On The Cliff's Edge

Jesus had left Nazareth, which was his home. His aunts and uncles and cousins and family friends had not seen hide nor hair of him for some time. They heard tales of what he had been doing. They’d heard from some cousins about what had happened at the wedding in Canaan; about the water in the jugs that was turned into wine. Not everyone believed the sensational story, but everyone retold it because it was a good one.

One of the neighbors had visited Capernaum recently and had heard that Jesus was going around that region. He had been going to the synagogues and preaching. What’s more, they had heard that Jesus had been placing his hands upon people, touching even lepers, and healing them.

Most people dismissed these stories. They had known Jesus and seen him as he grew. All agreed that he had been a unique child, but preaching in the temple at twelve years old and healing the sick and infirm were two completely different matters.

All the same, if he was performing these acts that some were calling miracles, his hometown friends, neighbors, and family wanted him to do so at home. They thought they deserved a little piece of the action. They hoped that he would come home again so that they could see him, and so that they could be healed and have wine made for them and hear one of these good sermons they had heard he was preaching.

Jesus did not call ahead to let them know he was coming. Instead, he just walked into town one day and joined the people of Nazareth in the temple for Sabbath, as was his custom. Being a man of the city, he gladly took the scroll when it was handed to him and he found a passage he liked and he read it to the congregation. Jesus read to them a part of Isaiah where Isaiah acknowledges his call and proclaims that God has called him to go to the poor and the captive and the blind to free them from their oppressions. As was also the custom, Jesus was asked to expound on the passage a bit, to offer a sermon on the text. He offered a very brief expository – “Today the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

For the people of Nazareth, it was like answering the knock at the door to find Ed McMahan on the other side with a Publisher’s Clearing House check. Jesus had come to them to ease their burdens.They were ecstatic at the prospect of having their burdens lifted and having their pains soothed. They imagined lives like kings and queens where there would be no more hauling heavy jugs of water up from the river to cook. No more cooking. No more toiling in the fields or tending the sheep. Their day of liberation had come.

But Jesus had only just begun to speak. As he continued their mood soured from elation to frustration and then agitation. He said that like Elijah and Elisha before him, who had been prophets of the Lord during difficult times in Israel, who had healed and cared for strangers and not the people of Israel who had already been blessed by the Lord. They gave respite to the foreign widow, and the Gentile leper. Like the prophets before him, Jesus had come to bring God’s good news to all, not just his hometown favorites. His mission was not to make the lives of his friends and family easy, but to bring comfort to all the earth.

The people of Nazareth were incensed. He was a child of their city, they knew him better than all the rest, they were the chosen ones, part of the in-crowd and because of that they wanted, they thought they deserved a double portion of grace.

The people of the synagogue stood and drove Jesus out of town, and further. Pushing past their borders was not enough. The people of Nazareth, the aunties and uncles of Jesus childhood, the baby-sitters and rabbis drove Jesus from the synagogue to the cliff outside of town to put an end to all this nonsense. By throwing Jesus off the cliff they would end the lavish and broad distribution of God’s grace, the grace that they believed was theirs alone to possess. They pressed in on him from behind and forced him toward the cliff’s edge and the stones below because of the words he preached of God’s glory and love of all people. Jesus proclaimed God’s grace for all.

How many of you are afraid of heights? Or, as a friend of mine used to say, not so much afraid of the heights as afraid of the falling?

Have you ever stood on the edge of a cliff? And surveyed the view and looked down at your toes to see where the land breaks off and the air and the decline begin? Have you stood there with the trill of the impending danger of the magnificent view raising the beat of your heart from resting to an admiring thump of a mild adrenaline rush? Have you ever stood at the edge of a cliff without a guard rail, with a crowd pushing in behind you?

I have not. I’ve stood on edges, don’t get me wrong. I stood on the edge of the Colca Canyon in Peru and waited for condors to arouse themselves from their chilly slumber and spread their winds to harness the thermals and soar up above the cliff’s edge and our heads in search of food. I stood there watching, so much on the edge that my next step was a precipitous one. But the crowds were not upon me. They were up on the observation deck safely contained by a rail, not on the little precipice we found, so the only danger on that cliff’s edge was my own wrong move.

I have felt the force of a crowd behind me. I have stood on a subway platform so engulfed in people that when the doors slid open I entered the car almost without moving my feet. I moved by the sheer force of the crowd behind me over the edge of the platform into the car.

I have stood on cliff’s edges and I have felt the power of a crowd pushing at my back, but I had not stood on a cliff with a crowd at my back. I have not felt the immense danger of the gospel until I climbed upon the cliff that is my faith in the face of the world.

When I first started preaching, when I had to preach a sermon for my preaching class, I was paralyzed with the fear of the cliff I was driven to by the assignment. It was not the assignment itself that was the problem. Delving into a biblical text and discussing it were becoming old hand, but proclaiming it…proclaiming it was a daunting task.

It meant deigning to articulate the acts of the Spirit that I had seen. It meant telling the world what the Spirit had moved me to say. It meant putting it out there, letting the words pass my lips. Once they had left there was nothing more for me to do. I could not control the words or how they were heard or how the Holy Spirit would twist them to speak to the hearts of the hearers. I was afraid to stand upon the pulpit and unleash such volatile, unpredictable words as God’s grace proclaimed.

But still I felt driven to the edge by that very grace that Jesus proclaimed in Capernaum and Nazareth. Grace seems a safety blanket, a gift of assurance, but to the people of Nazareth did not see it as assurance They were told that their blanket was being unfolded from their laps and spread also over the poor, the outsider. They were not guaranteed an advantage. The grace that they saw as a personal guarantee was not only theirs but also given to the world. The Gospel is dangerous to the comfortable. The danger of God’s Word is the truth of God’s grace and love in a world bent on entitlement and retaliation.

For Jesus, what brought him to the cliff’s edge was not curiosity. He did not seek out the edge to feel the pit of his stomach rise into his throat. Nor did even youthful impertinence bring him to the edge as some in the crowd may have accused.

Jesus was on the cliff’s edge because God had brought him there. It was God’s grace that led him to Capernaum that allowed him to heal and to preach. It was God’s grace that led him back to Nazareth to share the Good News to an unwelcoming crowd. God’s grace had been given through Jesus, not for the few, but for the all. Jesus had been anointed by God to preach and to teach and to heal. He had been called by God to share God’s grace. It was not grace that allowed him to escape; it was God’s grace preached plainly that carried him out of the synagogue to the edge of town to the “brow of the hill on which their town was built.”[1] It was the bold and plain proclamation of God’s grace given for all that propelled the crowd out of the temple and toward the edge. The world does not welcome the Word of God. The world has been given God’s grace, but does not want to hear about it.

When we live faithful lives in a world that does not want to hear the Good News, we live on the cliff’s edge. The edge is not just in the pulpit or on the brow of a cliff at the edge of town. The cliff’s edge is at work when someone asks you why you are generous and kind and the answer ‘God’s grace’ pops into the back of your head as an uneasy feeling eases into your stomach. The cliff’s edge is in the supermarket when I child is being roughly handled, when you know what you see happening should not be, but you are frozen feeling impelled to change it and afraid of saying no to a stranger whose hand is raised against someone who is not your own child. The cliff’s edge is daily upon us when we are faced with proclaiming God’s grace to a world that does not want to hear it.

Where’s your cliff’s edge? Are you willing to approach it?

[1] Luke 4.29

Spiritual Things

John 2.1-11

To be honest, ‘spiritual’ is a word that I can just hardly stand these days. It is used as a modifier for anything and everything. If the book industry is any indication, people are going out of their way to find a ‘spiritual’ part of themselves. People are trying ‘spiritual’ healing and a ‘spiritual’ way to arrange furniture in a room. There are books on meditation and on eating a ‘spiritual’ diet. The spirit has become a primary marketing tool for those searching for a deeper understanding of their place in the world and for the purpose of their lives. I think the search in genuine and is undertaken in earnest.

Even within church circles, a lot of people wonder about their spiritual gifts. Sure I can do ‘this’ or ‘that’, but what of a spiritual gift? There was a Sunday School class in November that was about figuring out our spiritual gifts and loads of people showed up. We want to be spiritual, but don’t know exactly how. For most people spiritual gifts are not evident to ourselves. We can see other people’s gifts while we continue to search for our own.
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Jesus had gone to attend a neighborhood wedding with his mother. That is what people did when someone got married. Everyone came out for the wedding to celebrate the start of the new covenant between the two people. The groom’s family threw a large party over several days to celebrate the union, to effect the separation of the bride from her family, to welcome the bride into their family. There was a new bride coming to Jesus’ town and so, one of his neighbors was throwing a bridal party.

Ancient weddings were the original church potluck. The family provided the main dish, like the meat, and also the wine and drinks, and others brought in the other food – the favorite side dishes and decadent desserts. The lambs were slaughtered and prepared and cooked one after another for days. And the wine flowed into the glasses and guests without ceasing. Everyone ate and drank and celebrated, unless the food or wine ran out too soon, then it was a disgrace to the groom’s family. It was poor manners to receive the bride’s family without proper ceremony. And, if they could not provide for the party then it was thought that they could not provide for the bride. The party was everything when it came to in-law relations, so it was well-worth doing right.

At this party that Jesus attended, the guests had been enjoying themselves. All was going well. There were lamb chops for everyone and enough mint sauce to go around. The music played on. Guests came and went and came again. The wine flowed freely – until afternoon grew into night. Then, whether by frugality or misjudgment or unpredicted consumption was to blame, the wine supply, famously, began to dwindle. The groom’s family had hoped that what they had bought would last, but it was quickly becoming apparent that it would not. Whatever their miscalculation, the wine was running out and they were at a loss for what to do.

I wonder what it was that made Mary say what she did. I wonder if Jesus had been known to fill her nearly empty olive oil bottle with water and then tell her to pour out the water only to find the finest olive oil. I wonder if Mary’s trips to the market were diminished by Jesus’ spiritual practices in her kitchen. That’s the humorous side of me. The more serious side knows that sometimes other people appreciate our gifts before we do, ourselves. Sometimes others will tell us to try something or do something before we recognize ourselves that we have a spiritual gift.

So, Mary saw a need and recognized in her son something that he did not yet realize or feel comfortable sharing. She saw that he had a gift that would make this situation right. Mary saw and believed that Jesus had been given a talent for filling the needs of people. Mary also saw that Jesus had not accepted his talent, for surely he had recognized the need. Mary not only recognized Jesus’ gift, but she also insisted that he act on it. She didn’t say, ‘how nice that you can do this thing and that you could help’. Mary turned to hear son and expected him to use the gift that God had given him, the gift the Spirit had activated in him.

Jesus, after some protest, but having been adequately encouraged, told the servants to fill the six stone purification jars with water. The jars did not have carbon filters to transform dirty water to clean water. The jars were made of non-porous stone so that the already clean water put into them would not be sullied by impurities within the jars. There was no question that water was put into the jars. There was no possibility of blaming something in the jars for the miraculous change of the water they held.

We know the story. The jars were filled with water and when the wine steward tasted the water that had been put in, he tasted the finest of wines. The wine he drew out was not vinegary or simple wine of a small community wedding. It was a fine, complex wine of a grand, royal banquet. And, though fine, it was not made sparsely. Jesus had transformed the six jars of clean water into 150 gallons of good wine. There was enough wine for the party and enough abundance to last for many parties to come.

Jesus had not given his gift of wine stingily. In an ordinary place among ordinary people, Jesus gave a gift of abundance. He gave it openly, freely, for all us to partake of. The gifts of the Spirit are no less generous. We all have gifts. We have heard it before. There are varieties of gifts but just one Spirit. We all have different talents within us, different potential. God has given us different abilities so that we are not all accountants or nurses or teachers or preachers. Thanks be to God that among the diversity of people there are a diversity of talents.

We know that. We’ve been assured and reassured of that. But this time I see something more to it – more than the mantra of diversity and reassurance. This time, when I read this passage, I took heart in a simple matter that has been there all along. It’s right there in verse six at the beginning of the list and again in verse eleven at the end of the list as if to remind us of where we started and Who has the final say. It’s that all of these gifts – for building things and designing things for recognizing needs in others and supporting others – every gift of the Spirit was not only given by God, but also activated by God, by the Holy Spirit.

The gifts God has so generously given us, the ones we acknowledge in ourselves and others, the ones we spurn as burdens and distractions to our lives, all of these gifts are made to be put into action by the Holy Spirit. These gifts were not given like Christmas presents. The custody of them was not handed over solely to us at our inception. God has held onto the gifts within us and works within us to use them in the world.

Spiritual gifts are not strange, holy things that others are given and we view from afar. The Spiritual matters of our lives are not found in books or in the arrangement of furniture or in the food we put into our bodies. They are not things we must search the farthest reaches of the land to find. Spiritual gifts are given, entrusted to each of us. They are inherent in the way God has fashioned us. Like they were for Jesus, spiritual gifs are part of our very being.

Ours is not a quest to find them, but to be ready, with God’s help, to use them when called upon. Ours responsibility is to cultivate the gifts and to trust in the Lord; so that, when called upon, we may use the gifts we have been given to the good of the community and to the glory of God.

Royal Rivalry

Matthew 2.1-12

For the readings this week we take a little detour from Luke into Matthew. The detour is not uncharted territory, however. It’s a passage we’ve heard at least twice, maybe three times over the last few weeks. It’s the story of the magi who have followed a star from the east to the place where a child lay in the west.

Convention has it that there were three. There may have been or there may have been two or a dozen. There were three gifts, that’s for certain. And they may have been kings, but more properly they were astrologers seeking an explanation for the new star in the sky. They’d seen an unusual star and had decided to get to the bottom of it, so to speak. They walked from what we generally call the Orient, not knowing their original point of departure, but it was more likely Persia, what is now Iran, than Asia.

Once they came to Bethlehem, they began to search the city. Perhaps the star stopped to give them a respite on their journey or they simply thought it made sense that what they sought would be in a city rather than the surrounding country-side. I don’t know how they decided the star meant there was a king, but once they had, they did the logical thing and went to the royal palace.

Herod, the king of the Jews, could not have been more surprised than to have his daily banquet interrupted by a bunch of nomadic astrologers. Then he was surprised all the more to have them ask to see the new, infant king.

Rome had appointed Herod as the King of the Jews. He had been a magistrate and a commander, surely, to have been given such clout. Or maybe he had been given the throne because the Emperor in Rome did not want to ‘deal with’ Jews. Either way, it was by royal edict that Herod, a known tyrant, had become king.
Herod was never accused of being a benevolent dictator. He was no soft, mamby-pamby dictator granting pardons to the poor or extending peace to neighbors. That wasn’t Herod’s style. He was more of a pre-emptive sort of guy, sure to get the other guy before he was gotten. Herod believed that his strong hand against his enemies instilled confidence in his subjects and made them feel safe. That wasn’t much the case, but once his reign of terror had begun, there was no going back on it, no changing his ways.

Chief priest and scribes throughout the land alerted Herod to all the goings on of the people. Herod knew everything that took place in the land. Therefore, it came as quite a shock when several strangers from Persia entered his court asking for the child King of the Jews. Herod was flattered by their underestimation of his age, he was sure he still looked young, but had not been mistaken for a child for some time. Softened by the adulation of the strangers, Herod was quick to claim his thrown and point out that they had found him. He was king.

The magi were confused for a moment and then one of them realized the old man before them had misunderstood them. The magi explained that they had followed a star from the east and that they were looking for a child. He suggested that perhaps Herod had a young son.

Now it was Herod’s turn to be confused. He had been appointed king of the Jews by Rome. Rome had not notified him of a new king for the Jews. There was no higher power than Rome; so he thought the strangers must have been mistaken. But then, realization followed by fright spread across the tyrant’s face. The Jews must be raising up their own king, in opposition, to contest his power. His mind was racing. If the Jews had their own king, then what was his role? Would they remain under his rule and his tax? Were they planning a coup?

Now Herod was no political dunce. He had not become the king of the Jews by mere chance. He had worked the system, making contact in the Emperor’s court and he had undermined many a rival. Herod knew just the thing to do to get to this other king, this royal child the Jews were planning to instate. Herod called together his chief priests and scribes to ask them what they had heard of such a royal baby born in the land.

Herod was discouraged that no one could find the child, but it seemed that a band of private investigators had walked into his court carrying gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. He decided to use their services to route out this baby king and put an end to this rival king nonsense.

Plotting, Herod called the magi to him and asked them all the details about the star they had been following. He wanted to know exactly what time it had appeared and the direction they had traveled. Herod heard their replies with an air of concern about it all; playing as though he, too, was concerned about finding the infant so that he, the king, could bow to worship him. He thought it was far-fetched. The idea of him, the mighty and powerful Herod, bowing beside the child – a child who could not even hold up his own head – but the magi bought the story. They set out again from Bethlehem to search for the child born king of the Jews.

When they left the city, the star went before the magi until it stopped over the place where Mary sat with her infant son. And before the infant God incarnate, before the child of Mary, before the baby Herod feared, the magi knelt and worshiped and offered their infamous gifts. And when they arose and left that place, they left by another way. They were not swayed by the power of Herod. Instead, they were moved by the power of God in the doughy child to return home by another way.

Herod’s power struggle with Jesus is our power struggle with God writ large. Herod feared the child and what the child’s power might do to his own power. He feared that the child’s power would truncate his own power, that his reign would be cut short. He feared that acknowledging the child would somehow be abdicating his own power and part of himself, which he desperately did not want to do. Herod did not want to relinquish control of his kingdom to Jesus just as we struggle against relinquishing our lives to God.

Though we may not have been crowned king or queen by the Roman Empire, we are not so far from Herod’s court. We see the infant child and celebrate his birth with songs and praise. We decorate and offer prayers and practice traditions that celebrate his coming. Yet when the day of his birth has gone, we, like Herod and the world, resist God’s divine kingship in Jesus Christ. We maintain a royal rivalry between the rule of self and the rule of God.

We resist God’s rule in our lives in a million different ways. We allow only an hour per week or occasional moments to pray to and worship God. When we do not spend time with God, we begin to believe that our lives are ours and that we are in control. When we worship God, when we pray to God, we proclaim that we are God’s and that God is in control of our lives. We resist God by ignoring the gifts God has given us– our talents. We disregard our talents and hide them beneath our busy schedules rather than trusting God and acting upon them. When we use our talents, we glorify God and demonstrate our reliance on God.
We resist God by squandering the gifts God has given us – our treasure. When we store our riches away in a barn, we tell ourselves that we have earned them, that they are ours and have nothing to do with God. When we return what we have to God, we offer thanks and remind ourselves of our reliance.

Though we are like Herod in our resistance to God’s rule in our lives, we are not entrenched, like Herod, in the political struggle of power. Unlike Herod, we can choose another way to approach the King of the Jews. We can choose to let God reign supreme in our lives. We, having found the infant king, can kneel before him offering ourselves in our daily actions and in the living of our lives.

Each time we come to the table, we participate anew in the reign of the kingdom of God. When we partake of the bread and the cup, we acknowledge God’s reign not only in this world, not only over sin, but also in our lives. At the table we proclaim the eternal rule of God in the world and in our lies.

Who will reign supreme in your life this year? Will you continue the royal rivalry of self with God, or will you come to the table and kneel before the Lord?