sermon preached
at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Bellingham, WA
by the
Rev. Josh Hosler, Associate Priest for Adult Formation
The Third Sunday in
Lent, Year B, March 4, 2018
I’m here to share a
little foolishness with you in the form of a story.
Once upon a time
there was a Creator who made a universe. And the Creator put creatures in the
universe and gave them the ability to become creators themselves. The Creator
gave them a space in which to create and said, “It is very good.” But it didn’t
stay that way. The creatures chose a path of fear and scarcity. They gave in to
their worst impulses and abused and murdered one another. They grieved their
Creator and broke the relationship.
So the Creator made a
series of deals with the creatures: “If you’ll listen to my advice and heed it,
we’ll have a good relationship.” The Creator sent a Law, and then the Creator
sent prophets to correct the creatures when they failed to follow it. And
finally, when it became clear that none of this was working, the Creator launched
a rescue mission. The Creator became the Created and lived among the creatures
on their own terms, for the span of one human life, subject to all the changes
and chances of that life. Jesus called disciples, healed the sick, and spoke
words of comfort and challenge: the Good News that the Creator’s community of
love was in the process of arriving.
And then the
creatures killed him. They mocked Jesus for his foolishness, abused him,
tortured him, and hung him on a cross to die.
But then—then!—in the
sneakiest twist of all, Jesus came back from the dead to say to those who had
been closest to him: “OK, I’ve done it. It’s all been repaired. You have
nothing more to fear. You are citizens of my community, and I love you
eternally. Trust me, and you will benefit from my love. Now go and spread this Good
News!”
Many of the creatures
rejoiced at the Good News and rushed to share it, but nobody really understood
it completely, and there wasn’t unanimous understanding of what made the News
so Good or how exactly it had taken effect. In fact, the evidence was sketchy that
it had had any effect at all. Most of the creatures went on in fear and
scarcity and kept on abusing and murdering one another—including many of those
who most ardently proclaimed the Good News. But others told the story
compellingly, and as a result, some learned to live lives of thankfulness, joy,
and self-sacrificial caring. So here we are today, the inheritors of a story in
which the Creator becomes the created, dies, and saves the unwitting world of
creatures who still struggle to understand just what happened there.
Does this story make sense
to you? Or does it just sound like foolishness?
Paul writes to the
Corinthians, “The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are
perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God … For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and
God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”
We all know what it
feels like to be foolish and weak. It’s not a good feeling, so we spend much of
our lives avoiding it. We shore ourselves up with money, education,
possessions, street smarts, influence … we grab onto anything we can to avoid
foolishness and weakness. But sooner or later, it all fails us. Sometimes we do
look ridiculous. Sometimes we do run up against the limits of our strength. At
the end of the day, we are all, always, foolish and weak.
Death is the epitome
of these things. Death comes to snatch every last one of us away, foolish
creatures who act as if life goes on forever—weak creatures who try to stay
alive and fail. Every last one of us.
I think that’s the
key.
If the Creator wanted
to rescue all of us, why not do so
using the very mechanism that we are all fated to experience? Only some of us
gain lots of knowledge, or a measure of security, or a host of praise from
others. Not everyone. So these can’t be saving mechanisms. Only the thing
toward which we are all heading—only death—is the universal experience. So of
course, only death can be the door to eternal life.
But mark this
carefully, because this is crucial: eternal life is not merely something we
have to wait for. Our task is not to hang around waiting for the salvation of
death. Remember how sneaky this Creator is. The mechanism of death has been
built backward, so that every time we experience the foolishness and weakness
that are a foretaste of death, we are actually participating in our own rescue!
This part is a little
harder to grasp, but I myself have experienced it. I have gone through crises
of faith, of employment, of self-confidence, of health, of good things
ending—all of which have deepened my dependence on God to provide a hope that I
cannot manufacture. Now, whether God sends crises into my life is for me to wonder about, not you. Likewise, I
wouldn’t dare offer that interpretation about anything specific in your life. Above all, I don’t believe
that God brings harm upon us. To whatever degree God’s hand is in our various
crises, it is exclusively for opening up new possibilities for Love.
This is my challenge
to you, and to me, too: to trust that the Creator is creatively involved, not
only at the beginning and at the end, but at every point in the middle as well.
“See! The home of God is among mortals,” we hear in the Revelation to John. In our
times of happiness and security, the Creator is with us, sharing our joy. When
tragedy occurs, God is the first to cry. And through our everyday foolishness
and weakness, we are in the process of being saved.
This story rings true
to me—maybe just because it is so bizarre. And not just enough to make me say, “Yeah,
I’ll go along with that,” but also, “Not only will I go along with that, but
I’ll build my life around it!” In baptism, we audaciously take this Christian story
of salvation through weakness, which can be told in so many different ways, and
entrust ourselves to it. Not everybody is going to adopt the Christian story,
but that’s not our concern. We only need to share it: to say to those we meet
and love, “Look! Here is my story, and here is this ridiculous, sweeping back
story, and here’s how the one fits into the other.” And then see what happens.
See how the Holy Spirit decides to move.
It’s hard to be a
creature of the Creator. We’re always looking for the right answers, because
wisdom makes us feel better about ourselves. And we’re always looking for signs
that we’re on the right track: if not a burning bush, then anything at all. The
temptation is always there to shore ourselves up, to make ourselves less
vulnerable to attack. But when we acknowledge to one another that we are all
foolish and weak—when we become this vulnerable—we make ourselves easier to
love. Nobody really loves those who think they have it all figured out; there’s
no joy there. Joy grows out of vulnerability.
Jesus knew
that—learned that? Being human, he learned the whole range of human emotions,
including anger, as we hear in the gospel today. A lot of people wield anger as
a sword or a shield. But in reality, anger makes us more vulnerable because
it’s so honest. And I think that when Jesus shows us his anger in the Temple, it
is driven by love.
 |
| The march from Selma to Birmingham, 1965 Source: assets.pewresearch.org |
Our college group,
EPIC, has been on retreat here at St. Paul’s all weekend. Yesterday we watched
the film Selma, reflected on the work
of Martin Luther King, Jr., and mused on the responsibilities of white folks to
dismantle racism in our society. One of the main emotions the film brought out
for us was anger: righteous anger at the white people who were perpetuating
these injustices. We couldn’t help but bring the conversation up to our own
times, where naked bigotry in Charlottesville last summer drove home for us
just how much growing white folks still need to do. We wondered about Dr.
King’s commitment to nonviolence: was it foolishness? Or was it the power of
God and the wisdom of God? And naturally, we came around to today’s gospel
reading, of Jesus in the temple.
At one point in the movie
Selma, a New York Times reporter says to Dr. King, “You say you’re committed
to nonviolence. But aren’t you inciting violence?” King replies that his work
is to hold white folks accountable for the violence they have always
perpetrated in secret—to bring it out into the light where it can no longer
hide. Dr. King took his example from Jesus himself, the Creator who became the
Created and exposed the evil in all of us.
On that day in the
temple, Love demanded that injustice be opposed as publicly as possible. In the
face of injustice, righteous anger is the holiest of responses. By expressing
his anger, Jesus shows us God’s heart.
When you feel angry, ask
yourself: “Does this anger come from fear and urge me toward self-protection? Or
does it come from love and urge me to risk?” If it comes from fear, watch out! This
is the enslaving force that God is trying to rescue you from. But if your anger
comes from love, you can risk a creative course of action. “What would Jesus
do?”—well, he might flip tables. He might pick up a whip and drive all the cattle
out of the temple.
Jesus became angry
out of love for God and for his fellow Jews. When we address the injustices of
our times—racism, financial inequity, the abuse of those with less power—we,
too, are to act out of love. We can do this by staying grounded in the
conviction that all our fellow creatures are to be loved, simply because we are
all creatures of the Creator. Have you, at some point, been called to force a
crisis for the sake of Love?
So that’s what I’ve
got for you today: Jesus’ righteous, loving anger, and Paul’s foolish
proclamation. Is that enough? I pray that the foolishness of the gospel will
always be enough to guide me. May I become an absolute fool in the eyes of the
conventionally wise. And I hope you might foolishly join me in it. Let us go to
great, gutsy lengths to love one another and to keep sharing the Good News of
this ridiculous, saving story. Amen.
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