What do you know about Jesus?
The Rev. Amy Morehous
Church of the Ascension
Proper 25, Year A
October 23, 2011
You come along. . . tearing your shirt. . . yelling about
Jesus.
Where do you get that stuff?
What do you know about Jesus?
--- Carl Sandburg, “To a Contemporary Bunkshooter”
That deceptively simple and angry beginning sounds like something we might read online, doesn’t it? Has anyone here heard it before? It’s actually the beginning of a poem first published in 1916 by Nobel laureate, Carl Sandburg. It’s a sometimes angry, sometimes sarcastic screed of a poem against false preachers - people preaching a false Gospel, and putting words in the mouth of Christ. Someone who is the exact opposite of Paul’s description of a minister of the Gospel.
I can’t quote the whole poem here. There’s definitely not any love in it, and it uses several words that I can’t use at the dinner table. It is a fast gallop of a poem, full of slashing words and images. It makes of itself an interesting paraphrase of the question Jesus asks the Pharisees in today’s gospel. “What do you know about the Messiah?”
We are dropped into the end of a long wrangling discussion between Jesus and the religious authorities of the time. Jesus listens to their final question, and answers it with familiar words. (Jesus’ answer is one they would have known - a portion of the Shema, the twice-daily Hebrew prayer acknowledging God as the center of life.) “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your mind.” (Then Jesus adds something from Leviticus, from the priestly Code of Holiness.) “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Well, that about sums it up, doesn’t it? Go do that, and I’ll see you later, everyone.....
That would be the shortest sermon in history, wouldn’t it? After all, Jesus’ answer is pretty clear - not a lot of mystery about it. Difficult to do, maybe even almost impossible.
The two great commandments are simple, but they have teeth: not only are they almost impossible, they’re costly. And mostly, we don’t comply. I don’t know about you, but I don’t live out those commandments, and most of the time, I’m really trying. Perhaps we can’t. God’s call is like that; it always stretches us, pulls us from wherever we are, so that we will strive to be more. It is like the horizon - we can always see it but never reach it.
They are commandments - not suggestions. Jesus doesn’t say love God - if you feel like it. Love God - when you have time. Love your neighbor - when it’s convenient. Love your neighbor - when it’s politically expedient. Love your neighbor - as long as they believe the same things you do, look the same way you do, value the same things you do. And worse, we are to love our neighbor as we love ourselves - you mean, we’re supposed to not only love our neighbor, we’re supposed to love and care for ourselves as well? Who has time for that, in this one lifetime??
That’s the costly part of Christianity. The part that asks us to love God enough, to love ourselves enough to turn around and give ourselves up, to give up all that is superficial and false in order to take on the life in Christ. To love those who are other than us. If it doesn’t make us fidget in our seats, we’re probably not paying attention, because it asks us to take a risk, to do something that might make us look foolish, might make us stick out from everyone else. I don’t know about you, but I’m happy to be a Christian - as long as it doesn’t actually ask me to change, or make me feel too uncomfortable, or expect me to make any actual sacrifices. Much like the Pharisees, who feel pretty secure in the way they’ve already structured their lives, and their beliefs.
Continuing in the discussion, Jesus turns the tables on the Pharisees, and asks them questions. The Pharisees are confused by Jesus’ response to them, and they fall silent, and question him no further. His answer confuses us too, if we’re honest. It doesn’t seem to make sense. How can the Messiah be both David’s ancestor and heir at the same time? Jesus is not debunking his Davidic ancestry here - he is pointing out one of the Divine paradoxes - he is both in time and beyond it. He IS the son of David, the son of man - love incarnate in this world, fully human. Touching, speaking, loving, dying. But the Pharisees don’t understand that he is also the Son of God, and his love is not bound by time, is not confined to our linear sense of past, and present, and future.
When I first read these few sentences, I thought this part of the reading should have been left out, that it was part of a different lesson. But that would be wrong. That second part is vital, because in it, Jesus links the coming of the Messiah to the commandment he’s just given. In his own person, Jesus is linking law...and love. Jesus is aware that loving God, and loving each other isn’t an easy task for us. He knows that we are going to fail, more often than we succeed.
Even knowing that we will fall short of God’s commandment of love, Jesus is giving us hope and promise. He points out that he is the place where love and law intersect: he IS the way, and the truth and the life. That intersection changes the way we relate to law, to God...to each other.
Today, we come together to do the same thing the Hebrew people gathered to do long ago: to come together as a community to worship an almighty God with prayers, and with sacrifice. We wrestle with how to live in community - how to bring people in, how to reunite when we have been divided, how to be God’s people in a hard and harsh world. In a few minutes, we will welcome three very loved children into our community in baptism. We are lucky enough, here, to be given the responsibility of loving them, and their family. They are powerful reminders that we are here to teach each other how to love - how to be the people of God.
And, I would argue, we’re all together, not only to learn to love each other, but to learn to be loved. Another of my favorite poets, W.H. Auden, once wrote, “We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for, I don’t know.” Well, I’ll tell you a hard learning for me. The others are here to love us, even when we aren’t very lovable. God sends people into our lives to love us, even when we don’t feel as if we deserve it. That’s the beauty of grace - we always receive more than we deserve. That love we receive from others is a small token of the love offered to us in Christ, who loves us completely and wholly, even though we are imperfect. God brought us each here to this place seeking something in each other, seeking something in God. What we seek is a glimpse of that divine love - that attracting love in Christ that draws us closer to each other, and to God.
The good news Jesus brings, along with his gracious commandment, is that the Messiah we were waiting for - came. Came to fulfill the law, to show us how to live out that Divine love. Came as a descendant of David. Came and walked on this earth, and spoke to the people. Loved them with everything in him, even in the face of their humanity and their cruelty, ate and drank with them, wept with them. Loved them so much, that he gave himself for them. He gave his very self for us. For each of us.
So, “What do you know about Jesus?” And if you do know something about him, if you’ve met him here, or elsewhere - then what? Does it matter? Does it matter that Jesus loves us? If it does matter, then what kind of people would Jesus have us go forth and be, as we fumble our way through this life? Christ challenges us all today to be more than we are, pushes us to the very horizons of our love. There’s a verse near the end of Sandburg’s poem: “I ask you to come through and show me where you're pouring out the blood of your life.”
Where are we pouring out our love, as if it were the very blood of our life? We are here to love each other - and that love is a choice. We can choose to treat one another as brothers and sisters in Christ - no matter what. No matter that we disagree, no matter that we disappoint one another, no matter than we are a fallible people. No matter that our lives are short, and our troubles long. We are here to love, to be loved, to learn through the course of our lives how to live into that relationship with God, in Christ. If we do that, if we pour out our lives, in offering and sacrifice, we will live fully, as the people of God we were meant to be.
May it be always be so.
Amen.
Church of the Ascension
Proper 25, Year A
October 23, 2011
You come along. . . tearing your shirt. . . yelling about
Jesus.
Where do you get that stuff?
What do you know about Jesus?
--- Carl Sandburg, “To a Contemporary Bunkshooter”
That deceptively simple and angry beginning sounds like something we might read online, doesn’t it? Has anyone here heard it before? It’s actually the beginning of a poem first published in 1916 by Nobel laureate, Carl Sandburg. It’s a sometimes angry, sometimes sarcastic screed of a poem against false preachers - people preaching a false Gospel, and putting words in the mouth of Christ. Someone who is the exact opposite of Paul’s description of a minister of the Gospel.
I can’t quote the whole poem here. There’s definitely not any love in it, and it uses several words that I can’t use at the dinner table. It is a fast gallop of a poem, full of slashing words and images. It makes of itself an interesting paraphrase of the question Jesus asks the Pharisees in today’s gospel. “What do you know about the Messiah?”
We are dropped into the end of a long wrangling discussion between Jesus and the religious authorities of the time. Jesus listens to their final question, and answers it with familiar words. (Jesus’ answer is one they would have known - a portion of the Shema, the twice-daily Hebrew prayer acknowledging God as the center of life.) “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your mind.” (Then Jesus adds something from Leviticus, from the priestly Code of Holiness.) “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Well, that about sums it up, doesn’t it? Go do that, and I’ll see you later, everyone.....
That would be the shortest sermon in history, wouldn’t it? After all, Jesus’ answer is pretty clear - not a lot of mystery about it. Difficult to do, maybe even almost impossible.
The two great commandments are simple, but they have teeth: not only are they almost impossible, they’re costly. And mostly, we don’t comply. I don’t know about you, but I don’t live out those commandments, and most of the time, I’m really trying. Perhaps we can’t. God’s call is like that; it always stretches us, pulls us from wherever we are, so that we will strive to be more. It is like the horizon - we can always see it but never reach it.
They are commandments - not suggestions. Jesus doesn’t say love God - if you feel like it. Love God - when you have time. Love your neighbor - when it’s convenient. Love your neighbor - when it’s politically expedient. Love your neighbor - as long as they believe the same things you do, look the same way you do, value the same things you do. And worse, we are to love our neighbor as we love ourselves - you mean, we’re supposed to not only love our neighbor, we’re supposed to love and care for ourselves as well? Who has time for that, in this one lifetime??
That’s the costly part of Christianity. The part that asks us to love God enough, to love ourselves enough to turn around and give ourselves up, to give up all that is superficial and false in order to take on the life in Christ. To love those who are other than us. If it doesn’t make us fidget in our seats, we’re probably not paying attention, because it asks us to take a risk, to do something that might make us look foolish, might make us stick out from everyone else. I don’t know about you, but I’m happy to be a Christian - as long as it doesn’t actually ask me to change, or make me feel too uncomfortable, or expect me to make any actual sacrifices. Much like the Pharisees, who feel pretty secure in the way they’ve already structured their lives, and their beliefs.
Continuing in the discussion, Jesus turns the tables on the Pharisees, and asks them questions. The Pharisees are confused by Jesus’ response to them, and they fall silent, and question him no further. His answer confuses us too, if we’re honest. It doesn’t seem to make sense. How can the Messiah be both David’s ancestor and heir at the same time? Jesus is not debunking his Davidic ancestry here - he is pointing out one of the Divine paradoxes - he is both in time and beyond it. He IS the son of David, the son of man - love incarnate in this world, fully human. Touching, speaking, loving, dying. But the Pharisees don’t understand that he is also the Son of God, and his love is not bound by time, is not confined to our linear sense of past, and present, and future.
When I first read these few sentences, I thought this part of the reading should have been left out, that it was part of a different lesson. But that would be wrong. That second part is vital, because in it, Jesus links the coming of the Messiah to the commandment he’s just given. In his own person, Jesus is linking law...and love. Jesus is aware that loving God, and loving each other isn’t an easy task for us. He knows that we are going to fail, more often than we succeed.
Even knowing that we will fall short of God’s commandment of love, Jesus is giving us hope and promise. He points out that he is the place where love and law intersect: he IS the way, and the truth and the life. That intersection changes the way we relate to law, to God...to each other.
Today, we come together to do the same thing the Hebrew people gathered to do long ago: to come together as a community to worship an almighty God with prayers, and with sacrifice. We wrestle with how to live in community - how to bring people in, how to reunite when we have been divided, how to be God’s people in a hard and harsh world. In a few minutes, we will welcome three very loved children into our community in baptism. We are lucky enough, here, to be given the responsibility of loving them, and their family. They are powerful reminders that we are here to teach each other how to love - how to be the people of God.
And, I would argue, we’re all together, not only to learn to love each other, but to learn to be loved. Another of my favorite poets, W.H. Auden, once wrote, “We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for, I don’t know.” Well, I’ll tell you a hard learning for me. The others are here to love us, even when we aren’t very lovable. God sends people into our lives to love us, even when we don’t feel as if we deserve it. That’s the beauty of grace - we always receive more than we deserve. That love we receive from others is a small token of the love offered to us in Christ, who loves us completely and wholly, even though we are imperfect. God brought us each here to this place seeking something in each other, seeking something in God. What we seek is a glimpse of that divine love - that attracting love in Christ that draws us closer to each other, and to God.
The good news Jesus brings, along with his gracious commandment, is that the Messiah we were waiting for - came. Came to fulfill the law, to show us how to live out that Divine love. Came as a descendant of David. Came and walked on this earth, and spoke to the people. Loved them with everything in him, even in the face of their humanity and their cruelty, ate and drank with them, wept with them. Loved them so much, that he gave himself for them. He gave his very self for us. For each of us.
So, “What do you know about Jesus?” And if you do know something about him, if you’ve met him here, or elsewhere - then what? Does it matter? Does it matter that Jesus loves us? If it does matter, then what kind of people would Jesus have us go forth and be, as we fumble our way through this life? Christ challenges us all today to be more than we are, pushes us to the very horizons of our love. There’s a verse near the end of Sandburg’s poem: “I ask you to come through and show me where you're pouring out the blood of your life.”
Where are we pouring out our love, as if it were the very blood of our life? We are here to love each other - and that love is a choice. We can choose to treat one another as brothers and sisters in Christ - no matter what. No matter that we disagree, no matter that we disappoint one another, no matter than we are a fallible people. No matter that our lives are short, and our troubles long. We are here to love, to be loved, to learn through the course of our lives how to live into that relationship with God, in Christ. If we do that, if we pour out our lives, in offering and sacrifice, we will live fully, as the people of God we were meant to be.
May it be always be so.
Amen.
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