An Over-the-Top Promise (Sermon for the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost) John 6:35-51

Sermon for the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

10.11.15

John 6:35-51 (Part of our 'I Am' statement sermon series) 

Calvary - St. George's Church, Manhattan 

Upon accepting his party’s nomination at the 1988 Republican National Convention, Vice President George H. W. Bush gave an address with an iconic line, “Read my lips: No new taxes.” This pledge not to tax the American people further had been a consistent part of his platform, but its prominent use in this speech, with those words, cemented it in the public consciousness. The impact of the promise was considerable, and many Bush supporters believed it helped him win the election.

As many of you remember, this line would also prove to be his undoing. Compromise had to be reached; taxes had to be raised. First Pat Buchanan in the primaries, and then Bill Clinton in the 1992 general election, relentlessly cited this line to question Bush’s trustworthiness. For George H. W. the dream of a two-term presidency died with a broken promise.

Now, of course, it's not just Republican presidential candidates who fail to remain true to their word. According to one popular fact checking website, Barack Obama has broken over a hundred campaign promises. He just never opened any with 'read my lips.' So whether the presidential candidate is Republican or Democrat, you and I are all too familiar with far-fetched campaign promises. 

Last week, we heard Jesus give an over-the-top promise. If you remember, he told the Samaritan woman at the well, “those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty.” This Sunday, instead of being like most of our politicians and backing down from his promise once elected, Jesus only ups the ante: "Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty" he says, and "Whoever comes to me will never be hungry."

'Take Up Your Cross' (Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost) Mark 8:27-38

Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Mark 8:27-38

9.13.15 (Sunday of a Baptism)

Calvary - St. George's Church, Manhattan

What does Jesus mean when he tells us to "take up our cross?"

Over the millennia, this phrase has been interpreted in a variety of ways. Mostly in good, helpful ways, but, on occasion, it’s been used to for ill.

I’m going to begin with two popular misinterpretations of this phrase, before taking a stab at what Jesus is really getting at.

So, two things he doesn't mean.

First, when he says ‘take up your cross’, Jesus does not mean: submit to oppression. Women and people of color, in particular, who have suffered abuse, have often had Jesus’s words used to keep them suffering... Does your husband mistreat you? Does your slaveowner beat you? Put up with it, so the false interpretation goes, for this is your cross to bear…

Too often ‘take up your cross’ is taken to mean, tell those who are suffering injustice to suffer it a little more. This is not what Jesus was talking about.

The second misinterpretation of this phrase is the way we often use it in everyday conversation. Sorry everybody, but ‘my cross to bear' is not a difficult spouse or a nagging in-law... Unfortunately, it isn’t even something as awful as crushing student loans.

Rooted in Trust (Sermon for the 13th Sunday after Pentecost) Ephesians 6:10-20

Sermon for the 13th Sunday after Pentecost

Ephesians 6:10-20

8.23.15

Calvary - St. George's Church, Manhattan

“Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armor of God. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, the authorities, the cosmic powers of this present darkness.”

If anyone has ‘been strong in the Lord,' it’s Dietrich Bonhoeffer. When nearly every German minister capitulated to the horrible desires and decrees of the Third Reich, Bonhoeffer remained steadfast. 

His dissent began early. Two days after Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, with storm troopers already on the streets, the 27 year old German pastor gave a dangerous radio address proclaiming resistance to the Fuhrer and support for German Jews.

The rest of his life, until he was executed in a concentration camp in 1945, was one of resistance against the ‘rulers and authorities; the cosmic powers of this present darkness.’

Bonhoeffer was so rooted in confidence and trust in his Lord that his very real fear and anxiety were simply swallowed up.

The Way of Force (Sermon for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost)

The Way of Force (audio)

Sermon for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

8.9.15

Calvary - St. George's Church, Manhattan

On Idolizing My Hero (Sermon for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost)

On Idolizing My Hero (audio)

Sermon for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

8.2.15

Calvary - St. George's Church, Manhattan

When I was in middle school my church hired a new youth director. John was young, outgoing, and we all thought he was super cool.

John was also really smart. He made me want to be smart, too. To read books so that I actually knew what he was talking about.

Most important of all, John took a particular interest in me. He took me out to lunch, to Rita’s water ice, for coffee before I even liked it.

I tried to hide my admiration for John. I tried to keep it cool. He was the older brother that I never had. An older friend who not only didn’t make fun of me, but thought I were cool and worth talking to. He made getting involved with God seem alright.

A few years later, after I had gone away for college, my mother told me that John had had a great fall. She told me that he left his wife and newborn daughter to run away with a girl whom I later found out was not much older than I was at the time.

I was shocked. At first I accused my mom of not getting the facts right. Then when I found out that his wife hadn’t left him, I continued to blame her anyway. (Sorry, ladies. Typical misogyny.) But after this short lived denial, of justifying John’s behavior, of making excuses for him, I came to. John had done a terrible, terrible thing. Everything he’d been for me was undone. He was no hero after all.

The Second Passover (Sermon for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost) John 6:1-24

Sermon for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

John 6:1-24

7.26.15

Calvary - St. George's Church, Manhattan

Have any of you ever celebrated Passover?

Have any of you ever been to a seder?

Growing up in a Jewish family on my mother’s side, I went to seders almost every year. At these feasts we would celebrate the liberation of the people of God from their bondage in Egypt. The freedom of slaves from their oppressors; victims from their victimizers.

The point of Passover is to bring to remembrance the Exodus story, where God called on Moses to confront the Pharaoh--the ruler of Egypt--and tell him to let God’s people go. Only the Pharaoh likes being in control and he likes his slaves, so he refuses. In response, God brings judgment on Egypt, and he does so in the form of plagues.

The reason why the season is called Passover has to do with the tenth and final plague, where God instructs Moses to tell Pharaoh that if you continue to hold my people in bondage I will strike down all of your firstborn. Pharaoh, stubborn to the end, again refuses. Instead of choosing liberation, he chooses the way oppression, and therefore, of judgment and death.

At this, Moses returns to the people of God--his people--and tells them to feast. He tells them to take a lamb, sacrifice and eat it, and to put the blood of the lamb on the doorposts of their houses. With this the angel will know to pass over the house not taking the first born. The next day with this great and terrible judgment inflicted on all of Egypt, the Pharaoh, finally, let Moses and his people go...

I’ve always enjoyed the seder feasts that I’ve been to. They are joyous occasions filled with the stories of a great people. But a few seders ago I began to think about the story from the perspective of the Egyptians. Not from the perspective of the Pharaoh, the rulers of Egypt, or the taskmasters who subjugated the people of God, but from the perspective of the ordinary Egyptians who were just going about their ordinary lives. The ones who were minding their own business. The ones who might not have given a second thought about the people of God. Or, if they had, must have thought that having the Hebrews as slaves was just the ordinary way of things; the way things had to be.

But the scary thing about this story is that the text makes clear that these people--the ordinary, everyday, barely aware--were under judgment, too. These people were viewed as complicit in the oppression of the people of God. And this threw me through a bit of a loop. It made me wonder if I might unknowingly be an oppressor of the people of God. It made me wonder if I might be complicit in the victimization of the lowly. As an American with plenty, it made me worry that I, like the everyday Egyptians of old, might be on the wrong side of the fence. So I began to think about this story in a whole new way, and wondered what this passage might mean for me and the ones that I love?

Don't Go. (Sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Easter) John 17:6-19

Sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Easter

John 17:6-19

May 17th, 2015

Calvary - St. George's Church, Manhattan

(I ad-libbed quite a bit more for this sermon than I usually do. I think it worked well live. I tried to transcribe some of the parts I ad-libbed. It may not work as well on paper so: wham)

Not too long ago there was a story in the papers about a mother in England who left her three very young children by themselves so that her and her new Australian boyfriend, whom she met online, could go off on a three-week island get-away. You gotta do what you gotta do for love these days, I guess. But, in all seriousness, it is hard to believe that a mother could do such a thing. Leave her three, four, and five year-olds completely alone for weeks. We might wonder what she thought she would find when she got home.

As it turns out, the children were found days later, not by their father--who was also nowhere to be found--but by his parents. When the mother returned from her romantic getaway, the police were waiting for her and she was convicted of willful abandonment.

Suppose this mother had had loving parents who were only too glad to look after the children while she was away. That may have made all the difference. She could have entrusted her little ones to them, safe in the knowledge that they would care for them. We might imagine a mother in that situation giving her parents detailed instructions as to how each child should be looked after, not because she didn’t trust her parents to look after them but because she did. (H/T Tom Wright, John for Everyone Part 2)

In this morning’s Gospel reading from John there is a lot going on, but one thing that is clear is that Jesus is going away. He’s not off on a three-week island getaway with Mary Magdalene. No, He’s headed to the Cross to do the work he came to do: to liberate us from the powers that enslave us and to take away the sins of the world, before returning to his Father. Jesus is not abandoning his disciples. He is not leaving them as orphans. He is entrusting his own to his father, his father whom he knows will care for them every bit as much as he has himself. Jesus prays to his father for his own because they need protection. Because they are at risk.

But what is the risk? What might the disciples need protection from? Well, according to John they need protection from the ’evil one,’ the personification of evil. The one John earlier described as “the ruler of this world.”