Text used – Luke 10:25-37

• Reminder of summer sermon series on Beatitudes
  • Dive deeper into one Beatitude each week
  • Today’s Beatitude: Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.[1] → And I feel like, of all the Beatitudes – the ones we’ve already covered and the ones yet to come – this is the one that’s the most deceptively simple.
    • Maybe it’s the repetitiveness of it? (Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy”)
    • Maybe it seems the most obvious, so it’s easier to gloss over it?
    • Maybe we just think mercy is a no-brainer? Like, of course we should be merciful … okay, next?
    • But despite the seemingly-simple language of this particular blessing that Jesus gave, there’s some much deeper depths to plumb here.
• So to start off with this morning, let’s all gather around the same definition of mercy.
  • Looking at the original languages
    • Gr. = admittedly relatively simple → “mercy” = sympathy, pity
    • Heb. “mercy” = much deeper, more complex word à goodness, favor, kindness, faithfulness, loyalty
    • Now, you might be saying, “But the New Testament was written in Greek? Why are we bringing the Hebrew word into this particular linguistic occasion?” Yes, the New Testament was written in Greek … but we have to remember that Jesus was a Jew most likely speaking Aramaic, a very close linguistic relative to Hebrew, when he actually declared these words of blessing to the crowd. As a practicing Jew, Jesus’ particular understanding of mercy would have been inextricably interwoven with what he said.
      • Concept of “mercy” = prominent throughout the First Testament à particularly prominent in the Exodus story and the Psalms
        • Almost exclusively used for humans seeking God’s mercy OR to describe God’s mercy for the people → Fr. Casey Cole: To understand why God acts with mercy, it’s helpful to consider the Hebrew word most used to describe God: hesed. While most often translated into English as “mercy” or “kindness,” the word suggests something far greater than a mere outward show of niceties. Imbedded in the word is a sense of steadfast fidelity and overwhelming generosity. This is the essential story of the Old Testament; it’s a story of a people coming to know and obey a God who chooses them and remains faithful to them even when they are not faithful to him. … When God reveals hesed, [God] is not just being nice; [God’s] acting from a commitment that [God] cannot break. When God shows hesed, [God] isn’t just doing random acts of kindness; [God] is showing love for a people intimately connected to [Godself]. In other words, when God acts in this way, [God] does so, not because of who Israel is, but because of who [God] is in relation to Israel: faithful and generous. [God] knows that they are all in this together.[2] → This discussion of mercy highlights two essential elements of mercy – elements that we have to keep in mind as we explore this particular Beatitude this morning.
          • First = abundantly generous, unearned nature of mercy
          • Second = communal quality of mercy → This communal quality is one of the things that sets this Beatitude apart from the others. All of the other blessings that Jesus declares can be solitary acts of faith or are acts of faith that can be shared intimately between God and an individual believer. But this one – Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy – requires relationship. It requires interaction. It requires the Other.
            • Can’t be merciful on your own à to show mercy, someone else has to be the recipient
• That’s why I turned to one of the most well-known Scripture stories this morning: Jesus’ story of the good Samaritan.
  • Story of intentional, inescapable relationship
  • Story of mercy → more particularly, it’s a story of mercy from unexpected places
  • Begins with back-and-forth btwn Jesus and one of the legal experts – text: A legal expert stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to gain eternal life?” Jesus replied, “What is written in the Law? How do you interpret it?” He responded, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus said to him, “You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live.” But the legal expert wanted to prove that he was right, so he said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”[3] → 2 important things to notice in this intro
    • FIRST = legal expert’s intentions → Scripture makes it abundantly clear that there are ulterior motives here.
      • Text said the legal expert “stood up to test Jesus” → Gr. = try or tempt → same word used to describe Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness → The legal expert isn’t just innocently asking Jesus a question. He isn’t bringing this rising-star-rabbi a question that’s been burning in his heart and soul. There is a deeper, less benevolent purpose brewing here.
    • SECOND = broader definition of neighbor from the outset → Throughout the millennia, the word “neighbor” has come to mean that people that live on my street. As a kid who grew up in the country, I always told people we didn’t have any neighbors because nobody lived “next door.” But this Greek word is significantly more expansive than that.
      • Gr. “neighbor” just means “near” or “close by” → even expands as far as simply meaning “fellow human being” in various parts of the NT
  • To drive that point home, Jesus tells the impertinent legal expert this story about an injured man and his unexpected rescuer.
    • Man traveling the road from Jerusalem to Jericho → notoriously dangerous road, especially for a lone traveler
    • Man = accosted by thieves who “stripped him naked, beat him up, and left him near death”[4]
    • 3 very particular people encountered the man as he lay there bleeding and dying on the side of the road
      • Priest
      • Levite (both holy men → various levels of priestly class/religious hierarchy)
      • Samarian
        • Reminder: Samaritans despised as children of mixed unions btwn Jews and Assyrians who conquered Israelites in 732 BCE → As the people of Israel were instructed by God not to intermarry with other nations, the Samaritan – living, breathing, walking, praying proof of those forbidden unions – were looked down on as less than … inferior … abominations.
      • Both the holy men – those you’d expect to “know better” – walked right past the broken and bleeding man
      • Samaritan stops and helps → But he does more than just giving the man a hand up and a cursory piece of clothing. – text: A Samaritan, who was on a journey, came to where the man was. But when he saw him, he was moved with compassion. The Samaritan went to him and bandaged his wounds, tending them with oil and wine. Then he placed the wounded man on his own donkey, took him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day, he took two full days’ worth of wages and gave them to the innkeeper. He said, ‘Take care of him, and when I return, I will pay you back for any additional costs.’[5]
        • Notice – text: “he was moved with compassion” → Gr. “compassion” = very closely related to “mercy” → They aren’t the exact same word, but they share the same root. So this pull to mercy moved the hands … the feet … the heart of the Samaritan.
        • Also notice the overabundance of provision from the Samaritan
          • Approach the beaten man (more than anyone else had done so far!)
          • Bandaged his wounds, “tending them with oil and wine”
          • Put him on his own donkey
          • Took him to an inn
          • Cared for him (for how long? → doesn’t say)
          • Paid a significant amount of money to the innkeeper to continue caring for him
  • Story of the good Samaritan = story of generous abundance in relationship = STORY OF MERCY
    • Mercy unexpected
    • Mercy unearned
    • Mercy given anyway
• Today’s Beatitude = flip side to last week’s Beatitude
  • Last week = Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled[6] → talked about how righteousness = justice and how God calls us to act for justice
  • Catholic priest and international peace/nonviolence advocate John Dear sheds light on the connection btwn justice and mercy: While we struggle for justice on the one hand, Jesus says, we offer mercy with our other hand, especially toward those who have hurt us and those declared by the culture of violence not to be worthy of mercy. He calls us to show mercy every day of our lives, to make mercy our way of life, and to help create a new culture of mercy. As we do, he promises, we too will be shown mercy.[7] → In order to be able to enact that justice in a way that is pleasing to God – in a way that is aligned with God’s heart and God’s definition of justice – mercy has to be a part of that action … to drive and infuse that action.
    • Mercy unexpected
    • Mercy unearned
    • Mercy given anyway
      • Given even when we find it uncomfortable
      • Given even when we can’t understand it
      • Given even (and especially) when what we’d rather see is retribution
      • Given to others … because that’s how God continues to give to us each and every day: generously … lovingly … fully
      • Cole: This is what it means to show mercy. It’s not about ignoring justice or allowing ourselves to be treated like doormats; it’s about being so permeated by God’s fidelity and generosity to humanity that we show the same commitment to others. It’s about widening the circle of people we call our own. When we are able to love so inclusively that our generosity knows no bounds, that no one can approach us without receiving our mercy, we are on the way of Beatitude.[8] → Truly, friends, blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. Amen.

[1] Mt 5:7 (NRSV).

[2] Casey Cole. The Way of Beatitude: Living Radical Hope in a World of Division and Despair. (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 2022), 59-60.

[3] Lk 10:25-29.

[4] Lk 10:30.

[5] Lk 10:33-35.

[6] Mt 5:6 (NRSV).

[7] John Dear. The Beatitudes of Peace: Meditations on the Beatitudes, Peacemaking and the Spiritual Life. (New London: Twenty-Third Publications, 2016), 71.

[8] Cole, 67-68.

Text used – Isaiah 58:6-12

• Reminder of summer sermon series on Beatitudes
  • Dive deeper into one Beatitude each week
  • Interesting: the more we dive into these, the more we see just how challenging and countercultural Jesus’ blessings were/continue to be
• So this morning, we’re going to start our conversation about the 4^th Beatitude by talking about language. More specifically, we’re going to talk a little bit about the fluidity of language – about how language evolves and changes over time.
  • Indeed, there are new words being added to the English language all the time. I looked up the most recent additions to Dictionary.com[1] (from winter 2023), and they ranged from the serious to the silly.
    • Cakeage: the fee charged by a restaurant for serving a cake brought in from outside
    • Nearlywed: a person who lives with another in a life partnership, sometimes engaged with no planned wedding date, sometimes with no intention of ever marrying
    • Rage farming: the tactic of intentionally provoking political opponents, typically by posting inflammatory content on social media, in order to elicit angry responses and thus high engagement or widespread exposure for the original poster
    • Petfluencer: a person who gains a large following on social media by posting entertaining images or videos of their cat, dog, or other pet
    • All of these are words or terms that had absolutely no meaning just a few years ago. And yet, they’ve become accepted enough to be included in the dictionary.
  • Flipside = words that have fallen into disuse[2]
    • Beef-witted: slow-witted; stupid. According to the United Editors Encyclopedia and Dictionary, “beef-witted” implies “a heavy, ox-like intellect.” Other sources say it’s because back in the day, people believed that eating too much beef would make you dumb
    • Cockalorum: a braggart, a person with an overly high opinion of themselves
    • Fudgel: pretending to work when you’re really just goofing off
    • Growlery: The word “growlery” was created by Charles Dickens. It means “a place where you can retreat from the world when you’re in bad mood.”
  • And within the life of the church, I think we find ourselves in both an odd and privileged place when it comes to language. You see, the Church as an institution – as a wider body – has specific terms and phrases that carry particular meaning within the realm of faith and spirituality.
    • Words used outside the church world BUT words that carry particular weight and meaning within the church world
      • E.g. = grace → As Christians, we put a very strong emphasis on grace.
        • Definition on the PC(USA) website: Grace is defined as favor, blessing, or goodwill offered by one who does not need to do so. It is unearned and undeserved favor. In our sinful condition as humans, undeserving as we are of God’s love, it is God’s goodwill and favor reaching out to redeem us.[3] → If you go out into the world and use the word “grace” in a non-church context, people will know what grace is, but they may not be familiar with the nuances and particularities of the faith-based definition.
    • I said that the Church as an institution is in an odd and privileged place because the Church has also become sort of a museum for terms. To put it frankly, things don’t change quickly in the Church, and that includes language. So while the language outside the realm of the Church shifts quickly – adding new words to the dictionary every year while other words fall out of favor just as quickly – the Church has a tendency to hang onto words in a way that has actually become pretty exclusionary.
      • Exclusionary because they’re so foreign – so unfamiliar – to anyone who didn’t grow up in church → Sometimes, it can be like listening to a conversation among military personnel. No one loves a good acronym or abbreviation like the military … but the church comes close!
        • E.g. – I can tell you that my husband’s rank listed on his DD214 was an E4 PFC and his MOS was 11B, though the unit he was with at the time of his ETS was 12B unit.
        • Church e.g. – language in the bulletin → A number of years ago, we made the conscious choice to take a lot of the “churchy” language out of the bulletin to make it easier to decipher.
          • Assurance of Pardon → God’s Promise of Grace
          • Prayer for Illumination → Prayer to Open Minds and Hearts
          • Benediction → Blessing
• We’re diving deeply into language and meaning today because I think that’s one of the challenges that we face with this morning’s Beatitude: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.[4]
  • Challenge = “righteousness” → I think “righteousness” is one of those church words that has sort of left us at odds with the world around us.
    • “Righteous” isn’t really used in the wider world much anymore → And if it is, it’s used in a way that’s facetious – said sort of tongue-in-cheek or sarcastically, more in reference to someone who thinks they’re righteous than someone who actually is And yet here it is in many translations of this particular Beatitude: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
  • However, we have to remember that the Scripture we read is a translation, and anyone who’s ever learned or attempted to learn another language can tell you, translation is an imperfect thing because sometimes a word in one language either has no equivalent in the other language or has many equivalents!
    • E.g. – llunga in Kasai or Tshiluba language spoken in the Democratic Republic of Congo → meaning: the ability to forgive a person for an offence or abuse the first time, to tolerate it the second time, but never a third![5]
  • Taking a look at this Beatitude, then, how else can we translate that word “righteousness”?
    • Gr. charity, justice, equity → element of salvation to this word
      • Shares same root as the word for deacon – ordained office in the church charged with the ministry of “compassion, witness, and service, sharing in the redeeming love of Jesus Christ for the poor, the hungry, the sick, the lost, the friendless, the oppressed, those burdened by unjust policies or structures, or anyone in distress.”[6]
  • So when we add that translation – that level of understanding – to this fourth blessing that Jesus laid out, we can see why Casey Cole paired this particular Beatitude with our centering prayer word this morning: longing.
    • Hungering and thirsting … longing … desire … desperation → Nowhere will we find greater longing or deeper desire than those suffering injustice … those hungering and thirsting for equity, for inclusion, for freedom, for their rights and their very existence.
• Reason I chose this particular Scripture passage from Is this morning → outright call for justice in all its forms
  • Speaks of injustices
  • Simultaneous speaks of ways that we can work against those injustices AND the blessing that comes from that work – text: Isn’t it sharing your bread with the hungry and bringing the homeless poor into your house, covering the naked when you see them, and not hiding from your own family? Then your light will break out like the dawn, and you will be healed quickly. … If you remove the yoke from among you, the finger-pointing, the wicked speech; if you open your heart to the hungry, and provide abundantly for those who are afflicted, your light will shine in the darkness, and your gloom will be like the noon.[7]
    • Heb. “afflicted” basically covers anything and everything that weighs down a person’s heart and soul
      • Things that suppress
      • Things that overpower
      • Things that violate
      • Things that humiliate
• Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be filled. Truly, friends, we find ourselves in a time in history in which there is deep, desperate hungering and thirsting for justice.
  • Read portion from Cole’s The Way of Beatitude[8]
  • Friends, we live in a world in which so many of our friends, family members, neighbors, co-workers, and fellow human beings are not just denied their rights but denied their very selves. They are told over and over again in a thousand different ways that they cannot be who they are – that there is something wrong with who they are, that they must change, that they must adapt, that they must simply “deal with it because this is how it is.”
    • Injustice based on …
      • Color of their skin
      • Citizenship status
      • Gender identity
      • Sexual orientation
      • Religious affiliation
      • Ethnic background
    • Laws passed against them
    • Violence perpetuated against them
    • Hate speech ringing out from some of the highest halls of government (and the church!) and blasted from news outlets against them
      • To be honest, friends, it’s hearing these injustices perpetuated in the name of God that I find the most infuriating, the most sacrilegious. We are told in Scripture that all humanity is created in God’s image. We are told to love one another. We are told that it is God’s job alone to judge while it is our job to care for each other. And yet there are pulpits all around the country today spewing words of hate; words of exclusion; words of judgment and hypocrisy and shame; words that draw a thick, jagged, ugly line between “us” and “them,” between a very small group of people supposedly loved by God and everyone else.
• Through it all, we hear God’s call:
  • Jesus: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be filled.
  • Today’s text: Isn’t this the fast I choose: releasing wicked restraints, untying the ropes of a yoke, setting free the mistreated, and breaking every yoke?[9]
  • You see, even in the midst of blessing, Jesus promises justice. Even when we broken and imperfect humans can’t seem to get it right, Jesus promises justice. And yet even when we broken and imperfect humans can’t seem to get it right, God still calls us to do better. – text: If you remove the yoke from among you, the finger-pointing, the wicked speech; if you open your heart to the hungry, and provide abundantly for those who are afflicted, your light will shine in the darkness, and your gloom will be like the noon.
    • Cole: This is what it means to hunger and thirst for righteousness. To be a disciple of Christ, we need not die of starvation or dehydration, but we must know what it feels like to be desperate. … As Christians, we are called to sit in the discomfort of our present age, to let the dissatisfaction of the way things are drive us to want something more. We mustn’t hide from it, and we mustn’t grow weary. Let the yearning in our hearts grow so painful that we cannot bear the thought of living another day in this day, and let that sense of urgency, guided by the light of faith, pour over into the life of the world. When we refuse to accept anything less than the kingdom of heaven, we are on the way of Beatitude.[10]
  • Truly, friends, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be filled.” Amen.

[1] https://www.dictionary.com/e/new-dictionary-words-winter-2023/.

[2] https://www.k-international.com/blog/obsolete-english-words/.

[3] https://www.presbyterianmission.org/what-we-believe/grace/.

[4] Mt 5:6 (NRSV).

[5] https://www.getblend.com/blog/difficult-words-translate/.

[6] Book of Order, G-2.0201.

[7] Is 58:7-8a, 9b-10.

[8] Casey Cole. The Way of Beatitude: Living Radical Hope in a World of Division and Despair. (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 2022), 45-46.

[9] Is 58:6.

[10] Cole, 55.

Text used – Luke 16:19-31

• Reminder of summer sermon series on Beatitudes
  • Dive deeper into one Beatitude each week
  • Pair Beatitude with another text as well as a focus word (centering prayer for the day)
  • A couple weeks ago – “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” – was a difficult one because of the way it’s been used to dismiss or diminish people’s grieving processes
  • And I think this week’s Beatitude can be another difficult one because of the ways it’s been used in the past.
    • Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.[1]
    • Used as justification for subjugation
      • In cases of slavery
      • In unhealthy relationships (abusive, manipulative)
      • In religious circumstances that keep women suppressed, subdued, and separate
      • But these are all ways that this blessing of Jesus’ has been twisted – twisted for harm instead of good.
• Much of our misunderstanding of this Beatitude comes from the way the term “meek” has come to be almost synonymous with weakness
  • What’s a stereotypical “meek” person?
    • Quiet
    • Small (personality/presence, not necessarily physically)
    • Unassuming
    • Passive
    • But the thing is, none of those things have anything to do with the Greek word Jesus uses in this particular passage. → Gr. “meek” = more about kindness, being gentle but strong, humility
      • Word that Jesus uses to describe himself 2 other times in Mt’s gospel
        • Mt 11:29: “Put on my yoke, and learn from me. I’m gentle and humble.”
        • Mt 21:5 (quoting prophet Zechariah as part of his entry into Jerusalem at the beginning of Holy Week): “Say to Daughter Zion, ‘Look, your king is coming to you, humble and riding on a donkey’”
      • So right off the bat, as we consider and dig into this Beatitude, we have to set aside our preconceived notions of what “meekness” might be.
        • Beatrice Smith: Meekness is not to be confused with weakness. It is the exercising of strength under control – the demonstration of power but without being unduly harsh. The meaning of meek is to find the balance in exercising power with restraint, in which God is perfectly able.[2]
        • Another important layer of definition from Casey Cole: The reality is there is nothing weak or cowardly about being meek. Quite the opposite, actually. What makes someone meek is not fear, but rather unflappable courage. The meek person remains quite because they feel no need to speak; they respond with peace because there is nothing to threaten them.[3]
• It’s the flipside of this definition – a lack of courage and humility – that drew me to today’s Scripture reading from Luke’s gospel: Jesus’ story of the rich man and Lazarus.
  • Parable = part of Jesus’ teachings about money in Lk’s gospel → end of larger section that begins: The Pharisees, who were money-lovers, heard all of this and sneered at Jesus. He said to them, “You are the ones who justify yourselves before other people, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued by people is deeply offensive to God.”[4]
    • Jesus proceeds to tell story about the rich man and Lazarus
      • Lazarus = poor man with a chronic illness who lay at the gate of the rich man → Now, Jesus doesn’t give us any kind of timeframe or definitive timeline for this particular story. We aren’t told how long Lazarus lay at the rich man’s get. But we do get the impression that it was more than just a one-time visit.
        • Implications of ongoing nature in the tense of some of the Gr. words in this part of the text, particular when it says: Lazarus longed to eat the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table.[5] → The tense of that Greek word that gets translated as “longed for” is an ongoing word. It’s a word that implies continuous action as opposed to a one-off action. So however long he was laying there, Lazarus longed more than once for the crumbs from the rich man’s table.
      • But alas, Lazarus dies without any alleviation of his troubles. → “carried by angels to Abraham’s side”[6]
      • Rich man also dies → “and was buried”[7]
      • And this is where the rubber really meets the road for the rich man. Jesus describes him as being “tormented in the place of the dead” when he looks up and sees Lazarus and Abraham side-by-side, presumably in a place of comfort and safety.
        • Rich man begs first for his own comfort → denied
        • Rich man begs for Abraham to send someone to warn his brothers of their fate (in the same vein as the three spirits that visit Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas Eve in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol) → once again denied
        • And in Abraham’s dialogue with the rich man here, we see something interesting. Or maybe it’s the lack of something that’s interesting. Not once does Abraham condemn the rich man for his wealth alone. Not once does he say anything about money. What he does point out is that in his life, Lazarus received no compassion. Lazarus received no help. “Child, remember that during your lifetime you received good things, whereas Lazarus received terrible things.”[8]
          • Scholar highlights further the rich man’s lack of both empathy and humility: Not once does it dawn on the rich man to speak to Lazarus directly as a fellow human being. It does not happen when the two men are alive; it does not happen when they exist in the worlds beyond mortality. The rich man operate on the assumption that Lazarus is beneath him, a mooch sprawled out on his doorstep covered in sores. In death, even after the illusion of supremacy has dissolved around him to reveal the truth about the way his attitude tormented others, the rich man still does not understand.[9]
  • When we hold Jesus’ story of the rich man and Lazarus up side-by-side with this morning’s Beatitude – Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth – we find a clear warning about where a distinct lack of meekness can lead. → meekness would have led rich man to be both humble and courageous enough to first see a fellow human being who was suffering, then to move past that suffering to offer help … to offer hope … to offer grace … to offer love
    • Fr. Jacques Philippe: Although [meekness] is one of the most precious expressions of love, it is unfortunately quite rare in today’s hard, competitive world. Yet it remains a powerful tool for attracting and opening hearts.[10]
• And when we roll all those ideas up into one – all those concepts that make up true meekness: humility, courage, and love – we come to our focus word for today: confidence.
  • Some might think of confidence as the polar opposite of meekness, but only if one is functioning with the passive, submissive definition of meekness → When we allow ourselves and our faith to embrace a definition of meekness that is more about humility and courage and love, it leads us to a place of recognizing where our truest confidence lies: not in ourselves and our own abilities but in the goodness and love of the God who created us.
    • A goodness better than us on our best day
    • A love stronger and purer than the deepest love we feel in our own hearts
    • Smith: The gift of meekness is not thinking more lowly or more highly of ourselves than we should – it’s the gift of being able to think honestly about ourselves. We must acknowledge our limitations, be honest about the parts of our lives that aren’t yet complete. But we must also be able to recognize our strengths and what we can We can learn to recognize where we are able to make a difference and to celebrate our victories. In short, we can bring our successes and our failures to God.[11]
      • “Free to Be Me” by Francesca Battistelli

• • In a very real way, it’s something we pray every time we lift up the Lord’s Prayer: Thy will be done. → True meekness includes both the confidence in our own gifts to act on our faith in ways that matter – ways that demonstrate God’s love in this world – and also the confidence to lay aside whatever control we have in the midst of a situation and say, “Thy will be done, God. Not my will. Thy will.” Truly, friends, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” Amen.

[1] Mt 5:5 (NRSV).

[2] Beatrice Smith. The Beatitudes: Eight Reflections Exploring the Countercultural Words of Jesus in Matthew 5. (London: Spring Harvest, 2023), 16-17.

[3] Casey Cole. The Way of Beatitude: Living Radical Hope in a World of Division and Despair. (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 2022), 31.

[4] Lk 16:14-15.

[5] Lk 16:21a.

[6] Lk 16:22a.

[7] Lk 16:22b.

[8] Lk 16:25.

[9] Leah D. Schade. “Luke 16:19-31 – Theological Perspective” in Feasting on the Gospels – Luke, vol. 2. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2014), 106.

[10] Jacques Philippe. The Eight Doors of the Kingdom: Meditations on the Beatitudes. (New York: Scepter Publishers, 2018), 101.

[11] Smith, 17.

Text used – Psalm 30

• Reminder of summer sermon series on Beatitudes
  • Dive deeper into one Beatitude each week
  • Paid Beatitude with another text as well as a focus word (centering prayer for the day)
• Let me preface everything I’m going to say this morning with this, friends: today’s Beatitude is a difficult one: Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.[1]
  • Difficult one because mourning is difficult
    • Painful
    • Confusing
    • Lengthy process
      • Much longer than we ourselves would like it to be
      • Much longer than society seems to think it should be
  • Difficult because everyone’s experience of mourning is different
  • Difficult because of the Hallmark-ized culture in which we live → culture in which we are bombarded by empty platitudes when people don’t know what else to say (platitudes that often have the opposite effect from the comfort intended)
    • “Everything happens for a reason”
    • “When God closes a door, he opens a window”
    • “I guess God needed another angel”
    • All well-meaning sentiments that end up having the same negative effect → whitewashing over someone else’s grief
      • Minimizes it
      • Dismisses it
      • Can even add an element of shame to their grief à an element of “why haven’t you gotten over this yet?” or “why aren’t you looking for the good in the midst of the massive you-know-what storm that you currently find yourself in?”
    • People say these things because so often, we don’t have words for grief – our own or anyone else’s – and yet we feel like we have to say something. For this reason (and because I am who I am), I always give people who are grieving this book by Jan Richardson: The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief[2] → book of blessings/poems written by Richardson after the sudden loss of her husband
      • 3 sections: “Getting the News: Blessings in the Rending,” “The Sweetness That Remains: Solace Blessings,” and “What Fire Comes to Sing in You: Blessings of Hope”
      • All blessings/poems that deal with grief in words that are both very raw/real and very powerful/profound
      • And I wanted to share one of those blessings to begin our conversation this morning. This is one called “Blessing for the Dailiness of Grief” from Richardson’s “Getting the News: Blessings in the Rending” section.[3]
        • I wanted to share this blessing/poem this morning because I feel like it holds space for all different kinds of grief – grief that is fresh and grief that has been carried long, grief that is sharp and grief that is a dull ache, grief for any person or relationship. Particularly, it names the staying power of grief – how it can surface in the most seemingly-mundane moments of our days when we least expect it.
          • American author Ann Hood: Time passes and I am still not through it. Grief isn’t something you get over. You live with it. You go on with it lodged in you. Sometimes I feel like I have swallowed a pile of stones. Grief makes me heavy. It makes me slow. Even on days when I laugh a lot, or dance, or finish a project, or meet a deadline, or celebrate, or make love, it is there. Lodged deep inside of me.
• I think these are important things to keep in mind as we talk about this second Beatitude this morning – Jesus’ blessings for those who mourn: Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.[4]
  • Notice: it’s not “Blessed are those because they mourn” but “Blessed are those who mourn” – there’s a critical element of agency here → Jesus isn’t saying that the mourning itself is the blessing. Throughout the history of this Church, this particular Beatitude has certainly been twisted in many of the ways that we’ve already talked about – ways that goad and shame people into denying the emotions their feeling and instead try to “look on the bright side.” But I think that Jesus’ words are pretty clear: the blessing is not in the mourning itself but it what comes through the mourning.
    • Casey Cole (in The Way of Beatitude): When Jesus says, “Blessed are those who mourn,” he does not speak of the condition of tragedy in itself, but rather of the capacity of a person to feel; blessed are those who care enough o cry. Blessed are those who are deeply moved by tragic events. Blessed are those who chose to love even when it would hurt a lot less not to love. For what does it mean to mourn other than to love in the face of loss, to persist in caring even when all seems hopeless, to refuse to move on easily or quickly from pain? When we speak of someone mourning, our focus isn’t so much on the events that caused the person’s sorrow as it is on the magnitude of a heart vulnerable enough to suffering with and for another. An uncaring heart does not mourn. Someone with no commitment, no vulnerability, and no self-sacrifice does not mourn. Only the one who loves, even when it hurts, is able to shed a tear. This is a blessed person.[5] → So one of the ways that we find blessedness even in the midst of grief and mourning is actually in the source of that grief and mourning: that person or relationship or experience for which we are grieving.
      • Lyrics from “For Good” from the musical Wicked: So much of me / Is made of what I learned from you. / You’ll be with me like a handprint on my heart. / And now whatever way our stories end / I know you have rewritten mine by being my friend. / Like a ship blown from its mooring by a wind off the sea. / Like a seed dropped by a sky bird in a distant wood. / Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better / But because I knew you / I have been changed for good.[6] → The tracks the people leave on our hearts – the ways that they change us – are both a blessing and the reason we grieve.
  • Jesus also makes it clear that the blessing is in the comfort we receive in the midst of our grief
    • First and foremost, comfort from a God who has been there, too, and who hunkers down with us in the midst of our mourning → reason for choosing our psalm for this morning
      • [re-read Ps 30]
      • Psalm that names the power of grief as well as the ups and downs of grief
      • Psalm that names the even greater power of God to reach down into our grief and hold us
        • v. 1: “You pulled me up”
        • v. 2: “You healed me”
        • v. 3: “You brought me up from the grave, brought me back to life”
        • v. 11: “You changed my mourning into dancing”
        • Notice that there’s no timeline attached to any of this. There’s nothing in our psalm that says, “In just 2 short months, God, you turned it all around for me.” There’s nothing that says, “Less than a year later, God, you dressed me up in joy.” Despite the way society might push us to “get past” our grief, there is nothing in our psalm that puts a deadline on any part of this process. What it does promise, though, is that God is there in the midst of it with us. It promises that when we call out to God, God will hear us and be with us, enfolding us in mercy and lifting us up.
          • Beatrice Smith (in her Beatitudes Bible study): Whatever the cause of our mourning, God makes a profound and beautiful promise through the Lord Jesus Christ: [God] will comfort you. The one who is called Immanuel, God with us, comes to us; in our mourning, in our sorrow and in our pain [Jesus] reaches out his hand and offers us grace, comfort and hope.[7]
    • But God is not the only place we find comfort in the midst of our grief. Often, we also find that comfort in the community that surrounds us.
      • Family and friends
      • Neighbors
      • Church/body of Christ → To share in our lives together – to share our prayer requests and the ins and outs of our days together – is one of the greatest blessings of being in Christian community together, and it’s a blessing that this congregation shares well and often. We lift one another up in prayer. We reach out to one another. We check in with one another. We cry with one another and hold that sacred space for one another’s grief. And that kind of community, friends, is both a holy calling and a special kind of blessing.
        • Paul speaks of this in his 2^nd letter to the Corinthian church: May the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ be blessed! He is the compassionate Father and God of all comfort. He’s the one who comforts us in all our trouble so that we can comfort other people who are in every kind of trouble. We offer the same comfort that we ourselves received from God. That is because we receive so much comfort through Christ in the same way that we share so many of Christ’s sufferings. So if we have trouble, it is to bring you comfort and salvation. If we are comforted, it is to bring you comfort from the experience of endurance while you go through the same sufferings that we also suffer.[8] → We’ve all experienced our own times of mourning. We’re all shouldering grief in some way. And through the blessing of this community – through the blessings of the other relationships and communities in which you find your own belonging and solace – we get to share that blessing of comfort with each other.
          • Fr. Cole: This is what it means to mourn. To follow Jesus, … [we need] to be a people with the capacity to love through sorrow. … We are a people who love even when it hurts. We know that our shared sorrow only brings us closer together in greater empathy, and we know that a heart that feels is a heart that can heal and reconcile. When we love so freely that we allow ourselves to be heartbroken for others and healed by God, we are on the way of Beatitude.[9]
  • In this vein, I want to share another of Jan Richardson’s blessings with you to close this morning. – read “Blessing the Tools of Grief”[10] → Truly, friends, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” Amen.

[1] Mt 5:4 (NRSV).

[2] Jan Richardson. The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief. (Orlando: Wanton Gospeller Press), 2016.

[3] Richardson, 42-44.

[4] Mt 5:4 (NRSV).

[5] Casey Cole. The Way of Beatitude: Living Radical Hope in a World of Division and Despair. (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 2022), 18-19.

[6] Stephen Schwartz, “For Good” performed by Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel, from Wicked. (New York: Universal Classics Group), 2003.

[7] Beatrice Smith. The Beatitudes: Eight Reflections Exploring the Countercultural Words of Jesus in Matthew 5. (London: Spring Harvest, 2023), 11.

[8] 2 Cor 1:3-6 (CEB).

[9] Cole, 25-26.

[10] Richardson, 135-136.

Text used – Matthew 5:3; John 21:1-14

• I’m excited for today, all, because today we’re kicking off our summer sermon series – a series on the Beatitudes.
  • Each Sunday = one of Jesus’ famous blessings
    • Only exception = last Sunday (Sept. 3) → last 2 Beatitudes have such a similar theme that we’re going to combine them
  • Dig deeper into each Beatitude using another passage from Scripture
  • Each Beatitude paired with a one-word idea → that word = our centering prayer for the morning
    • E.g. – today’s = surrender
  • Variety of books that I’m using to flesh out these ideas
    • The Eight Doors of the Kingdom: Meditations on the Beatitudes by Fr. Jacques Philippe[1]
    • The Beatitudes: Eight Reflections Exploring the Countercultural Words of Jesus in Matthew 5 by Beatrice Smith[2]
    • Arise to Blessedness: A Journal Retreat with Eight Modern Saints Who Lived the Beatitudes by Jen Norton[3]
    • The Way of Beatitude: Living Radical Hope in a World of Division and Despair by Fr. Casey Cole[4]
    • Best part about most of these resources = they’re very interactive
      • Jen Norton’s = journal (and a beautiful one at that!)
      • Beatrice Smith’s = actually a Bible study
      • Casey Cole’s = book that includes both reflection questions and practical acts (a.k.a. – spiritual practices) for each Beatitude
        • Also where each of the focus words that will be our centering prayers came from
      • So if you find yourself wanting to do more with any of these this summer, I’m more than happy to photocopy a few pages out of one or more of these books so you can try some things at home from one week to the next.
• Before we start exploring today’s Beatitude, let’s talk a little bit about where they’re situated in Matthew’s gospel.
  • Words = beginning of Jesus’ public ministry in Mt’s gospel → This peculiar list of blessings form Jesus’ opening to his Sermon on the Mount.
    • Just prior to this in the arc of Mt’s narrative
      • Jesus calling the disciples[5]
      • Short introductory passage about Jesus traveling throughout Galilee teaching, healing, and “announc[ing] the good news of the kingdom”[6]
      • Verses leading into the Beatitudes: Large crowds followed [Jesus] from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and from the areas beyond the Jordan River. Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up a mountain. He said down and his disciples came to him. He taught them, saying …”[7] → So as far as we can tell, much of the public ministry that Jesus was doing before this Sermon on the Mount were smaller, isolated incidents of healing where he could and teaching in synagogues he encountered. This Sermon on the Mount is Jesus’ first large-scale act of ministry among the people, and he opens with the Beatitudes.
        • Scholar (descr. of Beatitudes): One of the last adjectives many of us would choose for the Beatitudes is “surprising.” Matthew 5:1-12 is among the most familiar passages in all of Scripture … When the Monty Python crew wriest into their movie Life of Brian lines like “Blessed are the Greeks” and “Blessed are the cheesemakers,” the gags work because the Beatitudes are so familiar to so many people. Twenty centuries of Christian repetition threaten to make them into a sage chestnut that we pick up and remember together with a knowing nod. Even Biblically illiterate twenty-first century Westerners recognize them as the kinds of words Jesus is supposed to say. All of this is profoundly ironic, because in the narrative world of Matthew’s Gospel the Beatitudes are not familiar pearls of wisdom. They are the astonishing words of an unexpected Messiah.[8] → And this, friends is exactly why we’re going to be digging deeper into the Beatitudes this summer – as a way for us to really engage with these astonishing, unexpected, countercultural words of a Messiah who charges us to not just hear them, but embody them.
• So let’s get started with the first Beatitude this morning: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.[9]
  • Gr. in most of this passage is pretty straightforward BUT interesting word = “poor” – carries usual implication of lacking sufficient means but also connotations of being miserable, oppressed, and inadequate → When we pair this meaning with the idea of being poor in spirit, it basically covers all the ways that we feel down … the ways that we feel defeated … the ways that we feel deficient.
• And it’s those feelings that caused me to choose our accompanying passage for this morning – this text from the end of John’s gospel. → story of Jesus’ 4^th and final recorded appearance to the disciples after his crucifixion and resurrection as Jn tells it (despite what our Scripture says this morning – v. 14: This was now the third time Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead.)
  • 1^st appearance = to Mary in the garden outside the tomb (Easter morning)[10]
  • 2^nd appearance = to disciples that same evening when they were behind closed doors (Jesus: “Peace be with you”)[11]
    • Maybe John counted those two appearances together when he called today’s reading the third encounter? Just a guess.
  • 3^rd appearance = Jesus’ infamous exchange with Thomas → began with doubt and ended with belief[12]
  • Culminate in this morning’s text – this last, odd story about Jesus encountering the disciples on the shores of the Sea of Tiberias (a.k.a. – Sea of Galilee) for a session of early-morning fishing, breakfast, and of course, another lesson
    • Disciples are all hanging out on the beach
      • Text tells us the majority of the disciples were there (8 of the remaining 11) → And I don’t know about you, but I picture them all sort of sitting around looking at their hands … wondering what to do next. I mean, they’ve been through a lot in the last week! Jesus’ arrest and torture and sham of a trial and horrific death. Then the whole whirlwind of the resurrection experience with Mary’s unbelievable story and then Jesus’ appearances. But these appearances are just glimpses. Flashes. Jesus doesn’t return and stay with them and teach them like he did before. He appears. He imparts a little wisdom or a blessing. And he disappears again. We can only imagine how much their minds must be spinning in this moment.
        • Remember, Jesus has appeared to them and blessed them at this point, but he hasn’t given them any kind of indication or directive about what comes next
      • So into this uncertainty, Simon Peter reverts to what he knows. – text: Simon Peter told them, “I’m going fishing.” (And thinking that they had nothing better to do … maybe thinking that the familiarity of the water and the motions of fishing would calm their rattled minds, the rest of the disciples replied), “We’ll go with you.”[13]
    • Not exactly the uplifting experience they were probably hoping for – text: They set out in a boat, but throughout the night they caught nothing.[14] → So not only are the disciples still as perplexed as they were before, now they’re also frustrated by their inability to catch any fish and they’re sleep deprived because they’ve been out on the boat all night.
  • Into this wreck of an endeavor walks the resurrected Christ.
    • Appears on the shore
    • Calls to the boat and asks if the disciples have had any luck
    • Disciples response: “No.”
    • Jesus’ advice: “Cast your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.”[15]
    • Result: disciples catch so many fish in one single casting of the net that they can’t even pull it up into the boat
    • Text: Then the disciples whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It’s the Lord!”[16]
    • Disciples return to shore with 153 large fish
    • Breakfast on the beach with Jesus
  • We’re going to focus on that middle part this morning. The disciples are having a pretty awful time of it. And then Jesus arrives. And the second the disciples trust in Jesus’ instruction (even before they’ve recognized that it’s him!) … the second they trust in Jesus’ instruction and surrender their own plans and designs, their own control of the situation … that is when the abundance rushes in. And then … then they recognize Jesus. Then they recognize God at work among them. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
    • Cole: Our dependence on God must be so strong that we completely reevaluate what’s considered wealth and how we interact with it; that when faced with difficulties, we are not even tempted to look to the world because we have already been relying on God through the good times; that we have come to find the world and all its allurements so futile and unreliable that we actually prefer being poor, because it is in our poverty that we find the most strength in God.[17]
    • NOTICE: Scripture doesn’t say anything about God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit causing the lack of success for the purpose of teaching → This isn’t God creating a horrible situation just to make it all better in one flashy, didactic, overtly-revelatory moment. This is the disciples having a really horrible time – probably feeling exceptionally poor in spirit – and Jesus finding them in the midst of that struggle and providing what they need to get through. This is Jesus lifting them up when they need it most … but only when they have placed their full trust in him.
      • Surrender = key → And it’s also what’s so backwards, upside-down, inside-out, countercultural about what Jesus says here.
        • Beatrice Smith: Modern-day society is much like the society of Jesus’ day – humans are naturally wired full of ego. Our understanding of who is truly blessed is usually the healthy, wealthy and wise according to the current culture. Jesus, however, does not affirm these as the blessed. … When Jesus tells a crowd made up of poor fishermen, the sick and a bunch of hurting and insignificant people that if they feel poor in spirit, the kingdom of heaven is theirs, the listeners would have been scandalized. The very idea that somehow, in them, God could bring a sense of [God’s] presence for [God’s] purpose; the promise that God could come to them in their brokenness and their uncertainty; the fact that their incompleteness and fractured mess was the very reason for being given hope and grace: shocking.[18] → You see, with this first Beatitude, Jesus is naming that it is only when our own wayward ambitions, our own self-importance, our own insistent inner voice is silenced … only when we completely surrender our reliance on all those outward things that we think keep us afloat … only then can we truly hear the voice of God calling our names and speaking abundance, speaking hope, speaking grace. Truly, friends, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Amen.

[1] Jacques Philippe. The Eight Doors of the Kingdom: Meditations on the Beatitudes. (New York: Scepter Publishers), 2018.

[2] Beatrice Smith. The Beatitudes: Eight Reflections Exploring the Countercultural Words of Jesus in Matthew 5. (London: Spring Harvest), 2023.

[3] Jen Norton. Arise to Blessedness: A Journal Retreat with Eight Modern Saints Who Lived the Beatitudes. (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press), 2023.

[4] Casey Cole. The Way of Beatitude: Living Radical Hope in a World of Division and Despair. (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press), 2022.

[5] Mt 4:18-22.

[6] Mt 4:23.

[7] Mt 4:25-5:2.

[8] Allen Hilton. “Matthew 5:1-12 – Homiletical Perspective” in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary – Year A, vol. 4. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 237.

[9] Mt 5:3 (NRSV).

[10] Jn 20:1-18.

[11] Jn 20:19-23.

[12] Jn 20:24-29.

[13] Jn 21:3a (with my own embellishment).

[14] Jn 21:3b.

[15] Jn 21:6.

[16] Jn 21:7a (emphasis added).

[17] Cole, 12.

[18] Smith, 4.

• My mom posted a video on Facebook earlier this week that I just loved![1]
  • Big red circle on the sidewalk – probably 5 ft. or so in diameter
  • Small Blutooth speaker on the ground next to the circle
  • Big chalked instruction: DANCE HERE
  • And the video, which runs just over 5 minutes (the length of two songs) and is actually recorded at two different circles in two different locations, is just a compilation of lots of people stepping into the circle to dance for a little while. → 2 things immediately struck me about this video
    • FIRST: all the beautiful differences displayed in the video
      • People of all different backgrounds, ages, ethnicities chose to step into the circle and dance
      • All sorts of dance abilities – people who could barely find the beat to people who clearly had dance training and everything in between
      • Some people really get into it with big, flashy movements and some danced happily with much smaller, more discreet movements
      • All combinations of people in the circle
        • Lots of individuals dancing by themselves
        • People dancing with friends
        • People dancing with significant others
        • People dancing with kids
        • People dancing with dogs
        • Even a guy dancing with his bicycle!
    • OTHER: how pretty much everyone stopped dancing the moment they stepped outside that red circle again → They were changed. Many were smiling and laughing. A few were looking mildly embarrassed or a little chagrined. A few were still carrying the beat of the music in their bodies somewhere – snapping their fingers, bobbing their heads, and so on. But when they stepped outside that circle, they stopped dancing.
  • So all week I was thinking about this video … and about Pentecost … and about Church. See, here’s the thing: very often, we celebrate Pentecost as the birthday of the church – that day literally aflame with the Holy Spirit and the mission of God bursting out all over the place! That day when God sent the disciples out into all parts of the world with all languages in their mouths but the same message on their tongues: salvation in the love and grace of God through Jesus Christ. We say that that was the day the Church was born because God sent the disciples out to the ends of the earth, called to share that message with all who would hear it, called to evangelize and baptize and welcome all who were seeking into the body of Christ, called to gather and nurture and grow communities of praise and prayer and worship and fellowship. It was a nets-flung-wide kind of movement. It was a “y’all come” kind of movement. It was a movement with deliberately wavy and indistinct edges because there is nowhere that the love of God cannot reach.
    • Might be asking, “Okay … but what does this have to do with that dancing video you mentioned?”
      • Video = people finding freedom and joy in dance … but only in that confined red circle → Once they left the circle, the dancing stopped.
      • Here’s my question: On this Pentecost day when we celebrate the wild and flagrant outpouring of the Holy Spirit – a day full of unpredictability and wide-open potential, a day that was all about the incredible everything that God could accomplish … on this Pentecost day, have we as the Church today confined ourselves to a staggeringly smaller circle of what can be?
• Want you to hear a different telling of the story, so this is how Eugene Peterson paraphrased it in The Message: When the Feast of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Without warning there was a sound like a strong wind, gale force—no one could tell where it came from. It filled the whole building. Then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks, and they started speaking in a number of different languages as the Spirit prompted them. There were many Jews staying in Jerusalem just then, devout pilgrims from all over the world. When they heard the sound, they came on the run. Then when they heard, one after another, their own mother tongues being spoken, they were blown away. They couldn’t for the life of them figure out what was going on, and kept saying, “Aren’t these all Galileans? How come we’re hearing them talk in our various mother tongues? Parthians, Medes, and Elamites; visitors from Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene; immigrants from Rome, both Jews and proselytes; even Cretans and Arabs! They’re speaking our languages, describing God’s mighty works!” → Now, I know that that’s a pretty large section of difficult-to-pronounce names of places and empires that mostly don’t exist today, so let’s talk about this swath of land covered by all those languages that the Holy Spirit bestowed that day.
  • East: all the way to China’s western border (Pakistan, parts of northern India, Afghanistan)
  • North: strip of land btwn the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea (Georgia, Azerbaijan) as well as southern coast of the Black Sea (Turkey)
  • West: Rome, parts of Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia
  • South: down into Libya and Egypt and into the Arabian Peninsula
  • We’re talking about roughly 3,000,000 sq. mi. of land that these different languages cover! And that’s just the initial “sharing” in that one moment. That doesn’t include all the peoples and tribes and city-states and nomads and travelers and traders who will hear secondhand and thirdhand and twentieth-hand about the good news of Christ’s death and resurrection and about God’s unending love.
    • Evidence that the gospel traveled far and fast
      • In China by 635 CE
      • In the British Isles by the 4^th (300s CE)
      • Expanded out from there as the Church continued to grow and global travel became more and more ambitious
      • Now, we have to say here that the way that Christianity was spread throughout much of the Middle Ages was not good. It was violent. It was unjust. It obliterated indigenous cultures on every continent. And as it was spread, there were horrible, horrible things done and sanctioned by the Church. But I think looking back, we can also say that much of that was done not for the love of the Gospel but for the love of power and wealth and prestige.
        
        • • • • • •  
  • Cycle of misaligned Church priorities led to what the late Phyllis Tickle has called the church’s rummage sales – times of great uncertainty and great “cleaning out” within the history of the Church[3]
    • 500 yrs. ago = Reformation → divided Catholic/Protestant
    • 500 yrs. before that = Great Schism → divided Western/Eastern Orthodox
    • 500 yrs. before that = establishment of monasticism → saved Christian practice and theology through much political and social upheaval (e.g. – the Dark Ages)
    • 500 yrs. before that = Christ
    • Tickle (in The Great Emergence which was published back in 2008): As we shall see over and over again, religious enthusiasms in all holy rummage sales are unfailingly symptomatic or expressive of concomitant political, economic, and social upheavals.[4] → Sound like now, friends? Because in case you hadn’t done the math, here’s your spoiler alert: We are in the midst of another rummage sale. Things in the church world are changing. Rapidly. Uncertainly.
      • Conversations with other pastors right now inevitably always include some variation on the admission that it is hard to do/be Church right now because everything is so up-in-the-air → Things are changing in so many ways and on so many fronts, it feels like the Holy Spirit, that pesky and persistent Divine Disturber, is gusting throughout midst again and shaking up our comfort zones. The Holy Spirit is roaring through out midst with such force that we are being pushed outside those little dance circles that the Church has grown so accustomed to.
        • Scary
        • Uncomfortable
        • Undefined
        • But it’s also a wide open pavement of possibilities! Instead of being restricted to our little dance circle, we have the whole world around us to move and love and share God’s word in new and powerful ways that change everything – change out there … and change in here – change inside our walls and change inside our hearts! But that will only happen if we have the courage to step outside the circle and keep going.
          • Tickle gives reassurance in the midst of the uncertainty: It is especially important to remember that no standing form of organized Christian faith has ever been destroyed by one of our semi-millennial eruptions. Instead, each simply has lost hegemony or pride of place to the new and not-yet-organized form that was birthing.[5] → Christianity is not going to disappear, friends. But I think we can confidently say that it will not look the same either.
  • Bottom line: The message and joy and inspiration and movement of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost was never, ever meant to be something that was contained and orderly and defined by a handy acronym or a bulleted list of approved theologies. It was never meant to be safe. It was never meant to be easy. It was meant to shake things up and change lives. It was meant to completely reorient us with the person and work of Jesus Christ as our new North.
    • Late Rachel Held Evans: But the modern-day church doesn’t like to wander or wait. The modern-day church likes results. Convinced the gospel is a product we’ve got to sell to an increasingly shrinking market, we like our people to function as walking advertisements: happy, put-together, finished—proof that this Jesus stuff WORKS! At its best, such a culture generates pews of Stepford Wife–style robots with painted smiles and programmed moves. At its worst, it creates environments where abuse and corruption get covered up to protect reputations and preserve image. “The world is watching,” Christians like to say, “so let’s be on our best behavior and quickly hide the mess. Let’s throw up some before-and-after shots and roll that flashy footage of our miracle product blanching out every sign of dirt, hiding every sign of disease.” But if the world is watching, we might as well tell the truth. And the truth is, the church doesn’t offer a cure. It doesn’t offer a quick fix. The church offers death and resurrection. The church offers the messy, inconvenient, gut-wrenching, never-ending work of healing and reconciliation. The church offers grace. Anything else we try to peddle is snake oil. It’s not the real thing. → Maybe this time, instead of lighting a flicker flame over our heads, God is lighting a fire under our butts to get us out there doing and being and believing and preaching and praying the real thing in the real world with real people who need some good news! Amen.

[1] https://fb.watch/kP1gVmb4dE/.

[3] Phyllis Tickle. The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why. (Grand Rapids: BakerBooks, 2008), 19-31.

[4] Tickle, 21.

[5] Tickle, 27.

Text used – Romans 6:1-11

• Y’all … I think we may have finally made it to spring in Minnesota!!! (One week before Memorial Day weekend … what people tend to think of as the unofficial start to Sheesh.)
  • Kids had soccer yesterday – their last soccer game of the season – and it was the first game that wasn’t horrible to sit and watch because of the weather
    • Clarification: watching the games themselves has always been fun … the weather we had to endure while watching … not so much
    • Sporting the fruits of that finally-springtime weather in my lovely sunburn right here! → I’m one that’s usually pretty good about making sure I’ve slathered the sunscreen on – on my kids and myself – but clearly I’m out of the habit because it didn’t even cross my mind yesterday.
      • Out of the habit because it’s been SO LONG since we’ve really been able to be out enjoying the beautiful weather!! → Spring has been a long time coming this year. I mean, it felt like we were waiting … and waiting … and waiting for that renewal that comes with green leaves, longer days, and warmer temperatures, right? It felt like things stayed grey and brown and dormant for a long time this year. I felt like we were waiting a long time for that new life to spring forth.
  • And it was hard, wasn’t it? As the cold temperatures continued to drag on … as the snow continued to fall … and those steel-grey, wintery clouds that continued to block out the sun … it was hard. It was hard to wait. It was hard to hope. It was hard to remember that such a thing as “spring” even existed.
    • Started to feel a little bit like we were living in C.S. Lewis’ land of Narnia before the defeat of the White Witch – a land in which it is, by Lewis’ own description “always winter. Always winter and never Christmas.”[1]
    • And yet here we are … finally on the warmer … sunnier … greener side of things, surrounded by new life.
• Feel the push-and-pull of living with the current reality as well as the desire for new life and what that means in our Scripture reading this morning
  • Paul’s explanation of the crucial nature and meaning of Christ’s resurrection to the Christian church in Rome → wraps life and death and resurrection, sin and grace and mission all together in one theological package → As is his norm, Paul packs a lot of theology into a few verses. So let’s unpack it a bit.
    • Question at the beginning of today’s passage feeds in from what comes before it at the end of ch. 5 (section titled “Grace now rules”): Many people were made righteous through the obedience of one person (Jesus Christ), just as many people were made sinners through the disobedience of one person (implication: Adam). The Law stepped in to amplify the failure, but where sin increased, grace multiplied even more. The result is that grace will rule through God’s righteousness, leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord, just as sin ruled in death.[2] → So following this explanation about grace increasing in response to sin – that line about “where sin increased, grace multiplied even more” – Paul then begins our section today with this follow-up question: So what are we going to say? Should we continue sinning so grace will multiply?[3]
      • Makes sense, right? More grace must be good, so if we follow his logic from the previous section, that means more sinning … right? → Paul is not taking any chances with word choice here – makes his point abundantly clear
        • Gr. “continue” = active sort of word – word that carries connotations of persisting toward a goal → Paul isn’t just talking about the uninvolved ways that we wait for things to happen. This is the kind of continuing that is intentional. Should we intentionally continue to sin?
        • Gr. “multiply” = combination of two words, both of which mean many, much, more, etc. → Should we intentionally continue to sin so that there will be more and more and more grace?
    • But of course, Paul answers his own question – text: Absolutely not! All of us died to sin. How can we still live in it?
      • Scholar: The main thrust of chapter 6 is to head off any misunderstandings about the relationship between sin and grace. … Just because the power of grace outstrips the power of sin is no reason to sin. When my son was in preschool, he accidentally spilled an entire cardon of milk on the floor. He was devastated by his mistake. So as I mopped up the floor, I reassured him that everything was going to be just fine. I said, “Look! Now the whole floor is nice and clean!” He turned to me and said brightly, “Hey! Maybe I should spill on the floor more often!” By no means! Just because God in Christ Jesus has the power to make things right is not an invitation to do wrong.[4]
    • So then what does that entail? → Paul continues dialogue about basic tenets of Christian belief
      • Baptized into Christ Jesus
      • Christ died, was buried, and “was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father”[5]
      • Because our baptism binds us to Christ, “we too can walk in newness of life”
        • Expands this idea of “newness of life” → Paul makes it clear that once faith has become a part of who we are, we are changed. – text: This is what we know: the person we used to be was crucified with him in order to get rid of the corpse that had been controlled by sin. That way we wouldn’t be slaves to sin anymore, because a person who has died has been freed from sin’s power.[6] → Whoooooo! That is powerful “The person we used to be was crucified with him in order to get rid of the corpse that had been controlled by sin.” It’s a powerful reminder of where that path of following sin leads us: death. Period. Without Christ, this is a death that is The End. → especially powerful when we think about when this passage is most often read
          • Reminder: we’ve been following the Narrative Lectionary for the last 4 yrs. → schedule of Scripture passages that starts again every fall and walks us through the whole story of human salvation from creation in Sept. through the life of Israel, the prophets (Advent – leading up to Christmas), the gospels after the birth of Christ, and through some of the epistles following Easter and the resurrection → However, in the Revised Common Lectionary – a different schedule of texts for each Sunday that’s used widely throughout the Church – this passage from Romans 6 is always scheduled for Holy Saturday … for what’s called Easter Vigil … for that liminal space between the horrific death of Good Friday and the resurrection joy of Easter morning. It is into the uncertainty and desolation and darkness of that waiting that we read this text.
            • Text that brings a glimmer of light into the darkness
            • Text that reminds us why we must sit with those moments of death before moving on to the new life
            • Text that, although it never actually uses the word “hope,” is utterly brimming with hope
• Hope = theme for the conference that I was at this past week – the Festival of Homiletics: Preaching Hope for a Weary World → And after the last few years that we’ve all had – with COVID and all of the social unrest – one of the threads that kept popping up again and again throughout the various sermons and lectures was the idea of hope anyway.
  • Hope … even though we’ve all been through some stuff
  • Hope … even though the way ahead is uncertain and unclear
  • Hope … even though we are bombarded on every side by negative headline after negative headline
  • Hope … even, and especially, when we don’t feel like there’s any hope left
  • One of the sermons was by Rev. Dr. Will Willimon (retired bishop in the United Methodist Church, professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry at Duke Divinity School, author of over 60 books) → Willimon spoke about the importance of divining false hope vs. true hope
    • Willimon: Hope can be the parent of idolatry because false hope is always easier to live with than true hope. False hope is self-constructed. True hope asks of us, requires of us, expects of us.[7]
  • Later that same day, this idea of true hope was expanded on and fleshed out a little more by another preacher – Rev. Dr. Samuel Cruz (Associate Professor of Church and Society at Union Theological Seminary and senior pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Sunset Park in Brooklyn) → Cruz made a distinction btwn abstract hope and concrete hope[8]
    • Abstract hope = what Cruz called “hunky dory hope” → hope that has a far-reaching, sometimes nebulous, “pie in the sky” sort of aim
      • E.g. – world peace
    • Concrete hope = hope for things in the here and now → hope that calls us to act in the here and now
  • Both of these preachers – Will Willimon and Samuel Cruz – as well as just about every other preacher that I listened to last week talked about the importance of connecting hope and action. They talked about the way that hope changes us … the way that faith changes us … the way that interacting with Christ, that a relationship with Christ changes us. And that is exactly what Paul is talking about in our passage this morning. Paul makes it clear that through Christ’s death on the cross, a new life is available to us. – text: If we died with Christ, we have faith that we will also live with him. We know that Christ has been raised from the dead and he will never die again. Death no longer has power over him. He died to sin once and for all with his death, but he lives for God with his life. In the same way, you also should consider yourselves dead to sin but alive for God in Christ Jesus.[9] → We cannot help but find hope in this words. We cannot help but find promise in these words. But we also cannot help but find a call to action in these words. Paul makes it clear that this baptism … this faith … this relationship with Christ changes us.
    • Just as we cannot go out into the sun and not be changed (as I so graciously have illustrated for you this morning), we cannot engage in a relationship with the risen Christ and not be changed → The question is how? How will you be changed? How will you let that relationship with Christ change you? How will you take that relationship with Christ and change the world?
      • Exploring the Word Together question this morning: How can we honor this new life we have in Christ? → So indeed, let us be the word of God for one another this morning. Amen.
        
        

[1] C.S. Lewis. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1950), 14.

[2] Rom 5:19-21 (insertions added).

[3] Rom 6:1.

[4] Shawnthea Monroe. “Romans 6:1b-11 – Pastoral Perspective” in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary – Year A, vol. 3. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 160.

[5] Rom 6:4.

[6] Rom 6:6-7.

[7] Will Willimon. “We Had Hoped” from the Festival of Homiletics, preached at Westminster Presbyterian Church, Minneapolis, MN, 18 May 2023.

[8] Samuel Cruz. “Hope From the Margins” from the Festival of Homiletics, preached at Central Lutheran Church, Minneapolis, MN, 18 May 2023.

[9] Rom 6:8-11.

Text used – Romans 3:29-30; 5:1-11

• As I was thinking about grace this week, I was thinking about a bunch of those childhood playground games.
  • First thought: Red Rover
    • 2 teams stand in lines facing teach other holding hands
    • Team A calls over one person from Team B → that person runs across the space btwn. the lines and tries to break through Team A’s line while Team A tries to keep their line from breaking
      • If person breaks through, they get to take someone from Team A back to their line
      • If person doesn’t break through, they join Team A
  • Also thought about Duck Duck Grey Duck (Yes, people … it’s Duck Duck GREY DUCK. None of this “goose” nonsense. Geese don’t play with ducks. That’s ridiculous!)
    • Kids sit in a circle facing inward
    • One kid walks around the outside of the circle tapping people
      • If you’re tapped and the person who’s it just says “duck,” you stay seated
      • If you’re tapped and the person who’s it says “grey duck,” you get up and try to catch them before they can run all the way around the outside of the circle and take your seat
        • If you catch them, they remain “it”
        • If they make it back to your seat, you’re “it”
  • Game that we played at Girl Scouts when I was little: Mr. Bear à from a “Girl Scout Games” PDF I found online: One person is Mr. Bear. He is trying to sleep in his den. The other players sneak up to Mr. Bear and whisper, “Mr. Bear, are you awake?” Mr. Bear pretends not to hear them. Then the players yell, “Mr. Bear, are you awake?” This makes Mr. Bear furious! He chases them and tries to catch them before they reach home, which is the safe place. Everyone tagged becomes one of Mr. Bears’ cubs. They go back to the den with Mr. Bear. When the remaining players come back to wake up Mr. Bear, the cubs help Mr. Bear catch them.[1]
  • All of these games involve someone being singled out and trying to catch others while those others try not to get caught. And when we really get down to it, I think that’s sometimes the way we end up feeling about grace.
    • One hand: feel like there are things we do that make it impossible for grace to catch us → things that put us beyond the reach of grace
    • Other hand: feel like the ones chasing grace → like if we were just better … faster … more righteous … more Christian, we’d be able to “catch grace”
• Probably how some of the early Christians were feeling when it came to grace because of the many divides that had grown up in the early Church
  • Theological divides → When we read a passage like this one from Romans this morning, we have to remember that what seems relatively clear and straightforward to us was anything but clear and straightforward for the early Christians.
    • Justo González (acclaimed church historian): The many converts who joined the early church came from a wide variety of backgrounds. This variety enriched the church and gave witness to the universality of its message. But it also resulted in widely differing interpretations of that message, some of which threatened its integrity. The danger was increased by the syncretism of the time, which sought truth, not by adhering to a single system of doctrine, but by taking bits and pieces from various systems. The result was that, while many claimed the name of Christ, some interpreted that name in such a manner that the very core of his message seemed to be obscured or even denied.[2] → We who read this Scripture today have the benefit of 2000 years of theological thought and church doctrine that have laid and strengthened the foundation for our understanding. But in the time that Paul was writing this letter to the Roman church, there were all sorts of beliefs and teachings about who Jesus was and how Jesus was or wasn’t connected to God spreading throughout the ancient world.
      • Gnosticism: belief that a select few followers held a special, mystical knowledge, and that knowledge alone was the key to salvation → spiritual was crucial while the things of this world, especially the body and things related to the body, were to be denied and even reviled
        
        • • • •  
      • Marcionism: god of the First Testament = Jehovah → not the same as the God Jesus spoke of → sought to excise all of the references Jesus made to Hebrew Scriptures from the teachings of the early church
      • Docetism: viewed all matter as inherently evil and so belief that Jesus was never actually incarnated into a physical body → that he was a spirit that only seemed human to us
    • With all of these competing ideologies and budding wayward beliefs spreading like wildfire through the ancient world, it’s no wonder some felt that grace was something they had to chase.
• In the midst of this throng, we have the works of Paul who was trying to spread the good news of the gospel – a message of grace and salvation for all through the embodied life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
  • Ideologies (or heresies, as they have been labeled by the Church for centuries now) that were beginning to develop as Paul was making his missionaries journeys through southeastern Europe and the Middle East → Paul’s frequent references to “false teachers,” esp. in Gal
  • Not just competing theologies but competing backgrounds
    • Last week: mentioned the divide btwn. Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians → Many in the earliest days of the early church believed that, in order to follow Jesus, you also had to follow the Jewish Law as laid out in the book so Moses, including the law pertaining to circumcision.
      • View that Peter began to change with his interaction with Cornelius → vision about the sheet being lowered down full of what were considered unclean animals (unfit for human consumption) according to Jewish law → God to Peter: “Never consider unclean what God has made pure.”[3]
      • View that Paul was working hard to abolish – beginning of today’s text: No, not at all, but through the law of faith. We consider that a person is treated as righteous by faith, apart from what is accomplished under the Law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Isn’t God the God of Gentiles also? Yes, God is also the God of Gentiles. Since God is one, then the one who makes the circumcised righteous by faith will also make the one who isn’t circumcised righteous through faith.[4] → Paul is trying to tear down some of those divides that others within the early church were still trying to keep up.
• And once he’s made it clear just how open the gospel is to everyone – Jews and Gentiles alike – Paul gives us this exposition on grace and faith. Truly, these 11 verses are sort of a primer on grace and faith. They are the core of Paul’s belief laid out for us in black and white.
  • Central tenet of Christianity: This hope doesn’t put us to shame, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. While we were still weak, at the right moment, Christ died for ungodly people.[5] → These verses are so crucial, and I want to dive into the Greek here a little bit.[6]
    • First and most important: “love” = agape love → This is that all-encompassing, benevolent, unconditional love that God gives to us … the “love that covers sin,” as the Christian band Casting Crowns puts it in their song “Your Love Is Extravagant”: Your love is extravagant / Spread wide in the arms of Christ is the love that covers sin / No greater love have I ever known You considered me a friend[7] → It is this indescribably incredible love that God has poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.

• • • Gr. “weak” = encompasses all the ways that we can feel weak – physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually → Remember, Paul himself has experienced all of these things. He was an up-and-comer in the ranks of Jewish religious leaders … until he encountered God on the side of the road – an encounter that left him temporarily blind and spiritually flipped upside-down. Paul’s conversion experience was dramatic and wholly life-altering, and his work since then had him imprisoned, beaten, chased out of homes and towns. It had him weak in every way … and yet, in that weakness, Paul found not self-pity and bitterness but hope and love and grace.
    • Gr. “ungodly” = not quite the judgment/condemnation it sounds like → It’s not just about a lack belief but also about being irreverent – about not showing the appropriate respect or honor to the sacred. These are those moments when we feel like we’re the ones chasing grace … but we just can’t seem to keep up.
• But if we return back to that schoolyard games idea for a moment, Paul is saying that grace is less like those single-you-out games and more like a game that my boys have been talking about lately – a game that they learned in gym class.
  • Game = blog tag → And yes, it’s basically exactly what it sounds like.
    • Starts with one person who’s “it” → But every time that person tags someone, they become part of the blog, and the blog works to tag other people … to bring other people in. And once someone is in, they get to help bring in more people.
    • Scholar: Having discovered through faith the love that God has for each of us, we have peace and we have hope. We are no longer divided internally with questions of worth or feelings of failure. We are able to accept ourselves as we are because we experience being accepted.[8] → And in turn, feeling that acceptance in ourselves, we are called by the gospel to extend it to others as well … to bring more people into the blob.
  • Today’s text: But God shows his love for us, because while we were still sinners Christ died for us. So, now that we have been made righteous by his blood, we can be even more certain that we will be saved from God’s wrath through him. If we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son while we were still enemies, now that we have been reconciled, how much more certain is it that we will be saved by his life? And not only that: we even take pride in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, the one through whom we now have a restored relationship with God.[9] → Grace doesn’t single one person out over another. Grace doesn’t hold fast to hands in an attempt to keep others out – to only let in the selective few who are strong enough … fast enough … good enough to break through. Grace blobs everyone in. Grace grows and shifts and expands each time another one of us finds our way back to God. We don’t have to be strong enough … because God’s grace has already taken us in. We don’t have to be fast enough … because God’s grace has already taken us in. We don’t have to be good enough … because God’s grace has already taken us in. Again and again and again, God’s grace has taken, does take us, and will take us in. Thanks be to God. Amen.

[1] https://www.gsksmo.org/content/dam/girlscouts-gsksmo/documents/tlc-docs/Girl-Scout-Games-2021.pdf.

[2] Justo L. González. The Story of Christianity, vol. 1: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation. (New York: HarperCollins, 1984), 58.

[3] Acts 10:15.

[4] Rom 3:28-30.

[5] Rom 5:5-6.

[6] Exegesis by Rev. Elana Keppel-Levy, https://somuchbible.com/word-studies/annotated-scripture/romans-328-30-51-11/.

[7] Jared Anderson and Peter C. Kipley. “Your Love Is Extravagant” from Casting Crowns. (Brentwood: Capitol CMG Publishing), 2003.

[8] Ward B. Ewing. “Third Sunday in Lent: Romans 5:1-11 – Theological Perspective” from Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary – Year A, vol. 2. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 90.

[9] Rom 5:8-11.

• Tell me if this sounds familiar this morning:

Hi [prospect’s name], this is [your name] from [your company name].

I’ve been doing some research on [prospect’s company name] and I’d love to learn more about [challenge you’ve discovered in your research].

At [your company name] we work with people like you to help with [value proposition 1, value proposition 2, and value proposition 3.]

Is this something you think could help with [common challenges/pain points]?

Option 1: Yes, tell me more.

Great! [This is where you’re going to ask them to attend a demo, or continue the conversation with an Account Executive, or take whatever next steps are part of your sales process.]

Option 2: Objection

I understand. Is it ok if I send you a follow-up email to review at your convenience? Then I can follow up with you tomorrow.

If yes, send the email and set a reminder to follow up. If not, thank them for their time and ask if there’s another point of contact they can connect you with. Make sure to include resources that clearly explain what your company does and ask to continue the conversation.[1]

• • Cold calls … everyone’s favorite thing, right? Don’t we just love making those calls? Don’t we just love getting those calls? No? If by chance you aren’t familiar with the concept of the “cold call,” let me give you a short description (from same website where I found the script): A cold call is when sales reps reach out to a potential buyer who’s never interacted with them or their company before, with the intent to sell a product or service. Cold calling typically makes use of a sales pitch script to ensure reps sell the product effectively. It’s a common practice in outbound sales. Cold calling is a way to engage prospects one-on-one to move them to the next step in the buying process. In the past, cold calling meant using a “spray and pray” method, spending time making intrusive calls with no prior qualification, hoping that your message would resonate with someone. But that’s no longer the way to do it. Not only does it waste time and energy, but you end up facing more rejections than you normally would, which can quickly lead to burnout. → Now, contrary to that last bit about the “spray and pray” method no longer being “the way we do it,” I think we’re all familiar with the distinctly 21^st century, technology-driven spin that cold calls have taken on in the last 20 yrs. or so: the ever-present, ever-frustrating robo-calls.
    • Calls that are made by a computer → dials multiple numbers at once → often no one on the other end of the line → if you do happen to get “someone” on the other end, it’s more than likely a prerecorded message … something to do with the warranty on your vehicle, your cell phone carrier, or the way you did or didn’t vote in the last election.
  • So what is it about cold calls that we find so annoying? Why do they have such a persistent tendency to ratchet up our blood pressure and get under our skin? I think the answer comes most readily in the very beginning of that cold call script that I read: Hi [prospect’s name]. Do me a favor this morning: raise your hand if you’ve ever been the recipient of a cold call … and they pronounced your name incorrectly!
    • Growing up (pre-caller ID): always knew telemarketer was calling when they asked for Mr. or Mrs. PINE-Y (maiden name: Pinney … short i)
    • That greeting – especially when your name is mispronounced – is so There’s no real connecting in it, so it feels disingenuous. I mean, you can’t even pronounce my name correctly … how invested in my life and how your product/company can actually improve my life can you possibly be, right? You don’t know me. You don’t know my life. You’re only trying to sell me a product or a service.
      • Always felt equally annoyed and sorry for people working as telemarketers (anyone here?) → it’s a job, right? … a job that requires callers to make quotas, often a job in which your take-home pay is directly related to how effective you are a “closing the deal” … how effective your cold calls are → I’ll tell y’all right now … I certainly couldn’t do it.
  • Started looking into the whole phenomenon of cold calling because of the nature of our Scripture reading this morning → You see, we have lots of Paul’s letters to different churches in different towns and territories. In fact, other than the gospels, Paul’s letters – Paul’s epistles, as they’re often referred to in “church-y speak” – make up the next largest portion of the New Testament.
    • All of Paul’s other letters = to churches and faith communities that he himself had established throughout his extensive mission journeys
    • But the book of Romans is different. Paul himself didn’t establish the Christian community in Rome.
      • Paul = taken to Rome twice during his decades of ministry → both times = as a prisoner → spent 2+ yrs. under house arrest at one point → ended up writing 4 of his 14 epistles while in Rome (Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon)[2] → But he was never a free man in Rome. The Christian community in Rome is one that grew up through the encouragement and organization of others.
  • And yet it’s abundantly clear from the very outset of this particular letter – from those very first verses that we just read – that Paul want to get to know these Roman Christians. → makes Paul’s letter less of a gospel cold call than what’s referred to in the business/marketing world as a “warm call”
    • Differences[3]:
      • Cold call: unexpected, early in the sales process, based on general research (if any) – demographics and patterns, interruptive, prioritizes “seller first”
      • Warm call: expected, comes later in the sales process → built on established prior introduction = therefore invited, based on more personalized research, prioritizes “buyer first”
      • In essence, a cold call is exactly as its named – cold because it’s impersonal – whereas a warm call is based on a relationship.
• So Paul’s letter to the Romans this morning is a warm call for the good news of the gospel. → Paul makes it clear from the very outset that “relationship” is at the very heart of his correspondence
  • Two different kinds of relationships
    • FIRST, relationship with God through Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit → This is the paramount relationship for Paul – the genesis of all the rest of our relationships. He spends much of this introduction … much of this whole letter … much of many of his letters extoling the essential nature of a relationship with God and the blessing that such a relationship can be to us.
      • Today’s text starts by giving the basic rundown of the good news of the gospel (Paul’s “elevator speech,” if you will – the good news of who Jesus Christ was and is for us in 5 verses): God promised the good news about his Son ahead of time through his prophets and in the holy scriptures. His Son was descended from David. He was publicly identified as God’s Son with power through his resurrection from the dead, which was based on the Spirit of holiness. This Son is Jesus Christ our Lord. Through him we have received God’s grace and our appointment to be apostles. This was to bring all Gentiles to faithful obedience for his name’s sake. You who are called by Jesus Christ are also included among these Gentiles.[4]
      • Goes on to lift up the ways the truth of that gospel relationship is a blessing to us – scholar: The gospel is a living entity — a power. It is God’s power … and its purpose is salvation. The whole focus and purpose of the power of the gospel is saving, healing, making right. The gospel is not a power that seeks power for itself. Rather, God’s power (the gospel) is entirely directed towards salvation. The goal of the gospel (of God’s power) is salving humanity’s needs and hurts.[5] → It is for this very reason – this salvation, this healing, this making right, this salving of humanity’s needs and hurts – that God poured all of God’s love, all of God’s hope, all of God’s promise into this relationship with humanity through Jesus Christ. This relationship is quite literally The Point. To quote a beloved children’s book, it is all that we hope for and all that we seek.[6]
        • Nurturing that relationship with God = our ultimate “why”
          • Why we come to church
          • Why we read Scripture
          • Why we pray
          • “Why” that gets us through our day
    • Also the “why” that feeds into the 2^nd type of relationships that Paul emphasizes: our relationships with one another
      • Much of the 2^nd part of passage for this morning = devoted to interpersonal relationships → specifically interpersonal relationships … but even more pointedly interpersonal relationships that are based in and informed by faith.
        • Begins as Paul often does: by assuring the Roman Christians that Paul thanks God for them → I think that we often breeze through that when we’re reading Paul. Maybe it’s because Paul says it to every church in every letter, so we’re too used to seeing it. Maybe it’s because we read it too contextually – like Paul is saying that only to them without taking those words into our own faith lives. But stop and think about that for a minute. Paul is saying to these people who he’s never actually met that “I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you.”[7] How often do you tell the people who are a part of your everyday lives that you thank God for them? Let alone people you’ve never met? Imagine it!
          • Closest that I think we get nowadays = occasional letters we get at the church from another Session within the bounds of the presbytery → praying their way through the different congregations within the presbytery at each of their meetings → They don’t know who we are – not on a personal level, anyway. They don’t know what particular ministries we’re undertaking or challenges we’re facing. But as siblings in Christ, they took the time at the beginning of their own Session meeting to lift up our congregation in prayer.
          • Connection through faith in Christ = what makes Paul’s letter not a cold call for the gospel but a warm call → a call based on established commonalities, based on a shared faith, based on relationship
      • Paul also makes it clear in this portion of his letter that this relationship shouldn’t be hindered by all those barriers that we have a tendency to erect between ourselves and others → particular to Paul’s world = different btwn Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians … but his words can be just as applicable to bridging all those differences that separate us as well – text: We can mutually encourage each other while I am with you. We can be encouraged by the faithfulness we find in each other, both your faithfulness and mine. … I have a responsibility both to Greeks and to those who don’t speak Greek, to both the wise and to the foolish.[8]
  • Finally, Paul grounds this portion of his letter in the power and purpose and source of faith: I’m not ashamed of the gospel: it is God’s own power for salvation to all who have faith in God, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. God’s righteousness is being revealed in the gospel, from faithfulness for faith, as it is written, The righteous person will live by faith.[9]
    • Scholar: The righteousness of God revealed in the gospel is rooted in God’s astonishing and undeviating faithfulness to God’s creation, including fickle humanity. The righteousness of God is a profoundly loving and faithful revelation to us. The revelation in the gospel can be known only in the way in which it was offered — by faith. … Yet, even our faith is rooted in God’s faithfulness. Our faith is not ‘ours’. … Our faith is sourced in God’s faithfulness to us [“from faithfulness for faith,” as Paul puts it]. Our faith is part of the cosmic and wondrous revelation in the gospel. … Our faith makes us righteous, not because we have been good enough to believe in the gospel, but because the righteousness of God surrounds us as we exercise the faith that God gives us.[10] → And what better way to explore that faith … to experience that faith … to express that faith than to immerse ourselves in our relationship with God and to share it through our relationships with one another? Amen.

[1] Script pulled from https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/cold-call-script.

[2] https://www.biblestudy.org/apostlepaul/rome.html.

[3] Compiled from lists found on https://www.lusha.com/blog/cold-call-vs-warm-call/ and https://getvoip.com/blog/2021/06/22/cold-calling-statistics/.

[4] Rom 1:2-6.

[5] L Ann Jervis. “Commentary on Romans 1:1-17” from Working Preacher, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/narrative-lectionary/gospel-as-salvation-2/commentary-on-romans-11-17-2.

[6] Douglas Wood. Old Turtle. (New York: Scholastic Press), 1992.

[7] Rom 1:8.

[8] Rom 1:12, 14.

[9] Rom 1:16-17.

[10] Jervis.

Text used – Romans 1:1-17

Text used – Matthew 28:1-10

It began with a whisper –
     the whisper of the dawn
          as the sky barely began to lighten
          with the first rays of morning;
     the whisper of sandals on gravel
          and cloth brushing softly against cloth 
          as the women made their way to his tomb;
     the whisper of a Holy Spirit
          that is always on the move …
          even then …
               even now.

It grew into a murmur –
     the murmur of the earth
          as the garden around them began to awaken:
          birds, insects, and flowers yawning their faces
               to the rising sun;
     the murmur of the guards
          set to guard the tomb,
          guards who grumbled about their ridiculous mission …
          I mean, he was already dead, after all;
     the murmur of a Holy Spirit
          that is always moving with purpose …
          even then …
               even now.

It swiftly became a cry –
     the cry of the earth
          as it quaked and shook
          when heaven and earth collided in the presence of an angel;
     the cry of the women
          come to care for the body of their teacher, mentor, friend,
          women who found only an empty tomb …
               an empty tomb and a staggering message:
               HE’S BEEN RAISED FROM THE DEAD;
     the cry of a Holy Spirit,
          that ever-present, ever-dynamic Divine Disturber …
          even then …
               even now.

It crescendoed into a shockwave –
     a tremor of fear that shook the guards,
          guards terrified by their encounter
          with the miraculous … with the impossible … with the holy;
     a tremor of action that spurred the women on,
          on to share their good news – THE good news –
          with their friends …
               and their friends’ friends …
               and the whole wide earth;
     a tremor like the movement and work of the Holy Spirit
          that cannot help but leave us completely changed …
          even then …
               even now.

With great fear and excitement,  
     they hurried away from the tomb
          and ran to tell his disciples.[1]

• Friends, throughout Lent this year, we’ve been exploring a variety of ways that our faith calls us to willingness.
  • Lots of those calls to willingness were call to difficult actions
    • Willing to forgive
    • Willing to accept, especially when our idea of fairness doesn’t match God’s
    • Willing to respond to God’s invitation to us
    • Willing to prepare for the word to which God calls us
    • Willing to welcome, especially those who are unlike us in any way … in every way
    • Willing to give God the honor and faithfulness that God requires
  • All of those calls to willingness are calls to actions – to things that we can do to live into the faith that we claim. But today’s Easter call to willingness is different. Today’s Easter call to willingness is all about going and telling. → about putting a voice to our faith while we also put feet and hands and hearts to our faith
    • Important because while we’re doing all of those things that we spent all of Lent talking about – forgiving and accepting and welcoming and responding and so on … If we’re doing all those things but we’re not sharing with people around us that we’re doing them because of our faith, we are neglecting a critical and essential element of that faith: the element of witness.
      • Directive given to the women – to Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary” (could be Lazarus’ sister Mary or another Mary traveling with them) … directive given to the women by the angel – text: Don’t be afraid. I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He isn’t here, because he’s been raised from the dead, just as he said. Come, see the place where they laid him. Now hurry, go and tell his disciples, ‘He’s been raised from the dead. He’s going on ahead of you to Galilee. You will see him there.’[2] → The directive is clear: “Now hurry, go and tell.” There are no nuances in the Greek here – no potential other translation, no connotations to these words, no cultural context that adds extra insight for us. Go. And. Tell. Plain and simple.
      • Directive echoed by the Risen Christ himself just a few moments later – text: With great fear and excitement, they hurried away from the tomb and ran to tell his disciples. But Jesus met them and greeted them. They came and grabbed his feet and worshipped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Go and tell my brothers that I am going into Galilee. They will see me there.”[3] → Same directive. Same words. Same clarity. Go. And. Tell. But this time from the One – the One who had taught them and led them and eaten with them and loved them … the One who was supposed to be dead, the One whose lifeless body they had been going to anoint as per the Jewish burial customs … the One who was miraculously, inexplicably, gloriously before them now .. the One, the Savior … Jesus, the Christ.
      • Directive that eventually ends Mt’s gospel with what we’ve come to call the Great Commission: Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus told them to go. When they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted.  Jesus came near and spoke to them, “I’ve received all authority in heaven and on earth.  Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything that I’ve commanded you. Look, I myself will be with you every day until the end of this present age.”[4] → Go and do. Go and tell. They go hand-in-hand.
• But why? I mean, isn’t it enough that we just be good people? It is really our jobs to broadcast our faith? In a word … yes. Because Jesus said so! But beyond that, let’s think back to something we started talking about last week when we read our Palm Sunday passage.
  • Last week’s text: And when Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up. “Who is this?” they asked.[5] → You might remember that I pointed out last week that Matthew’s account of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday was the only one that included the entire city in this reaction – “the whole city was stirred up.” And you might also remember what I said about the Greek here.
    • Gr. here is a little more severe than this particular translation lets on – Gr. = shake, agitate, tremble → Jesus has caused more than just a subtle buzz of whispered conversations with his entry into Jerusalem. He’s sent a tremor through the entire city.
    • Last week: pointed out that that Gr. “stirred up” – that word that described what happened to the whole city when Jesus entered it at the beginning of Holy Week – is the same word used to describe how the guards at the tomb “shook with fear” when the angel from the Lord came down to roll the stone away and reveal the empty tomb → So Matthew’s entire Holy Week narrative – from the very moment Jesus sets foot in Jerusalem until the moment the stone is rolled away – is bookended by the trembling of profound revelation.
  • But it isn’t just this particular narrative that’s affected by that trembling of profound revelation. That bookending isn’t just a pretty literary device meant to draw our attention for a moment before we focus anew on something else. That shockwave that Jesus’ appearance sent through the crowd when he came into Jerusalem … that shockwave that overtook the guards at the moment the stone was rolled back and the emptiness of the tomb was revealed … that same shockwave stretched down through the millennia into our very hearts, our very lives.
    • Shockwave of the movement and work of the Holy Spirit – the Divine Disturber, as my treasured Fun Nuns call Her
    • Shockwave of faith that cannot help but leave us changed
      • Change our actions in all the ways we’ve talked about throughout Lent → inspiring our willingness to live the life that Christ calls us to live
        • Life of compassion and mercy
        • Life of abundant grace and radical welcome
        • Life in which we consider the words and actions of Christ before we speak and act → story of my lanyard/WWJD
      • Scholar: The resurrection of Jesus is a total reordering of our world but is also an intimate promise of presence with us. The risen Christ comes alongside us and walks with us … as this encounter with Matthew conveys. The resurrection of Jesus not only signals the radical transformation of the world that the inbreaking reign of God brings, but also promises that the risen Christ can be with us in the everydayness of our ordinary lives.[6]
        • Reminds me of the blessing/prayer attributed to St. Patrick: Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise, Christ in the heart of every man who things of me, Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.
  • Friends, the story of our faith is a story unlike any other. It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about the Grand Story – the story of God working in and through God’s people throughout history, a story that finds its climax in a empty tomb and the simple, joy-filled greeting of a Risen Christ who brings overflowing grace to a world in need. It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about our own stories of faith – the many and varied ways that God has indeed come alongside us in all the moments of our days, our mountaintop moments and our valley moments and also the everyday ordinary moments. The story of our faith is unlike any other, and it is a story that we are called to tell. If you have felt that shockwave – whether as a world-reordering tremor or even just a distant rumbling or a subtle hum – go and tell! If you have noticed the movings of the Holy Spirit in your life and in your world, go and tell! If you have felt the presence of Christ at all … if you have found Christ in any of the ways described by St. Patrick or any other ways he might have missed, go and tell! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Go and tell! Alleluia! Amen.

[1] Mt 28:8.

[2] Mt 28:5-7.

[3] Mt 28:8-10.

[4] Mt 28:16-20.

[5] Mt 21:10.

[6] Ruthanna B. Hooke. “Commentary on Matthew 28:1-10” from Working Preacher, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/narrative-lectionary/easter-matthew-2/commentary-on-matthew-281-10-10.