Martha’s Bad Day

Delivered August 21, 2011

Luke 10:38-42

This is a story about two sisters. You have likely heard it before. It is often used as a Biblical example of how people can be very different, especially when it comes to household chores. Some people are very meticulous about their household chores and entertaining guests, and others are much more laid back. Mary and Martha are often contrasted in this way. In fact I came across a list called “Sensible House Cleaning Solutions, “Martha’s Way vs. Mary’s Way.”  

#1 Martha's way: Stuff a miniature marshmallow in the bottom of a sugar cone to prevent melting ice cream from dripping out.

Mary's way: Just suck the ice cream out of the bottom of the cone.

#2 Martha's way: Use a meat baster to "squeeze" your pancake batter onto the hot griddle and you'll get perfectly shaped pancakes every time.

Mary's way: Buy the precooked kind you nuke in the microwave for 30 seconds.

#3 Martha's way: To keep potatoes from budding, place an apple in the bag with the potatoes.

Mary's way: Buy a mashed potato mix and keep it in the pantry for up to a year.

#4 Martha's way: To prevent eggshells from cracking, add a pinch of salt to the water before hard-boiling.

Mary's way: Who cares if they crack, aren't you going to take the shells off anyway?

#5 Martha's way: To easily remove burnt-on food from your skillet, simply add a drop or two of dish soap and enough water to cover bottom of pan, and bring to a boil on stovetop.

Mary's way: Eat out every night and avoid cooking.

#8 Martha's way: If you accidentally over salt a dish while it's still cooking, drop in a peeled potato and it will absorb the excess salt for an instant "fix me up".

Mary's way: If you over salt a dish while you are cooking, that's too bad. My motto: If it's cooked, you will eat it no matter how bad it tastes.

#13 Martha's way: Now look what you can do with Alka Seltzer:

* Clean a toilet. Drop in two Alka-Seltzer tablets, wait twenty minutes, brush and flush. The citric acid and effervescent action clean vitreous china. * Clean a vase. To remove a stain from the bottom of a glass vase or cruet, fill with water and drop in two Alka-Seltzer tablets. * Polish jewelry. Drop two Alka-Seltzer tablets into a glass of water and immerse the jewelry for two minutes. * Clean a thermos bottle. Fill the bottle with water, drop in four Alka-Seltzer tablets, and let soak for an hour (or longer, if necessary).

Mary's way: Put your jewelry, vases, and thermos in the toilet. Add some Alka-Seltzer and you have solved a whole bunch of problems at once.

As fun as these comparisons are, when I read the gospel story about the two sisters Martha and Mary, I don’t see it as primarily as a difference in housekeeping styles. I don’t see Martha as a biblical Martha Stewart. Neither do I interpret this story as about the difference between personality types – such as extrovert and introvert, activist and contemplative - as it is often portrayed. There is a best-selling book based on this story by Joanna Weaver entitled, “Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World: Finding Intimacy With God in the Busyness of Life.” The point of her book is that you can be as busy as Martha and as spiritual as Mary; you can bake your cake and eat it too. That may appeal to the 21^st century busy working woman, trying to balance career, family and a spiritual life, but I don’t think this is the point the story is making either.

I think the story is much simpler than that. I think interpreters tend to overthink these biblical stories. I think Martha was just having a bad day. We all have bad days.  Furthermore she may have thought she was having a bad life. She had some issues with the way the world was treating her, and her anger became apparent to everyone on this particular occasion.  On this day she freaked out in front of everyone, blaming everybody in sight, including her sister and Jesus - blaming everyone but herself for her problems. Jesus’ response to Martha is designed to wake her up and see herself and the world as they really are. This is Martha’s wakeup call out of her bad day and bad life.

1. The story begins with verse 38 “Now it happened as they went that He entered a certain village; and a certain woman named Martha welcomed Him into her house.” Here is the first hint that something is amiss. It says that Martha welcomed Jesus into her house. We know from other passages that this was not her house. It was the house that she shared with her sister Mary and her brother Lazarus. It was their house. These three unmarried siblings lived together in a home in Bethany, just a couple of miles over the Mount of Olives from Jerusalem. Normally when scripture refers to this house, it is referred to as the home of Lazarus, which Jesus visited often. But in Martha’s mind it was not her brother’s house or her their house; it was her house, and she personally took responsibility for everything that happened in it.

This is one of the problems that we can have. We think it is all about us. We think that things are ours. We think we can own things. I have a revelation for you. We do not own anything. A psalm says, “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.” We are just placed on this earth as the Lord’s caretakers of the earth. That is the teaching of the creation story in Genesis. God put Adam and Eve here to tend his garden. Humankind is placed here to maintain the earth for the Lord of the earth. Problems start when we forget who the true owner is, and we think things are really ours – that our houses and lands are really ours, that our money is really ours, that our bodies are ours to do with as we wish. The Bible calls our bodies the temples of God.

In churches this becomes a problem when we think that the church is ours: my church, our church. Christians can be very possessive about churches. This is especially true when people get in positions of authority in churches. We start to think the church belongs to us, and that we can run the church the way we want. That is especially a problem for clergy. Pastors can become very possessive about churches, but so can lay people. That can cause all types of problems. This is not our church. It is not my church nor your church. This is the Lord’s church; that is why the church is called the “body of Christ” in scripture. It belongs to Christ. Problems arise as soon as we get into the “I, me, mine” mode. That is what was happening in our story with Martha.

2. The second problem is that Martha was distracted by the busyness of her life. Verses 39-40 say, “And she had a sister called Mary, who also sat at Jesus’ feet and heard His word. But Martha was distracted with much serving….” Here is the first comparison we have between Mary and Martha. Mary is making good use of the wonderful opportunity of having Jesus under her roof. She was not going to waste her time in the kitchen when the Lord was in the living room; there would be time for dinner later. While Jesus was in her home, Mary was going to sit down and listen to him.

There is a great lesson in this for us. Churches can get so caught up in serving the Lord that they don’t pay any attention to the Lord who is present. There is an old vaudeville joke about a man and woman dancing in the Catskills, at a singles resort. “I’m only here for the weekend,” the man explains. The woman responds, “I’m dancing as fast as I can!” Martha is dancing as fast as she can around her house, trying to serve the Lord, and that is the problem. That is the problem in a lot of churches. We are dancing as fast as we can trying to make the church prosper. We think that a church has to do this and this and this activity, have this and this and this program. Churches dance to the tune of cultural, denominational, and congregational expectations. Like Martha, we are distracted with much serving.

3. Third, Martha was into the blame game. Verse 40 “But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she approached Him and said, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me.” This verse includes the only words that Martha speaks in the passage, but they give us great insight into the personality of Martha. When she got into trouble, she started to blame others. We have all known people like this; nothing is ever their fault. Perhaps we are people like that. All of us are like this to a certain extent. WE can all see ourselves in Martha. It is very natural when things start to go wrong to blame others for others. It is the tune we hear often in politics. Republicans blame the Democrats, and Democrats blame the Republicans for the problems of our nation. The strange thing is that both sides really seem to believe their own rhetoric.

People tend to blame others for their personal problems. Everything that goes wrong in their lives has to be somebody’s fault, but never our own fault. Martha blames her sister for not helping her. She even blames Jesus. She says to him, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me.” It is your fault, Jesus. We see this attitude in Martha later at the tomb of Lazarus. Mary and Martha’s brother Lazarus had died. When Jesus came late to the funeral Martha says to him, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.” She is blaming Jesus for her brother’s death, even though he was way up in Galilee at the time. She has even convinced Mary that it was Jesus’ fault. A few verses later Mary says that same thing to Jesus: “Then, when Mary came where Jesus was, and saw Him, she fell down at His feet, saying to Him, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.”

People do the same thing today. They blame God for everything that goes wrong in their lives. If someone they love dies, they blame it on God. If something goes right, they never think to thank God. But when something goes wrong, it is God’s fault. Even in insurance polices natural catastrophes are called “acts of God.” Why aren’t the good things that happen called acts of God?

4. Fourth Martha wants to be in control. Martha feels out of control of the situation and her life. Things aren’t the way she wants them to be. People aren’t doing what she thinks they ought to do. She wants to control the behavior of her sister. She wants to control Jesus; to get both of them to do what she thinks they ought to do. “Jesus, tell my sister to help me!” That is our problem too. A lot of our prayers are trying to get God to do what we think he ought to do. We really seem to think that if God took pour advice on how to run the universes, things would be much better.

We think that that if only other people were more like us, then our lives would be better. If only other people thought the way we do. If only they shared our view of things, our values, our opinions. If only they did what we wanted them to do, then everything would be fine and we would be happy. Right? If only the church would do what I think it ought to do. If only this country would conform to my values, then I would be so much happier. We really think that if we could change the outside then we would feel better inside.

But it is not true. Martha’s problem was inside herself. Jesus pointed that out to her in verse 41 “And Jesus answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things.” Martha is just a mess. She is all wrapped up in herself, distracted, worried and upset, thinking that no one is doing what they ought to be doing but her. She is wrapped up in her own worries and troubles, blaming everyone but herself for her problems. Her mind and emotions are a whirlwind of her own making. Into this confusion Jesus speaks his wake up call. Verse 41-42 “And Jesus answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, [you can hear him saying, ‘Get ahold of yourself!] you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.”

Jesus is telling Martha to stop worrying so much and to just calm down and sit down at his feet for a while. That is the lesson of this passage. That is what we are doing here today. Sunday mornings are designed as a respite from the distractions and worries and troubles of our lives, but a lot of people do not think they have the time for worship. There is so much else to do on Sundays. Sunday morning is a time when we can just sit down for a while at the feet of Jesus and listen to his word, like Mary was doing. Jesus calls this “the one thing needed.” This is the one thing we need to do each week and each day; that is what a daily devotional time is about. I hope you have a time of quiet each day to just sit and listen to the Spirit. But this is not just about stopping our busyness for a few minutes each day to sit quietly. It is also about being in touch with that spiritual quietness throughout the day. Jesus is always with us; we just need to check in with him regularly.

Jesus said, “But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.” Jesus calls it the good part. He calls Martha to chose this good part, as Mary has chosen it. And he adds that it will not be taken away from her. This is a peace that the world cannot take away, and no one can take away from us. What God has given, no one can take away.

View From the Summit

Delivered August 14, 2011

Luke 9:28-36

Religion is filled with examples of religious experience. Sometimes I think that is at the heart of religion. Over a hundred years ago Harvard psychologist and philosopher William James wrote a famous book entitled, “The Varieties of Religious Experience,” and people have been writing about them ever since.  Evangelical Christianity is grounded in a personal experience of Christ. Pentecostal Christianity is based on an individual’s experience of the Holy Spirit. The Bible is filled with examples of religious experiences. Moses’ experience of the burning bush and his subsequent encounters with God on Mount Sinai are the heart of the Old Testament religion. In the NT, the whole book of Revelation is a series of visions that the apostle John had on the prison island of Patmos. Our text for this morning is another vision that John, his brother James and Peter had on a mountain. It is called the Transfiguration. It was a powerful spiritual experience for the apostles, which they did not tell anyone about until after Easter. The account of it is found in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. I will be drawing upon al three accounts but using Luke as my main source.

I. First, it happened on a Mountain. If you take a trip to Israel today and ask to go to the Mount of Transfiguration where this story happened, the tour guides will bring you up Mount Tabor, not far from Nazareth, upon which the Franciscans have built the Church of the Transfiguration. You ascent it by a series of switchbacks, a zigzag road that ascends the mountain steeply. Jude and I ascended that mountain in a taxi driven by a crazy man. Going up the mountain was fine, but coming down was a harrowing experience! I guess he had traveled this mountain so many times that he felt comfortable with the hairpin turns, but we did not. He descended much too fast and at every turn he would shout our “Hallelujah!” as we thought we would drive off the road. It scared the willies out of us. You could say that we had our own type of religious experience on that mountain – praying that we would survive.

Seriously, it probably was not Mount Tabor upon which the Transfiguration occurred. The story happens shortly after Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi and the accounts say it was a high mountain, something that Mount Tabor is not.  It is less than 2000 feet above sea level. Our story likely took place on Mount Hermon, which is 9000 foot mountain that serves as the boundary between Lebanon and Israel. For you Over-the-Hill hikers, Mount Tabor is more like Mount Israel and Mount Hermon is 3000 feet higher than Mount Washington. Its summit is covered in snow six months of the year. So picture a mountain considerably higher than Mount Washington as you hear this story of the transfiguration.

The story says that Jesus “took Peter, John, and James and went up on the mountain to pray.” This was designed as a time when Jesus could take his three closest companions on a spiritual retreat to spend time alone with them in prayer. It emphasizes this aloneness. Mark’s gospel says, “Jesus took Peter, James, and John, and led them up on a high mountain apart by themselves.” Jesus led the way up the trail followed by the three other men. Mountains have always been considered holy places in every culture. All you have to do is go up a mountain and see the view and you know why. It is a spiritual experience in itself.

II. On top of this mountain they have a vision while they were praying. I call it a vision because Jesus calls it a vision in Matthew’s account. Jesus says afterwards, “Tell the vision to no one until the Son of Man is risen from the dead.”  This was a spiritual vision, a religious experience. So these are not ghosts that the apostles are seeing on the mountain. This is a vision. Luke tells us that the disciples were asleep for the first part and only woke up later. Verse 32 says, “But Peter and those with him were heavy with sleep; and when they were fully awake, they saw His glory and the two men who stood with Him.”  So they start off sleeping while Jesus is praying on the mountain (reminiscent of the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives) and as they awoke from sleep they notice that Jesus is talking with some other people. And when they fully woke up “they saw His glory and the two men who stood with Him.”

What was the vision of? It had two elements: One was the transformation of Jesus into a figure of light. “As He prayed, [it happened during prayer] the appearance of His face was altered, and His robe became white and glistening.” Matthew’s gospel says, “and He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light.”  Mark adds, “His clothes became shining, exceedingly white, like snow, [which likely was all around them for comparison] such as no launderer on earth can whiten them.”  This is a vision of dazzling light. What does it mean? Light is divine. The apostle John says that “God is light and in him is no darkness at all.” Whenever people report Near Death experiences of heaven they report bright light. This is a visual depiction of Jesus as the Light of the World, as he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” This part of the vision is obvious.

The meaning of the other element of the vision is not so obvious. Two other figures, identified as Moses and Elijah, appeared and talked with Jesus. Moses is the most important character in the Hebrew scriptures. He was the one who received the Torah – the Law - the first five books of the OT considered by Jews to be the holiest and most important part of the Bible. Elijah was an OT prophet whose distinction was that he taken up into heaven in a fiery chariot. Symbolically these two men represent the OT revelation. They represent the Law and the Prophets, which were the two divisions of Scripture in Jesus’ day. The third section of the OT, which is called the Writings, were not canonized until later. So we could say that Moses and Elijah represent the revelation of God in Scripture.

So here is Jesus in all his divine glory on a mountaintop conversing with two OT saints who represent the two divisions of Holy Scripture. What were they talking about? Luke tells us the topic of their conversation, “And behold, two men talked with Him, who were Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of His decease which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.”  This is referring to the fact that Christ’s death is prophesied in scripture. I think this vision was for Jesus’ sake as much as the apostle’s sake. Jesus had his doubts and fears, as we know from his own words in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus was a real man who had real struggles with his mission of earth – especially his suffering and death. I think this was a pep talk. Jesus needed this. In the Garden of Gethsemane it says that angels came and strengthened him. Here on the mountain, Moses and Elijah came to strengthen him.

III. But the vision of the Transfiguration was also for Jesus’ disciples, or Jesus never would have brought them along with him to see this. And this is where the vision is for us as well. In the following verses Peter gets involved. I love the figure of Peter. He is such a klutz. He sticks his foot in his mouth all the time. I am glad he did because it gives us some of the greatest scenes in the Bible. Verse 33 says, “Then it happened, as they were parting from Him, that Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; and let us make three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah”—not knowing what he said.”

Peter says this as Moses and Elijah were about to depart. Peter was hoping to delay their departure. Peter wants to keep this fantastic spiritual experience going. He does not want it to end. That is the way it is with all mountaintop experiences – all spiritual experiences. When you are having an exhilarating experience of any type, you don’t want it to end. I really think it is the motivation behind extreme sports, which are sports with a high level of danger – like rock climbing, base jumping or swimming with sharks. People risk their lives in death-defying acts for the experience of being on the edge between life and death. They say that this is when they feel most alive.

The spiritual life is like this, or at least it can be. Some people think religion is boring; I think just the opposite. I think the nonreligious life is boring. The religious life is about God, and how can God be boring? The spiritual life is an extreme adventure. The Bible says that no one can see God and live, and yet for millennia people have sought to see God. God is dangerous. Jacob wrestles with God. Moses comes face to face with God on the Mountain and in the Tent of Meeting. Job argues with God until God shows up, and Job becomes speechless in his presence. This is what the spiritual life is about. It is not just about singing hymns and hearing a sermon on Sunday morning. It is not even about studying your Bible and having meaningful prayer times. It is about meeting God, something too dangerous to comprehend, yet something we are drawn to like moths to a flame. That is why I started off this sermon referencing William James’ “The Variety of Religious Experience.” He subtitled his book “A Study in Human Nature.” It is our human nature to seek God. That is why Moses says, “you will seek the LORD your God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul.”

I hope you are here because you seek God or you know God and you seek to know God more. For me the spiritual life is about knowing God. You can phrase it different ways – awareness of God, relationship with God, encounter with God, experience of God, communion with God - use whatever terms you want.  It is to Peter’s credit that he is having this spiritual encounter and does not want it to end. But his solution is not a good one. His solution is to build three tabernacles – one of Moses, one for Elijah and one for Jesus. Then they can all camp out together on top of the mountain.

I see this as the impetus toward religion. Religion is the human attempt to corral God. To confine him to a certain time and place. To put God in a building or a ideology or a theology or a worldview or even in a religious experience – to cage God in a religion and then use rituals to bring him out of his cage at the proper time like a trained animal at a circus. Religion is an attempt to tame God – to control God. In C. S. Lewis children’s book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe there is a scene where the faun named Mr. Tumnus is describing Aslan (the lion who represents Christ.) Tumnus says that Aslan is a lion, but he adds that “he is not a tame lion.” Our God is not a tame God. Much of Mainline Protestantism and Evangelical Christianity try to tame God to appear on cue on Sunday morning when the right music is played and the right prayers are said. That is why I think that so much of Christianity – Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Pentecostal or Evangelical - are just playing religion. Most of churches would not know what to do if the Holy Spirit actually showed up in our midst on a Sunday morning!

Peter was having a genuine spiritual encounter and it was ending. He did not want it to end. He wanted to plant the “Church of the Three Tabernacles” on that mountain. Turn it into a mountaintop shrine where Moses, Elijah and Jesus could live and people could come to visit them. But you can’t do that. Spiritual experiences come and go. Anything that begins must end; it is the nature of things. But Christ remains.

IV. Christ remains. That is the point of the vision. The story says, “While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were fearful as they entered the cloud. ³⁵ And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is My beloved Son. Hear Him!” ³⁶ When the voice had ceased, Jesus was found alone. “

A cloud descends. You know what it is like to be in a dense cloud on a mountain. Visibility is zero; you can’t see anything at all. Here in the story the cloud is symbolic as well as physical.  If you know the Bible, then you know that God often appears in a cloud on the mountain. It is the opposite of vision; this is blindness. This is God telling Peter, “You are blind to what I am trying to communicate.” This was pretty typical for Peter. Jesus told him things like this all the time. Peter didn’t get it, yet again. Then a voice bellowed from the cloud, “ This is my beloved Son. Hear Him!” And when the fog lifted it, there was only Jesus. The others were gone and there was just Jesus present with them.

This story is communicating that Christ is the living presence of God. Christ is what it is all about. It is not about shining clothing and celestial figures. It is not about mountaintop tabernacles. It is not about the Law and the Prophets, except insofar as they point to Christ. It is not about visions or spiritual experiences. It is about the abiding presence of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. This is the Christian life, the spiritual life – the presence of Christ. Hear him!   

IMHO

Delivered August 7, 2011

Matthew 16:13-20

The area of Caesarea Philippi is one of my favorite places in the Holy Land. It is also one of the favorite spots of Israeli tourists. They call it Banias today. It is in the northernmost part of the country in the Golan Heights at the foot of Mount Hermon, which is a 9000 foot mountain that is often topped with snow. Banias is a beautiful wooded area with a spring, which is one of the headwaters of the Jordan River. It is has been a sacred spot for millennia. The name Banias comes from the ancient name of the place Paneas named after the Greek god Pan – the nature god. In Jesus’ day there was also a temple there built upon the rock in honor of Caesar, hence the name Caesarea Philippi. A spring flows forth from the mouth of a cave in the rock face of this mountain, which was considered one of the entrances to the underworld. In ages past the spring used to gush forth powerfully from this cave entrance. Now it is much weaker. It was at this site that Jesus chose to have one of the most important discussions that he ever had with his disciples. When Peter professed his faith in Jesus as the Son of God, and Jesus replied, “On this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it,” he was alluding to the temple of Caesar who was considered the Son of God and to the local tradition about this cave being the gate to Hades. Those are just a couple of the interesting facets of this story, which we are looking at today.

This passage is a turning point in Jesus’ ministry. Up to this point Jesus had been walking around the country teaching about the Kingdom of God. From this point on Jesus started teaching about his upcoming suffering and death in Jerusalem. His teaching shifts from being about the Kingdom of God to being about himself - who he is, and his role in the Kingdom of God. Verse 21, which comes immediately after our Gospel lesson today says, “From that time Jesus began to show to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day.” The teaching goes from being the gospel of Jesus to the gospel about Jesus. It is popular in some circles to say that the real historical Jesus preached the Kingdom of God, and later the early church changed the message to be about Jesus. But I think that Jesus preached both, and the two are two aspects of the same message. We are going to look at this passage in three sections

I. First is is the Opinion of the Crowd, found in verses 13-14. ^“When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, “Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?” Luke’s gospel frames Jesus question in these words: “Who do the crowds say that I am?”  The apostles’ answer was this: “Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”  People were trying to figure out who this powerful preacher, teacher and miracle-worker was. They came up with a lot of different possibilities. One was that he was John the Baptist. John had already been executed by this time. People were suggesting that John had come back from the dead, that God had resurrected John the Baptist. Others were saying that Jesus was Elijah returned to earth. Elijah was an Old Testament prophet who is one of only two people in the Old Testament (the other being Enoch) whom the Scriptures say did not die. The Hebrew Bible says that Elijah was taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot. Furthermore, it was believed that one day he would return, and his return would be a precursor to the coming of the Kingdom of God. Some people thought Jesus might be Elijah. Others thought Jesus might be one of the other OT prophets – perhaps Jeremiah. Some today see a reference here to reincarnation, as if Jesus was one of the OT prophets reincarnated. But reincarnation is an Indian concept, not a Hebrew one. The Jews believed in resurrection not reincarnation. Luke makes that clear when he records the disciples answer this way: “¹⁹ So they answered and said, “John the Baptist, but some say Elijah; and others say that one of the old prophets has risen again.” The crowds had a lot of different ideas about who Jesus might be.

The crowds have many different opinions today. Some say Jesus is a myth, that he never really existed, that he is a fictional figure invented by the church, a fantasy concocted from various ancient mythologies. Others say that Jesus was a real historical figure, but that is about it - that he was a wandering rabbi, a teacher, and a preacher. Judaism admits that Jesus he was a real person, but not a rabbi in the strict sense of that word. There are many biblical scholars who give varied answers to the question of who the historical Jesus was. There are as many answers as there are scholars. Some see Jesus as a political figure, or a revolutionary figure or an apocalyptic figure. But all say he was an important figure. H.G. Wells wrote: “I am an historian, I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history."

Some religious people today say Jesus was a great spiritual teacher. Islam teaches that Jesus was a prophet. Hindus say that Jesus was an avatar, one of many earthly incarnations of the Hindu god Krishna; the Hare Krishna movement teaches this. Some Buddhists would say that Jesus was a bodhisattva, an enlightened human being. The Dalai Lama has said that Jesus was a bodhisattva. The Baha’is says that Jesus was a Manifestation of God. There are lots of variations of these ideas. There are lots of opinions about who Jesus was – both in Jesus’ day and in our own. And we could spend this whole service exploring these.

II. But Jesus moves the conversation beyond speculation. Jesus asks a follow-up question. Verse 15 “He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” This goes from a theoretical question to a personal question. What is your opinion? Every thinking person, who has heard about Jesus, has to answer this question for himself or herself. Some people take this question seriously and do a lot of thinking and research about it. Others just parrot what they have heard others say, or they give an “off the top of their head” answer without much thought. Some try to avoid a direct answer, and say that it is all a matter of personal opinion and there is no one correct answer.

Sorry, I don’t buy it. At some point we have to personally make a choice. Jesus said to his disciples, “But who do you say that I am?” Forget what other people think for a moment. What do you think is true? What is your opinion? Simon Peter answered and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” What does Peter mean by these words? The word Christ means literally “anointed one.” Priests were anointed and kings were anointed in ancient times. In fact lots of people were anointed with oil for all types of reasons. But in Peter’s time the title “the Anointed One” or Christ meant the long-expected Jewish Messiah, a figure prophesied in the Hebrew Scriptures.  People had different opinions about what the Messiah would be like and what he would do, but they all agreed that he would be sent by God to the Jewish people.

Peter went beyond this general understanding of the Jewish Messiah to take a specific interpretation of who the Christ would be. Simon Peter answered and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” There was no doubt what Peter meant by these words. He believed that Jesus was divine. There was no other way of interpreting the title Son of God. The official title of Augustus Caesar in ancient documents was “Emperor Caesar Augustus, son of god.” The image of Caesar and the phrase “Son of God” was on Roman coins that all people of the empire carried with them. Biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan writes, “You cannot understand Jesus without knowing that every silver coin in the world he lived in said that Caesar was the Son of God.” The term communicated divinity and authority. Everyone understood that. This title is what got Jesus in so much trouble with both the Roman governor Pilate and the Jewish high priest, Caiaphas. The Romans saw the title “Son of God” as treason, challenging the status of Caesar. The priests saw it as blasphemy, challenging the authority of God. They described it this way, “he said that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God.” Regardless of what your opinion is, it was Peter’s opinion that Jesus was the Son of God, which was a radical thing to say.

III. This is why Jesus responds to Peter the way he does, which is the third point. We have looked at the Crowd’s opinion and Peter’s opinion. This is Jesus’ Opinion. Verse 17 says, “Jesus answered and said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.” Jesus was saying that this statement by Peter went beyond one man’s personal opinion. Jesus said that this statement was a revelation from God. Jesus goes on to say that he was going to build his church on this revelation. Verse 18 “And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”

This truth seen by Peter - “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” - is the foundation of the Christian faith. It was revealed to Peter that Jesus is the Christ the Son of the living God. For Christians this is not an opinion. This is the scandal of the gospel. We live in an age where everything is considered a matter of personal opinion rules; everyone’s opinion is considered equally valid in our egalitarian religious culture. “In my humble opinion” is watchword of our age. It is so common that we have an abbreviation for it – IMHO. But the gospel is not a matter of opinion, no matter how humble. Jesus says it is a matter of revelation. He says, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you….” That means that it is not of human origin or interpretation. He goes on, “but My Father who is in heaven [has revealed this to you].”

How do we know that this is revealed by God and not just an opinion – Peter’s opinion or my opinion? I am just a human being standing up here in a pulpit saying this. How do you know that what I say is true and not just my personal opinion? In spiritual matters how do we discern that anything is ultimately? The brief answer is you don’t – unless it is revealed to you. If you just take my word for it then, in Jesus’ words, “flesh and blood has revealed this to you.” If you only take my word for it, then it is second-hand knowledge. Do not take my word for it. Do not believe it because I say it, or Christianity says it. Jesus did not want people to believe this second-hand. This is why Jesus told his disciples not to go around telling everyone this. In Mark and Luke’s accounts of this story, they add “Then He strictly warned them that they should tell no one about Him.” Biblical scholars refer to this as the Messianic secret. Jesus repeatedly warned his apostles not to go around telling people that he was the Son of God. Why? Because it would just be another religious idea in the marketplace of religious ideas. Then it would just be a doctrine to be believed, a point of theology to be accepted or rejected. That is exactly what this is not and must not become.

This story is not trying to get us to accept Peter’s theology. It is not about accepting as true what someone else saw. It is trying to lead us to see for ourselves what Peter saw. At that moment Peter saw something he had not seen before. He awoke to a reality that he had not recognized before. Jesus tells Peter that it was revealed to him by God. The words “reveal” and “revelation” literally mean unveiling. It describes something that is covered by a veil and is suddenly uncovered. At that moment Peter looked at Jesus and it was as if a veil had been removed from his eyes. He looked at Jesus and saw Jesus as he really was. He could see that Jesus was not just a man – a teacher, a rabbi, a healer - but he was the Christ, the Son of the living God. It was as if Peter looked at Jesus and could see through the man to his true nature as the Son of God. Jesus became for him a window to the Divine, a doorway to Heaven, an opening in time and space that led into eternity. This is what Jesus meant when he says, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father but by Me.” As Jesus says elsewhere: he is the door; he is the stairway to heaven. The Christian faith is not believing all the right things and doing all the right things. It is seeing God in Christ and entering the Kingdom of God through Christ.

This is what this story invites us to. Peter’s words must not be reduced to a religious doctrine that we accept based on religious authority. If it is only that, then it is no better or truer than any other spiritual teaching or religious doctrine. We should accept nothing just because a church, a religious leader or religion, or a preacher like me says it is true. That is just flesh and blood speaking.  We should profess only what we know, only what we see, only that which has been revealed to us. The Christian faith is based on revelation. It is not based on doctrines or creeds or ecclesiastical authority. It is based on seeing what is true, knowing what is true. And that truth is Jesus Christ. This is the foundation. Jesus said he is building his church on what Peter saw: “On this rock I will build my church.” This is bedrock; you can’t go any deeper than this. This is the key to the kingdom. This is what it means to enter the kingdom of God. This is the solid rock that the church of Christ is built upon, and the gates of hell cannot prevail against it.

Big Love Christian Diner

delivered July 31, 2011

Luke 7:36-50; Deuteronomy 6:1-9

There is a big purple van parked in the former parsonage owned by Dan and Rachel Kusch. It is called the “Big Love Mexican Diner.” Just for fun I thought that for the morning I would rename this Baptist Meetinghouse “The Big Love Christian Diner.” I do this in honor of a woman who served up some big love at a dinner in the home of a Pharisee name Simon 2000 years ago. In our Gospel story an unnamed woman exhibits unrestrained extravagant love for Jesus Christ. This type of thing happened at least one other time and possibly two other times. There was something about Christ that elicited this type of uninhibited demonstration of devotion. John’s gospel tells a similar story which happened in the home of Lazarus; it tells us that it was Lazarus’ sister Mary who was the one who anointed Jesus. But that happened later, very near the end of his life, and it seems to be a different event. Matthew and Mark also have a story of a woman anointing Jesus, and it may be the same event, but it is not certain. Luke’s account is so much more complete than the others that I am going to focus exclusively on this one this morning.

The story compares and contrasts two characters who could not be more different. The woman is identified as “a woman in the city who was a sinner.” It doesn’t tell us what her sin was. People often jump to the conclusion that it was some type of sexual sin. This is assumed because the woman let down her hair and was touching Jesus. Women didn’t touch men who were not family members in that culture, and that is true in many cultures today, including observant Jews today. But I think these actions say more about this woman’s attitude toward Jesus than the type of sin she had committed. The fact that so many interpreters assume it was sexual sin probably says more about the interpreters than about her. We have to be careful not to read our cultural bias into scripture stories.

The other character in the story is a Pharisee named Simon. Pharisees are badly misunderstood today. They have become caricatures of religious intolerance and hypocrisy. Let me just give you a little perspective on them. The two main religious groups that we see in the Gospels are the Pharisees and Sadducees. The Sadducees were the conservatives. They were in charge of the temple and the priesthood. They were clergy, religious professionals who controlled the sacrifices and rituals. As conservatives they held only to the oldest portion of the Bible - the Torah, the first five books of our OT. In Jesus’ day they had strong ties to the ruling Herodians. Herod the Great built them a beautiful new temple, and they were grateful.

The Pharisees were a lay reform movement based in the synagogues, which were local congregations found in most towns. The scribes, who also appear in the scriptures, were part of this movement. Pharisees valued scripture above ritual. They were not conservatives or fundamentalists like they are so often pictured. They were actually moderates for their day. The Essenes, another group which do not appear in Scripture but were a part of the religious picture at the time, were much stricter than the Pharisess, and the Sadducees more conservative than the Pharisees. The Pharisees had a broader view of scripture, accepting not only the Torah (the Law) but also the Prophets. They held such new ideas (for that time) as the resurrection of the dead and life after death – something the conservative Sadducees did not accept. Jesus’ teaching had much more in common with the Pharisees than the Sadducees or Essenes. The Pharisees emphasized personal morality as very important to the spiritual life. They shared the Sadducees high regard for ritual purity, but ethics was their focus. That is the point that comes to the forefront in our story.

First let’s look at the woman; I call her the sinner who loved Christ deeply. One of the Pharisees, a man named Simon, asked Jesus to come and dine with him. And it says, “³⁷And behold, a woman in the city who was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at the table in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster flask of fragrant oil, ³⁸ and stood at His feet behind Him weeping; and she began to wash His feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head; and she kissed His feet and anointed them with the fragrant oil.” This is all we know about the woman, but it is enough.

          She was a sinner. This is stated as a matter of fact. It doesn’t say that this was the opinion of Jesus or of the Pharisee. It simply calls her “a woman in the city who was a sinner.” The truth is that we are all the same in the eyes of God. According to Scripture we are all sinners, but that is not the point. The point is that this woman had a reputation. Every culture in every age has some sins that are looked down upon more than others. The type of sin is changes over time. Today there are certain sins that are considered by our society as particularly heinous.

The media hoopla over the recent murder trial of Casey Anthony is an example. For those of you who don’t know who she is, she is the Florida mother who was recently acquitted of murdering her two-year old daughter Caylee. I did not follow the trial, but it is hard to miss the media frenzy surrounding her acquittal. Apparently everybody thinks she did it – even the jurors - but the prosecution couldn’t prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, so she walked. It is today’s O.J. Simpson trial, except the victim in this case is an innocent child. In our society, sin against children is the unforgivable sin. Child molesters are scorned even in prison. Even criminals have ethical standards and child molesters and abusers are at the bottom of the ladder. Regardless of what the woman’s crime would have been back in Jesus’ day, which earned her so much scorn in her community, today she would be Casey Anthony or some child molester.

          So when you hear this story this morning, picture this woman as Casey Anthony. That changes our attitude toward this woman, doesn’t it? Normally when we read this story we are sympathetic toward this woman. I am. I immediately sympathize with the woman, and I am already judging the hypocritical Pharisee in my heart. But if we look at that story this way we will entirely miss the point. And it will not have the effect on us that it is meant to have. To understand this story we must assume that this woman had done something that we would consider horribly wrong. Look at her from that perspective. And now finish the story.

This woman went into this respectable religious leaders house uninvited. She had a flask of very expensive “fragrant oil, and stood at His feet behind Him weeping.” This incident would have gone on for several minutes, while all the dinner guests stared. She got down on her knees and “began to wash His feet with her tears.” She let down her hair to wipe his feet. In those days, a woman did not let down her hair except for her husband. Then she began kissing his feet and anointing them with the fragrant oil.  I am trying to imagine what a modern equivalent of her behavior would be today, but it is very difficult to do. Imagine what you would consider very inappropriate behavior at a dinner party you were hosting. Someone burst in uninvited into your home and did something very embarrassing to you and everyone present.  Imagine that and you begin to sense the emotional atmosphere in this house.

Yet what is Jesus’ reaction to her? She is described as a sinner, but he doesn’t see her that way or treat her that way. Neither does he see her behavior as inappropriate. He is not embarrassed by it at all. If I was having a dinner party and a woman came in and did this to me in front of a houseful of guests, I wouldn’t know what to think or feel. Jesus looks at this woman at his feet, and he thinks and feels clearly. He does not see a sinner; he sees a forgiven woman. He says so in verse 48 “Then He said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”  Forgiveness in the Bible means having a completely clean slate before God. It does not mean overlooking a person’s sins. It means that the sins no longer exist. Completely gone. This is so amazing that it is beyond our human ability to comprehend, and that is why so many people do not understand forgiveness or salvation.

Furthermore he sees her as a woman of faith. He says so in verse 50 “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.”  He says that she is saved by faith. One of the most scandalous aspects of the gospel is the fact that truly terrible criminals can be forgiven by God. People do not like the idea that a serial murderer who truly repents can receive the grace of God and eternal life. It offends our sense of justice and fairness. That is the scandal of the gospel. And this scandal is being proclaimed here. No wonder Simon and everyone else is offended, not only by this woman’s behavior, but by Jesus’s proclamation of forgiveness and salvation and faith and peace.

We do not like to admit it, we are much more like the Pharisee in the story than the woman. We have our ethical standards and our ideas about justice, and we judge by them. Every one of us does this. It doesn’t matter how open-minded and tolerant you consider yourself to be. It doesn’t matter if you are religious or nonreligious, conservative or liberal. There are some behaviors that we think are wrong, and some people whom we consider downright despicable. The point of this story is to confront our judging, and understand that no person is beyond the love of God and the forgiveness of Jesus Christ.

An interesting element of this story is that the transformation of this woman already happened before the story begins. This is not a conversion story. Whatever happened in this woman’s heart and soul happened before she ever entered that Pharisee’s house. She had already experienced the love of Christ in her life previously in some way. This was just her opportunity to express her thanks. We do not know how the transformation in her life came about. But we know that it was real by the way she acts toward Jesus.

That is the whole point of the parable that Jesus tells to Simon the Pharisee – which brings me to him. Simon sees the woman behaving in this inappropriate manner and he is upset. He is upset with her, and he is also upset with Jesus. Verse 39 says, “Now when the Pharisee who had invited Him saw this, he spoke to himself, saying, “This Man, if He were a prophet, would know who and what manner of woman this is who is touching Him, for she is a sinner.”  But his resentment toward Jesus really runs deeper than that. We know that because of how he treated Jesus before the woman even arrived. Jesus points this out to him later. Jesus says in verses 44f, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave Me no water for My feet, but she has washed My feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head. ⁴⁵ You gave Me no kiss, but this woman has not ceased to kiss My feet since the time I came in. ⁴⁶ You did not anoint My head with oil, but this woman has anointed My feet with fragrant oil.”

Simon did not perform for Jesus the customary acts of hospitality that that any guest deserved. Maybe this was intentional or maybe it was unconscious. It doesn’t matter. In either case it reveals Simon’s heart. He has not experienced the love and forgiveness of Christ in his life, and therefore demonstrates no love or forgiveness toward the woman or Jesus. We reveal our true spiritual condition by how we treat people and how we treat Christ. You can be as theologically correct as the greatest theologian who ever lived and it doesn’t mean anything without love for God and love for others. I don’t care how spiritual you appear to be – how profound your insights – without love it mean nothing. I don’t care what titles are in front of your name or what letters are behind your name. I don’t care what positions you hold or have held at any company or academic institution or religious organization. All that matters is your love. If you have experienced the love of God you will show your love to God. That is what this woman was doing. She did not care how her actions looked to anyone. How many times has that been true of us? How embarrassed believers are these days to show their love for Christ. This woman in this story puts us to shame. She loved Christ with a big love - wholeheartedly, unreservedly, extravagantly and unselfconsciously.

This is a picture of big love and big forgiveness. This woman knew that whatever she had done in the past, which earned her the name “sinner,” was gone in the eyes of Jesus and God. Maybe she did some truly terrible thing; but whatever it was, it was serious. But she had experienced the forgiveness of God, and she understood that Jesus was the source of that forgiveness. I wish I knew this woman’s story. Somehow she knew that she had been forgiven by God through Jesus, and that experience of forgiveness swelled up in her soul into extravagant love. She couldn’t wait for the proper moment and the proper setting to express it. She couldn’t wait til Sunday morning worship. She heard that Jesus was going to be in this Pharisee’s home and so she grabbed the most costly thing in her house and poured it out as an offering at the feet of Jesus while crying tears of gratitude.

This is the gospel. This is true Christianity. This is what are lives look like that have been touched by the grace of God. If our lives do not resonate with this woman,  we have to wonder if we know the forgiveness of God like this woman did. That is why Jesus told the story about the two debtors. “⁴¹ “There was a certain creditor who had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. ⁴² And when they had nothing with which to repay, he freely forgave them both. Tell Me, therefore, which of them will love him more?” ⁴³ Simon answered and said, “I suppose the one whom he forgave more.” And He said to him, “You have rightly judged.”…. ⁴⁷ Therefore I say to you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little.”  How much have you been forgiven? How big is your love for Christ? This woman loved much for she had been forgiven much. “But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little.”