[Note: This sermon was preached at Natalie Gessert's ordination at Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church in Fairfax, VA, tonight.]
Allow me to bring in a topic that is of a holiness suitable to this sacred event, that is, suitable to the setting apart of an actual sinner to word and sacrament ministry. The holy thing I want to tell you about is truly a sacred realm: World of Warcraft. In case you’re not one of the 11 and a half million subscribers worldwide, World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role playing game, or MMORPG. You get to pretend you’re in an alternate world with giants, orcs, dwarves and the like. You maneuver through the world, gaining skills, encountering other players and, when necessary, going into battle.
In WoW it’s always helpful to gain an arsenal of weapons should you need to fight. Along with such things as the Arcanite Steam-Pistol and the Smashing Star of Arcane Wrath, one of the many weapons available to you is the Royal Diplomatic Scepter, which you can get from the Dark Iron Ambassador. You use it one-handed and it inflicts damage in the 37-69 range.
Of course, I really know nothing about World of Warcraft and the Royal Diplomatic Scepter. I’m more of a Candyland kind of guy and leave the online role playing games to my college students. But I do know about biblical scepters. A scepter is a crucial prop in the story of Queen Esther’s rescue of the Hebrew people from certain death. In our first reading tonight, Esther could not help her adopted father Mordecai, because she hadn’t been invited into the presence of the king. It would not do to enter the royal chambers uninvited, without being pointed at by the king’s golden scepter. To cross the threshold into King Ahasuerus’ inner court and go where you didn’t belong meant certain death. Esther told Mordecai that was the one law. It all depended on that single rule, on the royal and arbitrary whim of a king who may or may not look upon you with favor.
Scepters regularly appear in ancient stories as the symbol of royal power. They represent the king’s will. In The Iliad, the weak king Agamemnon sends Odysseus off to treat with the Achaeans. He lends his ambassador his royal scepter, so that Odysseus carries with him the authority of the throne. In Esther, to receive a point of the golden scepter is equal to the king speaking a word of welcome. It indicates the king’s will.
Natalie, I have brought you a glorious plastic royal scepter from our local party good store. Treasure it always, for it required an arduous quest through miles of Halloween paraphernalia-stocked aisles to find it. Come up here and get it, but be careful with it, because this is the equal to Ahasuerus’ golden scepter. It’s a scepter designed for wielding power. This is a scepter that makes demands on the one it points to. It’s a scepter of glory, of required and active righteousness.
Ah, yes – righteousness, it’s a fine, fine thing. As the Israelites in Deuteronomy say, “The LORD commanded us to obey all these decrees and to fear the LORD our God, so that we might always prosper and be kept alive, as is the case today. And if we are careful to obey all this law before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us, that will be our righteousness.” (Deut. 6:24-25) And as Micah asks, “What does the LORD require of you, but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God” (6:8). In order to get the nod, the flick of the divine scepter, you must, must fulfill all righteousness. All righteousness? All. You don’t just get to do a bit o’ honey-flavored justice, or kinda, sorta like kindness, or act humble. No. God requires it all. You want entry into God’s inner chambers? Then love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind.
Go ahead. Choose to do that, okay? We’ve got some time here. I won’t make you come up for an altar call (it’s a Lutheran worship service, after all). Go ahead; say it with Joshua and his family in the Promised Land: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” That’s better, isn’t it? You’ll eat your Powdermilk Biscuits and do what the medieval Scholastic theologians said, “Facere quod in te est” (or, as Larry the Cable Guy translated it, “Git ‘er done”). Will you? Yes, I will.
And there’s the rub, right there in those four little letters, w-i-l-l. Will. Will you? Will you be righteous? Will you be the one your heavenly king requires you to be? In just a few moments, Natalie will be asked four times about her intentions, about what her will is in carrying out the ministry to which she’s called. My guess is that, when you say you’ll love God, do justice and git ‘er done for God, your intentions are not much better than Natalie’s. And I know her intentions are about as strong and durable as a square of Charmin hanging on the spindle in my bathroom at home.
If you are to gain the scepter’s nod, the good graces of your Lord and God, it will take something more than your flimsy assertions of a good will. When you and Natalie say, “I will,” sinners that you are, your will will last about as long as it takes to get that last lingual “L” to roll off your tongue. And then it’s back to the more pressing business of building of your own Disneyfied kingdom where you need not worry about other royal whims or the slings and arrows of outrageous divine fortune. When you’re the one with all the glory, you can be the flicker of scepters.
Natalie, the temptation to pick up that scepter is a strong one for pastors. As you know from putting countless second-year seminarians through their paces on the Lutheran Confessions mid-term, Philip Melanchthon devoted an entire long article in the Augsburg Confession to the temptation of this scepter. It’s titled, “On the Power of Bishops.” Lest anyone think, I’m going to go after present company here, please know Melanchthon was talking about the power God grants to all public proclaimers of his Word. The Confessions are clear. The power of bishops, pastors, preachers and popes lies not in wielding the rod of the Law, not in civil power, worldly might or organizational acumen, much less in winsome charm or psychotherapeutic chops. It lies solely in the one, little, devil-subduing thing that we Lutherans sing with such fervor whenever “A Mighty Fortress” is trotted out on Reformation Sunday.
The power that Natalie has in her hands, before, during and after the laying on of hands, with or without an historic episcopate, from the time that clear water flowed over her in baptism to the last shovel of dirt and “Ashes to Ashes” at her grave – this power is the Word of God and only the Word of God. So let’s get something straight. Your seminary’s mission statement notwithstanding, Natalie, you have not been called to be a leader in the church. You have been called instead to be a servant of the Word, this Word of whom John speaks in the glorious prelude to the Bach invention that is his gospel. It is the same Word who comes to do clean-up at the end of Revelation: the Word of God riding in on his white horse with a sword pointing at sinners from his mouth and his own name tattooed on his thigh (yes, Jesus has a tattoo – look it up in Revelation 19).
Unlike the scepter of Ahasuerus, the Word that God sends via Natalie’s (sometimes too active) mouth is a Word that brings life out of death. My dear and fellow sinner, you have been called out of the baptized to publicly bear this Word in a broken and fallen world. It is a Word who is the last thing we sinners would expect or want. The saving Word of God you will serve is no glorious Ahasuerus condemning the Jews in exile in Persia with little thought or care. This Word, Jesus Christ, present from the beginning, wasn’t even recognized by his own. The folks back home in Galilee wanted to toss him off a cliff. The fine upstanding righteous and religious ones in Jerusalem, who knew they were good enough to enter God’s inner chambers, took one look at him and said, “Crucify him. But take the cannoli.”
It’s an ignominious end. Hanging on a cross hardly makes Jesus look like he’s able to do anything for himself, much less for sinners. And yet… And yet, this cross is God’s very throne. As Hebrews (1:8) says, “Your throne…will last forever and ever, and righteousness will be the scepter of your kingdom.” Everything changes in Jesus. No longer does the divine scepter demand your righteousness. Christ’s righteousness is the scepter that flings it your way. It’s the scepter of his righteousness that makes you worthy. No activity or deed or desire or intention of your own, but his work, his dirty, dying deed done dirt cheap, his cross. His crossbeam-bruised shoulders carry you into God’s holy of holies.
And Natalie tonight you are set apart to deliver those goods. I warn you, though; it’s not a shiny happy job for shiny happy people. It’s grunt work and often dispiriting to bring a Word that runs so counter to the world’s expectations of power. As we say on the prairies of South Dakota where I come from, a lot of times you’ll go home feeling like an excremental epithet. But it will happen way more often if you think you’ve been elevated to some vaunted position because you have a shiny scepter of glory.
So here’s the deal, and a heckuva a deal it is: Your real scepter is one no one would ever suspect. If you lined up all the scepters of the world’s kings and queens, monarchs and muckety-mucks, you’d never pick this one out as able to do the trick. It has neither gold nor silver, nor rubies and onyx. The scepter you are bestowed tonight is made of wood and rubber and little gold paint. As the psalmist says, this rod and staff brings sweet comfort. So come up here again and take this toilet plunger for your office to display alongside your framed copies of “Footprints in the Sand.” And let it be a reminder to you of where you will find ears ready to hear, who are hungering and horny for this living Word.
You’ll find those ears in the most fetid places, in the septic field of sin and brokenness. You will find these ears wherever the demands of life break your people down. You will find them scrambling to cobble together a life, managing calendars and shaky finances. You’ll see them popping zits and fretting about making the team, making the grade or making “it.” You will discover ears to hear when you enter into dark nights of the soul. The ends of the rope, the bottoms of glasses, the real-life versions of crash test dummies’ walls: These are all the places where we sinners come to know the truth: On my own I cannot attain the righteousness required. I believe I cannot by my own understanding or effort even do something as simple as believe.
So, Natalie, you are called to go where Ahasuerus’ legal scepter says, “Off with their heads!” You are called to point your new scepter, saying, “Sinner, the righteousness of our crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ is yours.” In fact, my young Padwan, at this very moment you are surrounded by these very sinners. Stand up and give that scepter a go. Point it at us, for we know our sin. And deliver the goods for we have ears to hear. We’re waiting for some absolution to come trippingly off your tongue. [Natalie speaks the absolution.]
And you my dear fellow forgiven sinners, do you believe this unlikely Word? The scepter of the Law says, “Do this, and it is never done.” But the scepter of the gospel says, “Believe this, and it is already done.” Your salvation is given you both this very night and whenever and wherever the Holy Spirit moves this newly minted pastor to point a plunger, open her sassy mouth and let fly with God’s promise in Christ Jesus. So get busy, Natalie. Fling. Flick. Point. Plunge. Forbear. Forgive. All in Christ’s name. You can count on our good Lord to help and guide you, for the King of Kings has opened his inner chambers just as the stone was rolled away from the tomb. Natalie, it’s time. The Word is given. Sinners await you. Bring us in. Please. Amen.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Monday, March 30, 2009
God's work. Our brands.
The ELCA is rolling out a series of ads to be aired during television’s sweeps month in May. We don’t know how much developing the marketing campaign cost, but the church’s website does tell us about “our brand” and its tagline “God’s work. Our hands.” Apart from wondering why the verbs haven’t shown up for the tagline party, we should ask what exactly is being sold here. We ought to consider what the ads reveal about the church’s core outcomes.
I currently sit on a faculty committee established to design a revised core curriculum for my school. We have spent the better part of the school year sitting around a table discussing research, best practices, trends in hiring and the like. The committee defined and the faculty as a whole approved four core outcomes for all we do at the University: critical inquiry, communication, global awareness and vocation. Our next task is to design a course of study for all students in all majors that will produce competence in each of those outcomes.
When they walk across the stage at commencement, we should be able to say that we have used the tools of our curriculum to create graduates who are able to demonstrate the outcomes in their personal lives, in work, in community and in church. We ought to be able to show to any accreditation team how the curriculum advances students toward those goals. And the outcomes should be self-evident in the very structure of our primary tool, the curriculum. Surely the leaders of the ELCA and its marketing team must have similarly considered what the church’s outcomes are and the tools of the ad campaign must self-evidently reflect those outcomes.
In the March 16 New Yorker, movie director and screenwriter Tony Gilroy speaks of the reversal as a useful trope. A good script will lead the audience on and then flout expectations by reversing the plot. It’s a trope used in the ELCA’s ads. In the first ad on the church’s website, a nice clean table is set with sparkling dinnerware and white linens. A waiter beckons to the diners and we see a crowd of dingy, ragged people. We learn it’s not really a restaurant but Trinity Lutheran Church feeding the homeless and providing them with “dignity” as their first course. In the second ad, a West African woman walks to a school with a child. We imagine she is dropping the child off for a day of learning, but are surprised to discover that the woman is the student. She is learning to start her own business, and the first lesson is “hope.” It’s all beautifully shot and the reversals are clever. It’s all so very nice and self-congratulatory. Who wouldn’t want to connect with such a cool, caring organization?
One of my homiletics professors in seminary used to ask about our attempts at proclamation, “Did Jesus have to die for this sermon to be preached?” It’s a good question to ask about these ads. The crucified and risen Jesus has always been the center of our faith, from the women at the tomb to the boys walking home to Emmaus, from Paul heading to Rome to Luther standing there doing no other at Worms. Yet in these ads our Lord is given what could charitably be called only a cameo role, if that. A cross floating in a bowl of soup in the first spot and a couple crossed pencils on top of a book in the second are the only allusion to the crucified and risen one.
Jesus simply did not have to die for us to air these ads. The cross in each spot is no different from Josephus’ report in Antiquities of the Jews: The token crosses in the ads report tangentially that a crucifixion happened, but don’t proclaim what our Lord’s death does for either the fictional the sinners in the ad or the real ones watching it. Because the ad campaign the ELCA is flogging on its website and will air does not extend the proclamation of God’s mercy in Christ to the godless and sinful (to me), it is not evangelism. Instead it is marketing. In the web site’s own words, it is branding. It comes across as an effort whose goal is the salvation not of people, but of the denomination – a salvation from the ravages of ongoing membership losses and diminishing benevolence. Intentional or not, the ads seek to further the ELCA’s self-continuity by recruiting from the ranks of suburban do-gooders who want to feel good about being connected to important causes.
It’s not as if do-gooding is a bad thing. Melanchthon, after all, dedicated Article VI of the Augsburg Confession to the topic of the new obedience. But if the ELCA’s public witness sent through our digital television sets begins with good works, we’ve done the potential viewers of these ads a grave disservice – as in, we’ve left them in the grave of unfaith. Like any number of well-meaning preachers, the ads assume that we have all the faith we ever need. All that’s needed is a religious version of the US Army’s “Be all you can be,” or Nike’s “Just do it.” These spots are a glimpse into the job description of successful suburban living and meaningful, relevant engagement with the world that the church holds out for us as our telos.
What’s missed are the first five articles of the Augustana. We can’t begin our public proclamation with a pleasant charity’s proposal you can respond to by hitching up your free will and getting on board the justice train. Instead, gospel preaching begins with an understanding of sin and God’s work in Christ to remedy it. If Article IV on justification is truly the article by which the church falls or stands, you wouldn’t know it by these ads. It’s because they are not what Article V calls the office of preaching, the delivery of the law and gospel described in Articles II and III.
Thus, while our branding and tagline, “God’s work. Our hands,” may produce the outcome of more adherents to the work of the social service agency the ELCA seems to present itself as in its coming marketing efforts, they cannot bring a commensurate increase in the numbers of what Luther, in his sermon in Castle Pleissenburg (LW 51:311-312), called the Heufflein Christi, the little band of Christ. We’ve turned our backs on what Melanchthon declared the church to be: the place where the word and sacraments are present in such a way that sinners like me have come to believe.
I’ve begun to wonder whether my not taking a stand for the sake of the gospel in my church hasn't moved God in his great displeasure to withhold true preaching from this church, from this world and from this sinner.
I currently sit on a faculty committee established to design a revised core curriculum for my school. We have spent the better part of the school year sitting around a table discussing research, best practices, trends in hiring and the like. The committee defined and the faculty as a whole approved four core outcomes for all we do at the University: critical inquiry, communication, global awareness and vocation. Our next task is to design a course of study for all students in all majors that will produce competence in each of those outcomes.
When they walk across the stage at commencement, we should be able to say that we have used the tools of our curriculum to create graduates who are able to demonstrate the outcomes in their personal lives, in work, in community and in church. We ought to be able to show to any accreditation team how the curriculum advances students toward those goals. And the outcomes should be self-evident in the very structure of our primary tool, the curriculum. Surely the leaders of the ELCA and its marketing team must have similarly considered what the church’s outcomes are and the tools of the ad campaign must self-evidently reflect those outcomes.
In the March 16 New Yorker, movie director and screenwriter Tony Gilroy speaks of the reversal as a useful trope. A good script will lead the audience on and then flout expectations by reversing the plot. It’s a trope used in the ELCA’s ads. In the first ad on the church’s website, a nice clean table is set with sparkling dinnerware and white linens. A waiter beckons to the diners and we see a crowd of dingy, ragged people. We learn it’s not really a restaurant but Trinity Lutheran Church feeding the homeless and providing them with “dignity” as their first course. In the second ad, a West African woman walks to a school with a child. We imagine she is dropping the child off for a day of learning, but are surprised to discover that the woman is the student. She is learning to start her own business, and the first lesson is “hope.” It’s all beautifully shot and the reversals are clever. It’s all so very nice and self-congratulatory. Who wouldn’t want to connect with such a cool, caring organization?
One of my homiletics professors in seminary used to ask about our attempts at proclamation, “Did Jesus have to die for this sermon to be preached?” It’s a good question to ask about these ads. The crucified and risen Jesus has always been the center of our faith, from the women at the tomb to the boys walking home to Emmaus, from Paul heading to Rome to Luther standing there doing no other at Worms. Yet in these ads our Lord is given what could charitably be called only a cameo role, if that. A cross floating in a bowl of soup in the first spot and a couple crossed pencils on top of a book in the second are the only allusion to the crucified and risen one.
Jesus simply did not have to die for us to air these ads. The cross in each spot is no different from Josephus’ report in Antiquities of the Jews: The token crosses in the ads report tangentially that a crucifixion happened, but don’t proclaim what our Lord’s death does for either the fictional the sinners in the ad or the real ones watching it. Because the ad campaign the ELCA is flogging on its website and will air does not extend the proclamation of God’s mercy in Christ to the godless and sinful (to me), it is not evangelism. Instead it is marketing. In the web site’s own words, it is branding. It comes across as an effort whose goal is the salvation not of people, but of the denomination – a salvation from the ravages of ongoing membership losses and diminishing benevolence. Intentional or not, the ads seek to further the ELCA’s self-continuity by recruiting from the ranks of suburban do-gooders who want to feel good about being connected to important causes.
It’s not as if do-gooding is a bad thing. Melanchthon, after all, dedicated Article VI of the Augsburg Confession to the topic of the new obedience. But if the ELCA’s public witness sent through our digital television sets begins with good works, we’ve done the potential viewers of these ads a grave disservice – as in, we’ve left them in the grave of unfaith. Like any number of well-meaning preachers, the ads assume that we have all the faith we ever need. All that’s needed is a religious version of the US Army’s “Be all you can be,” or Nike’s “Just do it.” These spots are a glimpse into the job description of successful suburban living and meaningful, relevant engagement with the world that the church holds out for us as our telos.
What’s missed are the first five articles of the Augustana. We can’t begin our public proclamation with a pleasant charity’s proposal you can respond to by hitching up your free will and getting on board the justice train. Instead, gospel preaching begins with an understanding of sin and God’s work in Christ to remedy it. If Article IV on justification is truly the article by which the church falls or stands, you wouldn’t know it by these ads. It’s because they are not what Article V calls the office of preaching, the delivery of the law and gospel described in Articles II and III.
Thus, while our branding and tagline, “God’s work. Our hands,” may produce the outcome of more adherents to the work of the social service agency the ELCA seems to present itself as in its coming marketing efforts, they cannot bring a commensurate increase in the numbers of what Luther, in his sermon in Castle Pleissenburg (LW 51:311-312), called the Heufflein Christi, the little band of Christ. We’ve turned our backs on what Melanchthon declared the church to be: the place where the word and sacraments are present in such a way that sinners like me have come to believe.
I’ve begun to wonder whether my not taking a stand for the sake of the gospel in my church hasn't moved God in his great displeasure to withhold true preaching from this church, from this world and from this sinner.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Transfiguration Sunday
Today’s gospel reading recounts the Transfiguration of Jesus, and that’s what we celebrate in worship today. The Transfiguration is the epiphany, the revealing of the hidden glory of Jesus. It’s the point in each of the gospels where get a glimpse of the full magnificent power and influence that Jesus has. He simply exudes power, to the point that it looks like he’s wearing shiny happy clothes. And then there are his mountaintop associates, Moses and Elijah. You can’t hob-nob with hoitier or toitier folks in the halls of power or in Hollywood. It’s a media event! It deserves strobe lights, red carpets and actresses who wear body-controlling Spanx under their designer gowns. This is something that calls for hoopla. Keep your eyes on your set, friends, for Jesus is a man of wonders. Why he’s almost Barack Obama!
But be careful what you turn your eyes toward. Jesus in the fullness of his glory is a dangerous thing. You’re dealing with big voodoo here. He has the power to heal using a gob of his spit and a simple word. But he’s also been known to come down hard on people trying to make a buck by trading on God. And he has no problem instantly withering a fig tree because it doesn’t please him. He’s God in the flesh and to come into his full glory is something you want to be careful about. When Moses caught a peek of just a tiny bit of God’s bum up on Mt. Sinai, it changed him physically, to the point of having to walking around with a veil covering his face for the rest of his life. Sure Jesus is glorified in the Transfiguration, but don’t for a minute think it has anything to do with “nice” or “pretty.”
The Transfiguration is the Holy Spirit’s great bait-and-switch tactic. It’s like the store clerk who draws you in with pretty baubles and then sells you something different. Jesus the powerful healer-man, the glorious schmoozer of prophets, the holy herald of all things wise and wonderful? That guy is about to go away and toss his divine Oscar in the ditch. He’s about to give it all up of his own accord in order to give you something better.
Peter should have been ready for it. After Jesus had called him up out of his boat where he was mending his nets, Jesus did some pretty cool stuff, things that would make the most driven cynic say, “Sweet!” But there were inklings that Jesus was up to more than just wonders and miracles, power and glory. The guy kept hanging out with prostitutes and sinners, tax collectors and, I’m sorry to say, people like you, who don’t have their poop in a group. Of course that must have been an anomaly, an odd blip on the radar, especially in the face of Jesus’ pals Elijah and Moses on the mountain top. Peter should have known better, though.
A week before the Transfiguration, Peter had been hanging out with Jesus, who asked, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter said, “You are the messiah.” Then Jesus explained exactly what it meant for him to be the messiah. It doesn’t mean power, prestige, success or glory. Jesus gave it to Peter straight. “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” Here at the Transfiguration, Peter wanted to forget what Jesus had said about his coming suffering and death. Peter wanted Jesus’ glory, bright, undiluted and worthy of acclaim. He didn’t want glory to come in terms of Jesus’ ignominious end. Though Peter had gotten a glimpse of what should have been the frightening fullness of who Jesus really is, he didn’t have the whole picture. Both in his confession of Jesus’ identity and at the Transfiguration, Peter had his eyes opened a bit, but he still thought Jesus’ kingship looks like earthly glory rather than the cross. When Jesus chooses to let it all go and show his glory in weakness, in being whipped and scourged and in a last wheezing breath on the cross, it’ll hit Peter like a blow to the solar plexus and knock him out nearly for the count.
On the mountain, a voice comes from heaven: “This is my son, the Beloved. Listen to him!” God isn’t telling Peter to listen in on the conversation going on between Jesus and the prophets. God says to pay attention to what his Son has been saying about the business of dying, for it wasn’t just the cloud on the mountain that Peter would have to face. There was a bank of dark clouds heading straight toward Jerusalem with Jesus, covering up the glitter of religious revivalism and spiritual success with the reality of what’s to come. Listen to Jesus: following him will look nothing like the winning on Jeopardy or American Idol. Our Lord has offered Peter a glory that is wholly unexpected. It will come to this most spur-of-the-moment of disciples when Jesus is arrested and led away for trial. Peter will come face-to-face with his own darkness and sin as he stands in the courtyard of the high priest. A servant girl says to him, “Hey buddy, I know who you are. You’re one of Jesus right-hand guys.” Peter will deny his Lord three times before the cock crows. And hanging on to glory, Peter won’t know what to do with a Lord who dies.
Ah, glory. It’s such a fine thing, but what happens when you have a Lord who gives it all up? How can you hang your faith on glory, when Jesus wants nothing to do with it? If Peter, personally chosen by Jesus, can’t keep his own faith going – even having seen the Transfiguration – it leaves sinners like you and me with a pretty sorry future. Peter’s denial is something we re-enact every single day as we turn away from such an unlikely Lord’s demise, as we seek to protect our futures and save our suburban skins by managing all the details of our lives. Yet we stand with Peter in the dark and accusing courtyards of our lives and await the one thing that can truly bring such an undying faith, that call to dive into death and failure and find our Lord there.
It’s what’s to come in the Lenten weeks ahead of us, for your Lord, God’s only son himself, takes on an upside-down sort of glory as he suffers torment and is crucified for you. His great love is poured out for you that your attention may be turned from yourself, from glitter and glory, from shiny success, to look to him – the humble, drab, torn and wounded one. The depths of his love for a sinner like you are unfathomable and know no end. The disciple who turns away from Jesus will find himself drawn back with the cross. Where there once was a Jesus wearing glowing robes, there will be a naked man crucified as a sinner.
But on the other side of his death, and yours, Peter will see something better than the shining robes he saw on the mountaintop. He’ll see the grave clothes of the risen Jesus and know, truly know, that Jesus’ glory on the cross isn’t something to run away from in fear. He’ll be caught up in it in the midst of his own suffering, loss, guilt and all-too-apparent faithlessness– in the same way that you have been caught up and wrapped up in Jesus’ death and resurrection in your baptism. For it’s there that in those drowning waters that you have been linked to both your Lord’s death and resurrection. You don’t have to deal with mere foreshadowing like Peter did. He stood accused in that courtyard not knowing what was to come, but you have the end of the story in hand. The fullness of Christ’s love for you is poured out for you in the water and the word. And if you’re not yet baptized, let me tell you that same promise and fullness awaits you, along with a pastor champing at the bit to bestow it on you and a congregation waiting to sustain you in it.
Thus God’s word bids you to put away the worldly glory that moves you to seek after short cuts, pipe dreams and the winning number and pray that God would bring on the divine glory that interrupts your expectations, your management plans, your strategies for success. So pray to God to destroy your death with Jesus’ death on a daily basis, so that your baptism becomes a living, breathing thing. In the coming season of Lent, you can look for the divine upside-down glory of Jesus who meets you in your denial and in your tomb to drag you, kicking and screaming maybe, into heaven to spend an eternity with the one whose love for you finds its ultimate glory on the cross: Jesus your bridegroom, Jesus your Savior, Jesus your Lord, Jesus crucified and risen comes for you today, that, in your clouded darkness, you may believe.
But be careful what you turn your eyes toward. Jesus in the fullness of his glory is a dangerous thing. You’re dealing with big voodoo here. He has the power to heal using a gob of his spit and a simple word. But he’s also been known to come down hard on people trying to make a buck by trading on God. And he has no problem instantly withering a fig tree because it doesn’t please him. He’s God in the flesh and to come into his full glory is something you want to be careful about. When Moses caught a peek of just a tiny bit of God’s bum up on Mt. Sinai, it changed him physically, to the point of having to walking around with a veil covering his face for the rest of his life. Sure Jesus is glorified in the Transfiguration, but don’t for a minute think it has anything to do with “nice” or “pretty.”
The Transfiguration is the Holy Spirit’s great bait-and-switch tactic. It’s like the store clerk who draws you in with pretty baubles and then sells you something different. Jesus the powerful healer-man, the glorious schmoozer of prophets, the holy herald of all things wise and wonderful? That guy is about to go away and toss his divine Oscar in the ditch. He’s about to give it all up of his own accord in order to give you something better.
Peter should have been ready for it. After Jesus had called him up out of his boat where he was mending his nets, Jesus did some pretty cool stuff, things that would make the most driven cynic say, “Sweet!” But there were inklings that Jesus was up to more than just wonders and miracles, power and glory. The guy kept hanging out with prostitutes and sinners, tax collectors and, I’m sorry to say, people like you, who don’t have their poop in a group. Of course that must have been an anomaly, an odd blip on the radar, especially in the face of Jesus’ pals Elijah and Moses on the mountain top. Peter should have known better, though.
A week before the Transfiguration, Peter had been hanging out with Jesus, who asked, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter said, “You are the messiah.” Then Jesus explained exactly what it meant for him to be the messiah. It doesn’t mean power, prestige, success or glory. Jesus gave it to Peter straight. “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” Here at the Transfiguration, Peter wanted to forget what Jesus had said about his coming suffering and death. Peter wanted Jesus’ glory, bright, undiluted and worthy of acclaim. He didn’t want glory to come in terms of Jesus’ ignominious end. Though Peter had gotten a glimpse of what should have been the frightening fullness of who Jesus really is, he didn’t have the whole picture. Both in his confession of Jesus’ identity and at the Transfiguration, Peter had his eyes opened a bit, but he still thought Jesus’ kingship looks like earthly glory rather than the cross. When Jesus chooses to let it all go and show his glory in weakness, in being whipped and scourged and in a last wheezing breath on the cross, it’ll hit Peter like a blow to the solar plexus and knock him out nearly for the count.
On the mountain, a voice comes from heaven: “This is my son, the Beloved. Listen to him!” God isn’t telling Peter to listen in on the conversation going on between Jesus and the prophets. God says to pay attention to what his Son has been saying about the business of dying, for it wasn’t just the cloud on the mountain that Peter would have to face. There was a bank of dark clouds heading straight toward Jerusalem with Jesus, covering up the glitter of religious revivalism and spiritual success with the reality of what’s to come. Listen to Jesus: following him will look nothing like the winning on Jeopardy or American Idol. Our Lord has offered Peter a glory that is wholly unexpected. It will come to this most spur-of-the-moment of disciples when Jesus is arrested and led away for trial. Peter will come face-to-face with his own darkness and sin as he stands in the courtyard of the high priest. A servant girl says to him, “Hey buddy, I know who you are. You’re one of Jesus right-hand guys.” Peter will deny his Lord three times before the cock crows. And hanging on to glory, Peter won’t know what to do with a Lord who dies.
Ah, glory. It’s such a fine thing, but what happens when you have a Lord who gives it all up? How can you hang your faith on glory, when Jesus wants nothing to do with it? If Peter, personally chosen by Jesus, can’t keep his own faith going – even having seen the Transfiguration – it leaves sinners like you and me with a pretty sorry future. Peter’s denial is something we re-enact every single day as we turn away from such an unlikely Lord’s demise, as we seek to protect our futures and save our suburban skins by managing all the details of our lives. Yet we stand with Peter in the dark and accusing courtyards of our lives and await the one thing that can truly bring such an undying faith, that call to dive into death and failure and find our Lord there.
It’s what’s to come in the Lenten weeks ahead of us, for your Lord, God’s only son himself, takes on an upside-down sort of glory as he suffers torment and is crucified for you. His great love is poured out for you that your attention may be turned from yourself, from glitter and glory, from shiny success, to look to him – the humble, drab, torn and wounded one. The depths of his love for a sinner like you are unfathomable and know no end. The disciple who turns away from Jesus will find himself drawn back with the cross. Where there once was a Jesus wearing glowing robes, there will be a naked man crucified as a sinner.
But on the other side of his death, and yours, Peter will see something better than the shining robes he saw on the mountaintop. He’ll see the grave clothes of the risen Jesus and know, truly know, that Jesus’ glory on the cross isn’t something to run away from in fear. He’ll be caught up in it in the midst of his own suffering, loss, guilt and all-too-apparent faithlessness– in the same way that you have been caught up and wrapped up in Jesus’ death and resurrection in your baptism. For it’s there that in those drowning waters that you have been linked to both your Lord’s death and resurrection. You don’t have to deal with mere foreshadowing like Peter did. He stood accused in that courtyard not knowing what was to come, but you have the end of the story in hand. The fullness of Christ’s love for you is poured out for you in the water and the word. And if you’re not yet baptized, let me tell you that same promise and fullness awaits you, along with a pastor champing at the bit to bestow it on you and a congregation waiting to sustain you in it.
Thus God’s word bids you to put away the worldly glory that moves you to seek after short cuts, pipe dreams and the winning number and pray that God would bring on the divine glory that interrupts your expectations, your management plans, your strategies for success. So pray to God to destroy your death with Jesus’ death on a daily basis, so that your baptism becomes a living, breathing thing. In the coming season of Lent, you can look for the divine upside-down glory of Jesus who meets you in your denial and in your tomb to drag you, kicking and screaming maybe, into heaven to spend an eternity with the one whose love for you finds its ultimate glory on the cross: Jesus your bridegroom, Jesus your Savior, Jesus your Lord, Jesus crucified and risen comes for you today, that, in your clouded darkness, you may believe.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Thanksgiving (a little late)
Better late than never: Here’s a little something about Thanksgiving.
We’re awfully close to the tipping point where the Thanksgiving holiday falls completely into the clutches of the advertising world, where Thanksgiving is treated as just another excuse to get you to buy more stuff, accumulate more goods. Our holy-days have been co-opted by the marketers and the cultural diluters: All Hallows Eve, the feast day of St. Valentine, the Nativity of our Lord, and the festival of Christ’s resurrection. They’re pretty good excuses to sell, sell, sell. But Thanksgiving remains as a small, flickering light, where the elements of a great holiday are still linked to the good and precious small things that make for a deep, rich life: family, friends, a little turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, and, depending on your predilections, a nice Merlot or a glass of Mogen David. As the old hymn says, we gather together as God’s people. And in our gathering we give thanks.
So how about it? Go on now and give thanks. If you read the story of Jesus and the ten lepers in the gospel, that’s what it seems to be about: giving proper thanks to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Jesus meets up with these ten lepers and gets ‘em all nice and clean, with no more rotting fingers and noses, and sends them on their merry way to be declared by the priests as fit for human company again. Nine of the ten former lepers head out presumably to the local gentlemen priests’ club to get their clean bills of health. But that one comes back to thank Jesus who, frankly, seems a bit surprised at the paltry return on his investment of messianic healing power. But give thanks is what the tenth leper does and then gets sent on his way again.
I’ve had any number of chances to preaching on this story of Jesus and the ten lepers. And I’ve been like most preachers who take it as an opportunity to tell my hearers what a fine example that tenth leper is. See! Now there’s a truly thankful fella. If you want to be an upstanding Christian you should take him as your model. Give thanks, my friends, give thanks.
But I’ve come to the conclusion that to speak of this remarkable little story in this way is to come at it with very little attention to my call to deliver God’s word to you in a manner that actually gives you saving faith. For what’s a sermon that tells you to give thanks but a thinly disguised example of yet another demand dressed up in religious language? Because I use the example of someone who encountered God in the flesh, then somehow that must be good news for sinners like you and me. But here’s why such a sermon is unfitting for a Christian preacher, and a Lutheran one at that: It pays attention neither to how your life actually works or to what Jesus death and resurrection have done for you and all creation.
If I were to stand here in the pulpit and tell you to take the tenth leper as your model and be thankful, it would ignore how such thanks actually comes about. It’s the nature of relationship stuff that things like faith, hope and love (the big three that Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 13, the standard wedding gospel) don’t appear as a result of our will. Who in the world has ever become hopeful because they decided to have hope? Hope comes when the thing hoped for is so sweet and rich that a person can’t help but wait for it with eagerness. In Ephesians Paul points beyond the act of hoping to the thing we await: “the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.”
The same is true of love, for has any one you gotten up one day and thought, “I’ve decided to fall in love today”? Try it out for size. Turn to the person next to you. Look that person in the eye and decide to fall in love. It doesn't work, does it? You fall in love because your beloved has so much charm and wit, or a winsome smile and long eyelashes, that you just can’t help yourself. As the old Temptations song said, “Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch / You know that I love you / I can't help myself / I love you and nobody else.”
That’s exactly how it works with thanksgiving. You might tell someone thanks because your parents brought you up to be polite, to say please and thank you as a matter of course, because that’s what you ought to do. But that’s not the same thing as having a thankful heart. It’s not the same thing as bursting with gratitude because you know how much you owe the person you’re thanking.
Demands like “Be thankful!” have never done us sinners much good, because, while they can get us to drum up some outward action like shaping air and teeth and tongue into the words “thank you,” they simply can’t make you thankful. Martin Luther liked to tell his hearers that these were words from Moses. They’re the law, making demands, doling out commands. They might be able to pull you into line morally, so you don’t hurt someone else. But the law, even something as nice and good as saying, “Be thankful,” can’t change your heart. Moses couldn't make it happen for the Israelites, and neither can a law-preaching pastor standing in front of a congregation on Thanksgiving Eve.
So if the story of the thankful leper and Jesus isn't meant as an example for you to take up, then what’s it do for you? I’ll tell you: This word from God comes to place your whole life under the light of God’s judgment and Christ’s redemption. Its aim is not to tell you to decide to be thankful, but to make you thankful, to give you faith, to get you to fall in love with your Lord, and to save you from the devil, the world and your sinful self.
These lepers may have had a skin disease that you’re fortunate enough not to be afflicted with, but they’re really no different from you. You can’t say, “Whew! It’s a good thing I don’t have to deal with such an ugly, smelly disease. I’m glad that I’m in good shape.” But leprosy was just the particular form of sinful brokenness that they had to live with each and every day. It simply another variation on the wages of sin that we human beings have been paid since our first mother and father sinned in the Garden.
You may not have leprosy, but the real disease that lies behind it is something you’ve caught. It’s Sin and your Lord has come to cure you of it. But notice this: In this story, Jesus doesn’t come to cure some leprosy out of ten people who don’t have the disease. He is the great physician who’s come to heal the sick, to make the lame walk, the deaf to hear, and the blind see. Christ our Lord comes to take on the raging virus of sin in all its forms, so that you might be healed.
Notice in this story of Jesus and the lepers that not a single one of them was healed because they decided to be healed and the tenth leper didn’t come back because he decided he needed to be thankful. The healing comes simply because that’s our Lord’s nature. Wherever he encounters the effects of sin he’s Johnny-on-the-spot serving up a dose of his power. Jesus heals because he wants to, because that’s what he’s come to do. His healing is valid; it actually happens.
In the world’s eyes, not being a leper anymore is a pretty good thing, just like not being a thief or not being a person trailing the baggage of broken relationships is a good thing. Jesus is just fine making that sort of visible healing happen. But he’s not satisfied with just shining up the veneer of your life or the lives of the lepers or the lives of any sinner. Such a repair job is just a surface fix and won’t last beyond your last breath. Those nine lepers who went off in search of the priests to show off their suitability and their newly regained status as clean people may get permission to enter the synagogues, but the fact that they have a clean bill of health doesn’t mean any real change has happened for them.
It’s an awful lot like having the gospel proclaimed to you in the water and word in baptism and then never having it mean a lick. Your baptism can be valid without having any effect. You can dress a person up in a clean white robe without it actually cleaning up that person’s heart and placing faith where there was only unbelief. No, what Jesus is after is a complete and utter change in the identity and very being of sinners like you and the lepers. He wants to make a new creation out of you, and that only happens when he gets at the truth of the sickness of sin in you.
There’s nothing that any of us truly deserves from God except his wrath and judgment. We come before God not having kept the commandments, not having loved our neighbors as ourselves, not loving the Lord with all our heart, strength and mind.
Instead, and if we’re honest about ourselves, we know that it’s we ourselves whom we’ve put first in our lives. We trust ourselves to make a future, to achieve whatever goals we hope to arrive at in life, to make our next breath happen, and our next and our next. And that’s exactly what happened for those nine lepers. They don’t come back to Jesus because they’re off to live their lives, assuming that they can go on and on and on like the Energizer bunny, under their own power and free will to make new lives for themselves.
But the tenth leper, now that’s a different story. He comes back not to confess his new cleanness like the other nine did to the priests. He came back to the source of the new life he’d been given. He came because he recognized his nothingness apart from Jesus. When you know you deserve nothing and Jesus gives you absolutely everything, when you realize the true state of affairs, there’s nothing to do but give thanks. The leper just couldn’t help himself.
What he did was no different from what Luther talked about in the Small Catechism when he explained what baptism means for daily living: “It means that the old creature in us with all sins and evil desires is to be drowned and die through daily contrition and repentance, and on the other hand that daily a new person is to come forth and rise up to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.”
You see, it’s not in the healing that salvation and thankfulness come for the tenth leper. It’s in having his eyes opened and in the relationship Jesus established with him that his complete healing and salvation happens. Not only is he a leper who was forced to live on the fringes of society, always forced to give people warning of his presence. He’s also a Samaritan, someone who’s seen by the religious folk of the day as an outsider, unable to come into God’s good graces. Not only does Jesus have no fear of the man’s disease, he also doesn’t have a problem with his lack of religious credentials. Christ our Lord is smitten with those who have no shred of evidence to plead their goodness or righteousness.
All the tenth leper had was a true knowledge of his nothingness and the new reality of his life caused by this preacher from Nazareth. It’s in the mysterious combination, in the unbreakable bond of both his living death as a leper and an outsider and his new clean state in Christ that he has the full and complete healing that Jesus is after along. When that happens there’s only the explosion of gratitude that can result, the new healed body lying prostrate before Jesus, saying, “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
And this is why a sermon saying you ought to be thankful doesn’t do the trick. It misses the truth of Jesus’ death and resurrection. If all you needed to get better from the disease of sin is an example or a demand or a law, Moses would have been plenty for you. You wouldn’t need a savior. You wouldn’t need the great physician. You wouldn’t need anything but a how-to manual for successful living or moral aptitude or a copy of Godliness for Dummies.
To tell you to be thankful would be to forget the very thing that gives you any life at all: your Lord’s death and resurrection. It would be to leave out the most important part of this story and your story: the event that tells the truth about your sinfulness and death and at the same time raises you up to new life. For it is Jesus on the cross who changes everything for you. It was the empty tomb that declared the emptying of Jesus’ lungs of their last breath as the victory over your sin. It is Jesus crucified and risen who says your divine judgment is condemnation and your hope is in him alone.
As Paul says in Galatians, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Paul’s three words in Corinthians, faith, hope and love, are relational. They happen because you’re compelled to love, to hope and, finally, to trust. At the end of the story, Jesus doesn’t say to the leper that his thankfulness has made him well, but his faith. In the trusting of Jesus, the leper is fully and finally healed both of leprosy and his sin.
It’s all a matter of faith. And if it’s faith that will make you well, then you might just ask, “Where the heck can I get me some of that stuff?” I tell you it comes when true sinners, and not sham sinners, appear before the Lord and hear his freeing word. So gird your loins, sinner, for Jesus is about to come before you:
Stand up straight with your broken lives and your trust in yourselves. Through off your bandages to reveal your rotting flesh like a real sinner and hear our Lord as he speaks to you: You are forgiven in spite of yourself. You are claimed by one who is absolutely unafraid of your darkest secret and deepest shame. He knows you through and through, for he is the one who holds each and every cell, all your amino acids and DNA together. And he is dead and risen that you might have life and have it abundantly. No longer does your future depend on either your past or your resolve to make things better, for Christ comes to raise you from the dead and bring you salvation all on his own power, his own holiness, his own lust for life.
Now you no longer need to decide to be thankful, for our Lord has given you everything and eternity, too. You are given something that elicits your gratitude. And in that new life, suddenly all God’s good gifts come to be seen as our Lord’s horn of plenty. Your sweet potatoes with marshmallows. The warmth of your bed on a crisp November morning. Your beloved family gathered around your table tomorrow and those you’ve lost who are gathered around God’s heavenly table. Your future. Your past. Your every single breath and heartbeat. These come not just as another thing you should be grateful for in life, but an actual part of the salvation that God has set out for you from the beginning of time.
Then the word for you is not, “Be thankful,” but “Get up and go on your way in the new life you’ve been given. Your faith has made you well.”
We’re awfully close to the tipping point where the Thanksgiving holiday falls completely into the clutches of the advertising world, where Thanksgiving is treated as just another excuse to get you to buy more stuff, accumulate more goods. Our holy-days have been co-opted by the marketers and the cultural diluters: All Hallows Eve, the feast day of St. Valentine, the Nativity of our Lord, and the festival of Christ’s resurrection. They’re pretty good excuses to sell, sell, sell. But Thanksgiving remains as a small, flickering light, where the elements of a great holiday are still linked to the good and precious small things that make for a deep, rich life: family, friends, a little turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, and, depending on your predilections, a nice Merlot or a glass of Mogen David. As the old hymn says, we gather together as God’s people. And in our gathering we give thanks.
So how about it? Go on now and give thanks. If you read the story of Jesus and the ten lepers in the gospel, that’s what it seems to be about: giving proper thanks to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Jesus meets up with these ten lepers and gets ‘em all nice and clean, with no more rotting fingers and noses, and sends them on their merry way to be declared by the priests as fit for human company again. Nine of the ten former lepers head out presumably to the local gentlemen priests’ club to get their clean bills of health. But that one comes back to thank Jesus who, frankly, seems a bit surprised at the paltry return on his investment of messianic healing power. But give thanks is what the tenth leper does and then gets sent on his way again.
I’ve had any number of chances to preaching on this story of Jesus and the ten lepers. And I’ve been like most preachers who take it as an opportunity to tell my hearers what a fine example that tenth leper is. See! Now there’s a truly thankful fella. If you want to be an upstanding Christian you should take him as your model. Give thanks, my friends, give thanks.
But I’ve come to the conclusion that to speak of this remarkable little story in this way is to come at it with very little attention to my call to deliver God’s word to you in a manner that actually gives you saving faith. For what’s a sermon that tells you to give thanks but a thinly disguised example of yet another demand dressed up in religious language? Because I use the example of someone who encountered God in the flesh, then somehow that must be good news for sinners like you and me. But here’s why such a sermon is unfitting for a Christian preacher, and a Lutheran one at that: It pays attention neither to how your life actually works or to what Jesus death and resurrection have done for you and all creation.
If I were to stand here in the pulpit and tell you to take the tenth leper as your model and be thankful, it would ignore how such thanks actually comes about. It’s the nature of relationship stuff that things like faith, hope and love (the big three that Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 13, the standard wedding gospel) don’t appear as a result of our will. Who in the world has ever become hopeful because they decided to have hope? Hope comes when the thing hoped for is so sweet and rich that a person can’t help but wait for it with eagerness. In Ephesians Paul points beyond the act of hoping to the thing we await: “the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.”
The same is true of love, for has any one you gotten up one day and thought, “I’ve decided to fall in love today”? Try it out for size. Turn to the person next to you. Look that person in the eye and decide to fall in love. It doesn't work, does it? You fall in love because your beloved has so much charm and wit, or a winsome smile and long eyelashes, that you just can’t help yourself. As the old Temptations song said, “Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch / You know that I love you / I can't help myself / I love you and nobody else.”
That’s exactly how it works with thanksgiving. You might tell someone thanks because your parents brought you up to be polite, to say please and thank you as a matter of course, because that’s what you ought to do. But that’s not the same thing as having a thankful heart. It’s not the same thing as bursting with gratitude because you know how much you owe the person you’re thanking.
Demands like “Be thankful!” have never done us sinners much good, because, while they can get us to drum up some outward action like shaping air and teeth and tongue into the words “thank you,” they simply can’t make you thankful. Martin Luther liked to tell his hearers that these were words from Moses. They’re the law, making demands, doling out commands. They might be able to pull you into line morally, so you don’t hurt someone else. But the law, even something as nice and good as saying, “Be thankful,” can’t change your heart. Moses couldn't make it happen for the Israelites, and neither can a law-preaching pastor standing in front of a congregation on Thanksgiving Eve.
So if the story of the thankful leper and Jesus isn't meant as an example for you to take up, then what’s it do for you? I’ll tell you: This word from God comes to place your whole life under the light of God’s judgment and Christ’s redemption. Its aim is not to tell you to decide to be thankful, but to make you thankful, to give you faith, to get you to fall in love with your Lord, and to save you from the devil, the world and your sinful self.
These lepers may have had a skin disease that you’re fortunate enough not to be afflicted with, but they’re really no different from you. You can’t say, “Whew! It’s a good thing I don’t have to deal with such an ugly, smelly disease. I’m glad that I’m in good shape.” But leprosy was just the particular form of sinful brokenness that they had to live with each and every day. It simply another variation on the wages of sin that we human beings have been paid since our first mother and father sinned in the Garden.
You may not have leprosy, but the real disease that lies behind it is something you’ve caught. It’s Sin and your Lord has come to cure you of it. But notice this: In this story, Jesus doesn’t come to cure some leprosy out of ten people who don’t have the disease. He is the great physician who’s come to heal the sick, to make the lame walk, the deaf to hear, and the blind see. Christ our Lord comes to take on the raging virus of sin in all its forms, so that you might be healed.
Notice in this story of Jesus and the lepers that not a single one of them was healed because they decided to be healed and the tenth leper didn’t come back because he decided he needed to be thankful. The healing comes simply because that’s our Lord’s nature. Wherever he encounters the effects of sin he’s Johnny-on-the-spot serving up a dose of his power. Jesus heals because he wants to, because that’s what he’s come to do. His healing is valid; it actually happens.
In the world’s eyes, not being a leper anymore is a pretty good thing, just like not being a thief or not being a person trailing the baggage of broken relationships is a good thing. Jesus is just fine making that sort of visible healing happen. But he’s not satisfied with just shining up the veneer of your life or the lives of the lepers or the lives of any sinner. Such a repair job is just a surface fix and won’t last beyond your last breath. Those nine lepers who went off in search of the priests to show off their suitability and their newly regained status as clean people may get permission to enter the synagogues, but the fact that they have a clean bill of health doesn’t mean any real change has happened for them.
It’s an awful lot like having the gospel proclaimed to you in the water and word in baptism and then never having it mean a lick. Your baptism can be valid without having any effect. You can dress a person up in a clean white robe without it actually cleaning up that person’s heart and placing faith where there was only unbelief. No, what Jesus is after is a complete and utter change in the identity and very being of sinners like you and the lepers. He wants to make a new creation out of you, and that only happens when he gets at the truth of the sickness of sin in you.
There’s nothing that any of us truly deserves from God except his wrath and judgment. We come before God not having kept the commandments, not having loved our neighbors as ourselves, not loving the Lord with all our heart, strength and mind.
Instead, and if we’re honest about ourselves, we know that it’s we ourselves whom we’ve put first in our lives. We trust ourselves to make a future, to achieve whatever goals we hope to arrive at in life, to make our next breath happen, and our next and our next. And that’s exactly what happened for those nine lepers. They don’t come back to Jesus because they’re off to live their lives, assuming that they can go on and on and on like the Energizer bunny, under their own power and free will to make new lives for themselves.
But the tenth leper, now that’s a different story. He comes back not to confess his new cleanness like the other nine did to the priests. He came back to the source of the new life he’d been given. He came because he recognized his nothingness apart from Jesus. When you know you deserve nothing and Jesus gives you absolutely everything, when you realize the true state of affairs, there’s nothing to do but give thanks. The leper just couldn’t help himself.
What he did was no different from what Luther talked about in the Small Catechism when he explained what baptism means for daily living: “It means that the old creature in us with all sins and evil desires is to be drowned and die through daily contrition and repentance, and on the other hand that daily a new person is to come forth and rise up to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.”
You see, it’s not in the healing that salvation and thankfulness come for the tenth leper. It’s in having his eyes opened and in the relationship Jesus established with him that his complete healing and salvation happens. Not only is he a leper who was forced to live on the fringes of society, always forced to give people warning of his presence. He’s also a Samaritan, someone who’s seen by the religious folk of the day as an outsider, unable to come into God’s good graces. Not only does Jesus have no fear of the man’s disease, he also doesn’t have a problem with his lack of religious credentials. Christ our Lord is smitten with those who have no shred of evidence to plead their goodness or righteousness.
All the tenth leper had was a true knowledge of his nothingness and the new reality of his life caused by this preacher from Nazareth. It’s in the mysterious combination, in the unbreakable bond of both his living death as a leper and an outsider and his new clean state in Christ that he has the full and complete healing that Jesus is after along. When that happens there’s only the explosion of gratitude that can result, the new healed body lying prostrate before Jesus, saying, “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
And this is why a sermon saying you ought to be thankful doesn’t do the trick. It misses the truth of Jesus’ death and resurrection. If all you needed to get better from the disease of sin is an example or a demand or a law, Moses would have been plenty for you. You wouldn’t need a savior. You wouldn’t need the great physician. You wouldn’t need anything but a how-to manual for successful living or moral aptitude or a copy of Godliness for Dummies.
To tell you to be thankful would be to forget the very thing that gives you any life at all: your Lord’s death and resurrection. It would be to leave out the most important part of this story and your story: the event that tells the truth about your sinfulness and death and at the same time raises you up to new life. For it is Jesus on the cross who changes everything for you. It was the empty tomb that declared the emptying of Jesus’ lungs of their last breath as the victory over your sin. It is Jesus crucified and risen who says your divine judgment is condemnation and your hope is in him alone.
As Paul says in Galatians, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Paul’s three words in Corinthians, faith, hope and love, are relational. They happen because you’re compelled to love, to hope and, finally, to trust. At the end of the story, Jesus doesn’t say to the leper that his thankfulness has made him well, but his faith. In the trusting of Jesus, the leper is fully and finally healed both of leprosy and his sin.
It’s all a matter of faith. And if it’s faith that will make you well, then you might just ask, “Where the heck can I get me some of that stuff?” I tell you it comes when true sinners, and not sham sinners, appear before the Lord and hear his freeing word. So gird your loins, sinner, for Jesus is about to come before you:
Stand up straight with your broken lives and your trust in yourselves. Through off your bandages to reveal your rotting flesh like a real sinner and hear our Lord as he speaks to you: You are forgiven in spite of yourself. You are claimed by one who is absolutely unafraid of your darkest secret and deepest shame. He knows you through and through, for he is the one who holds each and every cell, all your amino acids and DNA together. And he is dead and risen that you might have life and have it abundantly. No longer does your future depend on either your past or your resolve to make things better, for Christ comes to raise you from the dead and bring you salvation all on his own power, his own holiness, his own lust for life.
Now you no longer need to decide to be thankful, for our Lord has given you everything and eternity, too. You are given something that elicits your gratitude. And in that new life, suddenly all God’s good gifts come to be seen as our Lord’s horn of plenty. Your sweet potatoes with marshmallows. The warmth of your bed on a crisp November morning. Your beloved family gathered around your table tomorrow and those you’ve lost who are gathered around God’s heavenly table. Your future. Your past. Your every single breath and heartbeat. These come not just as another thing you should be grateful for in life, but an actual part of the salvation that God has set out for you from the beginning of time.
Then the word for you is not, “Be thankful,” but “Get up and go on your way in the new life you’ve been given. Your faith has made you well.”
Glory and the cross
A Lutheran student at a Baptist seminary wrote me about a statement of faith she had been asked to write. Her professor wanted to her to include something about glorification, an unfamiliar concept to her as a Lutheran. She asked for my input. Here’s my response:
In 1518 Luther presented his teaching in the form of a disputation at a gathering of his fellow Augustinian monks in Heidelberg. In the theses of the Heidelberg Disputation he makes a distinction between a theologian of glory and a theologian of the cross:
18. It is certain that a man must completely despair of himself in order to become fit to obtain the grace of Christ.
19. The one who beholds what is invisible of God, through the perception of what is made, is not rightly called a theologian.
20. But rather the one who perceives what is visible of God, God’s “backside,” by beholding the sufferings and the cross.
21. The “theologian of glory” calls the bad good and the good bad. The “theologian of the cross” says what a thing is.
Luther’s take is that our active righteousness (perhaps we could call it visible glorification) is actually dangerous, because it allows us to fall under the illusion that our spiritual success is an indication of our standing with God. Thus, God's work in us is hidden under the sign of its opposite, that is, righteousness, glory, success and victory come to us under the guise of sinfulness, brokenness, defeat and loss. Christ himself, and his suffering and death, are the clearest place God operates that way. Yet it works that way for me individually as well. It is in my own loss, suffering and death that I am finally able to admit my own inability “to obtain the grace of Christ.” In my failure I see that my only hope lies in him crucified.
Thus, a theologian of glory sees these things and regards them as proof positive of my being neither saved nor sanctified. Instead, the theologian of glory would push me to advance my religious life, become more moral and ethical, seek out glorious, mystical, spiritual experiences, and every day in every way become better and better. So a theologian of glory sees something (all these religious, moral activities) and calls it what it is not, that is, salvific and sanctifying.
The theologian of the cross, on the other hand, regards what the theologian of glory lifts up as not much better than manure. These so-called sanctifying activities lead me away from Christ and into my own self-continuity project. The theologian of the cross regards as holy any moment when I’m captivated by my Lord’s cross, over against my captivation to my own self, my victory, my visible righteousness and glory. If Christ alone is the way, the truth and the life, then it is his suffering and death that are my glory. And whenever and wherever I am shaped to his same cross by the circumstances of life that work to kill my self-sustenance and reliance, I am already glorified.
This is the essence of faith, that we look away from ourselves to Christ for our salvation, and past ourselves to our neighbor’s needs for the real work we’re called to be engaged in. Thus, where faith points to Christ justification is in place and, with it, sanctification. Luther hits this in a couple more theses in the Disputation:
25. The one who does much “work” is not the righteous one, but the one who, without “work,” has much faith in Christ.
26. The law says, “Do this!”, and it never is done. Grace says, “Believe in this one!”, and forthwith everything is done.
In the end, true glory on Christ’s part is active not passive: He does the work of dying for a sinner like me. True glory on my part is completely passive and not active: As Luther says in the Catechism, “I confess that I cannot by my own understanding or effort believe in Jesus Christ my Lord, or come to him. But the Holy Spirit calls me through the gospel, enlightens me with his gifts and sanctifies and keeps me in the one true faith.” If Christ has attained my salvation by his work, there simply is nothing left for me to do than trust what’s promised. My nothingness is his glory, because it honors him as the Lord who takes on my sin and is truly able to bring me into the comforting bosom of God’s mercy and forgiveness.
If I’m pushed into any activity aimed at achieving some glory (whether it’s a certain level of religious commitment, engagement in spiritual exercises, buying the right deodorant or showing up at the Jordan Creek mall at midnight on Black Friday), I simply have to reject it as the same proposition Satan offered to Christ in the wilderness. My glory is to take what comes at me in this life, even tremendous loss, and serve faithfully in my various vocations as husband, son, dad, friend, neighbor, professor, citizen, pastor. In fact, my glory becomes visible in those places where I am called to give myself up to those whom Luther called “die Nächste,” the neighbors. In short, when I no longer need to seek after my glory, it’s given to me on a plate in these plain, humble, earthy callings.
(For the full set of theses in the Heidelberg Disputation, check out Clint Schnekloth's blog: http://lutheranconfessions.blogspot.com/2006/10/heidelberg-disputation.html.)
In 1518 Luther presented his teaching in the form of a disputation at a gathering of his fellow Augustinian monks in Heidelberg. In the theses of the Heidelberg Disputation he makes a distinction between a theologian of glory and a theologian of the cross:
18. It is certain that a man must completely despair of himself in order to become fit to obtain the grace of Christ.
19. The one who beholds what is invisible of God, through the perception of what is made, is not rightly called a theologian.
20. But rather the one who perceives what is visible of God, God’s “backside,” by beholding the sufferings and the cross.
21. The “theologian of glory” calls the bad good and the good bad. The “theologian of the cross” says what a thing is.
Luther’s take is that our active righteousness (perhaps we could call it visible glorification) is actually dangerous, because it allows us to fall under the illusion that our spiritual success is an indication of our standing with God. Thus, God's work in us is hidden under the sign of its opposite, that is, righteousness, glory, success and victory come to us under the guise of sinfulness, brokenness, defeat and loss. Christ himself, and his suffering and death, are the clearest place God operates that way. Yet it works that way for me individually as well. It is in my own loss, suffering and death that I am finally able to admit my own inability “to obtain the grace of Christ.” In my failure I see that my only hope lies in him crucified.
Thus, a theologian of glory sees these things and regards them as proof positive of my being neither saved nor sanctified. Instead, the theologian of glory would push me to advance my religious life, become more moral and ethical, seek out glorious, mystical, spiritual experiences, and every day in every way become better and better. So a theologian of glory sees something (all these religious, moral activities) and calls it what it is not, that is, salvific and sanctifying.
The theologian of the cross, on the other hand, regards what the theologian of glory lifts up as not much better than manure. These so-called sanctifying activities lead me away from Christ and into my own self-continuity project. The theologian of the cross regards as holy any moment when I’m captivated by my Lord’s cross, over against my captivation to my own self, my victory, my visible righteousness and glory. If Christ alone is the way, the truth and the life, then it is his suffering and death that are my glory. And whenever and wherever I am shaped to his same cross by the circumstances of life that work to kill my self-sustenance and reliance, I am already glorified.
This is the essence of faith, that we look away from ourselves to Christ for our salvation, and past ourselves to our neighbor’s needs for the real work we’re called to be engaged in. Thus, where faith points to Christ justification is in place and, with it, sanctification. Luther hits this in a couple more theses in the Disputation:
25. The one who does much “work” is not the righteous one, but the one who, without “work,” has much faith in Christ.
26. The law says, “Do this!”, and it never is done. Grace says, “Believe in this one!”, and forthwith everything is done.
In the end, true glory on Christ’s part is active not passive: He does the work of dying for a sinner like me. True glory on my part is completely passive and not active: As Luther says in the Catechism, “I confess that I cannot by my own understanding or effort believe in Jesus Christ my Lord, or come to him. But the Holy Spirit calls me through the gospel, enlightens me with his gifts and sanctifies and keeps me in the one true faith.” If Christ has attained my salvation by his work, there simply is nothing left for me to do than trust what’s promised. My nothingness is his glory, because it honors him as the Lord who takes on my sin and is truly able to bring me into the comforting bosom of God’s mercy and forgiveness.
If I’m pushed into any activity aimed at achieving some glory (whether it’s a certain level of religious commitment, engagement in spiritual exercises, buying the right deodorant or showing up at the Jordan Creek mall at midnight on Black Friday), I simply have to reject it as the same proposition Satan offered to Christ in the wilderness. My glory is to take what comes at me in this life, even tremendous loss, and serve faithfully in my various vocations as husband, son, dad, friend, neighbor, professor, citizen, pastor. In fact, my glory becomes visible in those places where I am called to give myself up to those whom Luther called “die Nächste,” the neighbors. In short, when I no longer need to seek after my glory, it’s given to me on a plate in these plain, humble, earthy callings.
(For the full set of theses in the Heidelberg Disputation, check out Clint Schnekloth's blog: http://lutheranconfessions.blogspot.com/2006/10/heidelberg-disputation.html.)
Friday, November 7, 2008
Pixar and preaching, part II
If we are to preach the gospel “in its truth and purity,” as the Catechism says, then we might take a page from the Pixar playbook. We cannot fall prey to our own skepticism about the ability of a law-and-gospel word to actually do its work, nor can we shirk the task of manipulating the will of our hearer and, thus, draw that one into the realm of faith.
If preachers are to be faithful, then they cannot be so craven as to reject the assertion that faith comes by hearing. The work of the preacher is to be Johnny-on-the-spot appearing in the midst of the Law’s kill zone with a word that does indeed raise the hearer to new life. And if the hearer doesn’t recognize how deep sin runs or how one’s attention to the Law leads not to self-continuity but to the grave, then the preacher must trust the word preached to expose such a denial and bring it to light.
In any event, the preacher cannot assume that faith is already present for the pew-sitter. When that happens, what results is a job description for successful “Christian” living or an action plan for achieving justice or a bunch of dithering on moral schemes. We can use Kent Jones’ assessment in his Pixar article as an analog: This kind of preacher revels in the pleasure of storytelling, either in morality tales and other fables of self-preservation or in the mantra of an all-accepting God.
This sort of self-styled preaching sophisticate is “loath to relinquish enough precious sophistication to fully surrender” to the true power of the word which arrives as both law and gospel. On the one hand, there appears a preacher who is an expert at value-laden living. Whether those values lie on the right or the left of the political spectrum is irrelevant – either way they’re just another appearance of the law dressed up as pseudo-gospel. Such is the word from the lips of a theologian of glory. It sees the law and calls it what it is not: the gospel.
On the other hand, the preacher of all-rightness before God fashions the preaching moment into the homiletical equivalent of Stuart Smalley’s affirmations on Saturday Night Live in days of yore: “You're good enough, you're smart enough, and doggone it, God likes you!” If the word is that God accepts you as you are, then it’s an antinomianism that at its core is really more law. The hearer is left in the same old situation, aware of the reality that something isn’t working, and begins to distrust the power of the word to do something, anything.
How about we gospel preachers make some radical assumptions? Try these on for size:
Those you preach to don’t already have all the faith they need (and maybe aren’t baptized). Your job is to speak God’s word in a way that faith is created – just as that same word created the heavens and the earth at the very beginning. And just because your preaching brings faith today, don’t assume it’ll still be there next Sunday!
Your pew-sitters are smart enough to detect when you’re giving them a load of bull. They may not catch on immediately, but eventually their B.S. detectors will calibrate and they’ll vote with their feet (see, for example, the ELCA, which has experienced tremendous losses in its two-decade-long history). At some point they’ll need a word powerful enough to raise the dead. If you don’t have it, you’ll have left them hopeless and dead. Do you not remember what you swore to do at your ordination?
It’s okay to manipulate your audience – as long as it’s not self-aggrandizing manipulation or teaching them to engage in spiritual self-pleasuring. In the parable of the wedding banquet, the king sends his soldiers out to compel the guests to come in. If Luther’s right about us being beasts of burden ridden by God and the devil, God calls you to take the reins and give your hearers a compelling word – one to which they can’t help but say, “Amen.”
Hear the wonder and know the awe of the gospel that has saved you yourself. To that end allow me to preach to you: “You who organize your days and deeds in order to prolong your life and have just one more day to finally get it right: your days are numbered and all your efforts come to naught. Yet there is one won’t accept what you thing you can bring to the table, for he not only expects more from you, he’s also ready, willing and able to give it to you. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died for you that you might have his own new, resurrected life. He’s made himself the foundation and linch-pin of all the good gifts God has in store for you. Open your eyes and see that you are risen from the death of your sin. Look up. He’s come for you. Hang on. You’re in for the ride of your life!”
More to come???
If preachers are to be faithful, then they cannot be so craven as to reject the assertion that faith comes by hearing. The work of the preacher is to be Johnny-on-the-spot appearing in the midst of the Law’s kill zone with a word that does indeed raise the hearer to new life. And if the hearer doesn’t recognize how deep sin runs or how one’s attention to the Law leads not to self-continuity but to the grave, then the preacher must trust the word preached to expose such a denial and bring it to light.
In any event, the preacher cannot assume that faith is already present for the pew-sitter. When that happens, what results is a job description for successful “Christian” living or an action plan for achieving justice or a bunch of dithering on moral schemes. We can use Kent Jones’ assessment in his Pixar article as an analog: This kind of preacher revels in the pleasure of storytelling, either in morality tales and other fables of self-preservation or in the mantra of an all-accepting God.
This sort of self-styled preaching sophisticate is “loath to relinquish enough precious sophistication to fully surrender” to the true power of the word which arrives as both law and gospel. On the one hand, there appears a preacher who is an expert at value-laden living. Whether those values lie on the right or the left of the political spectrum is irrelevant – either way they’re just another appearance of the law dressed up as pseudo-gospel. Such is the word from the lips of a theologian of glory. It sees the law and calls it what it is not: the gospel.
On the other hand, the preacher of all-rightness before God fashions the preaching moment into the homiletical equivalent of Stuart Smalley’s affirmations on Saturday Night Live in days of yore: “You're good enough, you're smart enough, and doggone it, God likes you!” If the word is that God accepts you as you are, then it’s an antinomianism that at its core is really more law. The hearer is left in the same old situation, aware of the reality that something isn’t working, and begins to distrust the power of the word to do something, anything.
How about we gospel preachers make some radical assumptions? Try these on for size:
Those you preach to don’t already have all the faith they need (and maybe aren’t baptized). Your job is to speak God’s word in a way that faith is created – just as that same word created the heavens and the earth at the very beginning. And just because your preaching brings faith today, don’t assume it’ll still be there next Sunday!
Your pew-sitters are smart enough to detect when you’re giving them a load of bull. They may not catch on immediately, but eventually their B.S. detectors will calibrate and they’ll vote with their feet (see, for example, the ELCA, which has experienced tremendous losses in its two-decade-long history). At some point they’ll need a word powerful enough to raise the dead. If you don’t have it, you’ll have left them hopeless and dead. Do you not remember what you swore to do at your ordination?
It’s okay to manipulate your audience – as long as it’s not self-aggrandizing manipulation or teaching them to engage in spiritual self-pleasuring. In the parable of the wedding banquet, the king sends his soldiers out to compel the guests to come in. If Luther’s right about us being beasts of burden ridden by God and the devil, God calls you to take the reins and give your hearers a compelling word – one to which they can’t help but say, “Amen.”
Hear the wonder and know the awe of the gospel that has saved you yourself. To that end allow me to preach to you: “You who organize your days and deeds in order to prolong your life and have just one more day to finally get it right: your days are numbered and all your efforts come to naught. Yet there is one won’t accept what you thing you can bring to the table, for he not only expects more from you, he’s also ready, willing and able to give it to you. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died for you that you might have his own new, resurrected life. He’s made himself the foundation and linch-pin of all the good gifts God has in store for you. Open your eyes and see that you are risen from the death of your sin. Look up. He’s come for you. Hang on. You’re in for the ride of your life!”
More to come???
Friday, October 31, 2008
Pixar and preaching, part one
In explaining why Pixar’s movies are so much better than their competition, Kent Jones (nice name, huh?) in a recent issue of Film Comment* describes the prevailing temperament of the world of digital animation that Pixar works against: He says, “Few big-time filmmakers can muster up the incitement to suspend disbelief….Everyone wants the pleasure of storytelling, but they are loath to relinquish enough precious sophistication to fully surrender.”
Jones says, “Moviegoers have apparently become gripped by a fear of being exposed – as naïve, or stupid, or apt to believe in anything but their own skepticism. And few directors believe that they have the right, let alone the ability, to “manipulate” audiences…[D]istrust is an article of faith. How do you give yourself over to anything when you’re convinced that nothing is worthy of your credence?”
Can the same be said of the public purveyors of the gospel? Have we handed ourselves over to a skepticism about the task of preaching? Have we given up the call to incite a suspension of disbelief? Do we longer see ourselves as having the right to manipulate our hearers? Perhaps we just don’t really see the gospel as something radical and true enough to believe in.
The prevailing homiletical temperament refuses to relinquish the sophistication of our inherent perfectibility and assumed goodness. When “God is love” is the pulpit mantra with nary a mention of sin, death and the devil, the sermon becomes a series of recommendations for better living, deeper commitment and higher spiritual practices. The outcome of the sermon, then, rests on the hard-won wisdom or the individual charm and leadership of the preacher.
When your passel of pews is populated with people whose hyper-ironic sense of skepticism applies to everything but their own ability to believe, you’ve been delivered an audience (rather than a congregation) that is bent on playing church but not on the real death and resurrection of life as a disciple of Christ.
“Few big-time filmmakers can muster up the incitement to suspend disbelief,” Jones says, “Since the Eighties, we’ve seen countless narratives with a dispiriting, built-in self-awareness, tailored for people who know all the twists and turns, all the happy endings and the last-minute saves, who want to be in on the joke but have the story told anyway.”
This here Jones sighs at the tedium that is the sermon that meets my suburban expectations of nice. It’s good to have a shot of cleverness tossed in. And if the preacher has the down-to-earth charm of a dimple, a history of adolescent orthodontia and a cup of Starbucks in hand, so much the better. The ratings ratchet skyward, but my boredom with the old news of warmed-over law is stultifying. Such a sermon plays into the skeptical expectations of the spiritually enlightened, but to what end?
Pixar’s digital animators assume an intelligence, a manipulatability and a sense of wonder and awe on the part of those whose eyes and ears take in their product. What if the preacher were to take a page from the Pixar playbook, and maybe go a step further?
More to come...
*Kent Jones, “Beyond Disbelief,” Film Comment, July-August 2008, p. 24.
Jones says, “Moviegoers have apparently become gripped by a fear of being exposed – as naïve, or stupid, or apt to believe in anything but their own skepticism. And few directors believe that they have the right, let alone the ability, to “manipulate” audiences…[D]istrust is an article of faith. How do you give yourself over to anything when you’re convinced that nothing is worthy of your credence?”
Can the same be said of the public purveyors of the gospel? Have we handed ourselves over to a skepticism about the task of preaching? Have we given up the call to incite a suspension of disbelief? Do we longer see ourselves as having the right to manipulate our hearers? Perhaps we just don’t really see the gospel as something radical and true enough to believe in.
The prevailing homiletical temperament refuses to relinquish the sophistication of our inherent perfectibility and assumed goodness. When “God is love” is the pulpit mantra with nary a mention of sin, death and the devil, the sermon becomes a series of recommendations for better living, deeper commitment and higher spiritual practices. The outcome of the sermon, then, rests on the hard-won wisdom or the individual charm and leadership of the preacher.
When your passel of pews is populated with people whose hyper-ironic sense of skepticism applies to everything but their own ability to believe, you’ve been delivered an audience (rather than a congregation) that is bent on playing church but not on the real death and resurrection of life as a disciple of Christ.
“Few big-time filmmakers can muster up the incitement to suspend disbelief,” Jones says, “Since the Eighties, we’ve seen countless narratives with a dispiriting, built-in self-awareness, tailored for people who know all the twists and turns, all the happy endings and the last-minute saves, who want to be in on the joke but have the story told anyway.”
This here Jones sighs at the tedium that is the sermon that meets my suburban expectations of nice. It’s good to have a shot of cleverness tossed in. And if the preacher has the down-to-earth charm of a dimple, a history of adolescent orthodontia and a cup of Starbucks in hand, so much the better. The ratings ratchet skyward, but my boredom with the old news of warmed-over law is stultifying. Such a sermon plays into the skeptical expectations of the spiritually enlightened, but to what end?
Pixar’s digital animators assume an intelligence, a manipulatability and a sense of wonder and awe on the part of those whose eyes and ears take in their product. What if the preacher were to take a page from the Pixar playbook, and maybe go a step further?
More to come...
*Kent Jones, “Beyond Disbelief,” Film Comment, July-August 2008, p. 24.
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