarus, who had been dead so long he was starting to rot, when suddenly he heard his name being called. There is evidence that Lazarus continued to be a faithful disciple of Jesus. A couple of chapters later, Jesus is seen eating dinner at Lazarus, Martha and Mary's house. At the last supper, Lazarus—assuming that he is the one who Jesus loved—is seen reclining at the table with Jesus and asking, “Who is it who is going to betray you?”

And as Jesus hung from the cross, the small cluster of faithful disciples who dared to stand nearby to watch included Jesus’ mother, his aunt, Mary Magdalene, and Lazarus—the one whom Jesus loved—into whose care Jesus order his mother after his imminent death. Lazarus, then, might have been quite a confused soul. He became responsible for caring for Mary, he was still palling around with the other disciples after Jesus’ resurrection, and despite the fact that local officials wanted Lazarus dead, rumors were going around that Lazarus couldn’t die. But most confusing of all—the most heartbreaking part of Lazarus’ story—is that he was the reason Jesus was killed. Jesus had literally laid down his life for Lazarus, setting in motion the official action that would lead to his crucifixion, and all because Jesus loved him.

Maybe not everyone at the table knew what Jesus meant when he said, “no one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13) But Lazarus knew. And for Lazarus, taking up his life was in some strange way also a laying down of it, for surely he could not have gone back to “business as usual” after this! Surely knowing he had been the cause of Jesus death, however unintentionally, placed a burden of responsibility on him that he could not easily have shaken! Church tradition suggests that Lazarus went on to become a bishop in the early church, so he apparently remained a man of faith and of calling. How could he have done anything else?

I am reminded of the movie Saving Private Ryan. The movie opens with an older gentleman and his family searching a military graveyard for the marker of Captain John Miller. Upon finding it, Private Ryan recalls the mission that Captain Miller and his men undertook in order to rescue Ryan from behind enemy lines. As the climactic battle reaches its end, and although reinforcements have arrived that will ensure victory, nearly all of the American soldiers sent to save Private Ryan have been killed, and Captain Miller, himself mortally wounded, beckons Private Ryan close, saying, “Earn this. Earn it.”

The retired Private, weeping in the graveyard, turns to his family and stammers, “Tell me I have led a good life. Tell me I’m a good man!”

I have to think that Lazarus would have felt much the same way. Jesus was hunted down and arrested, because he raised Lazarus from death. His life, from that moment on, had to be lived in a way that made such a sacrifice meaningful.

The old Wesleyan hymn, “And Can It Be” is allegorical and deeply personal, and yet it also could have been written from the perspective of none other than Lazarus himself:

And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Savior’s blood?


Died He for me, who caused His pain—for me, who Him to death pursued?


Amazing love! How can it be, that Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

Long my imprisoned spirit lay, fast bound in sin and nature’s night;


Thine eye diffused a quickening ray—I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;


My chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.

I have preached on numerous occasions about the crucifixion of ministry—the idea that we have to stop thinking of our ministry as our ministry, and start thinking of ourselves as participants in Christ’s ministry, seeking to do his will rather than our own. More to the point, we must be willing to lay down that which we cherish, in order to embrace what the Lord cherishes. The follow up to the crucifixion of ministry, then, is the resurrection of ministry. For Jesus said to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life.” As Lazarus could surely tell us, the resurrection is the life!

The resurrection is the life in that without Christ’s redemptive, resurrection ministry, we have no life, no light, no hope! We are dead and in the grave—food for the worms, just as Lazarus was—if not for Christ’s ministry of resurrection. Just as Wesley’s hymn describes, and just as Martha learned while speaking with Jesus on the road to Bethany, the resurrection is more than just a future hope. “I know that he will rise again on the last day,” Martha said. But Jesus said, “No, Martha. I am the resurrection, I am the life!”

“Thine eye diffused a quickening ray—I woke, the dungeon flamed with light; My chains fell off, my heart was free; I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.”

The resurrection is the life. When we die to ourselves and live for Jesus—when we are enjoined to Christ by the power of the Spirit—the old life has gone and a new life has begun! We are raised from sin and death to live in the light. As Christ gave his life in order to raise Lazarus, so he has done the same to give us new life, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

He has freely given his life for ours, and our salvation is secured—we cannot earn it, and our resurrection, though not yet accomplished, has, at the same time, already taken place. But forgive me for feeling as though Jesus has said to me, as Captain Miller once said to Private Ryan, “Earn this. Earn it.”Share

Let Your Light Shine!

Isa. 58:1-12
Matt. 5:13-20 

I spent the last two weeks at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, taking the first two classes of my doctoral program. The experience was profound, in part because the other members of my cohort turned out to be fascinating people and gifted pastors, and we were able quickly to bond into what truly turned out to be a foretaste of the Beloved Community of the Kingdom of Heaven. I also found the professors to be exceptional thinkers, teachers and caregivers in their own right. Most strikingly, though, I came away from my classes with a more profound understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ and a new lens through which to read scripture.

Dr. Andrew Purves, professor of Pastoral Theology, has been influencing my life for several years, even though I’d never taken a class with him, or even read one of his books until just a few months ago. The reason for this is that as I spent the years between my associate pastorate in New Jersey and my call to West Virginia wandering in a vocational wilderness, a friend of mine—who had taken several classes with Dr. Purves while in seminary—taught me the very basics of Dr. Purves’ theology. It was a very great comfort to me, because it helped me to understand that four years of working outside of the church was not a sign of God’s displeasure, but an opportunity to learn something transformative about my life and my Lord.

On most Wednesday evenings, I can be found reading scripture with a small group of congregation members. Following the reading, we spend time praying together—for friends and family, for our congregation and its members in need, and for the world. I shall let you in on a private little secret about some of those prayers. Not always, but often, one or two members of the prayer group ask the Lord to “bless Matt and his ministry here.” My secret is that every time I hear that prayer, I cringe just a little, and pray in the Spirit, “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing!”

I don’t mean that to sound terrible! I am, in fact, blessed by the prayers of others and humbled by the sentiment of these prayers. But I cringe because I have come to understand ministry differently, but hadn't—until recently—taken the time to explain my understanding. In an act of God’s providence, the lectionary provided me a brilliant opportunity to do this, only three days after Dr. Purves’ class ended!

Those of us in his Doctor of Ministry class spent the week studying a series of lectures that theologian Karl Barth had given back in the 1930s on the Scots Confession—one of the most brilliant documents found in the Presbyterian Church (USA)'s Book of Confessions. In these lectures, Barth returns again and again to teaching what Dr. Purves calls the Christology of vicarious agency. Barth calls Jesus the “Judge judged in our place,” (not in the Gifford Lectures, but elsewhere), and that is one aspect of Jesus’ “vicarious agency,” one way in which he takes our role as sinners in need of redeeming. He replaces us, suffers our punishment and dies our death. However, because he is not only the Man Jesus but also God incarnate, death cannot contain him, and so because he rose from the dead, we too shall rise from the grave to His glory!

But we can’t stop there, can we? Jesus’ resurrection is not the end of the story. Jesus not only rose from the grave, but also ascended into heaven; in so doing, Jesus also vicariously carried our humanity into the presence of God! In Jesus, then, the Word became flesh and humanity was exalted by coming into the presence of our Heavenly Father! As Barth wrote, “God alone possesses divine glory, but alongside His glory there exists a glory which belongs to the world and to [humankind]… they do not possess their glory from themselves, but receive it from God, and do not possess it for themselves, but in order that the glory of God might be the greater thereby.” (Barth, The Gifford Lectures, p. 35-6)

This is what we celebrate around the communion table—that we commune with Christ, become one in Christ, and join ourselves to Him in such a way that we participate in the life and love of the Trinity. We enjoy this communion not because we deserve it or have earned it by our faithfulness, but because Jesus Christ deserves it and has earned it for us—prepared it for us—by his faithfulness.

And so we come, our Gospel reading. Jesus says to a great cloud of listeners, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.” (Matt. 5:17-18) Humanity is bound to the law because it is God’s righteousness—it’s what it takes to be worthy of God’s love. But we can’t fulfill it. We can’t fulfill it. We can’t fulfill it.

And yet we try, don’t we? You know how I know we try to accomplish this on our own? Because we feel guilty when we fall short! The law convicts us of our sin, and we realize that we have fallen short of the glory of God. If our salvation were up to us, not a single person on earth would ever be found worthy. But our salvation is not up to us. Our Heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, fulfills the law for us in an act of vicarious agency. “I have come not to abolish, but to fulfill.” It was God’s plan, God’s eternal decree from before the creation of the universe, that all things should be reconciled unto the love of the Trinity—that the whole law would be fulfilled perfectly—even if that meant that God would have to do it God’s self.

This is the freedom we have in Jesus Christ—the freedom to give God our best without ever fretting over whether or not our best is “good enough.” Of course it’s not good enough! But if we feel guilty for our shortcomings, we deny Christ’s vicarious agency, don’t we? If we feel guilty for our sins, it is because we’re afraid that Christ’s atonement might not cover it; we delude ourselves into thinking that God hadn’t anticipated this particular sin and already forgiven it! If that were true, Christ would have to be crucified over and over and over again, every time one of us sinned. But Paul declares, “Unlike the other high priests, [Jesus] has no need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for those of the people; this he did once for all when he offered himself!” (Hebrews 7:27)

I believe this truth, the vicarious agency of Jesus Christ, is what Jesus was talking about when he said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” (John 8:32)

The realization of this truth leads to two things. First, this leads us to fall upon our knees in praise and adoration of the God of our salvation! For though we could never be worthy of God’s love, the Word of God, from all eternity and by the power of the Holy Spirit, draws us into His communion with God the Father! How could anyone who realizes this truth, and the easy yoke and light burden of freedom in Christ, not worship the Lord with a heart overflowing with gladness?

Secondly, the realization of this truth leads us to ask the question, “What then must we do?” If we’re free in Christ because Jesus does the heavy lifting for us, why obey the law at all? Is this question not similar to the ones the Israelites asked in Isaiah: “Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” Why bother, the Israelites were asking, if it isn’t going to change anything or improve our status in God’s sight?

And God replies, saying, “Aha! See? Right there! You serve your own interests with your acts of piety, thinking that you can show up for church on Sunday, and then go on oppressing your workers on Monday! You fast before me, only to quarrel and fight amongst yourselves when you think I’m not looking! Paying lip service to your religion isn’t going make your voice heard on high!” Indeed, nothing we do makes our voices heard on high. It is only Jesus Christ, who intercedes for us as our great High Priest who makes our prayers his own, and who redeems our sins even before we commit them!

And so God continues, saying, “If you want to know what I want, I’ll tell you: loose the bonds of injustice! Undo the thongs of the yoke! Let the oppressed go free! Share your bread with the hungry! Bring the homeless poor under your roof! Clothe the naked!”

And so one might now say, “But, Matt, didn’t you just say that our best efforts fall short, and that we cannot earn our salvation? Didn’t you just say that only Christ’s sacrifice, once and for all, is perfect and worthy of God?” Yes! But God isn’t commanding the Israelites to follow the law in order to earn their salvation. Here is the reason he gives for worshiping God with our righteous behavior: “If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.” (Isa. 58:9b-10) In other words, we shall show forth God’s glory in what we do. By doing these things, we participate in God’s ministry, in Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit. We become a part of what Jesus Christ is doing in the world! We become the salt of the earth, we become a city on a hill, we become the light of the world, because Jesus Christ is the salt of the earth and the city on a hill and the light of the world!

And that, brothers and sisters, is why I cringe when someone prays for “Matt and his ministry.” Because I don’t believe it’s my ministry at all! It’s Jesus’ ministry; I’m just along for the ride, trying to discern how Jesus would have me respond to the needs I see around me, hoping that I get my response right, and trusting that the Holy Spirit will correct my mistakes. If I thought that the burdens of ministry were mine, I could never do it! In fact, I could only become increasingly depressed over my own shortcomings and ultimately fail to serve Christ faithfully. That is exactly what happened to “my ministry” in New Jersey. Because I toiled away as though it was my ministry, God had no choice but to shove me out of the way until I was able to learn—only after I had left New Jersey and only through a slow and painful wandering through the wilderness—that I was not called to be just any minister. I was called to be a minister of the Word—and the Word is Jesus Christ!

Andrew Purves calls it the crucifixion of ministry, and many have experienced it (and not only pastors). The crucifixion of ministry means allowing something we cherish—an idea, a belief, an institution, an assumption that we are right and others are wrong, or even our own prideful egos—to die, so that Jesus Christ can take its place, just as he took our place on the cross.

The lives we live in obedience to God are lives lived in gratitude for God’s having taken His righteous judgment upon Himself. In the Sermon on the Mount, of which this Gospel reading is a part, it is only after Jesus declares that he has come to fulfill the law that he tells us what we should do. The same is true of the Ten Commandments. God begins the Ten Commandments with the preamble, “I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery”! God does not issue the law—even to the Jews!—without first saying, “I have saved you, and made you my people.”

In liturgical language, God puts the assurance of pardon before the prayer of confession (as did I this past Sunday). We confess because we want to be better; we confess because we want the Holy Spirit to amend our lives and enable us to be ever more worthy worshipers of God with the way we live our lives. But we confess knowing that God already knows us completely, and that when God turns his righteous gaze upon us, he sees his own sons and daughters!

In the freedom of Christ's vicarious agency, let your light shine, so that God, our Creator, our Redeemer and our Sustainer, may be glorified!Share

Take Up Your Cross

Mark 8:34-38

Today's reflection will be brief, because it will be a departure from my usual posts.  Ordinarily, I edit and reorganize a recent sermon to share with those who faithfully sojourn beneath the boughs of the Solitary Broom Tree.  Today, though, I share with you a very brief reflection on something the Holy Spirit gave me to mull over this morning.

Today, a brief word of scripture was opened to me in a new way.  Forgive me if God has already revealed this to you -- at least you will have read this and witnessed the spiritual growth of a brother in Christ!  The passage is from Mark, linked above (and also paralleled in other gospels).  After this morning, the old phrase "we all have our cross to bear" has lost its more banal, generic meaning, as the Spirit has revealed a more faithful interpretation of Christ's words, "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me."

This is not a statement about "personal struggles," for Jesus was not struggling through trials for his own sake, but suffered unto death on a cross for our sake -- for the sake of us, his neighbors.  His cross was not His burden, it was ours, but he bore it for our sake.  How can we then think that "bearing our cross" means shouldering some personal burden?  Often the cross is allegorized to mean that we must stop self-identifying, and begin identifying with Christ -- to deny our own ego in favor of identity in Christ (certainly this is the point made by Oswald Chambers when he writes,

"He puts absolute annihilation of my right to myself and identification with Himself—a relationship with Himself in which there is no other relationship.  Luke 14:26 [the Lukan parallel of our passage from Mark] has nothing to do with salvation or sanctification, but with unconditional identification with Jesus Christ."  

That is all well and good, but a Reformed Christian (and I am one) knows that one cannot separate what the heart knows from what the hands do.  Therefore, to "take up our crosses and follow Him" must necessarily mean shouldering the burdens, struggles and trials of others.  We must deny ourselves, which means denying that the world revolves around us and our personal problems, and realize that we are never closer to Christ -- and never nearer to Christlikeness -- than when we take our cross (which is the pain and hardship of our neighbor) and follow Him by carrying it ourselves.  It is, in effect, the realization that we must stop being "goats" and start being "sheep." (Matt 25:31-46)

The late Dr. Howard L. Rice (who died in August), professor of ministry at San Francisco Theological Seminary, wrote in his seminal work, Reformed Spirituality, "We become more Christlike as we take up the cross of those around us and assist in the bearing of it."

If all of us were thus burdened by the hardship of others, because we see that each and every person is made in the image of God, many hands would make light work indeed of the world's woes.

Blessings, friends.Share

And the Angels Danced

1 Tim. 1:12-17

Luke 15:1-10

Let me just start with this: I question Jesus’ understanding of good stewardship.

I mean, let’s be frank.  If I were a shepherd with 100 sheep, and one turned up missing, the last thing I’d consider prudent is leaving the other 99 sheep defenseless in the wilderness while I search high and low for the wayward sheep.  In fact, that’s just flat-out irresponsible!  The smart money is on protecting the remainder of the stock!  Besides, the other 99 sheep are bound to make more sheep to replace the one that was lost, right?  And yet Jesus starts his parable by asking, “who wouldn’t leave their 99 sheep and go searching for the lost one?”  I guess my answer is “I wouldn’t.”

The second parable is also problematic.  Here, Jesus describes a woman who had ten coins.  One turned up missing, and she begins a search for it.  Now, this story is much more plausible.  Mathematically, the shepherd lost 1 percent of his stock.  Assuming that all the coins were of the same value, the woman lost ten percent of her holdings.  Ask me what I’d do if I lost ten sheep, instead of just one, and I’d at least have to stop and consider!  I have, in fact, gone searching after lost coins – and who hasn’t?  You’re even more likely to find me searching for a lost TV remote, but that’s another parable for another day.  The idea of a woman searching for the ten percent of her money that has gone missing is not surprising.  She’s even careful and methodical about it.  First, light a lamp – maybe the coins will gleam in the light.  When that doesn’t work, move things around and sweep carefully under the furniture until it turns up.  All that makes very good sense, and we can see the woman doing these things in our minds and think to ourselves, “If I were down to ten coins, and then one got lost, I’d do the same thing.”  What makes this story bizarre is what happens at the end.  Having found the lost coin, she invites all of her friends and neighbors to her house for a party.  In the gospels – especially in Luke – rejoicing implies eating.  Food is an important part of celebrations in Judean culture (which, in that respect, is not so different from ours).  We can understand the concept “if you’re going to have a party, you have to serve food.”  But who among us, if we were so desperately poor that the loss of a single coin would have us sweeping out the house and crawling around on our hands and knees, would celebrate its recovery by spending money on a party?  Jesus asks, “Who wouldn’t bend over backwards to find the coin, and then spend it to throw a party for their friends upon its recovery?”  I guess my answer is, “I wouldn’t.”

The context of the parables this morning is what the Pharisees have observed about Jesus.  He attracts tax collectors and sinners like road kill attracts flies.  They seem to find him irresistible.  The Pharisees start grumbling about the company Jesus is keeping, as if he’d hand-picked the crowd that had come to him.  While he had personally called the Apostles, most of his followers came along without a personal invitation.  Sure, he had called the tax collector Levi to follow him – but he was an Apostle of the inner circle.  And later, Jesus will invite himself to supper at the home of Zaccheus, a tax collector.  But all Luke says about the crowd surrounding him on this particular day is that “all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him.” 

Jesus’ response – the telling of two parables – is his way of saying, “I know, right?  Tax collectors and sinners!  And so you should be glad!  I’m finding lost sheep and redeeming lost coins.  After all, of what value is a lost sheep?  Of what value is a lost coin?  None!  But if you find me surrounded by the very people you religious types find distasteful, shouldn’t you celebrate?”

The attitude of the Pharisees is common enough in the Church.  We joke about whether or not the church’s roof fell in when a “sinner” walked into it.  When someone who doesn’t “seem the type” decides to go to church, our first reaction is to ask, “Did lightning strike the church while you were there?”  There are so many people who feel as though they can’t come to church, can’t be in the presence of God, because they’ve been given the impression that they either aren’t “good enough” to worship, or that they wouldn’t be made welcome by other church-goers.  This is tragic – tragic – because it flies in the face of everything the Church is supposed to stand for.  The Great Commission says to make disciples and teach them all that Jesus has commanded, but we can’t if they don’t feel welcome enough to listen to the message!  Jesus “new commandment” is “love another as I have loved you,” and yet people feel so unloved and even openly resented by church folk that they’re afraid to darken a church’s door.  The despair that such people must feel – there’s a longing in their heart to know God and to be known by Him; there’s an aching need to come and be soul-tended and spirit-nurtured!  And yet the one place where that might happen appears closed to them, because of the attitudes of those already inside.

Meanwhile, Jesus says, “There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”  This, too, is an odd thought.  We modern Christians have been indoctrinated by many centuries of Christian theological development.  And we Reformed church members are especially aware of the depravity of human kind.  We lament that we are all sinners in need of grace, but rejoice that we have received grace to help in our time of need.  But for Luke, the theological landscape was different.  There were those who were sinners, and then there were the righteous.  And I don’t just mean the presumed righteous, or the self-righteous, or even the self-declared righteous, but rather people who really were considered righteous.  Look, all of humanity is in need of redemption, to be sure, but having been justified by Christ and continuously sanctified by the Holy Spirit, we are righteous!  We need a relationship with God, and we need the Holy Spirit to help us amend our lives (because we will never be perfect), but we are good.  Of people like us, Jesus said, “Heaven gets more excited about one sinner repenting than it does over an entire congregation who prayers a prayer of confession without really needing to.” 

Norman Vincent Peale once told about addressing a Methodist conference in Atlanta, Georgia along with a fine preacher, and a much-loved local pastor.  In his message Peale said that he believed that Jesus Christ could come into a life and change it, no matter how hopeless it seemed. 

After the service, when he and the other guest preachers were gathered in the minister’s office, they were told that a man wanted to see them; a somewhat disreputable-looking man, they were warned, “unshaven, unwashed, poorly dressed.”  When the man did come in, he was reeking of alcohol, but his mind was full of the message he had just heard.  “Do you really believe that Jesus can help me?” he asked. 

“Without a doubt,” Peale replied.  Then the man asked if they would pray with him. 

So the three ordained ministers prayed with the man.  When he went out, one of the preachers said, a bit wistfully, “If that man changes, we’ll all be surprised, won’t we?”  There it was: a flicker of doubt – from a good man – that change is really possible for some people. 

Six months later, Peale said he was sitting in the lobby of a hotel in Clearwater, Florida, when he saw a man coming toward him, leading two little girls by the hand.  The man was immaculately dressed, and his daughters were exquisite children, attractive and well-behaved.  At first Peale didn’t know who he was, but as he came closer, he recognized the former derelict from Atlanta.  There was a smile on his face, and he was humming “Amazing Grace” as he held out his hand in greeting.  Peale said it was one of the most emotional and unforgettable encounters of his life.  And, according to Jesus, the angels danced.

The love of God is indescribable, but an old Jewish legend tries hard.  The legend says God received the counsel of the Angels that stood about his throne before creating Man.  The Angel of Justice said; “Create him not -- for if you do he will commit all kinds of wickedness against his fellow man; he will be hard and cruel and dishonest and unrighteous.”  

The Angel of Truth said, “Create him not -- for he will be false and deceitful to his brother and even to Thee.” 

The Angel of Holiness stood and said; “Create him not -- he will follow that which is impure in your sight, and dishonor you to your face.”

Then stepped forward the Angel of Mercy, who said; “Create him, Heavenly Father, for when he sins and turns from the path of right and truth and holiness, I will take him tenderly by the hand, and speak loving words to him, and lead him back to you.”

In fact, this is what Jesus Christ does for each one who turns to him.  The gift of the Holy Spirit makes transformation possible, helping those of us who live unjustly, untruthfully, and impurely to continue our journeys of faith toward communion with God.  Would not the angels – even those of justice, truth and holiness – dance in celebration when the mercy of God in Jesus Chris transforms the life of a sinner into a new creation, able to stand before God?

A mentor of mine, a great pastor with more than 25 years of experience, once told me the story of a time he had run afoul of his congregation.  Believing that he was following the example of Christ, he had been welcoming of a person whom the congregation felt was unworthy of welcome in the church, even agreeing to officiate at the person’s marriage in their church.  Some in the congregation became so angry that he began to fear for his job, and he even saw dirty looks and angry stares around town, as news of the rift in the congregation became known in the community.

One day, the most respected Elder in the congregation – a great pillar of the church – asked the pastor to lunch.  “Oh no!” my friend thought.  “This great pillar of the church is going to dress me down for the company I’ve been keeping!”  And he began at once to prepare his defense.

When they arrived at the restaurant, the Elder asked to be seated at the table in the center of the room.  After they had placed their orders, the Elder stood up, and in a voice loud and clear enough for the whole restaurant to hear, he said, “I want everyone in this restaurant to hear what I have to say!  The man seated with me is my pastor and my friend, and I don’t care who knows it.”  And then he sat down.  From that day forward, the pastor was never hassled about his welcoming attitude again, and in retrospect he realized that he was given exactly the same gift of grace that he had been accused of giving to someone “unworthy.

My brothers and sisters, I ask you the question that Jesus asked his listeners: “who wouldn’t do such a thing?”  Who wouldn’t defend a pastor’s decision to offer the love of Christ to one whom the world deemed unworthy?  Heaven gets more excited about one sinner repenting than it does over an entire congregation who prayers a prayer of confession without really needing to.  The people for whom the Church exists the most are the ones who attend it the least.  How can we, then, make those same people feel unwelcome or unworthy of God’s presence?

Let us reach out into our own community and extend hospitality to those we would ordinarily avoid.  Let us be willing to strike up a conversation with people we’ve previously been afraid to be seen with.  Let us put our reputations at risk, like my pastor friend, or like the Elder who redeemed him in the community, to befriend the friendless, to give hope to the hopeless, to associate with the disassociated.  If we become the hands and feet of Jesus, and do all things with the mind of Christ, then those deemed unworthy by others will come to believe that they are worthy of God’s love and care.  They are our brothers, our sisters.  They are precious sheep of God’s flock.  God is as heart-sick for them as you would be if your own child went missing!  Who wouldn’t throw caution to the wind in order to seek and save a lost child?  

It’s what Jesus did when they came to him, regardless of how it reflected on his own reputation.  And the angels danced.

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The Best Laid Schemes

Luke 12:13-21

Robert Burns, the celebrated 18^th century bard of Scotland, was plowing his field one day in November of 1785, when he noticed that he’d disturbed the nest of a little field mouse.  As well a poet might, Burns found himself deep in thought about what he’d done, and penned one of his best-known poems, entitled “To a Mouse.”  The original is written in a Scots-English dialect that almost reads like a foreign language, but when translated into something more decipherable, it goes like this.  (You’ll notice, towards the end, a line quoted all over the place, but rarely attributed to the Scottish bard.)

Small, sleek, cowering, timorous beast,

O, what a panic is in your breast!

You need not start away so hasty

With hurrying scamper!

I would be loath to run and chase you,

With murdering plough-staff.

I'm truly sorry man's dominion

Has broken Nature's social union,

And justifies that ill opinion

Which makes thee startle

At me, thy poor, earth born companion

And fellow mortal!

I doubt not, sometimes, but you may steal;

What then? Poor beast, you must live!

An odd ear in twenty-four sheaves

Is a small request;

I will get a blessing with what is left,

And never miss it.

Your small house, too, in ruin!

It's feeble walls the winds are scattering!

And nothing now, to build a new one,

Of coarse grass green!

And bleak December's winds coming,

Both bitter and keen!

You saw the fields laid bare and wasted,

And weary winter coming fast,

And cozy here, beneath the blast,

You thought to dwell,

Till crash! the cruel plough past

Out through your cell.

That small bit heap of leaves and stubble,

Has cost you many a weary nibble!

Now you are turned out, for all your trouble,

Without house or holding,

To endure the winter's sleety dribble,

And hoar-frost cold.

But Mouse, you are not alone,

In proving foresight may be vain:

The best laid schemes of mice and men

Go often askew,

And leaves us nothing but grief and pain,

For promised joy!

Still you are blest, compared with me!

The present only touches you:

But oh! I backward cast my eye,

On prospects dreary!

And forward, though I cannot see,

I guess and fear!

It’s a sad little poem, apologizing first for the disturbance that Burns caused to the poor wretched mouse, and then reflecting more deeply on the existential condition of the mouse: all that toil for nothing!  Now the poor mouse has no place to live, with the harsh winds of winter coming soon!  And finally, Burns compares the mouse’s experience to his own, and realizes that they’re not so different.  "The best laid schemes of mice and men often go askew, and leave us nothing but grief and pain, for promised joy!"  Sometimes, all the careful planning in the world can’t prepare us for what we cannot foresee.  And then the promise of a bright future is dashed, like a man’s plough blade through a mouse’s nest.

Jesus reflects a similar sentiment in this parable.  In response to an anonymous person’s request that Jesus intervene on behalf of someone hoping to get his hands on a portion of his family’s inheritance (and, incidentally, a portion to which he was probably not entitled, according to Jewish custom), Jesus warns against “all kinds of greed.”  Life, Jesus reflected, was about more than the accumulation of “stuff.”

And then he went on to tell the parable that is commonly titled, “The Rich Fool.”  The so-called fool finds himself the fortunate recipient of God’s unexpected blessing when his land produces a bumper crop.  Looking around, he realizes that he doesn’t have room in his barn to store this bounty, and so be makes plans to tear down his barn and replace it with one large enough to store his goods.  Then, he figures, he can kick back and relax, believing that his future is assured.

As so often happens with Jesus’ parables, I didn’t immediately understand what was wrong with this guy’s plan.  Look, it’s possible that he worked his tail off to get these crops, though, since Jesus doesn’t say so, it’s safer to assume that it was an unexpected blessing.  So what’s the proper response to a windfall?  We’ve all heard stories of people whose lives were ruined by winning the lottery, because they simply don’t know how to handle the windfall.  For all their millions of dollars, they wind up in financial trouble, because they invest it poorly or spend it all frivolously.  

My father-in-law, William Spence (my son's namesake), was killed when the helicopter he was piloting crashed in the front lawn of a hospital in Cleveland as a result of mechanical failure.  This occurred in January of 2002.  After this, a long, protracted court battle ensued, as my mother-in-law, as well as other victims, sought restitution from the builder of the helicopter.  When the settlement came, my mother-in-law gave to Diane what was, to us, a large sum of money.  Some of that money went to pay off our debts, which were drowning us, and with the rest we bought beautiful furniture for the baby we were expecting, a much-needed new computer, and a vacation with my family to the Outer Banks.  After all, the world was our oyster, and hadn’t we done the prudent thing by spending some of this windfall on paying off debt before treating ourselves?

Then I unexpectedly lost my job.  Suddenly, I wished I had every penny of that windfall back, because we might have survived this unexpected turn of events with more grace and less dependence on our family to help us out.  “The best-laid schemes of mice and men often go askew, and leave us nothing but grief and pain, for promised joy.”

Something even more tragic befell the man in Jesus’ parable.  After setting himself up right proper, God said to him, “You fool!  You’re going to die tonight!  And to whom will belong everything that you have prepared?”

This parable sprang to mind one day, early in my tenure at the Washington City Mission.  I had driven to one of the largest, nicest homes I had so far been called to visit with the donation truck.  It was explained to me that the very wealthy owner had died, and all of the items in the finished basement were being donated to the Mission, including three walk-in closets full of very beautiful clothing as well as large piles of other items.  There was so much to collect I had to call for backup, and who rode to my rescue?  None other than my pastor friend Keith.  We set to work collecting the mountain of clothing and possessions, and somewhere around my twentieth trip up the stairs with my arms full of clothing, I said out loud, “You fool!  This night your life is being demanded of you!”

And without even having to finish the quote, I heard Keith behind my exclaim, “Amen!”  This person had spent a lifetime acquiring a large and beautiful home and so many possessions that it required multiple walk-in closets and two Mission trucks just to haul away the donations.  That wasn’t the last time I had a call like that; and every time a whole house clean-out like this came along, I reflected anew on the seeming futility of toiling for a lifetime to acquire possessions we can’t take with us when the Lord comes to demand our life.  

What is interesting, though, is that Luke’s is also the gospel where the Prodigal Son demands his share of the inheritance (which, again, he had no real right to), and squanders it – like one of those wide-eyed lottery winners – until he is ruined by an unexpected famine.  Here, a so-called “rich fool” does just the opposite: he has squirreled away his possessions to guard against whatever may befall him in the future.  Isn’t this the prudent thing to do?

Alas!  The best-laid schemes of mice and men often go askew.

Jesus – especially as he is revealed to us by Luke – has remarkably little use for prudence.  To do the prudent thing means “playing it safe,” but Jesus (and Luke) are not concerned with playing it safe.  Luke is always challenging us to take risks for the sake of the gospel.  Interestingly, Luke follows this morning’s reading with words that Matthew inserts into the Sermon on the Mount: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or about your body, what you will wear.  For life is more than food and the body more than clothing.”  By putting this statement after the parable of the Rich Fool, Luke has used it to make clear the point of the parable.  Hoarding God’s blessings does not insure your future, for who knows?  Today might be the day that God demands your life of you, and what good will your hoard be to you or anyone else then?  Instead, share your blessings with others, trusting that God will provide for you in your hour of need!  If God feeds the birds and clothes the lilies, will he not care for you all the more richly?

Still [little mouse] you are blest, compared with me!

The present only touches you:

But oh! I backward cast my eye,

On prospects dreary!

And forward, though I cannot see,

I guess and fear!

That last couplet of Robbie Burns’ poem, “And forward, though I cannot see, I guess and fear!” spells out precisely our fear of a future we cannot see.  The path of discipleship is full of twists and turns – twists and turns around which we cannot see.  When the road bends, we know not where it will lead.  The rich fool, unconsciously fearing that the Lord would not provide, and believing that he needed to rely upon his own resources and his own cunning, stopped walking down that winding road, and built a house right there at the bend.  He stopped journeying, seeking to do the prudent thing and “play it safe.”

But Jesus doesn’t want disciples who “play it safe.”  Jesus wants disciples who take risks for the sake of the Gospel.  He wants people who dine with tax collectors and hug prostitutes.  He wants people who will work beside drug addicts, and shake the hands of lepers.  He wants people who will drop their nets – their livelihoods, their families and everything that gives them roots and an identity – and follow him.  He wants people who are able to throw themselves into the arms of a God who loves them and provides for their every need!  Make all the plans you like, says the Lord, but remember to “trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding!  In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.  Do not be wise in your own eyes; but fear the Lord, and turn away from evil… Honor the Lord with your substance and with the first fruits of all your produce; then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine!” (Prov. 3:5-10)

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