From Generation to Generation: We Can Choose a Better Way

This is how the birth of Jesus Christ took place. When Mary his mother was engaged to Joseph, before they were married, she became pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Joseph her husband was a righteous man. Because he didn’t want to humiliate her, he decided to call off their engagement quietly. As he was thinking about this, an angel from the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife, because the child she carries was conceived by the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you will call him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” Now all of this took place so that what the Lord had spoken through the prophet would be fulfilled:

    Look! A virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son,

        And they will call him, Emmanuel. (Emmanuel means “God with us.”)

When Joseph woke up, he did just as an angel from God commanded and took Mary as his wife. But he didn’t have sexual relations with her until she gave birth to a son. Joseph called him Jesus. 

--Matthew 1:18-25 (CEB)

Holy is God’s name, who shows mercy to everyone, from one generation to the next, for those who honor God. Amen.

I’ve mentioned to you before that, when I was 14 years old, my father committed suicide. Painful and traumatic as that experience was for our family, it was made even more painful by the response of my paternal grandfather. My father’s father. Who blamed my mother for my dad’s suicide. Who in his own hurt and pain over the death of his son, my father, chose to strike out. To hurt her. 

Today, we hear a similar story. A story of pain and hurt. But, it is a story with a different ending. A story that teaches us that we can choose a better way.

Being engaged in Joseph’s day was a fully contractual affair. A legally binding contract. Usually decided upon by two fathers. In other words, an arranged marriage. This was the situation between Mary and Joseph. But then, Joseph learns that Mary is pregnant. As far as he knows, his new wife has been unfaithful to him. As a faithful Torah follower, Joseph knows that, in the case of adultery, the Torah commands that both the adulterer and the adulteress were to be put to death. This is what Joseph could have demanded.

But, quickly, we learn that he doesn’t choose this way. Instead, he decides to divorce her quietly. To call off the engagement. To dissolve the marriage contract. 

But, even this kinder, gentler response is not God’s plan. Enter another divine interruption. An angel. Who appears to Joseph in the middle of a dream. Who first words - as with Mary last week - were, “Don’t be afraid.”  Who says, continue to choose a better way. Choose to stay with Mary. Choose to become an adoptive parent. Choose peace over violence. Choose grace over condemnation.

We might ask why it took the intervention of a celestial being for Joseph to make these choices. To not abandon his partner, even though, under the Law, he was fully justified in doing so. It’s easy for us to condemn him for simply wanting to walk away. To point a finger at him for wanting to preserve his life. Because to remain with Mary would not at all be the easy choice with all that could be put at risk. His reputation. His livelihood. Even other relationships. Walking away was the easier thing. Walking away was justified, wasn’t it? Oh, how we want to condemn Joseph!

But, aren’t we a lot like Joseph? Every day we are faced with opportunities to choose a better way. To put our power and privilege at risk. To do what is right. Yet how often do we decline to engage? Especially when it might put our relationships at risk. Or our jobs. Or our reputation.

Every day we are faced with opportunities to choose peace over violence, whether that is physical, emotional or psychological violence. Instead, like my grandfather, we strike out against or blame those who have hurt us - whether the hurt is real or perceived - and seek to harm them. With our words or our actions. Or both.

Every day we are faced with opportunities to choose grace over condemnation. To go directly to the person who has hurt us and offer forgiveness. Or to confess our error. To stay in the game and in the relationship, especially when it would be so much easier to simply walk away.

There is a reason God has written the law on our hearts. Not to condemn us, but to nudge us in a different direction. To nudge us to be people of a different way. To relinquish the hurt or the shame to which we so tightly cling. To let go of our woundedness, which is what so often drives our need to strike back - woundedness that may come from the situation at hand, but, more likely, from some deep, deep hurt we carry with us.

Imagine if Joseph had not heeded God’s command to take Mary as his wife. What might have happened to her and her newborn child? How might the Christmas story unfolded in a much different way if Joseph had made a different choice?

You and I. We are redeemed by this Jesus. Joseph's son. Emmanuel. God with us. You and I are called to that different way. That different highway envisioned by the Prophet Isaiah in chapter 35 - that Holy Way. A way not traversed by the unclean but by those walking on that way. Where even fools won’t get lost. Where no predators will exist. Only the redeemed will walk on it - those the Lord has freed. Who will return and enter Zion with singing, with eternal joy upon their heads. Where happiness and joy will overwhelm them. Where grief and groaning will flee away.

Sadly, my grandfather never apologized to my mother. Never chose that better way. But, the rest of his family - of my extended family - did. They wrapped their arms around us and held us up, walking the way with us in our grief and loss, loving us, helping us heal and return once again to a place of happiness and joy. They, like Joseph, chose a better way.

With God’s help, you and I can, too. Amen.

Preached December 11, 2022, at Grace & Glory, Prospect, with Third, Louisville.

4th Sunday of Advent

Readings: Matthew 1:18-25; Isaiah 35:1-10

Readings

Unraveled: Unraveling Shame

 Jesus had to go through Samaria. He came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, which was near the land Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there. Jesus was tired from his journey, so he sat down at the well. It was about noon.

A Samaritan woman came to the well to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me some water to drink.” His disciples had gone into the city to buy him some food.

The Samaritan woman asked, “Why do you, a Jewish man, ask for something to drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” (Jews and Samaritans didn’t associate with each other.)

Jesus responded, “If you recognized God’s gift and who is saying to you, ‘Give me some water to drink,’ you would be asking him and he would give you living water.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, you don’t have a bucket and the well is deep. Where would you get this living water? You aren’t greater than our father Jacob, are you? He gave this well to us, and he drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.”

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks from the water that I will give will never be thirsty again. The water that I give will become in those who drink it a spring of water that bubbles up into eternal life.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will never be thirsty and will never need to come here to draw water!”

Jesus said to her, “Go, get your husband, and come back here.”

The woman replied, “I don’t have a husband.”

“You are right to say, ‘I don’t have a husband,’” Jesus answered. “You’ve had five husbands, and the man you are with now isn’t your husband. You’ve spoken the truth.”

The woman said, “I know that the Messiah is coming, the one who is called the Christ. When he comes, he will teach everything to us.”

Jesus said to her, “I Am—the one who speaks with you.”

Just then, Jesus’ disciples arrived and were shocked that he was talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?” The woman put down her water jar and went into the city. She said to the people, “Come and see a man who has told me everything I’ve done! Could this man be the Christ?” --John 4:4-18, 25-29 (CEB)

She came to our food pantry one day, a few minutes after we had closed. When we told her we were closed, she burst out in tears. In the midst of her tears, we heard her story. She was a mother of four sons. Trying to survive after her husband had walked out on her and left her all alone. She’d driven by our food pantry for a year - a whole year - unable to stop by, to get food, this mother of four boys who we’d later learn had her PhD. All because of her shame. 

Shame. It’s at the heart of this story today. This story of the woman at the well. Notice that I didn’t say the “adulterous” woman at the well. Because, the truth is, nowhere does the text say this. 

Sure, Jesus reveals that she has five husbands. That the man she’s living with is not her husband. But he does not condemn her. Because there are many possible explanations for this. Explanations that are reasonable, perhaps even more typical. Explanations that are within the bounds of the Torah. Yet, explanations that have rarely been considered, perhaps even dismissed, as so many commentators, so many preachers have viewed this text for far too long with a patriarchal lens. A lens that resists other possible explanations. A lens that we, in the church, along with so many other lenses, have been challenged to unravel. 

Because this lens would much rather accept Jesus’ offer of good news to the Samaritans - a people hated by the Jews and vice versa -  than to her. A woman. A Samaritan woman. A despised Samaritan woman. Of questionable moral character. Or who lacks the intellectual and theological ability to engage with Jesus in serious conversation. Both interpretations of this text that delegitimize her (and any woman, if we’re honest) as a conversation partner for Jesus and as a receiver and proclaimer of the gospel. 

So, instead, she is shamed. Not only by our patriarchy, but by hers, as well. And, perhaps, she has begun to believe this shame, too. Perhaps, that’s why she comes to the well at noon - the hottest time of the day, when no one else - no other women - would be there. Because it is so much safer - so less risky - to simply be alone. And isolated. So as not to trouble the waters. So as not to feel ashamed.

But, then, Jesus speaks to her. And in one of the longest conversations by far in the Gospels that he has with anyone, Jesus names her truth. Her woundedness and isolation. Her shame. And, in naming it, begins to unravel it.

Dr. Brene Brown is a sociologist and a researcher on shame. For six years she researched shame before she began to write about it. Why? Because, as she puts it, “shame is this horrible topic, no one wants to talk about it. It’s the best way to shut people down on an airplane. ‘What do you do?’ ‘I study shame.’ ‘Oh.’” When we begin to talk about patriarchy or whiteness. Sexism or Racism. Or privilege. She writes that when we begin to talk about these things, people get paralyzed by shame. Because “shame is the most powerful, master emotion. It’s the fear that we’re not good enough.”

But, here’s the thing. We cannot unravel those things in our lives, in our world, without addressing the shame - the shame Adam and Eve felt in those first moments after eating the apple - the shame that is at the heart of our human brokenness. Shame that tells us that we are not good enough. And shame that then drives us to wound others.

What shame in your life needs to be unraveled? Where is your woundedness? What is the thing that you spend so much energy trying to heal through so many insufficient ways? Relationships? Religion? Success? More degrees? More therapy? Working out? Busy-ness? Perfectionism? Aspects of aging? Aspects of youth? Whiteness? Othered-ness? There are a million ways we seek to isolate ourselves or to use substitutes for God to try and make sure our woundedness - our shame - is not known.

But Jesus knows. Jesus knows this deep and hidden part of us. And Jesus loves us for who we have been created to be, people in God’s image. And, then, Jesus calls us, just as he called the woman at the well, to be his apostles. At this time. In this place. In this moment of great disruption in his Church. In this moment of great disruption in our world. To do the risky work of unraveling. Faithfully. 

But, it’s hard work. This work of unraveling. And it’s difficult to find hope in the midst of it. Where can we find that hope? Where can we find Jesus in this work of unraveling?

I would suggest right here. Here, in our midst, in this space, as we have begun to unravel our own frameworks of thinking and ways of being, as we have argued and wept together, it is here. Where we have witnessed hope for the church God desires, the church God has called us to be. It is here where Jesus has been. Present in the midst of our shame and all our unraveled-ness. Knowing us. Building trust. And weaving us together into a rich tapestry of the diverse and beautiful community God has created us to be, that God hopes for us, for the whole church, for our world, and for all creation. 

For this I say, thanks be to God. Amen.

Who We Are: Consolation

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

We have returned to Corinth, where we were in the spring, as we worked through portions of Acts and 1st Corinthians. Today, in the first of five weeks, we move to Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. But, before we begin, let’s check in about what we remember about Corinth and, particularly, about the church that Paul planted in Corinth. 

We know that Paul first arrived there in about the Year 51. Paul was there for about a year-and-a-half, working in both as an apostle and as a tentmaker, which was his trade. After this time, he then moved onto plant a church in Ephesus. 

Corinth was an important cosmopolitan city, located on an important isthmus. It was a strategic political and military location for the Romans, including being the governor’s seat for the entire region of Achaia. 

We know that the church in Corinth was beset with division. There were many, many issues. Most of them, if you recall, revolved around status. Some of the conflict was between believers who had been converted by different apostles and claimed superiority over others. There was also an issue around economic status - those who were wealthy refused to eat with those who were poor, including for the weekly agape meal. 

The divisions resulted in frayed and shattered relationships within the Corinthian church. So bad, in fact, that Paul made a trip back to Corinth from Ephesus, where he had been moved. And, apparently, based on evidence we find in 2nd Corinthians, during that visit harsh words had been exchanged. 

Even after that visit, things were not resolved. So, Paul sent Titus back to Corinth with a letter - one that we don’t have but that is referenced in Paul’s writing. This letter was a harsh and corrective communication from Paul. The result was that there was a deep sense of woundedness between Paul and many in the congregation. Much of this woundedness revolved, once again, around status. But, this time, it was about Paul’s own status as an apostle. His status and integrity had been challenged by other apostles arriving in Corinth from Jerusalem. Who these other apostles were, we don’t really know. However, by the time this fourth letter, which we know as 2nd Corinthians, is written, Paul is calling them “false apostles.” 

In writing his letter, Paul does not address it to these false apostles, but to the congregation at Corinth. Because it is with them that Paul seeks reconciliation - something that is important to him because he views them as co-workers - as partners - in this ministry of reconciliation, in Christ’s ministry of reconciliation.

It is here where we begin. Paul opens gently. We read from 2nd Corinthians, chapter 1.

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,

To the church of God that is in Corinth, including all the saints throughout Achaia:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God. For just as the sufferings of Christ are abundant for us, so also our consolation is abundant through Christ. If we are being afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation; if we are being consoled, it is for your consolation, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we are also suffering. Our hope for you is unshaken; for we know that as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our consolation.

We do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, of the affliction we experienced in Asia; for we were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death so that we would rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He who rescued us from so deadly a peril will continue to rescue us; on him we have set our hope that he will rescue us again, as you also join in helping us by your prayers, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many. --2 Cor. 1:1-11 (NRSV)

I want us to take a closer look at the central portion of today’s text - verses 3 through 7. In this section is something that Paul often does as he begins a letter. He starts with a prayer or a blessing where he lays out before God the main theme he wants to get across to his readers. This is what Paul is doing in these first verses of 2nd Corinthians.

Do you notice anything interesting about this paragraph? We’ve talked before about the importance of repetition. If we take a close look at these verses, we see that Paul uses the word, consolation, or some form of it, ten times in these five verses. What’s interesting is that Paul only uses this word 25 times throughout the entire letter. But here, in just five verses, he uses the word ten times. So, what’s up with this?

If we dig deeper into the Greek, the verb that is at the root of all of these words is the word parakaleo, which means to instill someone with courage or cheer. To comfort them. Or to encourage them. Particularly, it means to come near. 

Paul’s approach at reconciliation is not to insist that he is right. Or to command the Corinthians how they should act or respond. But, instead he addresses them using the word, consolation. His desire is to overcome the strain that has taken place. The way to do this is to come near and speak words that will change the mood or the situation. This will then give courage, or a new hope, or a new direction, or new insight into what the future may look like. In using this word, Paul is intentionally meeting the Corinthians where they are. Just as God meets us where we are.

Contemporary theologian Ben Witherington writes that Cicero once suggested that “‘the ability to placate or reconcile was a sign of greatness in human character.’ If this is so, then perhaps 2nd Corinthians, more than any of Paul’s other letters, reveals his largeness of soul.” These words of encouragement, of comfort, of cheering up, of coming near are Paul’s way of affirming the Gospel message of a God - of our God - who raises up the dead. Just as human conflict led to Jesus’ resurrection, God’s own message of resurrection is a refusal to let human conflict dictate the future. 

Paul believed that failure to achieve this reconciliation would endanger the very Christian identity of the Corinthian church, since Paul was Christ’s agent - Christ’s apostle - to this church. To be alienated from Paul was to be alienated from the One who sent him. So, it is not only the heart of Paul’s ministry that is at stake, in his mind, it the very heart of the Corinthians’ faith that is at stake.

But there are a few more repeated words in this passage that we must pay attention to. We might think that the same Greek word would be used for affliction and suffering, given their similarity in meaning. However, in this passage, this is not the case. In fact, there are three different Greek words that translate in English as either affliction or suffering. Let’s look at each one separately.

The first word is thlipsis. This word, like consolation, is mentioned more often by Paul than any other New Testament writer and more so in 2nd Corinthians. It can refer to either external suffering or internal suffering. Specifically, it refers to suffering that has been experienced.

The second word used for suffering or affliction is pathema. This word generally refers to the suffering that Jesus experienced. His tribulation here on earth.

The third, and final word, is pascho. Notice that this word is only used once. It’s a word that Paul uses rarely and in different ways. In 1st Corinthians he uses it to describe the general sense of suffering that any Christian might know. In Galatians he uses it to describe a general experience of suffering. In 1st Thessalonians it refers to persecution. But here, as in Romans and Philemon, pascho is used by Paul to refer to the suffering that we share with Christ. Yet, this is different from how the word is used in other parts of the New Testament, where it is never used to refer to the suffering of believers, but only of the suffering of Jesus himself.  So, what is Paul doing here?

In connecting his suffering with that of Christ, Paul is connecting the Corinthian church to that same suffering. He’s emphasizing to them that there is a partnership or koinonos in both the suffering and consolation that is experienced by members of the body of Christ. He is bound to the congregation just as he is bound to Christ. 

When Christ suffers, we, as the body of Christ, suffer. When one of us suffers, the whole body of Christ suffers. Through our baptisms into the body of Christ, we are all interconnected - brought together in our suffering and our consolation.

This is important to Paul, and to us, because what is not promised is immediate relief from our afflictions or our suffering. But what is promised is that they can be endured. Specifically, they can be endured when they are understood as the sufferings of Christ, and the same sufferings that the apostles have known. And through which the gospel has been proclaimed. These are the same sufferings shared by the whole body of Christ. As members of this body, the Corinthians - and we - are called to be conformed to Christ’s own life-giving death. And to live obediently in expectation of the final glory that is to come. 

Paul’s hope for the church in Corinth, as with us, is that we will be members of the body of Christ who live out that partnership. Who understand that in sharing in the suffering and consolation of Christ as with one another, we also share in the final glory of Christ.

What hope this gives us in this time in which we are living! Knowing that as we suffer, whether it is from division, or physical illness or disease, or anxiety, or whatever affliction we experience, we are not alone. But we are partners with Christ, claimed by him, and brought into community with one another. So that we might be comforted. And that, together, we might endure. And find hope in the overwhelming power of God to bring life out of death. 

Thanks be to God! Amen.

Preached July 19, 2020, online at Grace & Glory Lutheran Church, Goshen, KY.

7th Sunday after Pentecost

Readings: 2 Corinthians 1:1-11; John 14:25-27