Taste and See

Fall Camp

Psalm 34.1-8

The Psalms are all about prayer. They are songs to God written on various occasions. There are Psalms of praise and thanksgiving. There are Psalms that speak to human pain and suffering. There are psalms spoken by the discouraged and forsaken. And there are psalms of deliverance. They speak to every aspect and emotion of life. The Psalms, like our prayers, speak to our experience.

Psalms are hard to preach on because they strike so deeply at the chord of how we are and where we are in the world. But Psalm 34 does more than just speak to our pain in trouble. It is somewhat unique in its style. First, in it original Hebrew it is an acrostic poem. That means that the first line of each of the 22 verses corresponds to each of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. We think of acrostics as elementary school activities, but in Israel an acrostic were a mark of Wisdom Literature. That is to say, that the person who wrote the poem was a wise person among the scribes who wrote the Psalms. The acrostic was an elevated form of composition.

In and of itself, the intentionality with which the psalm is written is interesting. It was not a creative, artistic effort by a poet who was swayed by a the flit of a butterfly wing or the rustle of the leaves. The author of Psalm 34, like so many artists was a studied scribe with a set process by which he or she wrote. The poet’s creative process was intentional. The intentionality plays out not only in the acrostic, but also in the content of the poem. It is first adoration. “I will bless the Lord at all times; God’s praise shall continually be in my mouth” (1). The first three verses exalt the Lord our God, not with unchecked childlike zeal, but with measured mature praise. It was written by someone who had a long relationship with this God of which he or she spoke.

The next five verses take on a form that is exceedingly rare in the Psalms. They are alternatively personal, which is not so rare, and didactic, which is very rare. Verses four through eight alternate between personal experience and instruction based on the personal experience and experience with God.

So what’s the point of all this? Of all of my text criticism of Psalm 34? Aside from how obviously fascinating it is to all those who don’t have a passion for the Hebrew language (sarcasm), the style of the Psalm contributes to what it is conveying. The prayer lifted up is not only a song of praise, but also a lesson of ethic on the way we live our lives.

It advocates life lived in the presence of God. Life lived acknowledging the presence of God. Life lived reliant on God. Life lived with God as near experience, “praise of God shall continually be in my mouth.” The phrase, “Taste and See” in verse eight has often been co-opted by Christians to point toward the Lord’s Supper, as though it were an ancient arrow pointing to the Eucharist. I don’t think that it is, but I do think it points to the experience of the Eucharist. Verse eight is instructing us to fully experience the God in our lives. Not only to acknowledge but to sensually experience the presence of God.

Fill In The Hole

Mark 10.17-27, 31

The house where Jesus and the disciples were staying was a buzz with people. There were people in the common room and the hallway. There were several laying on the kitchen table and others clogging the doorways. They were all trying to be seen by Jesus before he left town. Word had gotten out that he was leaving, but only after the word of his healings had spread throughout the area. Everyone wanted last minute attention from this traveling healer.

These desperate people did what the others before them had done, they came and knelt before Jesus and bowed their heads and asked for his healing. The Syrophoenician woman who wanted healing for her child did that. The deaf man who wanted his hearing restored had as well. It was a sign of respect of Jesus the man and of his power to heal.

Even as Jesus and the disciples were leaving, the people continued to come and run up to them. As Jesus and the disciples were setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before Jesus (v17). The disciples could not immediately see what it was that ailed this man. So often they could see a withered hand or leprosy, but this man looked able and clean. Nonetheless, he presented himself to Jesus to be healed.

The disciples did not know the man, but they could hear the whispers of the crowd. Some said he was a landowner. Others said he was a ruler. Either way, he was a rich and powerful man, not the kind of person the disciples generally saw kneeling at the feet of their teacher. They were used to seeing the weakest people – poor people, outsiders, and women. That was who was usually drawn to Jesus, but not a person who could buy or sell anything and anyone in town.

The man, kneeling before Jesus, asked an earnest questions, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” A lot has been done over time to malign the rich man at Jesus’ feet. Many have said that he was mocking Jesus by calling him good or that he was prideful. I think he was neither. This man, kneeling at Jesus feet is anyone of us. He was trying to show respect to Jesus by using an honorific title. A successful business man, he knew just the right words to use to illicit the attention of another, he knew well how to close a deal using his charms and guiles. Charming maybe, but a malicious man does not present himself at the feet of another.

“You know the commandments,” Jesus said, “you shall not murder; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; you shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother” (19). The disciples heard the law come from Jesus’ mouth. It was not the first time they had heard it. They had grown up with the law. It had been told to them as children. Later they were made to recite it in the synagogue. The disciples knew the law well, and yet that made it no easier to keep. As they wandered from town to town without their families, without the creature comforts of their homes, without the things that made their lives easy, it was hard not to covet the lives of others they saw and met. It was hard not to covet the life of the rich man at Jesus feet.

“Teacher,” the man said, “I have kept all those since my youth” (20). He was not mocking or prideful. The rich man was an earnest, honest, righteous man. Even as he spoke, the disciples were bearing false witness against him by discrediting him in their minds without proof. How could anyone have kept the law, especially a rich man? But this man claimed he had kept the law. Despite the incredible claim, the disciples were glued to the exchange. A man who was not only rich and powerful, but also righteous was kneeling at the feet of their teacher asking for entry into his kingdom. Surely this man, through his resources, could gain entry into any kingdom.

Jesus looked at the man and judged him with the rule by which he asked his followers to judge others. “Jesus, looking at him, loved him” (21). Jesus used the rule of the new law and measured the rich man at his feet with love. Looking at the man, Jesus could see the one thing the disciples could not see, he could see the hole within the man. He could see the great space of emptiness and yearning that the man was using his great wealth to fill.

Jesus, because he loved him, said to the man “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” This is where the stewardship sermon could kick in. This is where some would tell you that while Jesus asked the man to give away all that he had, we are asking that you give the church a portion only of your earnings…but while I think that Jesus recognition that wealth was for this man, and often is for others, an impediment to relationship with God, I do not think that is the most interesting thing that happened in this story.

We all have holes that we fill with a variety of things. We try to fill them with money and education and work. We even try to fill the holes within ourselves with relationships and family and friends. Along with Jesus loving eye upon ourselves, we can see the holes within our selves and we try our darndest to fill them. And when those things are stripped away from us exposing the painful hole within each of us that longs to be filled, we, like the rich young man, gaze with a shocked stare into Jesus’ face, but we do not have to go away grieving.

The disciples stood aside with awe. They were aware of their own short-comings. They had not been nearly as faithful to the law as had this man, they too, even as they followed Jesus, even as they worked with Jesus to proclaim the new kingdom, the disciples were working to fill the holes in their lives with work and knowledge and even faith. They stared at Jesus with shock and grieving. And their spirits were not eased when Jesus spoke to them.

“How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” (23). The disciples were perplexed at these words. If people who are powerful and wealthy cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, how can anyone? During that time it was common to view wealth as a blessing from God. So how was it that those who were at the top of society and so blessed by God could not get into heaven?

But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” (24-25). Here again, some have tried to soften the blow of Jesus’ criticism. Some have suggested that it was not a camel of which Jesus was speaking. They have claimed a slight change in the Greek for camel will render the word rope. Rope, indeed would be easier to fit through the eye of a needle than a camel, just as a camel would be easier to fit through a tiny, fictitious gate called the Needles Eye than through the eye of a needle, but both are mistranslation and do a disservice to Jesus’ words. They are harsh words; words we and the disciples do not wish to hear. If the wealthy cannot make their way into heaven, then who can!

The disciples were astounded. Their countenance was falling alongside that of the rich man who had gone away. They, too, were beginning to grieve when Jesus looked at them and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but for God; For God all things are possible” (27).

This passage is harsh in its condemnations yet miraculous in its proclamations. Jesus demands that we strip away everything in our lives that separates us from God. He told the rich man he must dispense his riches to the poor, release himself form the bridle of their control. Without the comfort of those things, the rich man could appreciate that it was not his doing, it was not his adherence to the law nor his earthly power or accomplishments that would gain him entry into the kingdom of God. Humanity can do nothing to open the gate for ourselves. No matter how desperately we try to fill the holes in our selves, we come to the gate empty and tattered. It is only God who can fill the holes in ourselves to make us whole and only by the grace of God do we gain entry into the kingdom of God. Though it is impossible for humanity, for God, for God all things are possible.

Lower Than The Angels

Job 1.1, 2.1-10
Hebrews 1.1-4, 2.5-12

I have had trouble all week trying to figure out which passage to preach on and then what exactly to say. Some weeks it jumps out at me and other weeks I have to dig in and mull it over and some weeks, even after that I have to search. This week was one of the latter.

The thing is, everywhere I turned, in the texts and in the world today, I kept seeing suffering and I didn’t like what I saw. It is nearly impossible to turn in any direction without seeing suffering. When we turn to the news we hear about children being killed in their schoolhouse by a stranger and about suicide bombers in crowded markets and about the careless pilots of a small plane that caused an airliner to crash into the Brazilian jungle. When we turn to get a glimpse of local affairs we hear about violence and accidents and people going hungry in a land of plenty. When we turn to the mirror we see suffering as well, in the eyes staring back at us. Sometimes it comes at our own hands through bad decisions made, acts of fear, life lived in self-loathing. Sometimes it comes through random acts upon us. We each do it our own way, but, because we are thoughtful, emotional, compassionate beings, we experience pain and suffer. There is nothing we can do to avoid it.

Though we may try to protect him, soften the blow by saying he was not really human or he was not really dead, despite the soft words we may choose to describe it, even Jesus suffered. The Apostles’ Creed is bold to proclaim: Jesus was born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilot, was crucified, died, and was buried. Though he was above them, Jesus, for a little while, was made lower than the angels…so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone (v9 Suffering is an unexplainable aspect of even a faithful life.

The problem I have is actually not with the suffering, I mean I do have a problem with suffering, but this week, looking at these passages, the problem I had was not specifically with the suffering.

I have a problem with Job. Not with Job the man. He was good and faithful and upright before the Lord. What’s not to like and admire about that. Job the man is fine. It’s Job the book I take issue with. See, I think it’s a great story, full of intrigue, a righteous man, his clueless friends, unending adversity. What I don’t like is the way the story of Job portrays God. I don’t like the way it depicts God as party to human suffering. I don’t like the way the story of Job portrays God as allowing ha Satan, the Adversary, to inflict pain and suffering in Job’s life. I don’t like the way Job is allowed to be affected like he is a play-thing or a game piece in the hands of the Adversary.

That very idea makes my skin crawl. The idea that human pain and suffering are God’s will…that God takes some pleasure in our suffering or is even indifferent to our pain…that God somehow uses pain and suffering as tools to shape us, the children of God, into works of creative art, into better human beings is contrary to the God of love who created us and gave us life anew in Jesus Christ.



William Sloan Coffin, in the early 1980s, a week after his son Alexander died in a car crash, preached a sermon at The Riverside Church in New York City where he was pastor.[1] In the sermon, he told the story of a woman who brought quiches to his family during that week. As we do for one another, she was bringing food in a tangible attempt to help comfort the family. When she was crossing the living room she looked at Coffin sitting in a chair in the corner. She shook her head, on her way into the kitchen, and said, “I just don’t understand the will of God.”

I’ll say you don’t,” Coffin barked at her as he jumped to his feet and pursued her into the kitchen. “Do you think it was the will of God that Alex never fixed that lousy windshield wiper of his, that he was probably driving too fast in such a storm…? Do you think it is God’s will that there are not streetlights along that stretch of road, and no guard rail separating the road and Boston Harbor?”

God does not spend time trying to figure out ways to make us stronger by making our lives more difficult and inflicting suffering upon us. God does not burst into schools with a grudge to bear and a thirst for blood. God does not prowl the cities with a finger on a trigger and a knife in hand. God does not build cities below sea-level just to see what will happen when a storm kicks up.

On the contrary, God is the Creator and Sustainer of life. God is the very one in whose image humanity is created. God is the one who set the heavens in motion so that eventually we and the world as we know it would come to exist. Even in the midst of their wickedness, God sustained Adam and Eve outside the Garden and later the Chosen People in the wilderness. God not only kept them alive, God gave them food and drink enough to live and prosper. God is a God of life.

And when the God of life became Immanuel, God with us, Jesus healed people, delivered them from paralysis, insanity, and leprosy, fed them and freed them from the weight of their sins. God With Us perpetuated life and created life anew for us the people healed of blindness and hemorrhages and social estrangement. Through Jesus, God the Creator demonstrated love and caring for us that does not desire for us to suffer.


Our God is a God of life who wills life for we the creation and who laments the destruction of life. William Sloan Coffin says that his own consolation lies in knowing that it was not the will of God that his son die; that “when the waves closed over the sinking car, God’s heart was the first of all hearts to break.”
Would that we were above the angels. Would that humans were above suffering, above pain, above loss, but we are not.

But, as we pick up our potsherds to scrape at our wounds, God is with us in our pain. Ye though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, God is with us in our darkness.

God shares in our suffering, and, as the community in Pennsylvania has shown so beautifully in their banding together for one another and in their reaching out and caring for the family of the man who brought such destruction and sorrow to their community, we are given the opportunity to share in God’s ministry of presence and hope.

Coffin spoke of a healing flood of letters he received from members of his congregation and colleagues and the public at large. In the middle of grief and suffering, in the solitude of pain, when God feels distant and abstract, we must be God’s presence for one another. For Coffin, people stopped by and wrote letters and brought flowers, their presence was unending support. He said, “You gave me what God gives all of us – minimum protection, maximum support. I swear to you,” he continued,” I wouldn’t be standing here were I not upheld.”

Because we are lower than the angels we suffer as Jesus did when he was made lower than the angels. He was raised again to new life because it was not God’s will that he suffer nor is it God’s will that we suffer; so we are called into community to care for one another and to be cared for by one another.

Though we are lower than the heavenly beings, Jesus has called us brothers and sisters; therefore, we are able to reach out to one another, to acknowledge suffering, and to work to bring about change.

This sermon really belongs on a Sunday in a few weeks when we talk about the Invitation to Congregational Care and Fellowship rather than on the day we are invited to care for God’s creation through House and Grounds, but our care for one another cannot be relegated to a day any more than God’s love is distant and indifferent. Everyday there is an invitation, an opportunity to care for one another as God cares for us each day and an invitation to be cared for by the love of God in Jesus Christ.
[1] Coffin. William Sloan. “Alex’s Death,” The Courage to Love. Harper & Row, 1982.

An Invitation

Esther 4.9-14, 5.1-4, 7.1-3, 8.1-2

Esther is a unique book in the canon of our Bible. It almost wasn’t included in the canon at all. Back when the church fathers were collecting and compiling the books of the Bible, making critical decision about what should go in and what should be left out, Esther was nearly left out and only barely won approval for a place among the other books. Even after it was included, theologians and biblical scholars campaigned to have it removed – Martin Luther among them.

Until today it is a book that is given little emphasis. It rarely appears in children’s Sunday School Curricula, and in the entire three year cycle of the lectionary, it appears on only a single Sunday. Other, shorter books like James are allotted multiple Sundays.

So why all the controversy? Why have people tried over the ages to remove the ten scant chapters from among the tomes of our holy scripture?

In the entire course of the book of Esther, while all of the exciting actions are going on, while the drama of human persecution and human endeavor are playing out, God is never once mentioned. It’s true, in all the pages God’s name is never proclaimed, but, I would argue as many have, that God is nonetheless present in the book of Esther inviting the characters to act and working through acts of providence.

In Esther there is intrigue and romance. There are plots to kill the king and plots of revenge. There is corruption and justice and irony. And, in the middle of it all, there is a young woman who was to put her faith in action.


Esther had managed, rather passively, to become queen. She was among the girls of the kingdom who met the qualifications the king set and so she and others were ushered off to be preened and prepared for selection by the king. Esther had not sought her royal position, it had sort of just fallen into her lap. One day she was hanging around her uncle Mordecai’s house and, practically the next she was in the royal courts being summoned by the king.

Most of her time was spent among her royal attendants and in correspondence with her uncle who kept her updated on the rest of her family and friends who were still living normal lives. Like most of the Jews of the kingdom, Esther practiced her faith quietly below the royal radar. The Jews had been captured generations earlier and taken from Jerusalem by the king of Babylon. Now, this was there home and their country. The land of King Ahasuerus was where they worked and ate and raised their families all rather peacefully. On occasion a Jew was even raised to prominence, as Mordecai had been through his noble actions. He had a place among the wise-men at the gate of the city.

There was a member of the royal court who was very much aware of the Jews’ presence. Haman had been made the highest of all officials in the kingdom. He was the highest judge and above all other magistrates. He was the King’s right-hand man. When he entered a room or passed by the gates of judgment, all present were to bow in obeisance just as they did for the king. Haman was not one to overlook such conventions. He rather enjoyed, them, actually, and even came to demand them.

One day, upon coming to the king’s gate, all present bowed low before him as they always had. Yet one remained standing and did not bow down or do obeisance (3.2). Day after day Mordecai refused to bow in the presence of Haman. When the others tried to convince him and asked him why he acted so foolishly, Mordecai explained that he was a Jew, implying that he worshiped only God and not a human of any stature. Haman took note of what he saw as Mordecai’s insolence and decided then to destroy the Jews and began to plot their destruction.

Haman craftily convinced the king that all of the Jews of the land were hostile toward the kingdom and that they should be eradicated. The king, agreeing that anyone hostile to the kingdom should be dealt with, issued the decree Haman wrote. It called for the destruction of the Jews and offered a reward on the heads of the Jews. The decree was sent out to all of the provinces of the kingdom giving orders “to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate all Jews, and plunder then goods” (3.13). The date was set and the people of the kingdom prepared for the siege upon their neighbors.


When Mordecai heard of the decree he tore his clothes and mourned the impending destruction of his people. He went to the entrance of the king’s gate, the very gate where he had refused to bow, and he wailed with a loud and bitter cry (4.1). Esther’s maids came to her in great distress and told her of Mordecai’s acts of mourning. As a Band-Aid to his pain, she sent him clean clothes, but he would not accept them.

Next she sent back a servant, Hathach, to learn what distressed him. Mordecai told Hathach about the decree and about the money that would be paid on the heads of the Jews. Mordecai sent Esther a copy of the decree and charged her to go to the king to make supplication to him and entreat him for her people (4.8).

She knew better than to go to the king’s court. Esther knew that to go to the king’s court unbidden meant sure death for her. She had compassion for Mordecai and the other Jews, but everyone in the land knew that the punishment for entering the king’s inner court without the king’s request was death. The only way to avoid death was if, by some chance, the king held out his golden scepter. Then the person could live. Esther could not take the chance. She made her reply by stating the facts, “I myself have not been called to come to the king for thirty days” and so she declined Mordecai’s invitation for her to serve (4.11).

In Esther’s mind, the inner court was for other people. It was for people who were among the king’s company. The inner court was for the powerful, the in-crowd, the people who had been around for sometime. It was not for someone like her who had no real power, who had only just come to the court.

But Mordecai was not content with Esther’s passivity. He had not been passive in response to Haman’s authoritarianism, he had not passively bowed down in worship of a magistrate in the presence of the Lord. For Mordecai, there was no room for passive participation. For him, being a Jew meant active faith expressed in his words, in his body, and in all of the actions of his life.

In his reply, Mordecai invited Esther to just such a faith. He told Esther that there was no safety in her passivity. Mordecai explained that the royal palace would not be a refuge for her while the rest of the Jews were destroyed. Queen Esther, too, was slated for destruction by the decree that Haman fashioned and the king signed. Her title and her royal robe would provide no protection.

After Mordecai’s second entreaty to Esther he extended to her a second time an invitation to serve. “Perhaps,” he said, “you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this” (4.14). Perhaps, Mordecai was saying, God’s providence has invited you here, to this place, to be the queen so that when your people face persecution, you may stand up on their behalf and be their voice to the king.


Despite her fears, despite what she considered to be the protests of her rational mind, Esther accepted Mordecai’s invitation to service, and she began to act on behalf of her people. First she entered a time of discernment. When faced with the unknown that awaited her in the king’s inner court, Esther listened for God’s guidance. She instituted a fast for herself and her maids and all of the Jews throughout the land. During that time she actively prayed and listened for God to lead her. On the third day Esther shed her former passivity and donned her royal robes and active faith and stood in the inner court of the king’s palace.

King Ahasuerus saw the Queen standing in his inner court unbidden. She had come when he had not asked. He stared at her for a moment scrutinizing her beauty and her existence and slowly he lowered his golden scepter toward her and beckoned her into the room. “What do you want? What is your request?” he asked her, “You shall have it even to half of my kingdom” (5.3). Having answered her invitation from Mordecai and from God, Esther extended her own invitation to King Ahasuerus. She invited the king and Haman to a banquet she had prepared for them. The king and Haman came to the queen’s inner court and feasted. King Ahasuerus, again, offered to fulfill Queen Esther’s request and, a second time, she invited them back for another banquet. As the second banquet came to a close, the king again asked for her petition.

Queen Esther, invited to leave her comfort zone, invited to leave her former, passive faith behind, invited to act on behalf of her people, invited the king to act on behalf of her people. “If it pleases you,” she said, “let my life be given me – that is my petition – and the lives of my people – that is my request” (7.3). Esther was bold to respond to Mordecai’s invitation. She put aside her very real fears and prayed and accepted his invitation to active faith and participation in her community through service.


One of the things I love about the book of Esther, in addition to the fact that it is just a down-right fantastic story, is that it is no stretch for me to relate to it. We take turns as Esther and as Mordecai. As Mordecai we invite others to worship with us, to participate in Fall Camp or book discussions, to serve the church at Fall Clean-up and as a Sunday School teacher, and to serve the world at Maryland Food Bank and Paul’s Place. We embrace the role of Mordecai invite one another to participate in the life of the church, but also I know so clearly that I am Esther, that we all are Esther. We have been invited to this place, to this community, to this moment in our lives of faith for just such a time as this.

Despite our fears of family time lost, of financial instability, of lack of full control of our lives, despite what we consider to be the opposition of our rational mind we are invited to an active expression of our faith here at Dickey Memorial around this table and in the Stewardship campaign. We must take time to discern what we are being invited to do. And then we must boldly, like Queen Esther, accept that invitation.

Like the book of Esther, God is present to us less in a voice-from-on-high-Mt.-Sinai sort of way and more of a providential, inviting sort of way. God provides for us in our lives, provides all that we have and all that we are. And God invites us into relationship, invites us to serve, invites us to use our gifts we have been given.

What has God provided for you?
What gifts has God given you?
What is God inviting you to do?