Moving In
Sermon
Sermons On The Gospel Readings
Series I, Cycle C
Philip Yancey, the best-selling author, once holed up in a mountain cabin for two weeks during a Colorado winter. His intent was to bring a stack of books and do some work on several writing projects. What happened instead is that he opened only one book: the Bible. He began at Genesis and read straight through as the snow fell, six feet of fresh powder in all. By the time he reached the book of Revelation, Yancey had to call someone to clear the driveway. "The combination of snow-muffled stillness, isolation from all people, and singular concentration changed forever the way I read the Bible."
What struck Yancey the most was that our common perceptions of God simply do not square with the way the Bible actually portrays God. For example, we tend to perceive God as all-powerful but also rather aloof -- mighty and eternal, but also rather emotionless. Yancey instead discovered a God who was "not a misty vapor but an actual Person. God feels delight, and anger, and frustration. Again and again he is shocked by human behavior." Yancey was reminded that the God of scripture cannot do just anything. "The Bible shows God's power to force a Pharoah to his knees and reduce mighty Nebuchadnezzar to a cud-chewing lunatic. But it also shows the impotence of power to bring about what God most desires: our love."1
Today Jesus is going away. He is preparing his disciples for his departure. And in John he takes almost four chapters of unbroken speech to do it. One of the disciples asks a very understandable question. "Lord, how will we know you after you leave?" There's more than a hint of separation anxiety in that question. Jesus tells the truth. "Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words."
"We will make our home with them." Isn't that a great expression? Earlier in this same chapter (14:2) Jesus said, "In my Father's house there are many dwelling places." It's a verse often read at funerals. Jesus has plans for us. He will take us to a "dwelling place" when we die. And between now and then he will also "make his home" with us right here if we keep his word. What we don't see in English is that these are the exact same words in Greek -- "dwelling place" and "home." We will indeed "go home" one day. But Jesus decides to rent a room in our hearts right now, long before we get there. The idea all through the Gospel of John is that heaven begins right here on earth. But there is a condition attached. Jesus will move in with us now only if we are keepers of his word.
"The weirdest corruption of contemporary American Protestantism," wrote William Stringfellow in 1967, "is its virtual abandonment of the Word of God in the Bible."2 Is that too harsh? Over thirty years later is it fair to say that the modern church has "virtually abandoned" the Word of God? "Those who love me will keep my word," says Jesus. "Whoever does not love me does not keep my words." Let's go a step further. What if you don't know the words to begin with?
On a recent week-long bicycle trip on the Blue Ridge Parkway, I carried a small New Testament and a collection of Wendell Berry poems among other much heavier things like peanut butter. One of the poems, titled "The Snake,"3 kept playing theological tag with the daily lectionary readings from Luke and Romans. The poem is set in late fall and the narrator comes upon a swollen snake, almost completely disguised in the dead leaves, whose belly is "thickened with a mouse or small bird." The snake is so engaged with the basic act of digestion that he hardly takes the trouble to flick his tongue. The narrator picks up the snake and holds it a long time, "thinking of the perfection of the dark marking on his back" and the "death that swelled him." When winter comes, the snake is remembered. Berry writes:
Now the cold of him stays
in my hand, and I think of him
lying below the frost,
big with a death to nourish him
during a long sleep.
It's been a while since I've read a poem that has so thoroughly jarred me awake. That's me, "lying below the frost," where I spend so much of my emotional time. That's us, "big with a death to nourish him." That's us, gathered at the communion table week after week, feasting on the death and life that will finally awaken us from the cold. Perhaps Berry doesn't intend these theological images. It doesn't matter. When our experience, even an innocent walk through the woods, rubs up against the story of Jesus, something amazing happens and we catch our collective breath because we see for the first or five hundredth time that we're in the story and not just listening in. "Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them."
I read recently of an Episcopal congregation that had gone through a building program and experienced some problems with the installation of new carpet. The carpet built up this huge charge of static electricity either due to dryness in the air or some odd propensity of the rug itself. During the liturgy, the pastor intoned the words of blessing, lifted the chalice to the lips of an assisting minister, and watched in horror as a sudden electrical discharge knocked this man flat on his back. My source goes on to report, "In fact, parishioners were so consistently shocked that it became customary to serve an acolyte first and let him or her absorb the initial and most charged jolt. The acolytes, in turn, would draw straws to assign this somewhat sobering duty."4
Beyond the rather bizarre similarities to child sacrifice in this story is a parable of truth for congregations like ours. Perhaps Holy Communion should be more like a jolt of grace than a sweet sip of kindness. Perhaps the Eucharist should knock us on our duffs because it is attempting to re-arrange our priorities and introduce us into the story much like Saint Paul was thrown to the ground one fine day on the way to Damascus.
In the Parkway campgrounds on our bike trip, the bathrooms were referred to as "Comfort Stations." That amused me somewhat because that phrase pretty much describes the central paradigm for the American congregation. Are we a "Comfort Station" that dispenses sympathy, kindness, friendliness, understanding, accommodation to the culture, and little else besides comfort? Is that what a church is for? Or is there more to it than that?
Many are familiar with the various biblical gaffes from Sunday schools across the nation making their way around the internet these days. You know -- "Noah's wife was called Joan of Ark," "The seventh commandment is thou shalt not admit adultery" or "When Mary heard that she was the mother of Jesus, she sang the Magna Carta." A professor of Bible at a Lutheran school recently wrote: "Nearly all the students in a typical undergraduate class at a church-related college consider themselves Christians, and most come from families more or less active in a church. Nevertheless, the world of the Bible is a mostly foreign land."5 I find those words both sad and alarming. To use again the words of William String-fellow, is it off-base to admit to the "virtual abandonment of the Word of God in the Bible" in our churches today?
In holing up in a cabin for two weeks during a snowy Colorado winter, Philip Yancey discovered something about the God of the Bible. God's power, though obviously impressive, cannot bring about the very thing God most desires: our love. Jesus wants to make a home with every human being. But being in church on Sunday can't ensure this. And your name on a membership roll is not really what the man is talking about. Jesus needs room. "Those who love me will keep my word."
One of my candid confirmation students recently told me that reading the Bible was so confusing that it was like listening to a foreign language. There is a lot of truth in that statement. For those of us with children, we have a couple of options. We can, for example, try to force church, Bible, and God down the unwilling throats of the young while we still have time. Writer Anne Lamott was once asked why she made Sam, her young, resistant son, go to church. "I make him because I can," she said. "I outweigh him by seventy-five pounds."6 What parent hasn't fought this battle?
One of the best ways to teach a new language to children, however, is to become conversant with the language yourself. And so here are a few suggestions: Turn off the television. Read the Word daily. Study the Word faithfully. Help shape the Bible curriculum for adults and children here in our congregation. One does not learn French or basic piano scales all at once. We must begin. We must continue. We must re-commit.
People of God, so much is at stake. In fact, if I'm reading this lesson correctly today, everything is at stake. "Those who love me will keep my word, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words."
We will make our home with them.
Our attention to the word will determine whether Jesus has moved into our lives to set up house, even down below the frost. Or whether he has slowly been served with an eviction notice while we weren't looking.
____________
1. Philip Yancey, I Was Just Wondering (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans, 1998), pp. 153-55.
2. Bill Wylie Kellerman, ed., A Keeper of the Word: Selected Writings of William Stringfellow (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans, 1994), p. 167.
3. Wendell Berry, "The Snake" Openings (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), p. 9.
4. Rodney Clapp, A Peculiar People: The Church as Culture in a Post-Christian Society (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1996), p. 112.
5. Frederick Niedner, "Ground Zero: Forming Students Through the Bible" The Christian Century (April 18-25, 2001), p. 16. Both the quote and the anecdotal sayings are from this article.
6. Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999), p. 100.
What struck Yancey the most was that our common perceptions of God simply do not square with the way the Bible actually portrays God. For example, we tend to perceive God as all-powerful but also rather aloof -- mighty and eternal, but also rather emotionless. Yancey instead discovered a God who was "not a misty vapor but an actual Person. God feels delight, and anger, and frustration. Again and again he is shocked by human behavior." Yancey was reminded that the God of scripture cannot do just anything. "The Bible shows God's power to force a Pharoah to his knees and reduce mighty Nebuchadnezzar to a cud-chewing lunatic. But it also shows the impotence of power to bring about what God most desires: our love."1
Today Jesus is going away. He is preparing his disciples for his departure. And in John he takes almost four chapters of unbroken speech to do it. One of the disciples asks a very understandable question. "Lord, how will we know you after you leave?" There's more than a hint of separation anxiety in that question. Jesus tells the truth. "Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words."
"We will make our home with them." Isn't that a great expression? Earlier in this same chapter (14:2) Jesus said, "In my Father's house there are many dwelling places." It's a verse often read at funerals. Jesus has plans for us. He will take us to a "dwelling place" when we die. And between now and then he will also "make his home" with us right here if we keep his word. What we don't see in English is that these are the exact same words in Greek -- "dwelling place" and "home." We will indeed "go home" one day. But Jesus decides to rent a room in our hearts right now, long before we get there. The idea all through the Gospel of John is that heaven begins right here on earth. But there is a condition attached. Jesus will move in with us now only if we are keepers of his word.
"The weirdest corruption of contemporary American Protestantism," wrote William Stringfellow in 1967, "is its virtual abandonment of the Word of God in the Bible."2 Is that too harsh? Over thirty years later is it fair to say that the modern church has "virtually abandoned" the Word of God? "Those who love me will keep my word," says Jesus. "Whoever does not love me does not keep my words." Let's go a step further. What if you don't know the words to begin with?
On a recent week-long bicycle trip on the Blue Ridge Parkway, I carried a small New Testament and a collection of Wendell Berry poems among other much heavier things like peanut butter. One of the poems, titled "The Snake,"3 kept playing theological tag with the daily lectionary readings from Luke and Romans. The poem is set in late fall and the narrator comes upon a swollen snake, almost completely disguised in the dead leaves, whose belly is "thickened with a mouse or small bird." The snake is so engaged with the basic act of digestion that he hardly takes the trouble to flick his tongue. The narrator picks up the snake and holds it a long time, "thinking of the perfection of the dark marking on his back" and the "death that swelled him." When winter comes, the snake is remembered. Berry writes:
Now the cold of him stays
in my hand, and I think of him
lying below the frost,
big with a death to nourish him
during a long sleep.
It's been a while since I've read a poem that has so thoroughly jarred me awake. That's me, "lying below the frost," where I spend so much of my emotional time. That's us, "big with a death to nourish him." That's us, gathered at the communion table week after week, feasting on the death and life that will finally awaken us from the cold. Perhaps Berry doesn't intend these theological images. It doesn't matter. When our experience, even an innocent walk through the woods, rubs up against the story of Jesus, something amazing happens and we catch our collective breath because we see for the first or five hundredth time that we're in the story and not just listening in. "Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them."
I read recently of an Episcopal congregation that had gone through a building program and experienced some problems with the installation of new carpet. The carpet built up this huge charge of static electricity either due to dryness in the air or some odd propensity of the rug itself. During the liturgy, the pastor intoned the words of blessing, lifted the chalice to the lips of an assisting minister, and watched in horror as a sudden electrical discharge knocked this man flat on his back. My source goes on to report, "In fact, parishioners were so consistently shocked that it became customary to serve an acolyte first and let him or her absorb the initial and most charged jolt. The acolytes, in turn, would draw straws to assign this somewhat sobering duty."4
Beyond the rather bizarre similarities to child sacrifice in this story is a parable of truth for congregations like ours. Perhaps Holy Communion should be more like a jolt of grace than a sweet sip of kindness. Perhaps the Eucharist should knock us on our duffs because it is attempting to re-arrange our priorities and introduce us into the story much like Saint Paul was thrown to the ground one fine day on the way to Damascus.
In the Parkway campgrounds on our bike trip, the bathrooms were referred to as "Comfort Stations." That amused me somewhat because that phrase pretty much describes the central paradigm for the American congregation. Are we a "Comfort Station" that dispenses sympathy, kindness, friendliness, understanding, accommodation to the culture, and little else besides comfort? Is that what a church is for? Or is there more to it than that?
Many are familiar with the various biblical gaffes from Sunday schools across the nation making their way around the internet these days. You know -- "Noah's wife was called Joan of Ark," "The seventh commandment is thou shalt not admit adultery" or "When Mary heard that she was the mother of Jesus, she sang the Magna Carta." A professor of Bible at a Lutheran school recently wrote: "Nearly all the students in a typical undergraduate class at a church-related college consider themselves Christians, and most come from families more or less active in a church. Nevertheless, the world of the Bible is a mostly foreign land."5 I find those words both sad and alarming. To use again the words of William String-fellow, is it off-base to admit to the "virtual abandonment of the Word of God in the Bible" in our churches today?
In holing up in a cabin for two weeks during a snowy Colorado winter, Philip Yancey discovered something about the God of the Bible. God's power, though obviously impressive, cannot bring about the very thing God most desires: our love. Jesus wants to make a home with every human being. But being in church on Sunday can't ensure this. And your name on a membership roll is not really what the man is talking about. Jesus needs room. "Those who love me will keep my word."
One of my candid confirmation students recently told me that reading the Bible was so confusing that it was like listening to a foreign language. There is a lot of truth in that statement. For those of us with children, we have a couple of options. We can, for example, try to force church, Bible, and God down the unwilling throats of the young while we still have time. Writer Anne Lamott was once asked why she made Sam, her young, resistant son, go to church. "I make him because I can," she said. "I outweigh him by seventy-five pounds."6 What parent hasn't fought this battle?
One of the best ways to teach a new language to children, however, is to become conversant with the language yourself. And so here are a few suggestions: Turn off the television. Read the Word daily. Study the Word faithfully. Help shape the Bible curriculum for adults and children here in our congregation. One does not learn French or basic piano scales all at once. We must begin. We must continue. We must re-commit.
People of God, so much is at stake. In fact, if I'm reading this lesson correctly today, everything is at stake. "Those who love me will keep my word, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words."
We will make our home with them.
Our attention to the word will determine whether Jesus has moved into our lives to set up house, even down below the frost. Or whether he has slowly been served with an eviction notice while we weren't looking.
____________
1. Philip Yancey, I Was Just Wondering (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans, 1998), pp. 153-55.
2. Bill Wylie Kellerman, ed., A Keeper of the Word: Selected Writings of William Stringfellow (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans, 1994), p. 167.
3. Wendell Berry, "The Snake" Openings (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), p. 9.
4. Rodney Clapp, A Peculiar People: The Church as Culture in a Post-Christian Society (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1996), p. 112.
5. Frederick Niedner, "Ground Zero: Forming Students Through the Bible" The Christian Century (April 18-25, 2001), p. 16. Both the quote and the anecdotal sayings are from this article.
6. Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999), p. 100.
