I’ve been gifted the trust of the pulpit and leadership of an Ash Wednesday service for a congregation this year. The scripture readings for the homily are: Isaiah 58:1-12 and Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21.
Here are the words I will offer.
From the first notes of O Come, O Come Emmanuel, through the baptismal waters of the Jordan, past temptation, a first miracle, and straight on through to the empty tomb, we Christians seem to race from Silent Night, Holy Night to Christ the Lord is Risen Today. Tonight, we pause to recognize the beginning of Lent. The forty days between the end of Epiphany and Easter. The words of Isaiah are trying to shake us from our comfortable fasting routine. The words of Jesus are trying to wake us from the daydream that public piety is righteous living or even life-giving.
We live in a GPS (global positioning system) world. Our inclination in this busy, fast-paced, FOMO culture is to punch Jerusalem into the GPS and take a straight line, the quickest path to Hosanna, and the stone rolled away from the tomb. Lent is a reminder that a journey with Jesus meanders. We want the certainty of a straight and quick trip, even if that includes a toll road called “giving something up.” Lent is a choice.
Lent is a journey. The map has marked trails, arrows, landmarks, bridges, and few written directions. Places are marked on the map: wells where strangers meet and draw water for one another, waterfront property can become teaching space for pesky parables, and dusty roads are places where Samaritans live the commandments better than I do.
There are stories about the journey scribbled around the edges of this incomplete map: how to avoid sinkholes, dangerous passages, thieves, and persons selling “authorized” directions to a promise land and privilege. There are stories about hospitable, safe spaces and the helpers.
Christians think of ourselves as an Easter people, as if Easter is a destination. For some, it is simply a tourist attraction to sell and buy all the appropriate painted trinkets, t-shirts, coffee mugs, and jewelry for sale. For others, it is an oasis on the journey, but eventually, we all must decide what to do after Easter vacation. The journey through Lent is an invitation. You have to choose to accept it.
This may be your first journey, and you may not know where the path begins. Look for the helpers. You may have walked this way before but forgotten where the path is. Isaiah is a good marker of the path. Speaking to those returning from Babylonian exile, Isaiah reminds the people that the rituals they observe are self-serving rather than illuminating. Isaiah’s words are for anyone returning from exile, thinking that the old ways were the good old days.
Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high. (Isaiah 58:3-4)
Rev. Jim Wallis, the founder of Sojourners magazine, once lived in a neighborhood where children go to sleep to the sounds of gunshots. His hope for our nation’s future and what religious faith can mean to people is highlighted in the stories he tells about talking to young people all over the world who are volunteering their time to tutor and mentor younger children. At an event several years ago, I heard him talk about the young adults and college students he meets who are tutoring inner-city kids in Washington, D.C. He said, “They volunteer many more hours than are needed to balance a resume.” A question from the audience asked why he thought they did that. He responded, “The two most common words I hear are meaning and connection. They are looking for meaning and looking for connection.”(1). In a sermon, Wallis said:
The prophet’s call is as contemporary as if it were written yesterday. Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, to bring the homeless into your house, when you see the naked to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? And this is the key: “Then will your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily.” (Isaiah 58:8). Isaiah understands that it’s not the healing of those poor inner-city kids that’s at issue here; it’s our healing. And the college students are finding that the way to get your life together is to do something for somebody else. This is two people being changed. It’s a transformation. Everybody gets “different” in the process. Everybody gets healed.
Jim Wallis, “We All Get Healed”, 30 Good Minutes, Program #4416, November 21, 2000.
What one does on the journey through Lent can bring transformation. What are you willing to do with someone else or for someone else that might transform their lives, and maybe yours? When that happens, mark that place on the map.
The Gospel of Matthew casts an image of an edgy Jesus. Sometimes, his words sound more like “John the Baptist” than Pascal Lamb. More flame thrower than humble table host. Matthew’s edgy Jesus reminds us:
Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your God in heaven. (Matt. 6:1)
This is where Christians have gotten into trouble throughout the centuries. It is rare these days not to hear a nod to God or Jesus following a victory in a sporting event, accepting a Grammy or an Oscar, winning an election, or escaping tragedy when others do not. That may be one’s belief, and gratitude is important, but the implication of that piety. Does God take sides? No doubt there are times we hope and pray that God does. There have been times in my life life that it felt like God chose a side. What about you? Some expressions of modern Christianity like making a spectacle of their outreach, worship, evangelism, morality, or political reach. As we meander with Jesus is he asking us to reconsider that piety? Is Jesus asking us to reconsider the cross as a public religious statement or as fashionable pop culture?(2)
Matthew’s edgy Jesus might sound like this today.
Whenever you give alms, just put your gift into the tray or bucket quietly. Whenever you pray, go into your room and pray. And when you are fasting, do not look dismal to show others that you are fasting. God in heaven knows why you give, pray, and fast. (paraphrase of verses in Matt. 6:5-7)
I can hear Jesus asking, “Why, why, why?”
Are we seeking approval?
Are we measuring ourselves next to other believers, trying to attain their portion of the spirit, or trying to prove a superior understanding of scripture or God?
Are we seeking capital “T” truth or reassurance or influence or hoping to become influencers?
Along the journey, you might reflect on your motivation for practicing Christian faith. Yes, I mean practice. No one becomes a musician, artist, athlete, performer, or preacher without practice. It might not make you perfect, but it could make you proficient. It will help you improvise in the challenging times. So, “give, pray, and fast. Sing, forgive, do justice. Love your enemies, turn the other cheek, keep Sabbath. Offer hospitality, serve the poor, care for the planet.”(3)
Diana Butler Bass suggests that “By practicing our faith, we actually become all the things we promise to be in our baptism vows, we become citizens of the Kingdom of God, the radical followers who embody the beloved community that Jesus proclaimed.”(4)
Treasure can be many things. It may be dollars and cents, stocks, bonds, real estate, family, friendships, or even eternal life.
Treasure may be transforming your heart to see the image of God in other people. The journey may help you discover meaning and connection. Meaning and connection may bring illumination about what you treasure most. The journey through Lent may help you discover that, contrary to conventional wisdom and traditional Christian interpretation, you are originally blessed, and there, there, your heart will be also. When you experience it, mark that place.
Someday, you may pass by this way again and need the reminder.
Someday, another person may pass by and need a marker to know the way; and you can be a helper.
God’s grace doesn’t require reciprocity.
You have to choose to accept it.
You have to be willing to be changed by it. Again and again and again. And when you do, when you experience it, mark that place.
Notes
1. Paraphrase of Wallis, speaking to a session at the Society of Biblical Literature conference, November 2006.
2. This is why I do not wear my religious symbols in public. The fish neckless I wear is my reminder of my call to ministry, my discipleship as a follower of Jesus, and the obligations of my belief in God.
3. Diana Butler Bass, “Practicing Lent.” 2014. The Cottage Substack, February 14, 2024. https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/practice-the-cross.
4. Bass, “Practicing Lent.” 2014.
I was gifted the trust of the pulpit at First Christian Church in Stillwater on January 28th. The congregation is exploring the theme, “More in ’24”. They began in Advent and continued through Epiphany, into Lent, Easter, Pentecost, and Ordinary. For the Epiphany season, it was “More Light.” The Lectionary gospel reading was Mark 1:21-28.
More Light
I was in the audience listening and heard, “Belonging is a gift received and a gift given.”(1)
More Hope
More Peace
More Joy
More Love
More Christ
More Light
Just then, there was a question, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?”
People have puzzled over that question, like Pooh Bear, “Think, think, think.” There have been answers, responses, and suggestions that have taken many forms: doctrine, creed, affirmation of faith, Christian apologetics, violence in the name of God, story, art, poetry, and music.
In the 1920s, Harry Dixon Loes, responded with this little children’s song:
“This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.
Everywhere I go, I’m gonna let it shine
Jesus gave it to me. I’m gonna let it shine.”(2)
Lyrics have been added through the years to that response:
Don’t let Satan blow it out. I’m gonna let it shine
Hide it under a bushel. No, I’m gonna let it shine.
In the late 1950s and Civil Rights Era of the 1960s, additional lyrics were added. This little children’s song was a beacon of light that was steady, or flashing, and sometimes set on strobe.
In my brother’s heart, I’m gonna let it shine
In my sister’s heart, I’m gonna let it shine
All around the world, I’m gonna let it shine.(3)
In the Chalice hymnal, you will find:
“Here “in this place, new light is streaming;
now is the darkness vanished away.
See in this space our fears and our dreaming
Brought here to you in the light of this day.(4)
There is a segment of Christian rock, sometimes called the Jesus love ballad. Its songs can cross over into or from pop music and can trace its roots to Debbie Boone’s cover of “You Light Up My Life.” Some of Taylor Swift’s music includes light around the edges of relationships, and they are not necessarily break-up songs. Hip-hop and country have themes about light that sing of liberation and relationships
A quick search of my music library includes:
From Godspell. “You’ve gotta live right to be the light of the world!”(5)
From Hank Williams.
“No more darkness, no more night.
Now I’m so happy, no sorrow in sight.
Praise the Lord, I saw the light.”(6)
And from folk singer Carrie Newcomer:
The shadows of this world will say
There’s no hope why try anyway?
But every kindness, large and small
Shifts the balance toward the light
Lean in toward the Light.(7)
Maybe that’s what this little synagogue story from the gospel of Mark is inviting us to do. Lean in toward the light.
Dr. Daryl Schmidt was one of those professors who would not tell students they were wrong. I was glad about that because I wasn’t the best Greek student. He would say, “That’s not quite right. Try again, Mr. Davison; you’ve almost got it. What’s that ending telling you about this word and sentence? Remember your context clues.”
Dr. Schmidt was one of the New Testament professors at TCU who loved the ancient Greek language and the Gospel of Mark. When I think back on my biblical classes from college and seminary, Dr. Schmidt’s nudging to “remember your context clues” is still important today. Context clues, those things that help us with cultural competency and being a decent human being, are so important today. They can help us do what is right because it is right as we practice the way of Jesus every day.
Mark is the second gospel in the New Testament but the first written, probably between 65 and 70 CE. It serves as the cliff notes for Matthew and Luke with the letters of Paul. I think of the gospels as prequels. The letters of the Apostle Paul are being passed around between house churches that began as a response to Paul and others preaching about Jesus Christ, which is a theological title, not a surname. People listened and changed the way they lived. But, Jesus didn’t have a backstory. The synoptic gospels, Mark, Matthew, and Luke, tell the story of the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth. In Dr. Schmidt’s book, The Gospel of Mark, he suggests that one of the themes of Mark is, “What you see the first time is not all there is!”(8)
That is helpful for one who knows the story so well. When I watch a film I’ve already seen three times, I like to watch beyond the main action or characters and notice the background and what is around the edges of the scene. When I revisit stories in the bible that I know, I try to forget what I know or believe to meet them anew.
Mark’s story about the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth moves from one scene to the next with a sense of urgency. It jumps from one place to the next. You read words like “just then,” “suddenly,” “immediately,” and “at once.” There is no birth story- just an adult Jesus who, in the story last week, called a few disciples who left everything and everyone immediately to follow him. Then, Jesus sets out to do something. What, exactly, he is out to do is unclear.
Mark introduces Jesus to the public in a synagogue setting. Jesus is teaching on the Sabbath, and during the teaching, a person shouts a question at Jesus. I wonder how a peasant gains the floor to teach in the synagogue instead of the scribes. Was someone sick? Had a scribe heard Jesus somewhere else and invited him to speak?
The writer doesn’t think that’s an important detail. The important detail is that the questioner is living with an unclean spirit. Jesus rebukes the unclean spirit and commands it to leave the man. Jesus’ power of “exorcism” is based on the same authority through which he teaches. It is received, and it is a gift. Just then, the spirit departs the man. A changed life interpreted as a healing miracle. You probably know people, and it may even be true for you that a significant change in one’s life, or the way one lives, IS, sometimes, a miracle.
What authority does Jesus have, embody, or use?
What will Jesus “do with us”?
Rev. Dr. Barbara Lundbald offers a thought. “In Mark’s gospel, Jesus himself is the content of the teaching. The authority is not in particular speeches but in this particular life. Jesus lived as one who had authority, an authority radically different from that of tradition. Different from what had been expected. To understand this authority we must not only listen, we must also look.”(9)
Her thought reminds me of that old saying, “Preach the Gospel. When necessary, use words.”
Mark does not say what Jesus was teaching; it just says that he was doing it with authority, unlike the scribes. Does the crowd think of it as “new” because it is an authentic, fresh idea, or a challenge to tradition? Was Jesus speaking truth to power? Was he just loud? There are so many people and so much out there, right now, shouting for your attention as if they have authority. There is a month of Sunday’s worth of bible study on authority, that needs to include some sociology, to help us understand the nuance of what that word means in secular and religious life. It is one of the things clergy wrestle with: ministerial authority. I’ll just say that, like belonging, authority is a gift received and a gift given. And, it’s complicated. The amount of information in this digital information age makes it difficult to short facts and sift out little truths and capital “T” truth as we gift authority.
What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Notice that the text doesn’t read, “What will you do for us?” Nor does it say what will you do to us. Jesus isn’t transactional.
What authority does Jesus have in your life? Is he like a compass helping you navigate life? Is he that little voice on your shoulder arguing with the voice on your other shoulder? Can you recall the last time you did something because of Jesus’s authority in your life?
In the gospels, the followers of Jesus only know his teaching, the miracles, and the controversy he could cause. So I wonder, “If there were only the teaching of Jesus and no resurrection stories in the gospels, would Jesus have authority in or on your life?”
Here is a suggestion from a minister running a homeless program in his community.
“What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? We are not always sure. I don’t know every single day what God wants from me. Some days I am just like that man with the unclean spirit. Isn’t there a part of all us that sometimes feels unclean? We don’t always understand why things are happening; events and emotions control us in ways we do not want. We are searching for some power that can set us free to live in the right way.”(10)
I think we need to hear “unclean spirits” as a metaphor. There are a number of “isms” or “abuses” that could be considered “unclean,” maybe even evil. Sometimes, we use the word “sin.”
In her book, Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening, Diana Butler Bass discusses what she observes as the major reformation movements in Christianity. She thinks we are currently in the “Fourth Reformation 2.0,”(11), and notes a shift in Christianity from asking “what to believe” to asking “how to believe.” That is an interesting way to “think, think, think,” about “Jesus, what have you to do with us?” Remember, followers of Jesus do Jesus-like things.
Over and over again, Jesus meets people. He places their value as persons, as children of God, above rules, power structures, societal identity, personal identity, divisions, and tradition.
A suggestion. A response from a Gerhard Frost poem.
When your options are either
to revise your beliefs
or to reject a person,
look again.
Any formula for living
that is too cramped
for the human situation
cries for rethinking.
Hardcover catechisms
are a contradiction
to our loose-leaf lives.(12)
What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?”
I’m thankful for the theme you are using this year. It has given me something to think about. I have a modest suggestion. A response. You might call it an epiphany. More in 24 might include less.
Less fear.
Less anger.
Less us and them.
Less siloed news or social media.
Less consumption of what ‘they” tell me I need to be successful, a Christian, or a citizen of this Nation.
Less, I me.
More, I thou relationships
Siblings in faith, there is ministry to do and gospel to be from this corner of Stillwater that only you can do, and only you can be.
More in 24? Lean in toward the Light.
Notes
- During a lecture at Remind Renew at Phillips Theological Seminary on January 25, 2024, Rev. Dr. Bill Kincaid used the phrase quoting (insert author) as a reflection on meaning, community, and positive impact.
- Loes, Dixon Harry, “This Little Light of Mine.” During the 1920s.
- Yarrow, Peter, “This Little Light of Mine.” 1950. “This Little Light of Mine” is a gospel song that came to be an anthem of the civil rights movement in the 1950’s and 60’s. Often mistakenly believed to have been sung on plantations during slavery, it was originally written by Harry Dixon Loes around 1920 as a children’s song. During the Civil Rights Movement, Zilphia Horton adapted the song and taught it to Pete Seeger. The song is famously tied to Civil Rights leader, Fannie Lou Hamer. While being detained by police on her way back from attempting to register to vote with other members of her community, she began singing this song.”
- Haugen, Marty, “Gather Us In,” Instruments of Peace, Vol 1, 1991).
- Schwartz, Stephen, “Light of the World.” Godspell, 1971.
- Williams, Hank, “I Saw the Light.” MGM, 1947.
- Newcomer, Carrie, “Lean in Toward the Light.” The Beautiful Not Yetˆ. 2016.
- Daryl D. Schmidt, The Gospel of Mark. Polebridge Press (California) 1990, p 12.
- The Rev. Dr. Barbara K. Lundbald, “A New Kind of Authority”, Day1.org, February 2, 1997.
- Todd Weir, “What Will You Do With Us, Jesus?”, bloomingcactus.org, January 17, 2006.
- Diana Butler Bass, “The Great Recession and the Great Awakening: The Future is Here”, delivered as a part of Phillips Theological Seminary’s “Re-mind and Re-new Conference (January 17, 2012).
- Gerhard Frost, “Loose-Leaf”, Seasons of a Lifetime, Augsburg Press, 1989, p. 57.