Pile of Debris

Genesis 1:1-2:4a | Psalm 8 | 2 Corinthians 13:11-13 | Matthew 28:16-20 

Listen to it here.

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A few years ago, I worked at a church in San Francisco that opens its doors every friday of the year to the whole city to come buy their food without money: The Food Pantry at Saint Gregory’s distributes thousands and thousands of pounds of food every year, and they set it out all around the altar, which stands in the middle of the sanctuary.

The people line up outside: Chinese grandmas, homeless parents, hungry college students, curious onlookers, strung out meth-addicts.  They all bunch up outside and then come in through the church’s front doors, making their way around the stacked piles of oranges and cabbages and bread and frozen chicken breasts and fill their various bags and suitcases.

There are no requirements for getting food other than showing up. You don’t have to live in a certain place or have an income below a certain line.  All you have to do is show up.  And, what was even more surprising to me, even shocking to that part of my self that wants the “right” people in charge: the people who run the Pantry, a giant enterprise, are all people who originally came for food.

Almost all of them have been on and off the street since their first visit, and more than one of them has more than a passing acquaintance with methamphetamine or heroin.  Surely, I caught myself thinking, the Food Pantry is being run by the wrong people.

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All through the history of Israel, God always does this: God is *always* choosing the wrong people.

God chose to protect Cain, who murdered his brother, rather than condemn him to death.

God took a shepherd boy, the youngest son, and made him king of Israel.  David, that king, then went on to arrange murders and commit adultery, and yet somehow, God managed to make good out of this very imperfect man.

Paul, the man who some Biblical scholars call the “Second founder of Christianity” started his career by having Christians stoned to death, and Peter seemed to spend most of his time confused and contradicting his teacher.

These are the people that God seems to like choosing, and we see it again today, here at the very end of Matthew’s Gospel.

When we meet the disciples, they have been hiding out in Jerusalem, doing their best not to meet the same end as their friend Jesus, maybe mulling over just exactly what they might have done to prevent the grisly execution that most of them were too afraid even to come witness.

Or thinking about how futile it had all been.  How powerful the forces were that had been arrayed against them, how foolish Jesus had been to have even tried.

And then, their friends Mary come breaking into their rooms, telling them that Jesus isn’t dead after all, jabbering on about earthquakes and visions and how they have to go back to Galilee and that Jesus will meet them there.

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How hard do you think it must have been to get up and leave that room.  To get up and travel the hundred or so miles north to Galilee, back to where it had all started, to meet the friend that you had betrayed and that you had *seen* dead.

If it had been me, and I had heard that Jesus was back, I think the first thing that would have entered my mind would have been, “Oh, no… he’s going to be *so* mad at me…”

One way or another, though, they did head north, back home.  I imagine a kind of desperate expectation both to meet Jesus there, and maybe hoping, after all, that he wouldn’t show up.

But he did.  Jesus came to them.

He meets them, and even in the face of this appearance, though they worship, some are still doubting.  There he is in front of their faces, and yet they are still confused, still wondering what can possibly be going on.

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In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus doesn’t have much to say to the disciples when he meets them after the Resurrection.  But what he does have to say is perhaps the most shocking, absurd thing he has said yet.

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Jesus spent his life making the authorities angry and inviting the wrong people into fullness of life.  He touched unclean people and told them they were clean.  He ate dinner with sinners and made them his friends.  He did these things and got killed for it.

It wasn’t that he was doing miracles or attending feasts.  It was that he was touching unclean bodies and revealing their wholeness at the times the authorities had told him he was not supposed to do so.  It was because he was inviting the wrong sorts of people to his table and treating them as though they were beloved by God.

In the specialized lingo of seminaries and church work, this is what we call having “bad boundaries.”  Rather than keeping a decorous distance from the people he is serving, scheduling office hours and only becoming just as involved as he needs to in order to send the person on their way, Jesus breaks the rules that have been set for him.  He knocks down the boundaries that have been set up by people of good faith to keep society running as it’s supposed to.

Over and over again, Jesus goes to the people that he shouldn’t and gives them the love and power that they cannot possibly deserve.

And all along, people would ask him, “By what authority do you do this?”

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And so here, on the mountaintop, after days of desperation, fear, and confusion, the disciples come to Jesus in doubt and in faith, and to all of them, he says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

Jesus is claiming authority that no human being is supposed to have.  He’s taking authority from all the rulers, all the parents, all the husbands, all the soldiers, all the guards, all the governors.  He is even claiming as his the authority of God herself.

“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” Jesus says.

As any of you who have done much study of Old Testament will know, name have power.  Names are more than just labels for people in Hebrew thought: they are the essence of the person themselves.  And so for Jesus to put himself on par with the name of the Father and the Holy Spirit, is a boundary-crossing of the most provocative sort.

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A fully-articulated theology of the Trinity would only emerge after centuries of struggle and conflict and even treachery and backstabbing (again, we see the kinds of people that God likes to choose), but even from the earliest days of the Church, the disciples knew that in this man from Galilee, they had met God in a new and unique way.

And what the Church would come to understand is that in characteristic fashion, God herself had shown just how bad her boundaries really are: God went so far as to enter creation itself and live a human life, with all of its messes, embarrassments, joys, and confusions.

Jesus is able to claim God’s authority because, in a way that the disciples could only begin to imagine, Jesus is himself an encounter with God’s own self.  Meeting him, they meet God.

Only God is not how they expected: Not in great power and majesty, but in a convicted and executed criminal.  The God they met joins them in their humanity, rather than demanding that they ascend to him in perfection.

God did what God always does: showing up in unexpected places, offering food to the hungry, making servants out of those enslaved to the worst that the world has to offer.

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And so, perhaps with many of the same doubts that the disciples had as they met Jesus there on the mountaintop in Galilee, we are allowed to overhear his instructions to them.  Jesus is not content merely to appear to his friends: he comes to them, and then puts them to work. “Go, make disciples of all nations,” he says.

I do not care if you don’t think you believe enough or don’t think that you are the right kind of person, he says.  Go, you doubtful and questionable people: I love you, and am inviting you into the work of breaking open the heart of the world, so that there might never be a “wrong” sort of person again.

You can find the audio of this sermon here.

Isaiah 11:1-10 | Romans 15:4-13 | Matthew 3:1-12 | Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19

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When I was twelve, growing up in rural San Diego County, I remember standing out on our deck, leaning out as far as I could to see the tongues of flame lapping up from behind the hillside in the wide expanse of brush between between our house and town.  Tall, red flames, twenty or thirty feet high I could see, and because it was evening, only faint black smudges of smoke that rose up, lit from below.  On and on the fires burned, but away from us, so there was no need to worry.

Later on, when I was in high school, I remember coming back from a backpacking trip in Yosemite, driving down the Five, through the path of a wildfire, still burning off to the west.  Again, I could see the tall, red and orange flames eating up the hillside, consuming the dry brush and leaving a charred wasteland behind.  Scorched, ashy, shades of dark gray and black.  I remember thinking about the contrast between this utter devastation and the beautiful alpine lakes and seemingly untouched wilderness I had just left.

And then just a few years ago, I walked around Camp Stevens, the Episcopal camp in San Diego, walking amidst the wreckage of the fire that had all but destroyed the place.  Hillsides of matchsticks that had once been trees, and a pile of rubble that had once been the camp’s chapel.  Fire ran through the camp, eating up everything it could touch, taking, consuming, destroying.

And it is with these memories in mind that I hear the words of John the Baptist: “His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”  Unquenchable fire.  These are not the words of a Christmas carol or an Advent hymn.  For most of us, these words do not come as tidings of comfort and joy.  We are waiting for the birth of our savior.  We wanted a King who would bring justice, and instead, he is coming to take what we have and burn it all away.

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In the earliest days of the church, those first Christians did something naughty.  Something illegal, really.  They took titles that justly belonged to the Emperor and stuck them on somebody else.  Somebody dead.

Look around you as you go out into the mess of holiday shopping that the world has suddenly become, and listen to the music, look for the signs.  They’re getting fewer and farther between as Christmas becomes more and more thoroughly secularized, sanitized and sterilized, but here and there you will still see and hear the old titles, “Prince of Peace,” “Son of God,” “King of Kings.” It’s no secret anymore that these are names that were more properly attributed to Caesar, to the Emperor.  And in putting this titles on the name of a dead, crucified criminal, the early Christians were daring the authority of the Empire to come crashing down on them like a tidal wave, to wash them away as though they had never existed.

In the Roman Empire, as in all empires in human history, the titles of Prince, Lord, and King have always meant power.  They have meant power of the strong over the weak, the rich over the poor, men over women, the deserving over the undeserving.  Rome had claimed these titles on account of their Roman Peace.  “The sheep are safe,” they said, “because we have killed the wolf.  The Lambs and cows and children are safe, for we have killed the lion and the bear and exterminated the asp and the adder.  Your are safe because we are strong.  We are the king who makes you safe, the Lord who gives you security.  Truly the Emperor is the Prince of Peace.”

But the early church took the old titles and did something else with them.

Two weeks ago, we heard Luke’s account of the story of Jesus’ crucifixion.  The disciples and all of Jesus’ followers had built up their hopes for the liberation of Judea.  They were sure that this man was their promised king, the one who would save them from the oppression of Rome.  This is the man that will punish the wicked and reward the righteous.  This is the king, the True King.

Only, he wasn’t.

Jesus was executed.

The Romans did put a sign over his head that read “The King of the Judeans.”

“There is one emperor, one Caesar,” the Romans said, “and this, is what we think of your ‘king’.”

The disciples panicked. They had run and fled into the fire Jesus had lit on the cross, and through it, met Jesus resurrected.  He met them in their fear and took it away, like the fire consumes a hillside.  Their dreams of power and delusions of fear were eaten up by the pain of the cross.

And only then did see, and they looked up to the cross and said, “Yes.  This is our king.  This is what we mean by kingship.  This man, hanging on a cross.  Tortured to death and shamed.  This is our king.  The Prince of Peace and Lord of Lords.  This man is the Son of God.

When we say King, we do not mean you.  We do not mean your power.  We mean this.  A helpless victim.  His innocence burns away the lies of your power, your promises of peace that come at the expense of our bodies.  You have not killed the wolf, the lion, the bear: you are the wolf who eats the sheep the lion who eats the lamb.  And in his innocence, this man exposes your fears.  Your fears that if you do not eat us you will go hungry.  That if you do not poison us, there will not be enough for you to eat.  But this man you have crucified offers you more than that.  ‘Come, dine with us‘ is his invitation, for there is more than enough and no need to fear.  Here is our King,” they said.  “Here is his mighty judgement.”

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And it is into this path that we are invited in this season of preparation.  We are invited by God as we prepare to celebrate the Incarnation of God in human history by walking into the unquenchable fire and having our fears burned away.

What are you afraid of this Advent?  What is looking you in the face and claiming its power over you?    What in you needs to be burned away, left by the roadside as you walk along the way that we are called to follow.  Because the fire is not optional.  We have that clearly from John the Baptist’s mouth.  And we know.  We know what it’s like to have your illusions burned away.  The lies unmasked, the truth laid bare.  And the truth hurts sometimes, right?

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The first Christians paid for their crime.  They were hunted and persecuted, betrayed and put to death.  Failing to give the right offerings to prove their loyalty to the empire, they were executed just as their king was.

And in the days and years that followed, their fear was burned away, leaving faith and hope.  Looking forward to the future without knowing what it held, only trusting that Christ was going ahead of them.

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There is nothing that I can say that will make the next few weeks, the next few years of any of our lives be more simple.  Easier.  Less painful.

The days between Thanksgiving and Christmas have become almost proverbially chaotic.  Nothing I can say will make them less so.  But we are invited in the gospel into a different vision of the chaos of our lives.  Cleansed in the fires of baptism from the power of our fears, our histories, our broken relationships to determine our lives, our desires, our ability to see one another,  we are freed to begin again the work of reconciliation.

We come to this table each week, together in our disagreements and differences, to join now the feast at which wolf dines with sheep and lion with lamb.  To fear neither that we will be eaten or will go hungry, but rather to feast together.

We no longer need to fear that our relationships need always be broken or our hopes always dashed.  We are invited to die to those fears and live again in hope, looking for foundations of the kingdom ruled not in power, but in the spirit of wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

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A few years after I visited the camp that had burned, I returned to work as a chaplain.  I remember walking up and down the hillsides, still marveling at the skeletal black tree trunks that lettered the landscape.

The camp had almost finished rebuilding, and green shoots were growing from the stumps of the old.  The fire had burned and left rich, rich soil.  New life had begun.