No Rock Like Our God

November 18, 2018
1 Samuel 1:4 – 2:10

For a video recording of this sermon, along with the narrative reading that preceded it, click here. 

 

So. Hannah.

Hannah is one of many women in the Bible whom we know as being barren. Unable to conceive.

The Biblical language about such women is that God has closed their wombs, that God does not look on them with favor.

This is a soul-sick woman.

In Hannah’s culture, a woman who had not given birth had no standing in the community. Giving birth to a daughter was good but being the mother of a son was good. Middle Eastern culture is still like this: a friend who worked in Saudi Arabia a few decades ago told me that women there tended to spoil their sons because sons are the only people who will ever respect and care for those women.

That is Hannah’s situation. Without a son, she is no one.

We know many women of our own time who have been unable to conceive, and even if the “problem” is not hers but that of her partner, it’s often the woman who feels the brunt of that same soul sickness.

It’s a hard situation now. It was a desperate situation then.

And Hannah doesn’t exactly get a lot of support from the people around her. Her husband, Elkanah, even though he gives her double portions because of his love for her … well, Elkanah doesn’t get it. “Am I not more to you than ten sons?” he asks. Well, no, Elkanah, you’re not. You may think you’re God’s most perfect gift to your wife, but you’re not listening—you’re not hearing her very real misery.

Her “sister wife,” Penninah, must have been jealous because of the way Elkanah loved Hannah. She “used to provoke her severely,” the text says. Taunted her. Mocked her. With her seven children, Penninah was secure in being a woman of worth in that culture, but she couldn’t get past her sense of being second best in Elkanah’s eyes.

Hannah is a soul-sick woman whose husband doesn’t make the effort to understand her misery and whose sister wife is intent on keeping her down.

We wouldn’t be surprised if she just gave up. But she doesn’t.

 

Hannah has two things going for her. First, she has faith.
You know that line from Paul’s letter to the Philippians? “Do not be anxious in anything, but in everything, in prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (Phil 4:6)? That’s Hannah.

She brings her worst troubles to God, in prayer and petition, with a sure trust that God has the power—and the desire—to help her. With a sure faith that God is the rock of her salvation.

Hannah also has chutzpah. Agency. She doesn’t just sit at home wailing and pouting; she takes her troubles to God. To the temple. Even when Eli, the high priest, puts her down when he thinks she’s drunk, she stands up for herself and for her prayer.

After baby Samuel is born and grows old enough to be weaned, his mother Hannah walks the walk. She fulfills her promise.

 

And then she sings. Hannah sings of what she has learned and come to believe about God: that God has delivered her from her enemies, including the ones who stalk her own mind. That her strength increases as she ponders on God—prays and meditates with God. That people who previously had been filled full have been brought down, and those who were starving are well satisfied. That the woman who had been barren has now birthed seven children, while the one who boasted of her progeny has lost them all. That God rejects those who boast of their gifts but lifts the downtrodden to unimagined blessings. That God is a rock—that there is no other shelter and shield like our God.

It’s a song that presages Mary’s song, the Magnificat. A song about God’s reversals, about the upside-down-ness of the kingdom of God. About God’s love for those whom the world sees as worthless.

It’s the song of a prophet, one who looks at the world and sees God’s truth. One who started in misery but used her chutzpah and her faith to rise beyond the place where the world would have kept her.

Hannah. Child of God. Prophet. Blessed.
Thanks be to God for her life and her legacy.

Alleluia. Amen.

The Joy of Nard

March 18, 2018     John 12:1-8

Hello. Let me introduce myself. My name is Elizabeth, and I come from a little town near Jerusalem called Bethany. Oh, you needn’t go looking on your map for my town—everything I’m telling you about happened a long time ago.

It was just a few days before the Passover, and my neighbors were having a dinner for the prophet Jesus—you’ve heard of him?—and some of his followers. This dinner was in Jesus’ honor because of what he’d done the week before, bringing Lazarus right out of the grave, you know. Wait—you know that story, don’t you? Lazarus (well, we called him Laz, but this is an important story, so I’d better use his whole name) … well, Lazarus (oh, he’s brother of Mary and Martha, you know?) … Lazarus died. And his sisters were just sick about it, and they kept saying that if Jesus had been there, he wouldn’t have died. But they got his body all anointed and wrapped in the grave clothes and got it in the cave that his family always uses as a grave.

A couple of days later Jesus comes a-strollin’ up … and next thing we know Jesus has gone to the tomb and is telling them to open it up. Martha said, “Whoa, Jesus, you know it’s going to smell something awful in there,” but well, he basically told her to shush, and he looked up and prayed. He called Yahweh Father, and then he yelled out for Lazarus to come out, and don’t you know, he did! It was something, I tell you. He had those grave clothes hangin’ on him and around his face. But they unwrapped him, and he was fine.

So anyway, of course the family was pretty excited, and they decided to give a dinner to honor Jesus. Martha said she’d serve, which seemed to be some kind of inside joke between her and Jesus, because they kind of grinned at each other, but then, I think she likes doing that sort of thing.

There was something going on with Mary that night. I’d noticed it before with her when it came to Jesus. She got kinda misty-eyed when she talked about him. It wasn’t like she wanted him for a husband; it was something else, and until later that night I never could tell exactly what it was.

Anyway, Mary had one of those weird looks on her face that night—sometimes it looked like she was about to cry, and then the next minute there’d be such joy shining out of her eyes … And she had her hair down. Now, we’re not like the Greeks, where the women are kept out of sight most of the time, and there’s nothing wrong with a woman having her hair down at home, but, well, mostly we keep it up and out of sight when other people might see. I certainly had my hair up that night, and I was just kinda surprised at Mary. I mean, no one’s going to mistake Mary for some kind of loose woman, but still …

Okay, so we’re eating, and Martha’s serving and people are talking, and all of the sudden Mary whips out this bottle and pours it all over Jesus’ feet. And it’s nard! And a lot of it. Oh wait, I forgot, you folks don’t know from nard. It’s a perfume, from India, and I’ve got to tell you it’s expensive. That bottle she had—that had to cost as much as my husband earned in a year.

Well, everybody stopped talking all at once. This is strong perfume, and—look, I know you folks work hard to wipe the smells out of everything—but we’re all lounging at the table there, pretty much in each other’s armpits, and those men, they can really … well, you know … and there were smells from the mutton roasting and the garlic and the onions … and the animals outside … and this nard—ohh, it’s a wonderful smell—it just cut through all that, and everybody got quiet. And there’s Mary, pouring all this perfume on Jesus’ feet, and wiping them off with her hair. It’s the servants’ job to wash people’s feet, and usually we use olive oil, but there was Mary, crying and laughing at the same time and using her hair like it was a towel on this perfumed oil all over his feet. And I looked at Jesus and he had his eyes closed. It looked like he was enjoying it, but kind of sad-like … and I looked over at Martha, standing by the door, and didn’t she have the exact same look on her face, like she was so proud of Mary for doing this and so sad at the same time.

And then Judas—do you know Judas, the one called Iscariot? —oh, he’s one of those intense, disapproving types, you know—always so stiff and rigid. Well, prissy old Judas says in that sneering way he has, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” Humph, like he cared about the poor. He just couldn’t stand anybody being happy. (And I did hear someone say that he handled the money for that group and always liked to have his fingers on the cash, you know what I mean? Old klepto.) He didn’t care a bit about any of us.

Oh, and yeah, I know about what he did later, but I just can’t even talk about that, okay?

Well, after Judas said that, Jesus looked up sharp-like and told him to leave Mary alone. “She’s got this nard for my burial. She knows it’s coming, and she’s honoring me with it now.”

Wait. Burial?—Jesus is going to die? I was so horrified that I almost missed what he said next. “Leave her alone. The poor—they’re always here, but I won’t be.”

Well, I can tell you, the dinner broke up pretty quickly after that. Jesus and his people left—and Andrew and John, they were dragging Judas out of there. I suppose maybe they were afraid of what Martha might say to him, but I think Jesus had already said everything that needed to be said. I stayed around to help Martha with the dishes a bit—that and I just wasn’t ready to leave, you know? The breeze came up while we were washing up, and that nard smell just filled the room. Martha looked at me and grinned a little. “Well, I guess we don’t need to worry any more about any of the stench from when Laz was buried, do we?”

I’ve thought a lot about that night, over the years. That next few weeks were something else … but I guess you know those stories. And while we were going through them, and as I’ve thought about that whole time since then, there are so many ideas that just keep on wafting through my brain—a bit like the smell of that nard, I guess. There’s death and coming alive again … and there’s those smells … and there’s the foot-washing (like I guess you know Jesus did for his guys at that last supper they had) … and there’s that jerk Judas, of course. I just keep coming back to that nard and how it was supposed to be used for a death but it wasn’t … and then there was a death, but then it wasn’t. And how expensive that nard was—cost Mary just about everything she ever had … but then, Jesus, well, I guess that cost him everything he had, too, didn’t it.

And there’s something else I think about. I think about Mary and the look on her face that night. Like this was the biggest thing in the world, ever. And I guess it was, really. She just purely loved Jesus, and she wasn’t afraid to let it show in the way she acted.

It’s a long time since those days in Bethany, and I’ve seen an awful lot since then. But I’ve got to tell you that every once in a while I get a whiff of nard in the air, and I look around me, and someone’ll be there who’s got that joy on their face. And usually they’ll be doing something that’s just extravagant, just outrageous … and completely filled with love for Jesus. Something like, oh, I don’t know, like spending time on the phone, week after week, listening to someone try to sort out his life … or getting up in the night for the fifth time to comfort a sick child … or spending time with a high school kid who needs to know there’s goodness in the world … or chasing after little kids on Wednesday nights … or listening for the umpteenth time to someone go on and on about the good old days … or getting excited about giving their money to something like One Great Hour of Sharing. Lots of things—stuff they don’t have to do but they do it anyway.

Extravagant stuff. Ordinary stuff. Stuff filled with love.

God bless you. Amen.

Water Walking

August 13, 2017
Matthew 14:22-33

Hi. So yeah, I’m one of the ones who followed Jesus. The ones you think of as The Twelve. I’m here to talk with you about followin’ Jesus—in my time and in this day and age.

Now this story I wanna tell you about—it happened kinda early on. We’d gotten the news the day before that Jesus’ cousin John—the one they called The Baptist?—Herod had beheaded him. He spoke out against the State, you know, and Herod couldn’t stand that. That was sad … and kinda scary. Jesus wanted to get away from the crowds for a while, but they followed him … and he spent most of the day talkin’ with them and healin’ the ones who were sick. That healin’ thing, that may sound pretty amazing to you, but by this time we’d kinda gotten used to it.

But that night—whew!—that was somethin’ else. We’d been gettin’ nervous about havin’ all these people way out there as night came, and we told Jesus to send them on because there sure wasn’t enough food for everybody out there. But—and you know, I still can’t quite get over this one—he took the little bit of food that was out there—a couple of fish and some bread—and, well, we fed all those thousands of people with that little bit of food! I gotta tell you, that was amazing!

We all wanted to talk with him about what had happened, but he did somethin’ he’d never done before that night. He sent us out on the boat without him. I guess he wanted to be alone for a while. Maybe we were just as much pests to him sometimes as all those crowds of people.

But anyway, we started out on the boat and whew, there was some wind that night! I’ve never experienced such a wind. I can tell you that none of us was gettin’ any sleep, what with fightin’ that wind and tryin’ to keep the boat upright and bailin’ out the water that kept pourin’ in over the sides. And of course thinkin’ about feedin’ all those people, and worryin’ a bit about Jesus not bein’ with us, and bein’ sad about John. Nah, it wasn’t what you’d call a peaceful night.

And then, and then one of the guys started screamin’: “It’s a ghost! It’s a ghost!” And when we looked where he was pointin’, well, we could see somethin’ out there, kinda floatin’ over the water. Now, I remember my uncles, those old fishermen, talkin’ about the strange things they’d see when they’d been out on the water for days and nights, and I’ve got to tell you, my breath just caught up in my throat. The thing came nearer, and guys were screamin’ and yellin’, and danged if it didn’t look like a man. … Jesus!?

And then he called out to us to let us know that it was him. “Have courage!” he called, “Don’t be afraid.” And … now this is important. I know you’ve heard this story and heard that he said, “It is I,” but that wasn’t quite it. “Ego eimi,” he said. I AM.

Now, I don’t know about you folks and how much you know about the old scriptures, the Torah, but I gotta tell you, them’s kicker words. I AM. That’s what Yahweh said when Moses asked him who he was. I AM. Folks, that’s God. That’s not-foolin’-around-here God. And there was Jesus, a-strollin’ across the water in the middle of the night just like it was, say, the middle of Capernaum on a sunshiny mornin’, and he’s sayin’ I AM. Jesus?

So we’re all still yellin’ and screamin’, and some of us are just about out of our minds and cryin’ and thinkin’ Jesus? I AM? And, well, you don’t know Peter the way we did, but I guess all the excitement just grabbed hold of him, and he’s yellin’ out to Jesus: “If it’s you, tell me to come to you on the water,” and Jesus says, “Come on then,” and—whew—next thing you know Peter’s jumpin’ over the side—and now he’s walkin’ on the water.

Now that got us to shut up, I’ll tell ya. Here’re these two guys, walkin’ toward each other on top of the water, and Peter’s just a starin’ at Jesus, and we’re starin’ at the two of them, and you can hear some sobbin’ here and there, and of course the wind is still just carryin’ on. And then you could see Peter start to look around, like he was lookin’ at the waves and the water and hearin’ that wind, and dang if he didn’t start to sink. Shoooot! “Save me!” he cries out, and sure enough, Jesus just reaches out a hand for him and pulls him up. “Oh you,” Jesus says, “you just didn’t quite have enough faith. Why did you doubt?” And then he brings Peter over to the boat so they can both get in.

And suddenly it was just as quiet as it could be. That wind just, well, it just stopped. And we’re all in the boat, tryin’ to get our heads around everything we’ve heard and seen, and just starin’. And then somebody said what we were all thinkin’: “Truly you are the son of God.” And then we were all sayin’ it, and bowin’ down and tryin’ to reach out and touch him and saying, “You’re the son of God!” Theou huios ei. Over and over: the son of God! You’re the son of God! Theou huios ei!

 

Well, that’s the story. I’ll never forget it. And I’ve thought about it a lot over these years, and I’ve talked with a lot of folks about what it meant.

Now, some folks look at it like it’s a story about Peter and how he didn’t have enough faith, how he looked away from Jesus and started to fail. And yeah, that’s in there. It’s been true for me in my life—those times I got caught up in what I thought was “real” and kinda forgot about Jesus, well, those are the times I sank a bit. But you know, when you look back and call to Jesus for help, he’s always there.

And other folks, usually the ones with some kinda fancy education, they tell the story like it’s a big “extended metaphor.” The boat is supposed to be the church, with all of us in it and bein’ rocked about a lot without Jesus …

Huh. I don’t know from extended metaphors, but I can tell you it happened. Just the way I said.

 

Now, they tell me I’m supposed to tell you what this means to you. Huh. I’ve met a bunch of ya, and I’ve got to say that y’all seem to be awful hung up on whether people walkin’ on water is scientifically possible.

Yeah, we weren’t so different at first—us disciples—before that couple of days. I mean, we’d seen Jesus healin’ the sick and all, but well, he wasn’t the only one could do that. Now, we didn’t know all the stuff you all know about science, but heck, we knew about water and that people just can’t walk on top of it. So it’s not like we were a bunch of gullible fools, thinkin’ well, hey, we didn’t know people could walk on water. ‘Cause they can’t. You know it and I know it—the world just don’t work that way.

But for Jesus, that one night, the world did work that way. And I don’t think it was because the world changed but because of who he was. Theou huios—the son of God. God, even. And like that guy Luke wrote down: “All things are possible with God” (Luke 1:37).

Cause God, well, God don’t follow the kinds of rules we know about down here—rules like “natural law,” and rules that people come up with, like how it’s best to stick to your own kind or how people who are different from us are probably out to get us.

Nah. God don’t follow those kinds of rules.

 

So here’s what I’m hopin’ happens to you. I’m hopin’ that God comes to you in a way that just breaks all the rules. Things you never thought could happen that way, and then here’s God, just a-stridin’ through the waves, so to speak, and a-reachin’ out to you. And I hope maybe you’ll get excited, like Peter, and jump up and try to do it too, and then get pulled out of the brink by God when you get scared. Cause a life of faith can be scary sometimes. It can have you steppin’ out of the boat and takin’ off across the unknown.

I’m hopin’ that when Jesus—the Son of God—calls you, and you think, “Whoa, that’s not the way the world works,” that you’ll trust enough to jump out of the boat and go strollin’ with God. You’ll be glad you did.

Cause God’s there. In the middle of the lake, in the middle of the storm, in Charlottesville, in Korea, in Baltimore City, in Joppatowne. God’s there. And a-waitin’ for us to jump out of the boat, y’know?

I’m off now. Good to see ya.
God bless.

The Joy of Nard

March 13, 2016
John 12:1-8

 

Hello. Let me introduce myself. My name is Elizabeth, and I come from a little town near Jerusalem called Bethany. Oh, you needn’t go looking on your map for my town—everything I’m telling you about happened a long time ago.

It was just a few days before the Passover, and my neighbors were having a dinner for the prophet Jesus—you’ve heard of him?—and several of his followers. This dinner was in Jesus’ honor because of what he’d done the week before, bringing Lazarus right out of the grave, you know. Wait—you know that story, don’t you? Lazarus (well, we called him Laz, but this is an important story, so I’d better use his whole name) … well, Lazarus (oh, he’s brother of Mary and Martha, you know?) … Lazarus died. And oh, his sisters were just sick, and they kept saying that if Jesus had been there, he wouldn’t have died. (You know people talk that way when someone dies—all those “if only’s,” I call ‘em.) But they got his body all anointed and wrapped in the grave clothes and got it in the cave that his family always uses as a grave, and a couple of days later Jesus comes a-strollin’ up. Martha met him on the road and then she sent Mary out, and next thing we know Jesus has gone to the tomb and is telling them to open it up. Martha said, “Whoa, Jesus, you know it’s going to smell something awful in there,” but well, he basically told her to shush, and he looked up and prayed. He called Yahweh Father, which I have to tell you I pondered on some, and then he yelled out for Lazarus to come out, and don’t you know, he did! It was something, I tell you. He had those grave clothes hangin’ on him and around his face. But they unwrapped him, and he was fine.

So anyway, of course the family was pretty excited, and they decided to give a dinner to honor Jesus. Martha said she’d serve, which seemed to be some kind of inside joke between her and Jesus, because they kind of grinned at each other, but then, I think she likes doing that sort of thing. But Mary and Lazarus were both there at the table, along with Jesus and those followers of his and a bunch of folks from the town. I was there, too, of course.

But you know, there was something going on with Mary that night. I’d noticed it before with her when it came to Jesus. She got kinda misty-eyed when she talked about him, I noticed. It wasn’t like she wanted him for a husband; it was something else, and I never could tell exactly what it was. I got a clue later, but I’ll talk about that in a while. Anyway, Mary had another one of those weird kinda looks on her face that night—sometimes it looked like she was about to cry, and then the next minute there’d be such joy shining out of her eyes! And she had her hair down. Now, we’re not like the Greeks, where the women are kept out of sight most of the time, and there’s nothing wrong with a woman having her hair down at home, but, well, mostly we keep it up and out of sight when other people might see. I certainly had my hair up that night, and I was just kinda surprised at Mary. I mean, no one’s going to mistake Mary for some kind of loose woman, but still …

Okay, so we’re eating, and Martha’s serving and people are talking, and all of the sudden Mary whips out this bottle and pours it all over Jesus’ feet. And it’s nard! And a lot of it. Oh wait, I forgot, you folks don’t know from nard. It’s a perfume, from India, and I’ve got to tell you it’s expensive. That bottle she had—that had to cost as much as my husband earned in a year.

Well, everybody stopped talking all at once. This is strong perfume, and—look, I know you folks work hard to wipe the smells out of everything—but we’re all lounging at the table there, pretty much in each other’s armpits, and those men, they can really … well, you know … and there were smells from the mutton roasting and the garlic and the onions … and the animals outside … and this nard—ohoh, it’s a wonderful smell—it just cut through all that, and everybody got quiet. And there’s Mary, pouring all this perfume on Jesus’ feet, and wiping them off with her hair. It’s the servants’ job to wash people’s feet, and usually we use olive oil, but there was Mary, crying and laughing at the same time and using her hair like it was a towel on this perfumed oil all over his feet. And I looked at Jesus and he had his eyes closed. It looked like he was enjoying it, but kind of sad-like … and I looked over at Martha, standing by the door, and didn’t she have the exact same look on her face, like she was so proud of Mary for doing this and so sad at the same time.

And then Judas—do you know Judas, the one called Iscariot? —oh, he’s one of those intense and disapproving types, you know—always so stiff and rigid. Well, prissy old Judas says in that sneering way he has, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” Humph, like he cared about the poor. He just couldn’t stand anybody being happy. (And I did hear someone say that he handled the money for that group and always liked to have his fingers on the cash, you know what I mean? Old klepto.) He didn’t care a bit about any of us.

Oh, and yeah, I know about what he did later, but I just can’t even talk about that, okay?

Well, after Judas said that, Jesus looked up sharp-like and told him to leave Mary alone. “She’s got this nard for my burial. She knows it’s coming, and she’s honoring me with it now.”

Wait. Burial?—Jesus is going to die? I was so horrified that I almost missed what he said next. “Leave her alone. The poor—they’re always here, but I won’t be.”

Well, I can tell you, the dinner broke up pretty quickly after that. Jesus and his people left—and Andrew and John, they were dragging Judas out of there. I suppose maybe they were afraid of what Martha might say to him, but I think Jesus had already said everything that needed to be said. I stayed around to help Martha with the dishes a bit—that and I just wasn’t ready to leave, you know? The breeze came up while we were washing up, and that nard smell just filled the room. Martha looked at me and grinned a little. “Well, I guess we don’t need to worry any more about any of the stench from when Laz was buried, do we?”

I’ve thought a lot about that night, over the years. That next few weeks were something else … but I guess you know those stories. And while we were going through them, and as I’ve thought about that whole time since then, there are so many themes that just keep on wafting through my brain—a bit like the smell of that nard, I guess. There’s death and coming alive again … and there’s those smells … and there’s the foot-washing (like I guess you know Jesus did for his guys at that last supper they had) … and there’s that jerk Judas, of course. I just keep coming back to that nard and how it was supposed to be used for a death but it wasn’t … and then there was a death, but then it wasn’t. And how expensive that nard was—cost Mary just about everything she ever had … but then, Jesus, well, I guess that cost him everything he had, too, didn’t it.

And there’s something else I think about. I think about Mary and the look on her face that night. Like this was the biggest thing in the world, ever. And I guess it was, really. She just purely loved Jesus, and she wasn’t afraid to let it show in the way she acted.

Some people say that’s the definition of discipleship, y’know, loving Jesus and acting on that love. And she had it in spades, didn’t she, discipleship. The look on her face. She loved him so much. She knew he was going to die, and she gave him everything she had, and she had so much joy in it.

It’s a long time since those days in Bethany, and I’ve seen an awful lot since then. But I’ve got to tell you that every once in a while I get a whiff of nard in the air, and I look around me, and someone’ll be there who’s got that joy on their face. And usually they’ll be doing something that’s just extravagant, just outrageous … and completely filled with love for Jesus. Something like, oh, I don’t know, like spending time on the phone, week after week, listening to someone try to sort out his life … or getting up in the night for the fifth time to comfort a sick child … or spending time with a high school kid who needs to know there’s goodness in the world … or fixing toys … or listening for the umpteenth time to someone go on and on about the good old days … or getting excited about giving their money to something like One Great Hour of Sharing. Lots of things—stuff they don’t have to do but they do it anyway.

Wait. [sniff] What’s that? Do you smell it? You must love Jesus, too! Mary would be so happy … and Martha would invite you to dinner.

God bless you. Amen.