1 Kings 3: 5-12

At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night; and God said, “Ask what I should give you.” And Solomon said, “You have shown great and steadfast love to your servant my father David, because he walked before you in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart toward you; and you have kept for him this great and steadfast love, and have given him a son to sit on his throne today. And now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David, although I am only a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in. And your servant is in the midst of the people whom you have chosen, a great people, so numerous they cannot be numbered or counted. Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people?”

It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. God said to him, “Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches, or for the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, I now do according to your word. Indeed I give you a wise and discerning mind; no one like you has been before you and no one like you shall arise after you.

Sermon Text

            If you could have only one wish fulfilled, what would it be? It is so tantalizing a question that it lingers in the air. All of us know what the “correct answers,” are – for an end to poverty or for world peace, but we also know that beyond this we have our initial impulse. A hundred thousand potential answers that would satisfy our needs in life and then some. Whatever they are, we know them in our hearts, whatever form they take, we know that their form is our own. Our desires and who we are, they are so often connected to one another.

            We are so aware of this that we have made books and movies, song and poetry, all reflecting the danger of getting what we want. “The Monkey’s Paw” is one of the most famous examples of this, a short story where every wish a couple makes brings them some sort of misfortune, indicated each time with the twist of the monkey’s paw they have wished upon. Money is wished for and their son’s company sends them a check to cover expenses related to his death at work. They wish for their son to be back with them and they sit in horror as someone begins knocking on the door that night.

            We do not usually make wishes, on monkey paws or anything else, but we do put our desires forward to God in prayer. Oftentimes we make these prayers about outward conditions of other people, prayers for the health and provision for others. If we do pray for ourselves we do so in extremis, or else we pray for guidance, anything but prayers that address our specific needs in life. Perhaps in part we are blessed that, usually, our basic needs are met and so we do not have to pray for ourselves. However, we cannot just assume this is always true. We all have needs even beyond food and shelter and enough money to pay a few bills. We need to have friendships, we need to have emotional connections, we need a great deal. Yet, we seldom pray on these things. Even beyond those, we have an innate distrust for offering our desires to God.

            There is an honesty to this anxiety, we would be right to be skeptical of our own projections of the future. If we are honest with ourselves, we know that many of the things that we would go after are fundamentally harmful. This is not only a matter of the most dramatic or significantly selfish impulses within us, but even in the little expressions of desire we have on a regular basis.

            Who here, when driving does not image being somehow able to go around a large line of traffic – maybe by driving on the shoulder or simply by the line magically getting out of your way. Who here, when at a buffet, remember buffets? Did not find themselves filling plates they had no hope of finishing. Who, looking at their bank account does not image zeros appear at the end of the amount in the checking account and the savings account? This final desire is perhaps the most obviously off kilter of those I have outlined, but is it fundamentally different than the earlier two?

            We crave good things in life, but we often chase after them wrongly or in excess. Money, as Ecclesiastes points out, is able to supply most every need we have in life. (Ecclesiastes 10:19) However, we only need a scant amount of it to really survive in most circumstances. The same is true of food, we almost never need to grab a second plate, but when our first one empties it only takes a moment for us to convince ourselves to fill it again. Even our time, that precious commodity we only have a set amount of, is something that we try to hoard away for ourselves and spend how we want, even though truly utilizing it appropriately requires a great deal more than driving fast and irritating our fellow drivers.

            Still, our twisting of the earnest desires of our heart oftentimes leads to negative consequences either directly or over a course of time. When I, and I will stop saying we for now because this is an obvious vice of mine, decide to order a foot long sub instead of the half sub from Sheetz, I know the price I will pay is heartburn and indigestion. Yet I find myself gravitating toward the option to get a full sub time and time again. My need for food, my desire for nourishment, twisted by my own viciousness.

            Our fear to ask for things, our constant mantra to ourselves, “be careful what you wish for,” it is borne out of a legitimate self-critique within ourselves. We know that we are prone to inflate what we need to fit what we want. We know that if we got all that we want, instead of seeking after only what we need, it would ultimately hurt us. Still worse, it may hurt other people. When we chase after an excess of any good thing, it usually is to the detriment or loss of someone else.

            When we keep our money to ourselves we deprive the poor who are given to us to care for. When we pursue connections and relationships outside of the covenants we are in, we harm the partner with have in that covenant. When we seek to be superior among our peers, or even our friends, we often find ourselves pushing the heads of those around us down, rather than lifting ourselves up. The cost of ill-sought-after wishes is always that they will be ill-begotten. You cannot pursue a good thing in excess without causing harm to yourself, to your loved ones, or to a stranger.

            For this reason, we have to do something more than not wishing. We need to do more than shutting off the part of our brain that seeks after things or that projects something bigger and better down the line. We cannot give up wishing, we cannot give up our desire to want, but we must change the way we even begin to form wanting in our hearts. We have to go to the roots of who we are and ask, “What am I contributing to, what is going on, and what ultimately do I need?” These questions can reshape the way that we tackle problems in our life, our response to them, and ultimately what we want out of the circumstances we find ourselves in.

            We work backward through these questions. “What do I need?” So often the evil that we end up going after in life begins as a legitimate need within our heart. We need to be heard, so we lash out at those around us. We need to feel comforted, so we chase after substances or situations that numb our senses. We need to feel loved, so we seek after relationships we have right to begin with people we have no claim to. The initial desire, to be heard, to be loved, to be comforted – are more than not evil, they are human and good. Yet, when we do not address our fundamental needs they fester within us and we meet them through any means but the proper ones.

            Secondly, what is going on? Once we know what we need and are honest about it then we are able to act appropriately. However, honesty about the inward condition must be met with honesty about the outward. The evaluation of the situation we find ourselves in will look different depending on where we find ourselves. If we are feeling distant from a love one, then we must think about what we have done and what they have done to reach that point. If we are feeling uncomfortable in a situation, then we must identify the source of the discomfort. This step is crucial, and it often falters because while one party is willing to interrogate the situation, others may not be. Siblings in Christ, when we interact with one another, let us always be willing to undertake this step together, considering one another’s perspective and sharing freely our own.

            Finally, we ask what we are contributing to in our present actions and will be contributing to in our future actions. We have identified a need, we have identified what in our environment is causing the need itself or the lack of its fulfillment, maybe we even have a plan of action in place, now comes another critical step. We must ask what our actions are going to contribute to in our life and the relationships we are a part of. We must evaluate what we are feeding into in life.

            If, for example, a friend of mine points out that I have failed to speak to them honestly and with any frequency about what is going on in my life. I acknowledge this and endeavor to be more upfront with them, perhaps they agree to reach out to me more often to give me that opportunity, we both have a way forward with our actions. As time goes on, we will see what our choices have contributed to, what has grown or been shackled following our initial responses. The result of this additional evaluation is that we will be able to go forward once more or circle back and reevaluate based on what we have learned through taking these actions.

            As we established at our outset, our desires and who we are, are linked together. Solomon’s prayer in our scripture today to be wise, that is ultimately a prayer to know himself fully. To be honest within himself and about the situations he was in and to go the step further to evaluate that situation again and again. This wisdom, this knowledge of where we are and what we must do, it can be learned through experience and mentoring to be sure, but the ultimate teacher of this wisdom is God and God’s grace. God gives Solomon the wisdom to rule as he does, and God enters into our hearts and our community to do the same, if only we are willing to be honest and to listen.

            When we see Solomon be told he will have success in his kingship because he sought wisdom, let us think of Jesus’ words that by pursuing righteousness we will find all that we need. In seeking a good life lived in community with one another, a moderate life tempered with wisdom and knowledge of God, self, and community, we see God supplying for us and our superfluous desires replaced with the greater calling God has placed on our lives. We dream, we hope, we pray earnestly for what we desire, because we now know we are truly seeking something Good, and we know that our Good God will not twist that goodness, but will allow it to flourish, and for us to reflect the same light that God freely shines toward us. – Amen

Genesis 28:10-19

Jacob left Beer-sheba and went toward Haran. He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place. And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And the Lord stood beside him and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring. Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!” And he was afraid, and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”

So Jacob rose early in the morning, and he took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. He called that place Bethel; but the name of the city was Luz at the first.

Sermon Text

We as human beings are obsessed with place. Religious Theorist J.Z. Smith believed that location, rather than ritual or belief structures, determined the nature of our religious devotion. To quote Smith directly, “Sacrality is, above all, a category of emplacement.”[1] To modify an example that Smith uses, there is a great deal of difference between skipping through a park and skipping in a graveyard. The location in which an action takes place can be just as important in determining the nature of an action as the action in itself. Hymns sung in church sound a little different in our ears than hymns sung in a field or even sitting in our living room.

The importance of place is why we build sanctuaries and graveyards in the first place, or why we consecrate the ground where we plan to hold religious services. We build things in spots that are significant to us, and if the location is not significant than the construction in some way transfers the importance of one existing location to another new one. Every church therefore is built after the first churches, every tent of meeting is built after the first tabernacle, and so on and so on.

In the ancient world, place had an even greater sense of importance. Religious centers were not built simply in a place where they could afford land or where enough space existed for a meeting house to be erected, but where a concrete encounter with Divinity was said to have occurred. Tenochtitlan, the ancient capital of the Mexica, was built where an eagle stood on a cactus, representing to them a message of significance from the Gods. Olympus was a holy place to the Greeks because they believed people had encountered the Gods on it. Shechem was holy to the Israelites because it was there God parted the Jordan and let them cross into the Levant.

The locations that we highlight as significant can be communal ones like this, but they can also be deeply personal. Many of us have our own sacred location where something important happened. The location of our first date with our spouse, the place where we survived an accident that we should not have been able to walk away from, the place we saw something so beautiful in nature it just took our breath away. Place is incredibly important, we create for ourselves a thousand little axes that our world can turn around, and each one has its own importance to us.

Place is not permanent. Places can quickly disappear because of a thousand different factors. Old restaurants will close and be torn down, natural disasters will wipe landmarks off the face of the Earth, even sanctuaries can burn down or find themselves closed off to the public – no location is free from the effects of time, and no structure from the effects of erosion or rot. The wheel of time keeps spinning and it does not discriminate in what becomes crushed under its wheels.

Place, it seems, is not the eternal point of reference we would like it to be. Rivers written of in Genesis and other ancient texts simply ceased to exist at some point, in the middle of our state entire mountains have been torn down to retrieve the coal within, and cliff faces across the world have been blown to bits to create monuments of one kind or another. Whether because of human action or natural causes, we are left derelict at times as our points of orientation are disrupted. The place we loved, the place where we were loved, the place where we discovered something new about God or our fellow human beings, washed away in the ocean of time.

What can we do when we no longer have the axis on which our world turned? Where can we go when the place where God always was, now has ceased to be, and seemingly, God is now cut off from us? What do we stand on when our memories were so easily bulldozed into sand?

Our scripture today catches Jacob walking, unknowingly, in the rubble of a place where God had once been known to the world. Abraham, having traveled through the region, had built an altar in the area that Jacob now found himself. Two generations had passed, the altar had seemingly fallen out of memory, maybe even crumbled into the rocks that Jacob now used as a pillow. Whether Jacob was in the exact spot God has appeared to Abraham or not we do not know, but we know that Jacob had stumbled upon the site of a historic event like no other, and the sacredness of the place was unknown to him.

Yet in his sleep he saw a vision like no other. A great entranceway into God’s city, with angelic beings moving up and down the path from the city to the Earth. The angels, busy with their work throughout the world, were not the focus of the vision, but God was. God who was standing on the path from Heaven to Earth, God who was not sitting on God’s throne, but had left the city to come and meet Jacob. Jacob is blessed with an expanded version of the blessing that was given to Abraham at the same spot, and Jacob was moved instantly, building an altar to God like his grandfather had before him.

The text leaves us with some questions hanging over us. Is this place, now named Bethel, truly the home of God in the sense that, to meet God you must go to Bethel? Would anyone who found themselves here have an encounter with God? What about the angels? Is this the one place they enter into the world from? What do we make of this entrance to God’s city, to this encounter between God and servant in the wilderness of the Levant?

If Bethel, and indeed all places like it, are uniquely Holy so that God can only be found in them then we should all begin to mourn. We, far removed from the Levant, cannot take regular trips to Bethel or Jerusalem or any other Holy Site and hope to see God. Even if we extend to ourselves the hope that there are such places here in the United States, we cannot make daily pilgrimage to meet God, and honestly to do so even yearly to seek out sacred spaces would be difficult.

No, God cannot be limited in this way to single locations. Something more must going on than this. We cannot deny that places like Bethel, like the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, even places as humble as our own churches, have something sacred to them. They have seen the prayers of the faithful lifted to Heaven and the wonders of God enacted across decades, centuries, and even millennia – they are consecrated and set apart uniquely from mere constructions of wood and stone. Yet, they are not Holy in themselves, God is not constrained to appear in our churches, or in Jerusalem, or in any one place, God is necessarily free of such limitations.

This does not diminish the importance of any of these spaces, they still hold something incredibly powerful in our hearts and when we enter them we feel a change in ourselves. However, when we exist as we do right now, people who are meeting through alternate means. When we are people sitting outside of sanctuaries and behind screens. When the structures that gave us a sense of comfort still feel somehow foreign, what are we to do?

The answer is that we look to Jacob in the wilderness. Traveling as we have been, moving as we continue to through the new landscape of a pandemic era existence, we find ourselves resting in a space that is both familiar and unrecognizable. We look around and recognize what we used to know, but acknowledge that something is different. The altar of our devotion seemingly in rubble around us. The place is right, the God is the same, but have we changed? Can we see God even with the world so profoundly different, even though we do not recognize Bethel as we rest there?

Yes! The answer is overwhelmingly yes! Because while the landscape has changed, and our altars are not where they once were, or the accoutrement of our worship has taken a new form. However, the lesson that Jacob saw at Bethel was not simply that, “God is in this place,” But that God was working in all places. The structure Jacob saw reaching up into Heaven, something we typically call a “ladder,” was nothing like a ladder. Neither was it like the steps of a Ziggurat which reached up into the Heavens.[2] No, that would suggest that something was built to reach Heaven, something put up for people to climb. It is better understood that what Jacob saw was a roadway, an incline that stretched from the city of God to the Earth[3] The road into a city is built, not by those hoping to enter the city, but by those within, an invitation to come in, but also a way for those within the city to travel outward.

God is seen not on the throne within the city but on the roadway ready to meet Jacob. God is stepping out and coming toward Jacob. Why can we not imagine God doing the same for us? In part I think because we are expecting to find the same sacred space we knew before, or to see God like we did before. However, even when we are in the same spot, time has passed and our sacred spaces have changed. So, I think, have all of us. We are not who we were a few months ago, that is the nature of growth and of our lives. Yet, God is still on the roadway, God is still walking down to meet us. Sometimes that means we will see God in a place we saw God previously, sometimes in a place we have never known God before, but wherever we see God, we see God walking toward us. We see a blessing offered us that was greater than the one we had before.

We gather together today, in a variety of different ways and with a great deal that has changed since the last time we did so. Yet, I tell you God is in this place. Whether that place is outside of the church, in a car or a camp chair. Whether that place is sat in front of a laptop or tablet. God is with us. God is here. God is offering us a new blessing. Let us give thanks to our God who is walking down to meet us, let us give thanks that God can meet us wherever we are, let us see Bethel not in one place but in all places, wherever God’s name is called upon and God’s people gather. God is in this place! Let us rejoice to know it! – Amen

[1] Jonathan Z. Smith. “To Take Place” in To Take Place. (Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press. 1987) 104

[2] C. Houtman. “What did Jacob see in his dream at Bethel?” in Vestus Testamentum. 27 (1977) 337-351

[3] Ellen Van Wolde. “A Stairway in Heaven?” in Vestus Testamenum. 69 (2019) 722-735

Romans 7:21-8:8

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Sermon Text

Do you ever feel like you just cannot get things right? There are those weeks where everything just piles up on itself so that, before we know it, we find ourselves with our head in our hands and our heart in the pit of our stomachs. “How can this happen? What have I done? Why can’t I do anything right?” Usually, these are not because of anything of great importance – we keep being inconvenienced in our work or somehow manage to spill the coffee and we’re late because we have to clean it up – a cavalcade of minor problems that nonetheless is enough to press us down and turn us into pulp.

The minor slip-ups, those inconveniences, they do not usually have an impact on our moral standing as people. Our reaction to them may, if the problems we encounter rub away the veneer of smiling politeness that defines business as usual and causes us to lash out, but those moments are rare. We often develop our feelings of worth, of usefulness, or moral standing from whether we produce something or whether we have executed certain tasks perfectly. Thus we decide we are a failure because we did not do all that we could have in a week or because we burnt the sauce for dinner, or for any other number of minor failings that materialize as a consequence of simply being limited human beings, incapable of acting perfectly at all times.

What is interesting about this paradigm is that we often conflate the above failings of productivity and finesse with moral excellence. We say to ourselves, “The good people,” whoever they may be to us, “They never struggle like this. They do everything perfectly and they get their work done. They never struggle like this.” Thus we conflate our goodness, our moral excellence with our ability to produce, to put out a concrete product that others can see and engage with and ultimately consume. We see ourselves as people who must create so that others can use what we make, a cog in a machine that is constantly turning beyond our control.

The problem with equating productivity with morality is that there are plenty of people who, though morally bankrupt, they are capable of doing and making and succeeding and selling and of participating in the great machine we have fashioned for ourselves. Excellence in productivity is a wonderful thing, but it is not the sum of human life. Excellence in presentation is a wonderful thing, but it is not the sum of our appearance. In fact, even as we chase after the abundant life that God has allotted us, we must admit that that abundance is not found in our flourishing in terms of wealth or status or productivity, but in goodness.

Our scripture today captures the predicament of every person of faith. We know what is Good, we read the laws of God contained in the mitzvot of the Torah and in the teachings of Jesus and the goodness of these injunctions resonates within us. We have something deep inside that connects us to them and the bold moral life that they call us to – one that is not selfish or cruel, but that is generative and compassionate. Yet, when we encounter our day to day life we see that it is not always easy to do what is right, and as such we find ourselves falling short of God’s vision of our life.

There are two responses to this reality, one which is honest and the other which is more palatable and therefore more common. The first response, the honest one, would be for us to start to evaluate what choices we make in life that limit our growth in the goodness of God. What are we putting ahead of doing good? What are we holding onto that feeds into our selfishness and cruelty rather than our creativity and compassion? This work has us dig deep into ourselves and root out the mindsets we have created that ultimately harm us. This is a difficult work that takes most people their entire life to perfect. It is the struggle of every honest Christian, rooted in self-examination and a willingness to change.

The second option, that common option, builds off of the dilemma we discussed a moment ago. Rather than digging deep to find what we need to change about our disposition toward or our presuppositions about we instead look to things that are immediately tangible. We look to things like our productivity, our appearance, our ability to look at all times like we have everything together. This allows for us to make the Christian life one of finding out how we can become more efficient at doing, better at presenting a holy façade, more invested in systems that ultimately only feed our need for more and more production and more and more consumption.

We have often been sold an idea that, with enough work and enough striving after a good successful professional life, we will stumble upon the goodness of our character. We imagine that all those who work up to great heights must be those who have already done this hard work, and so the building of earthly wealth and acclaim is equated with a holiness of spirit. The tireless work of our hands is our own striving after something more than what we need to survive, something more than even an excess of wealth, we seek to make ourselves perfect through blood sweat and tears.

In order to truly move beyond our conflation of plenty and morality we have to name our obsession with productivity for what it is. When we are consumed in the rush to do more, to make more, to somehow make ourselves perfect through work, we are engaging with what Paul calls in our scriptures, “the law of Sin.” This law, contrary to popular belief, has nothing to do with the laws given by Moses – these are already established in Romans to be laws given by God. No, these are the laws we create for ourselves by twisting our priorities away from our God-given ones.

Imagine what our world could look like if we took even some of the time that we invest in improving our outward presentation of put-togetherness or goodness, or in honing our highly effective habits to become a highly effective person, and instead invested it into honing ourselves as moral persons called by God to live into the life Christ exemplified for us. The amount that would change in a week, in a month, we can scarcely imagine a year! If we took the time to think deeply about the consequences and intent behind our actions rather than the look of them, the world would be shaken overnight.

This, of course, does not mean we cannot strive toward self-improvement. Reading about better organizational skills, learning how to manage our money better, and learning what “sparks joy,” so that we can clear out our overstuffed closets all benefit us holistically. However, at the end of it all we have to ask ourselves what our self-improvement serves, is it fueling a legitimate change within ourselves, or is it feeding into the same cycles that allow us to avoid the glaring problems in ourselves and the world around us.

When we begin doing proper self-evaluation, digging into our own motivations and focusing on how what we do impacts people and changes our perspectives, then we will inevitably find two things happening. Firstly, our intentionality will see us being better people. When we actively strive toward, not being the best cog in a machine, but the most compassionate person in a community, we will see ourselves transform into a more compassionate person. Secondly, we will find that the self-talk we gave ourselves previously about our simple inability to be perfect workers will creep into our approaches toward moral acts as well. We will find ourselves saying, “I should have given that panhandler that five dollars I had for lunch,” or “I should have spoken up when Bert made that awful joke.” We will begin to see our failings plain as day, not just in concrete actions but in our intentions and our failure to act.

Yet, there is hope for us in the contrition of our moral growth. Paul tells us that, though we see every day the instances of our own shortcomings, that we are not condemned at all! “There is, therefore, NO condemnation in Christ.” Why? Because Christ lived a life just as full of temptation and potentiality for evil as we do now. Christ lived that life, died the death that comes at the expense of it, and rose to overcome not only death but the twisted perspective of life we’ve built around ourselves. Christ, in taking on sinful flesh, never sinned once, thus proving that the law of Sin that is somehow knit within us is not capable of controlling us because the Spirit of the one that overcame it now inhabits us.

More than this, Jesus’ existence on the margins of society frees us from needing to look perfect. We picture now, with our paintings of Jesus enrobed in a halo of light or standing above the crowds, that Jesus was obviously in the right to all people who saw him. Yet, we know Jesus was labeled a sinner, someone who was always in the wrong place at the wrong time, someone who went to the wrong kinds of places and talked with the wrong kinds of people.[1] Jesus broke down the pretensions that we have tried so hard to build up around ourselves, and Jesus broke them down so we could never have to live in them again!

Thus, we have a choice in setting our mind on spiritual things or in creating within ourselves a mindset on the flesh. The choice is toward performative action or authentic and generative moral action. It is a choice that presents itself every day, and it is one that we must make in each moment. The choice between working late to get a few more pieces of paperwork done or some extra data entered, or stepping away to be in prayer, or with our family. The choice between leaving the panhandler on the street with a handful of change, or taking them into a café and sharing some coffee and a bit of time. The choice between the law of God which transforms us, or the Law of Sin, which condemns us in our own concerns and fixations. The choice is and always shall be, yours and mine. We should pray we always choose the harder path and the greater reward. – Amen.

[1] Vincent P. Branick. “The Sinful Flesh of the Son of God.” In The Catholic Bible Quarterly. No. 47. 1985 246-262

Matthew 11:11-19

Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force. For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John came; and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come. Let anyone with ears listen!

“But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another,

‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;

we wailed, and you did not mourn.’

For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.”

Sermon Text

In another life, I was afforded the opportunity to help begin a youth program aimed toward middle schoolers. The ministry was an offshoot of an existing ministry of the Church and involved much of the same leadership. In deciding what the group needed to be founded on, it was decided that it should empower people, young people, to become part of something larger. The decision was made to begin planning based on a passage of scripture, and the decision was made unilaterally that that foundation should be today’s scripture, specifically verse 12 of chapter 11.

Reading that verse, it seems hardly like something anyone would want to unify a group of young people behind. “the Kingdom of Heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.” Certainly, that was the opinion of several people in the group, but there was a unilateral move to make this the motto. Elements of the leadership could see that, with just a little tweaking, a verse talking about how Christians suffer because of their faith could be a triumphant statement. “If you are forceful in your faith, then the Kingdom of God will expand but you have to be forceful!” That ethic led to a search through all translations of the scripture until one was found that matched that sentiment. Rather than using King James, or NIV, or NRSV, the “God’s Word Translation,” was used which rendered the verse, “”From the time of John the Baptizer until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful people have been seizing it”

That makes a difference does it not? It lets us dream of triumphant Christians pushing through a world of unbelievers and establishing the Kingdom of Heaven and their place in it. It has none of the drabness of acknowledging suffering on the behalf of God because it is a victorious declaration of how, with the right amount of force, the Kingdom of Heaven becomes real.

The problem with this, evident to all but the few people with any real authority, was that it was clearly a manipulation of the text. While it is true that the exact wording of the passage allows for multiple possible translations, translators are almost universally in agreement about how this text should be rendered.[1] This memory of mine, which returned to me as I began to study for this sermon, seemed almost quaint in its distance from me, in its improbability.

However, as I prepared this sermon, I found that this specific manipulation was common. People preaching in revivals, crusades, and even simply from the pulpit Sunday to Sunday did not want to make it seem like Christianity was a difficult thing to be a part of – certainly not to imply that true Christianity might result in you being opposed by powerful people. No, it has often been decided that it is better for us to receive a positive message about how we if we just believe and do and preach hard enough, will see God in our life. That message does not ask much of us and it plays into our most basic desires anyway.

Last week we discussed how we tend to claim we are making sacrifices predominately in situations where those sacrifices do not ask much of us. When the price rises above someone responding poorly to the Facebook post we share or fuming over the conversation we had at a family get together we usually check-out and declare any further action as someone else’s problem. Today, we must consider the other side of that coin. What happens when we as the Church do act, but our actions are based solely on making God’s will conform to ours and not the other way round. What happens when we, through violence toward a text or toward other people or toward ourselves, take hold of the Kingdom that belongs to God alone?

We often hear about the manipulation of the Gospel from faith leaders. Accusations of people, “watering down,” the Gospel are fairly common in discourse. However, this accusation is usually pointed outward. There is little acknowledgment of how, with very little exception, everyone has their own points of scripture they are willing to twist to make their points. When we want to justify our willingness to take up arms against X, Y, or Z we can find passages in Judges or Kings to justify that. When we want to justify our own sin, we can point to passages that remind our critics that they are in no place to judge us. When we want to instigate arguments about proper worship, we can find any passage that justifies our traditional, contemporary, ascetic, or eccentric stances. The manipulation of scripture is not a problem of any one faction in the Church but instead threatens to permeate the lives of every Christian.

The near-universal presence of a thing is not an excuse for its existence, but it allows us to frame the conversation. As we understand that we are not pointing outward to those who misuse God’s word, but that we too must investigate the ways we manipulate Scripture, we also begin to see that interpretation must be a collaborative effort between communities in themselves and communities with one another. This month I personally, have added a great deal of Black theology to my reading list, that is theology written by Black writers about Black experiences in light of the Scripture. What this allows on one level is for me to peel back how my background, my experiences, my biases have led to me manipulating scripture to match my worldview. This phenomenon is true of any instance where we read perspectives other than our own, the violence that we have done to the text is made obvious in a different light being shone on it.

It is necessary for every Christian to think critically about what they believe. While the words of scripture are true and edifying to us, we do not come to them without our own interpretations preloaded in our minds. We have hundreds of sermons and op-eds and devotionals to draw from in a moment. This is not in itself bad, but we must acknowledge that the Spirit works either with or against these resources as we come to understand the Word of God. Taking each influence and thinking about what it contributes allows us to clear the way much more effectively.

Returning to our scripture for today in particular, we can see how our own desire for immediate results and having our own way pushes us into wrongful action. When we think of the Church post-Constantine, invested with money and power and influence and how quickly it sought to forcefully establish itself. How often it has been stained by those who chase after violence and forcefulness as a means to achieve a so-called righteousness. The pogroms against non-believers, crusades that colored the world red with blood, expeditions into the new world, and the enslavement of native persons to rush along the end of the time.

This is contrasted with the witness of Christ and of the Apostles. Strong and sure in their beliefs as they were, they did not force their way through the world or take up weapons to coerce the world into believing. Instead, they took up crosses, they served those who threatened their lives, they stood up for those who were being killed or abandoned by the powers that be, they pursued the Kingdom of Heaven through love and devotion to the people God gave them to serve. It was this devotion, this service to the marginalized and to those rejected by those in power that defined the Church and that defined Christ. We today cannot give ourselves over to any Gospel that mandates violence, any vision of the Kingdom founded on any blood but the blood of Christ, and we must seek to remove from ourselves all desires that do not align with the goodness of God, the expansion of God’s Kingdom, and the fulfillment of God’s beloved community.

The Kingdom of God, from the first days, has suffered violence, let us seek never to be the source of that violence. Let us remove all violence in our hearts toward our neighbors, our God, and our scriptures. Let us, through careful self-inspection and devotion, see the scales of our biases and presumptions fall from our eyes, and the radiance of God’s new vision for creation be made plain to us. – Amen.

[1] Matthew W. Bates. “Cryptic Codes and a Violent King.” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly no. 75, 2013. 74-93