Sermon for Third Sunday after Pentecost, "Saved By the Bell"

Sermon 6/13/10

Galatians 2:15-21

Galatians: Saved By the Bell

Today we get past the introduction to Galatians, where Paul is laying out his credentials and why the Galatians should listen to him, and into to the heart of this epistle, the deep theology, the content that Paul wants them to believe and feels like they are mixing up with whatever ‘other gospel’ people have been teaching them. Paul’s writings are certainly not as easy to listen to as the Parables of Jesus, and so you may find yourselves tuning out or getting overwhelmed when you first hear this passage – but Paul has some really good stuff in there when we take the time to examine it closely – stuff that, when we rephrase it into our own words, I bet you will find hits the nail on the head for some of the struggles we face as disciples. Let me share with you this same text from Galatians in Eugene Peterson’s The Message, to help us understand Paul’s argument better. He writes:

15-16We Jews know that we have no advantage of birth over "non-Jewish sinners." We know very well that we are not set right with God by rule-keeping but only through personal faith in Jesus Christ. How do we know? We tried it—and we had the best system of rules the world has ever seen! Convinced that no human being can please God by self-improvement, we believed in Jesus as the Messiah so that we might be set right before God by trusting in the Messiah, not by trying to be good.

 17-18Have some of you noticed that we are not yet perfect? (No great surprise, right?) And are you ready to make the accusation that since people like me, who go through Christ in order to get things right with God, aren't perfectly virtuous, Christ must therefore be an accessory to sin? The accusation is frivolous. If I was "trying to be good," I would be rebuilding the same old barn that I tore down. I would be acting as a charlatan.

 19-21What actually took place is this: I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn't work. So I quit being a "law man" so that I could be God's man. Christ's life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not "mine," but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that.

   Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God's grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily.

At stake in Paul’s writing is this: the question of how we are saved. What saves us? Paul uses the word “justified” – how are we justified? And to understand this term, you can just think of the documents you create on a computer – you can have your text in a straight line on the right, the left, center your text, or justify it on both sides, so that your columns make straight lines on both margins. That’s my preferred style – nice and neat. To be justified theologically means to be set in a correct line with God. So, how are we justified? What saves us? Paul’s answer, here, and throughout his writings, is that we are justified, saved, by faith in Jesus Christ. Having faith in Jesus Christ gets us in line with God. At first glance, this may not sound like a startling revelation to us, but Paul is teaching directly to a culture that prized obedience to the laws of Moses as the way to be ‘justified’, saved before God.

But Paul’s argument met with a lot of questions and outright disagreement. If your faith saves you, can you do whatever you want, sin as much as you want, as long as you believe in Jesus? If doing good works, or obeying the rules isn’t actually going to do anything for you in God’s eyes, why bother to obey the rules? Why bother to do good works? And really, if you and I both have faith in Christ, but I am really so much better at doing good than you are, shouldn’t I get some better reward than you? And finally, the Galatians and others apparently see Paul’s lack of perfection, the faults they see in him, as proof, somehow, that this whole “justification by faith” thing doesn’t really work out after all. In fact, elsewhere in the scriptures we’ll see that even the other apostles didn’t take Paul’s arguments at face value. James, brother of Jesus, wrote: “Show me your faith without works, and I by my works will show you my faith.” Even today, church-folks still have a lot of debate about how to answer the question: How are you saved?

So why do we struggle with this question so much? As I was preparing my sermon this week I kept thinking of the ordination essays I had to write five years ago as I was preparing to be examined by the Board of Ordained Ministry. One of the questions I had to answer is this: 2) What effect has the practice of ministry had on your understanding of humanity and the need for divine grace? In other words, what had being a pastor helped me understand about people needing grace? And this is what I wrote in part, “The practice of ministry has put a spotlight on the ‘human condition’ for me – this struggle, this tension in which we are caught. On the one hand, we consider ourselves such hopeless, worthless creatures. We’re overcome with a belief that we are without much value, without importance. We hate ourselves, hate our actions. In this sense, our need for grace is complete – we need to be given value, and that value comes in our very existence, our beingness, creations of God. But on the other hand, we are content – smug – ruling the world, in charge, unstoppable. Humanity feels so full of itself that we can’t give anymore. We whine, “we’ve done enough, God, we have no more to give.” In this way, our need for grace is complete – we need to be challenged, prodded, transformed, made new. So I find myself preaching two themes in my practice of ministry: one, where I say, “just being a ‘good person’ isn’t enough. God wants more! God wants all of you!” And the other says, “You are so loved! You are so valued! God’s grace is free – you don’t have to and can’t earn it.” We live in that tension, grace and responsibility.”

We struggle with this question of how we are saved, how we are justified, because we’re torn between so many presumptions. We figure that though we’ve heard otherwise, grace can’t really be free, because nothing’s free, and it seems like some trick to catch us off-guard. And I think we simultaneously feel like we aren’t doing enough, being good enough to get God’s grace, and like we’re basically good people, so what more does God want from us? And then, we feel like at least we’re better than the next guy, so maybe if we highlight to God how not good, not worthy the person next to us is, God won’t pay so much attention to the faults in us. And that’s just another proof that grace can’t really be free – if it was free – if it was for everyone – grace would also have to be free for the person we like the least, who is the worst. And that’s hardly fair, is it?

Ah, but as we all know, life isn’t fair, is it? And really, grace – God’s free gift to all of us – grace isn’t really fair either. I’ll tell you it’s a bad sign that you’re going to end up as a pastor when you have some serious internal theological debates as a sixth grader. Here’s one of mine. There was a girl in my sixth grade class who made my life pretty miserable. She was the most popular girl in school – wealthy, athletic, and pretty, and years later became the homecoming queen and prom queen and senior ball queen – and she was mean to me, and with her friends, made my last year of elementary school pretty miserable. What I struggled with was this: from everything I’d read in the Bible, I understood that if this girl had faith, she could be forgiven and welcomed into heaven someday despite how much horrible stuff she’d done to me, and even though I was so much nicer than her! And it just wasn’t fair! It really got to me, that if God’s grace worked like I thought, God’s grace would be for her too.

And yet: if God was fair, we’d be in big trouble, wouldn’t we? If God was fair, we would try to follow the law, but when we broke a law, we’d be punished. If God was fair, our punishment would be equal to our transgression. If God was fair, the law that we try to follow but can never perfectly fulfill would crush us, body and soul, and God would never be able to forgive us for all the good we fail to do. Thank God God is not fair. Instead, God is gracious. When we have faith in God’s grace, then, we find precious salvation – wholeness – justification.

For through the law I died to the laws, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. By faith. By unfair grace. Amen.

Sermon for Second Sunday after Pentecost, "Galatians"

Sermon 6/6/10, Galatians 1:11-24

Galatians

This week, we change course for a bit and begin a month of focusing on Paul’s letter to the Galatians. The church in the region of Galatia wasn’t really a single congregation, but a community of worshippers, people to whom Paul had brought the gospel message of Jesus during some of his earlier missionary work. We don’t know exactly what Paul’s been hearing, but we know that the reason he writes this letter to these churches is because he’s been hearing things about the churches that cause him great concern. Paul’s tone is frantic, as if he heard rumors about Galatia and immediately sat down to write and address the troubles. The epistle doesn’t open with the usual long line of greetings from Paul, but gets to the point after the briefest of openings. He says, “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel – not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.” Paul’s upset because the people have apparently been leaning away from what he taught them to listen to someone else who is teaching them that the gospel is something different from what Paul presented. Paul actually curses anyone, including himself, who tries to ‘sell’ a gospel that is different from what Paul first shared with them.

            In the verse right before today’s passage begin, Paul writes, “Am I now seeking human approval, or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ.” Nonetheless, what follows in our passage today is Paul explaining why he has the authority to do and teach what he has. First, Paul says, he didn’t get this gospel handed down to him by other humans – it isn’t a human source, he wasn’t taught what he preached. But he received it through a revelation from Jesus Christ himself, on the road to Damascus. Paul brings this up because, as perhaps you can imagine, the disciples who actually walked with Jesus and were called by him and sent out by him and spent three years with him – well, it took them a long time to take Paul seriously. Here was someone who was known as a persecutor of followers of The Way, Jesus-followers, who had never even met Jesus, and now he’s trying to proclaim the good news of Jesus? Paul is reminding the congregations of Galatia that though he may not have been one of the twelve, he still learned about Jesus from Jesus. It was three years later, Paul says, before he really spent time with the other apostles – he went to visit Cephas – who we know as Simon Peter – and James the brother of Jesus. Again, he’s saying that he isn’t just preaching what other people told him – his gospel message comes straight from the source.

            Finally, Paul closes our text for today with what I would consider typical Paul: He mentioned that people knew in Judea that he used to persecute Christians and knew that now he proclaimed that very same faith, and Paul concludes, “they glorified God because of me.” I’ve mentioned to you before that Paul always strikes me as a little full of himself in his writings – and this is a great example of what I mean. I can’t picture myself ever saying, “yeah, they were praising God because of me.” But Paul doesn’t have any qualms talking about himself if it helps to prove his point: his ministry, preaching the gospel of Jesus from Jesus, has been effective, and the Galatians need to return to following Jesus as they’ve been taught.  

            As much as Paul sometimes irks me, I kept mulling over this passage this week and trying to make sense of it, his tone, his confidence, and kept trying to figure out what it meant for us. I’ll admit I find it to be a challenging text. Paul’s arguments and strategy for persuasion seem counter-intuitive to me. He has contact with Peter and James the brother of Jesus and the rest of the twelve, and this would seem to give him more clout and standing, firm up his reputation, make the Galatians more receptive to his message. But instead, he makes it a point, again and again, to insist that the message he has doesn’t come from them – just from God, from Jesus. That’s all good and well – but why not have some extra accreditation? I think of it like giving references – Paul says the Galatians can’t have any references to check. It would be like me showing up here at the pastor without being willing to show you that I’d been to seminary, or been ordained, or been approved by my peers and supervisors for ministry.

            On the other hand, I wonder this: Although I might need some credentials to be the pastor of this congregation, do we, as Christians, really need any credentials to tell our story of God at work in our lives? And finally, I think I understand what Paul is all about. He’s the only one who can tell his story of Jesus at work in his life, and he can’t really tell anyone else’s story as well as he can tell his own. And so it is for us. We just sometimes forget that, and, like the Galatians, tend to put all the preaching of the gospel into the hands of people who have the credentials, like me, instead of in the hands of the people who can tell their own story – which is all of us.

            Consider this: The role of the pastor has change pretty drastically over the years. Last week, during the hymn sing, you heard about camp meetings, one way frontier Christians could gather together for worship, preaching, and praising even though congregations and pastors were few and far between. In Methodism and other traditions, preachers were “circuit riders” – they would travel from congregation to congregation to preach and to administer the sacraments of baptism and Holy Communion. But that meant that the day to day life of ministry in congregations was left up to the people. They couldn’t just wait for the next time the preacher would come around to get things done. If they wanted others to know about Jesus, they had to tell the story themselves, do the visiting, do the mission, do the ministry themselves. Paul calls that, as we still do today, the priesthood of all believers. We all have a story to share that is our story to share.

            So maybe when Paul says, “And they glorified God because of me,” we should all strive for his confidence. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to say that you impacted someone else so much that they came to praise God because of you? Now, I’m thankful to not be a circuit rider – and I’m blessed to have as my career this pastoral ministry which allows me to visit, and be in mission, and preacher, and teach, and immerse myself in the life of the church and get paid for it on top of it all. But I’ll tell you what: most people don’t come in these doors for the first time because of me, and what they might have heard about me. They come because of you and what you have said to them and shown them about God at work in your life and in this congregation. And while I hope I might have something to do with it if someone decides to stay here, become a more permanent part of our community, again, it doesn’t matter if I preach dazzling sermons if folks are not welcomed and greeted and talked to by you – if they don’t hear anything from you. That’s because you are the best resource you have for sharing the good news about God’s love – because the best, most convincing, most moving examples of God’s love you’ll have to share are the stories of how God’s love has changed you.

            So maybe it’s ok – for once – to take a little of Paul’s confidence for ourselves. Be a little full of it – full of God, that is, and brimming-over with stories of how God is changing you. You don’t have to write an epistle. You don’t have to preach a sermon. But find a way to tell your story – and watch how God is glorified because of you.  

            Amen. 

Sermon for Sixth Sunday of Easter, "And She Prevailed"

Sermon 5/9/10, Acts 16:9-15

And She Prevailed

Do you know the history of Mother’s Day? Celebrations of Mothers are centuries and cultures old. Some people suggest that such celebrations of motherhood started perhaps even in Ancient Greece. In the United States, a push for an official Mother’s Day started in the late 1800s. Julia Ward Howe, author of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, was an abolitionist and social activist who pushed for a mother’s day celebration as a call to action. She wanted women to use their influence to call for change, and was particularly upset over the carnage of the Civil War. In 1870 she wrote this Mother’s Day Proclamation: (1)  

Arise, then, women of this day!

Arise, all women who have hearts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

In the early 1900s, Anna Jarvis worked to make Mother’s Day an official US holiday, in honor of her own mother, Ann, who was another activist during the civil war. Ann had organized groups of Mothers’ Day Clubs to provide relief to soldiers during the war on both sides – they served Confederate and Union soldiers equally. Anna, the daughter, was involved with justice-related causes herself, and within just a dozen or so years of the inception of the official Mother’s Day, was already disgusted at how commercial it had become. She lamented over greeting cards, upset that children couldn’t come up with anything on their own to say to their mothers. (2)

            I enjoyed reading about this history of Mother’s Day, but I also struggle a bit with Mother’s Day and worship. It isn’t a religious holiday, after all. And although I am blessed with a wonderful mother, I am very aware of how Mother’s Day can stir up a lot of emotions for people who have other experience – who have mothers who were hurtful or uncaring, or who have wanted to be mothers and aren’t able to be, for example. But as I was thinking about our text from Acts today, and thinking about Lydia, and thinking about women and their place in the Bible, I thought about how the full scope of our experience with mothers is reflected in all the pages, all the stories that we find in the scriptures.

            It always amuses me when people talk about family values and the Bible, as if Biblical family values were anything we’d want to copy or hold up as a model. The Bible contains stories about some of the most dysfunctional families I’ve ever seen. But the gift is that the Bible contains stories about imperfect families that we can actually see ourselves in – and yet God still uses these people. Of the mothers in the Bible, we have women who prayed to have children every day, and actually gave their children to temple service when they finally conceived, we have a mother who openly favored one son over the other and helped him trick his sibling out of his inheritance. We have a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law who become closer after the death of their son and husband. We have women who became mothers in old age. Women who had to offer their servants to their spouses to have children with since they themselves weren’t capable. Women who acted as surrogate mothers for adopted children. Women whose children were killed by government decrees. And of course, a mother who gave birth to Jesus. And somehow, through all those stories, God was at work.

            And we see God at work in our reading from Acts today, where we encounter Lydia – a woman, a mother, a head of household, in fact. By this point in the record of the Acts of the Apostles, we’ve shifted focus from Peter and the rest of the twelve to Paul and his missionary journeys. In today’s passage, we hear Luke writing as if from his own personal diary, creating a vivid picture. Paul has a vision of a Macedonian man pleading for Paul’s help, and so Paul responds, convinced that God is calling them there to proclaim the good news about Jesus. They set sail and arrive in a Macedonian city, a Roman colony called Philippi – the community to which Paul will eventually write the letter we know as Philippians.

Paul and company go to the river on the Sabbath day where there was a place of prayer. In communities where no synagogue had been built, the riverside would have been a common place to meet for prayer, with the nearby water making purification rituals easier. They find a group of women gathered there, including a woman named Lydia, who is described as “a worshipper of God.” This particular identification lets us know that although Lydia was not Jewish, but a Gentile, she already was participating in some of the Jewish community life – including praying to God. She listens to Paul and Luke and the others, and we read that God “opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul.” In fact, her heart is open so wide that right away, she is baptized and her whole household is baptized too. She invites Paul and his crew to stay with her saying, “if you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay.” Apparently there’s some hesitation that we don’t read about. But we get the concluding word: “And she prevailed upon us.”

We don’t know a lot about Lydia, but what we do know is significant. So few women are named in the scriptures, so often designated as so-and-so’s wife or daughter or being lost in the crowd altogether without even standing out as an individual. But Lydia – we know that she’s a business woman – she deals in purple cloth, a color that would signify wealth – so she’s probably a fairly successful business woman. We hear in the text that she seems to be the head of her household: when she chooses to be baptized, her whole household, which would have meant relations of all ages, and servants, and anyone connected with her home – they were all baptized too. And we know that Lydia is persuasive enough to convince Paul, certainly a man who knows his own mind, to stay at her home. When Lydia is baptized, she becomes the first European follower of Jesus, the first disciple in the community of Christians that will be the Philippian church.

I don’t know how Lydia came to be the head of her household – to be a business woman, able to be in charge of her home and livelihood and decisions in a time when that was so rare. I found myself wondering: what if Lydia’s situation had been different? If she’d not been the head of her household, would she have ended up hosting Paul and the others? I am a strong believer that God doesn’t creates the hard situations in our lives – I don’t think God tries to punish us or test us with pain and suffering. But I believe God can take whatever messes we have, and, if we offer it to God, God uses it to do things beyond our imagination. Because I think that God finds a way to break into our world, burst onto the scene, be visible in our lives whether working with us or in spite of us. God finds a way. And I think that’s why the Bible is filled with stories of the most unlikely, messed-up people turning into proclaimers of good news – because God will use whoever says yes, whoever has an open heart, to bring God’s kingdom near, right here, right now. Think back to our Palm Sunday text, when the Pharisees were trying to get Jesus to make the adoring crowds to be quiet – Jesus told them, “I tell you, if [the crowds] were silent, the stones would shout out.” God always has a way.

The question for us, then, is how do we want to be part of God’s way? Thomas Paine once said that we were supposed to “lead, follow or get out of the way.” God finds a way, and we can be part of it, or keep staying out of it if we insist, but God is the one leading, and God isn’t likely to stop moving and doing a new thing just because we won’t get on board. The Bible lets us know that God just finds the person, however unlikely, whose heart is open and uses them. I’d suggest that our smartest move is to ask ourselves: What do you have, what do I have, what do we have as a congregation that we can take and offer to God, even if it seems like a big mess to us? How can we let God use us, right here, right now, where we are, even if our situations and circumstances aren’t what we’d hoped for, or if they’re exactly what we wanted without God changing things on us? In an unlikely story, Lydia prevailed upon the apostle Paul, because she let God take her life and make it what God wanted. What unlikely story will God make of you?

Amen.  

Sermon for Fifth Sunday of Easter, "At the Table"

Sermon 5/2/10, Acts 11:1-18

At the Table

During Lent, I asked participants in our midweek communion study to help me brainstorm about food imagery in the bible. There’s lots of it – if you go from beginning to end, the books of the Bible mention food perhaps a surprising number of times. But then again, maybe it shouldn’t surprise us. Eating and drinking are necessary to our survival. If we don’t eat, we don’t live. It’s that simple. And so not only is food and drink mentioned frequently in the Bible because we eat and drink every day, it also shows up in our faith stories because what better way for us to understand how God wants to be in our lives than to connect it to food? We need God like we need food – we need God to live – to have real, abundant life. God is necessary for abundant life. Communion is served with simple foods – bread and juice – basics – because communing with God and with each other in the Body of Christ is a basic. Foundational.

My first congregation had the connection between food and faith down pat. I had heard that one time, years ago, there was some church event here where the congregation actually ran out of food. This was such a disturbing event in the history of St. Paul’s that they have never ever come close to running out of food at an event again. I would tease members of our Evangelism Committee about this – when we had a breakfast for new members, I would try to encourage them to keep it simple – doughnuts and juice. But inevitably, doughnuts and juice would turn into milk and muffins and bagels and cream cheese and fruits and Danishes and so on. We ate well at St. Paul’s.

And, truthfully, food isn’t just food in the life of congregations, is it? Think of the meals we share together – be it working on Spaghetti Dinners together, or having cake to celebrate a baptism or confirmation, food that we put together for baskets at Thanksgiving and Christmas, or cookies and recipes passed around at our Cookie Walk, or Philathea prayer group dinners, or meals together at Panera, or even the meal we share when we join in Holy Communion together – these meals are holy and spiritual events. At least I see them that way – seriously. Sharing food with one another symbolizes a close relationship with those with whom you eat. Sharing food means sharing a bit of yourselves. It binds us together, makes us feel like family. Think of all the ways you interact with people each day. You might see hundreds of people in a day who are so different from you. But who do you share meals with? Who is at the table with you? Usually, we don’t share our meals, our table, as freely as we share our time, our energy, and so on. Sharing food is really something special.

Most of you know that not only am I a vegetarian, but I’m also just a picky eater, and have been since I was a child. This makes for tough situations sometimes when I am being served food by someone. I never felt this more acutely than when I visited Ghana, West Africa during seminary. While we traveled just with our group, I could manage just fine and make due and refuse foods I didn’t want without consequence. But we spent an entire week of our stay living with host families. In most cultures around the world (including our own, to an extent), it is considered pretty rude for a guest to refuse food that is served, with, of course, exceptions for allergies and special diets and the like. I had communicated with my host family before my arrival that I was a vegetarian, which they graciously accommodated. But beyond that, I knew I would have to be ready to eat whatever was served to me. The food was served in huge quantities which I tried hard, but usually failed, to finish. Even the breakfast meal was huge, and I usually don’t eat breakfast, and even more rarely a hot breakfast. But, in Ghana, part of my daily huge breakfast consisted of some kind of cooked white beans. I don’t especially think of beans as a breakfast food. But I tried very hard to eat my beans. It took a lot of effort. One day I worked extra hard and managed to eat all of the beans that I was served. And the next day, I was served twice as many beans as usual! As I said, food is important in so many ways – we communicate using food, build relationships through sharing meals, and show how we feel about others using food.

It should come as no surprise, then, that food and how food was shared was a critical issue for the early church, for the disciples trying to figure out how to live and work together. And in fact, for the early church, food became a point of great conflict. Jesus and his disciples constantly were often at odds with the religious leaders of the day over appropriate rules about who to eat with, but the apostles were actually at odds with each other over rules about sharing meals. Let’s go back and take a look at this text for today, which gives us insight into this ongoing conflict.

The whole passage is sort of a flashback. Peter, apparently, has eaten with some Gentiles – the food the Gentiles would be eating would be forbidden to Peter by Jewish law, laws that had very detailed dietary laws, laws that centered on purity and impurity, cleanliness and uncleanliness. So some of the circumcised believers, the ones who are following Jewish purity codes, want to know why Peter has eaten with these people. And so Peter must explain himself, “step by step,” we read, and that is where he flashes back to describe what has caused this strange behavior in him. He’s had a vision, he says. A large sheet, maybe like a giant tablecloth, was lowered from heaven by its corners. On the cloth were various kinds of animals, representing animals that Peter would not be allowed to eat according to Jewish laws, kosher laws. Surprising to him, he hears God’s voice telling him to get up and eat these forbidden foods. Peter refuses, insisting he would not eat anything unclean. But God responds, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” This sequence Peter saw repeated in his vision a total of three times.

Right after this happens, three men appear who are Gentiles, and Peter feels the Spirit telling him “not to make a distinction” between himself and these men. So he goes with them and fellowships with them. In his heart, Peter finally understands his vision. He tells the questioning apostles, “I remembered the word of God . . . ‘John baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave them the same gift that God gave us when we believed in . . . Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” And the apostles get it too, finally, after hearing Peter’s story: They praise God and say, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life!”

What, you might be asking, is it that they all seem to understand now from Peter’s strange vision? Well, as we encounter in this text and other texts in Acts and the epistles of Paul, Peter and the rest of the ‘original’ disciples and Paul and Barnabbas and the apostles working with them approached their ministry very differently. Paul, certainly a devout Jew, spent most of his ministry reaching out to those who were not Jewish – reaching out to the Gentiles. Paul had a complete conversion on the road to Damascus, and he was ready and willing to let go of all the old things in his life – so he felt free to tell others becoming Christians that they didn’t need to adopt all the commandments of Jewish life – they were new creations in Christ. But Peter and company didn’t see things Paul’s way: Peter and the rest of the Twelve focused their outreach and evangelism primarily on those who were already Jews, viewing God’s message in Jesus as directed only or at least mostly for the chosen people of Israel. He thought that those who were not Jews who wanted to follow Christ should at least convert first to the Jewish faith, and then become Christians. The two sides spent a lot of time disagreeing over this topic, and ultimately agreed that each would focus on their own special area of ministry. But here, here is Peter’s own conversion experience. Peter has already converted his life to be a follower of Jesus Christ – here he has a conversion of a different nature, when his mind is opened and he sees the radical inclusive and all-reaching nature of God’s love and grace in Jesus Christ. In his vision, he’s told essentially that only God decides what is clean and unclean, and that what God has made clean, we humans have no right to reject.

To me, the verse that sticks out in this passage is where Peter tells the other apostles, “The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us.” For Peter’s day and time, this was a huge statement. The Jewish faith was all about being a distinct people – and the Jews weren’t alone. Cultural differences created huge barriers between people. The Romans who occupied the lands hated the Jews because of their distinctiveness. People from neighboring villages didn’t get along with each other because they felt the distinctions between them were too great. Distinctions, differences, were the causes of wars and controversies and divisions. But Peter was beginning to realize that because of the new life he experienced in Christ, because of this love of neighbor that Jesus talked about – this new commandment of love for one another – because of this, distinctions were irrelevant.

Do you think we’ve changed a lot? If we look around us, we’ll see many different kinds of Christians – United Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Catholics, Episcopalians, Baptists, Quakers, Seventh Day Adventists. But actually, today I think most people aren’t particularly worried about these distinctions between denominations. But even if these distinctions don’t matter to us anymore, focusing on our distinctions still seems to be a problem – perhaps in more serious ways. We make distinctions all the time – Democrat or Republican? Pro-life or pro-choice? Native or immigrant? Black or white? Rich or poor? Educated or uneducated? Conservative or liberal?

As people of faith, as children of God – a trait we share with everyone – we’re called, like Peter, to remember – the Spirit has told us not to make distinctions between them and us. When Jesus calls us to love one another, he calls us to love Lutherans and Catholics, rich and poor, native and immigrant, liberal and conservative with the same unconditional love of God. We can appreciate the differences between us, but we should never let the distinctions divide and separate us. Because the one distinction that Jesus does encourage us to have, the one thing that is most meant to set disciples apart is that they will be known by their generous and far-reaching love.

“And I remembered the word of the Lord . . . if then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believe in . . . Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” Amen.

Sermon for Third Sunday of Easter, "New Life: On the Road to Damascus"

Sermon 4/18/10, Acts 9:1-20, John 21:1-19

New Life: On the Road to Damascus

            I’ll admit to you that Paul hasn’t always been my favorite Biblical figure. When I read Paul’s writings, I see someone who is pretty full of himself and his own faithful discipleship. I think Paul thinks an awful lot of himself, and would be the first one to tell you, Biblically speaking, about how much he’s had to endure for the sake of the gospel. But over the years I’ve come to terms with Paul, at least, and though he’ll never be my favorite follower of Jesus, our text from Acts today, the story of Paul’s beginning in particular is one that I really enjoy, one that has stuck with me since I was a child. When the passage opens, we hear about Saul, a Pharisee, and his systematic and intentional persecution and execution of members of “the Way,” the name in the early church for followers of Jesus Christ. In fact, Saul is on the road to Damascus, hoping to find some of these followers as he travels so that he can hand them over to the high priest. But as he’s going, a light flashes around him, he falls to the ground, and he hears a voice: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” “Who are you?” Paul wonders. “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” the voice responds. Saul follows Jesus’ instructions to head to the city to wait for someone to tell him what to do. He’s been temporarily blinded by his encounter with Jesus. Once in Damascus, he meets a man named Ananias, who was sent by Jesus to help Saul. Ananias lays hands on him and says, Jesus, who appeared to you, has sent me “so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” Saul’s sight is immediately restored, and he gets up and is baptized, and over the next several days, he spends time with the very disciples he was intent on persecuting, and begins preaching: “Jesus is the Son of God.”

            Eventually, this Saul is known to us as Paul. He’s the only person to whom Jesus speaks in this way in the scriptures, in this ‘appearance’ of sorts after the resurrection. Paul’s conversion from a persecutor of the Way to a follower of the Way is one of the most dramatic stories of conversion in the Bible. But as dramatic as this story is, I almost decided not to preach about it today. In conversation with one of my pastor-friends this week, I mentioned to her that I’d been thinking about switching my plan to preach on the Acts text and Paul to preaching on the gospel and Peter instead. I figure that more of you have had gradual faith journeys, gradual growth in your relationship with God, rather than sudden epiphanies and revelations and 180 degree turn-arounds like Paul. So maybe Paul isn’t so easy to relate to – maybe we can appreciate his experience as fascinating and unique, but what can we learn from Paul, without being skeptical that Jesus will ever speak to us in quite the same way? As I expressed this to my friend, and indicated that I meant to lean towards Peter’s story in John instead, she suggested that perhaps the message of my sermon today was just that – talking about how different the spiritual journeys of Peter and Paul are and how that’s ok – not all of us have Paul’s kind of experience – not all of us have Peter’s. But we all have the potential for God to work new life in us, in whatever form, over whatever timeline that new life comes.

            Before we move on, let’s take a quick look at another piece of Peter’s story from our gospel lesson. We find ourselves in this strange post-resurrection time, where Jesus is spending these last days with the disciples before he returns to God and sends the Holy Spirit upon them. These are the last times that Jesus has to prepare them to carry out the ministry that he’s been about for years in such a direct, in-person way. And he’s taking full advantage of this time.

            In this unique story that appears only in the gospel of John, Simon Peter, Thomas, Nathanael, James, John, and two others decide to go fishing, but catch nothing. But then, after daybreak, Jesus appears to them on the beach. Jesus gives them advice on a better spot to fish, and suddenly the nets are full to overflowing. After they are done, they go ashore, and find that Jesus has prepared breakfast for them – fish and bread. They share this meal together with Jesus, and then Jesus sits down for a tête-à-tête of sorts with Peter. He asks him, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” Peter answers him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.”  “Feed my lambs,” Jesus says,“ and then he asks Peter again, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter repeats his answer, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” “Tend my sheep,” Jesus says, and a third time asks, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” We read that this time Peter is hurt that Jesus asks him again – he clearly must not be convinced of Peter’s answer. So Peter responds differently this time – “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” And Jesus tells him, “Feed my sheep.” He foreshadows with his words that indeed he does know – he knows that Peter is committed to discipleship and that his discipleship will bring him suffering. But his final words to Peter in this passage are the same as some of the first Jesus ever spoke to Peter: “Follow me.”

            I can only imagine the inner struggle, the pain, the searching that must have been going on inside of Simon Peter during this conversation. Peter might have felt conflicted about Jesus’ resurrection. Of course, he was filled with joy at the prospect that Jesus was alive. But was he also afraid, after how totally he’d denied knowing Jesus in the critical hour? Guilty? Embarrassed? Wondering if Jesus would still want anything to do with him? Wondering if he would still be used by God? Used by Jesus for ministry? Was Peter wondering if he’d screwed up beyond redeeming? And so I think it is no accident that Jesus asks him this question, “do you love me?” three times, just as Peter had three times denied even knowing Jesus. It is an act of graciousness on Jesus’ part – he is letting Peter know that he is forgiven, and he’s giving Peter a chance to say out loud that he is committed still to being a disciple. It brings Peter full circle. Yes, he messed up. But yes, there is grace, and Jesus needs to help Peter move on from his self-doubt, move on from wallowing in his own mistakes, and move on to the next chapter, literally and figuratively. So while Paul’s story is a story of a complete turn-around from a persecutor of Jesus to a proclaimer of his good news, Peter’s story throughout the gospels is a story of two-steps-forward, two-steps-back faith, perhaps one many of us relate to more easily, as Peter blunders and stumbles, but eventually becomes a rock of faith.

            The setting of Paul’s conversion is on the road to Damascus. The Greek word used in the Bible for road is hodos, which is also the word for path, way, or journey. In fact, when I said Jesus-followers were called followers of “the way,” that word is hodos – the path, the way, the journey. And when Jesus says he is the way in the gospels, again, that word is hodos – path, way, journey. Jesus is the road, the path, the journey – and his followers are those who are on the road – on the journey. The very earliest way then, to define followers of Jesus, was with a word that represented not a state of being, not a resting place, a static state, but a movement, something you would travel on, something that would require you to move along to follow. You don’t stand still on the road – you travel and journey along it. That’s what Jesus-followers are – those who take the road that is Christ.

            On Easter Sunday, we talked about new life, and whether or not we believed new life was for us – how hard it is to believe that new life is really going to happen in our own lives and experiences. But as I read the stories of Paul and Peter today, I wonder if we have so much trouble believing in our own new lives because we keep thinking of new life as a static, one-time event, rather than the hodos – the path, the journey on the road of Jesus. Paul’s new life came when Jesus turned him around to travel the road in the opposite direction he’d been going. Peter’s new life came step by struggling step – over time, through events, over years of listening to Jesus, and then years of serving Jesus. Maybe if we start remembering that new life is a journey, not a destination or a finish line, we’ll be better able to see new life at work in our own experiences. And for each of us, though we may be on the same road, followers of the same Jesus, our new life experiences can be as different as Paul’s is from Peter, even though we’re going the same hodos – the same way.

            Next month, we’ll celebrate confirmation, and join in affirming several of our young people as they make a public commitment to being followers of this way. One of their assignments in their coursework is to interview someone who is a part of this congregation – not their mentor or a family member, but someone who is part of this body, and to ask them, learn from them, what that person’s spiritual journey has been like. How did they get to be a part of this congregation today? I don’t know how the confirmands feel – usually it takes them awhile to get beyond the essay they have to write about the interview – but this is one of my favorite assignments for them. I love reading the essays the write, and in the past, I’ve loved hearing about how surprised our youth are to discover that adults didn’t always have a straight and simple path to today. Youth sometimes think that you all are spiritually stable, deeply believing, know everything about the Bible, have all the answers – and sometimes, then, that puts your experiences out of range for them – they don’t think they can ever be the kind of believers that you are. But what they don’t know is what your hodos – your journey with Jesus – has really been like. They don’t know the twists and turns, the hills up and down in the road of your faith, your travels seeking new life. And so these interviews can be eye-opening, when they learn that you too have struggled and wondered, even as you’ve had moments of faith and understanding and clarity.

            But it isn’t just our confirmands who need this eye-opening experience. We need the reminder too. As you look around you, if you look beyond any family who might be here with you, how much do you know about the spiritual journey of the people sitting near you? Do you know why and how the people here came to be sitting where they are? Why do they follow Jesus? What “new life” experiences have they had? What common threads are in your journeys? How have your travels on the path been completely different? I challenge you, between now and May 23^rd, when we celebrate confirmation, to informally complete the same assignment the confirmands are – find someone in this congregation whose experience on the hodos you don’t really know – and find out whether they’re more like Peter or Paul, and whether they feel confident of new life in them all the time, or struggle, like you sometimes do, to let new life move them along the path.

            Saul started out looking for followers of the Way. What he found out was that he, too, was on the Way, the path of Jesus, heading straight for new life. Let’s follow along the same Way. Amen.

Sermon for Easter Sunday, "Resurrected"

Sermon 4/4/10, John 20:1-18

Resurrected

I’ve always thought Easter was the hardest day of the year to preach on. Every year as I prepare for what is our most holy of Sundays in the life of the church, I struggle. I’ve preached on this Sunday many times now, but every year it seems to be the same. What do we say about Easter? The stories of Jesus, preaching about his life, his teachings – that gives us a concrete hold – we can hear a lesson he shares and learn how to apply it to our own lives. But what do we do with Easter?

            We know the story. That’s not the problem. We know that Jesus was crucified and his body was laid in a tomb. Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb, and sees that the stone is removed. She runs to get Peter and another disciple. They come to the tomb and see that Jesus is not there, and they return home. Mary stays, and she encounters Jesus, although she doesn’t recognize him at first. But when he speaks her name, Mary realizes that it is Jesus. He sends her to tell the others, and she does, saying, “I have seen the Lord.”

            That’s the Easter story. Jesus, who they saw crucified, is alive. So, what’s the trouble with this? Why is it so hard for me to preach on Easter? I’ve struggled with answering that question every year. What’s so hard about Easter? And I guess it’s a question of believability. But I don’t think it is that we find the story so unbelievable in that God couldn’t raise Jesus from death. After all, as human beings our minds accept a lot of phenomena of seemingly unbelievable kinds. You’ll find among us people who believe in ghosts and spirits and angels, or who believe in life on other planets or think they’ve seen a UFO, or people who have witnessed some sort of miracle – a healing, an unbelievably fortunate turnaround of circumstances. I don’t think it’s that we don’t believe it’s possible that God raised Jesus from death to life.

            So what is it? What’s so unbelievable? I think, actually, that we have a hard time believing something much more straightforward. I think we have a hard time in believing that new life is for us. We can believe God can bring Jesus to life. But I think we don’t actually believe in new life. Maybe for Jesus. But not for us. We don’t actually believe that we can be resurrected. Maybe we believe in eternal life after death. But we have a harder time believing in resurrection that’s for right now. Think of all the public figures who have some scandal exposed, who fall from grace, who enter some rehab program or swear they’ve turned over a new leaf. It is not their failures that shock us and surprise us in the least. It is claims of being a new person that we’ll doubt, that will be met with skepticism or cynicism. We’re just not sure we believe in new life, not here and now.

Throughout Lent, we’ve been talking about the contradictions that mark our spiritual struggle. We seek abundance, and we seek to be filled, but we continually try to fill ourselves with things that have proven again and again to leave us empty. We want to be disciples but we’re unwilling to actually follow where Jesus leads. We are full of contradictions. And we talked about my suspicions that the reason we’re so full of contradictions – that I think we’re afraid to let Jesus change our lives, as we know would happen if we were really truly following God with our whole hearts. But I think we need to take it even one step further. I think our getting stuck in the same cycles of contradictions when Jesus offers us life is about even more than being scared that following Jesus will change our lives. I think, actually, we’re a little scared that Jesus won’t be able to change our lives. We’re scared that we’re beyond change. Or perhaps we’re not even scared – we’re just convinced, resigned, aware that new life is not possible in us. Change can’t really come to us.

            After all, how many times have you tried and set out to change your life in some meaningful way, and failed? How many New Year’s Resolutions have you made and broken? How many fresh starts and clean slates have you tried to give yourself? How many times have you said, “starting tomorrow I’m going to…” and then that tomorrow never came? How many times  have you imagined a different life – a fuller life, a more meaningful life – than the one you are living, and yet not found a way to that full live you’ve imagined?

            What do you hope you could be, when you envision your best self? There are so many things I wish were different about myself, or that I wish I did differently. When I think of all the gifts God has given me, I start to be overwhelmed with feeling like I could be doing so much more. I could be giving more of myself. I feel I know what God is calling me to do, and yet I struggle each day just to do the bare minimum. There are so many changes I could make, and so many times when I commit to beginning again. And yet, if I was being honest about it, I’d have to admit that I can’t really see myself ever becoming the me I wish I was. I don’t really see it happening. That’s the new life I can’t believe in – my own new life.

            That’s why I think Easter can be so hard for us to really ‘get’. It’s not that God raising Jesus from the dead throws us for such a loop. It’s figuring out if Jesus’ resurrection has any meaning for us, any impact on us that we can experience now – that’s what makes us skeptics.

I think our experience is somewhat like that of the disciples: Peter and the other disciple. In our gospel lesson, Mary Magdalene makes her way to the tomb to attend to Jesus. When she finds the stone rolled away from the tomb, she runs to bring back with her Peter and the other disciple. The two men run back to the tomb, actually racing each other, eager to see what Mary is talking about. When they arrive at the tomb, they walk in, look at everything, see that Jesus is not there. But they don’t get it – what they are seeing, or what they are not seeing. They simply return to their homes. They tell no one, they say nothing to Mary, they make no reaction whatsoever. All throughout Jesus’ ministry, the disciples have struggled with being truly transformed by knowing Jesus, by following him. Even his closest confidants had a hard time letting new life seep into them – and at first, on Easter, they don’t let the change wash over them. They’re frozen in time, in grief, and they can’t see the new life they’re staring at. 

Mary, on the other hand, has a totally different experience at the tomb than do her companions. While they run to arrive at the tomb, but quickly leave once they find the place empty, Mary stays, Mary lingers at the empty tomb a bit longer. She stands there weeping, grieving. Overcome by the events of the past days, months, years – everything that has changed in her life since meeting Jesus playing over in her head – she just needs a moment to soak everything in. She stays at the tomb just a little longer, lets the emptiness sink into her mourning soul. It is then, then, that she leans in and sees the risen Christ. She does not recognize him right away, but she stays, she waits, she asks questions, and wonders about what she is experiencing. Then, finally, the joy hits her. And so Mary experiences the resurrection in a way that the others miss at first. Literally and figuratively she’s the first to experience the new life of Easter morning, as she sees the risen Christ, and knows, beyond a doubt, that resurrection is possible.

On this most holy morning, be careful – don’t miss Easter. Don’t walk away, disillusioned, from the empty tomb, wondering what you missed. Don’t find yourself feeling empty, like you didn’t quite get it, in the midst of family celebrations and special meals with loved ones. Don’t rush out, like the disciples did, feeling that what you came to see wasn’t as special as you thought it would be after all. Don’t hurry away. Just stay here, wait a little, stand here at the door of the empty tomb. The risen Christ is in our midst. And God promises new life to you.

But new life takes time to unfold, to grow, to take root, to bloom, to flower. It doesn’t usually happen all at once. It takes nine months for a new human life to be formed and born, and years after to see what this new life will be. It takes a season for seeds to planted to grow into food for harvesting. Decades or centuries for trees to reach maturity. New life takes time. It took time for Mary to understand the good news of Easter before she felt the joy. It took even longer for the disciples to experience the resurrection. In the weeks ahead we’ll see that it takes time and reassurance for resurrection to soak into the core of Jesus’ followers. There is still doubt, and fear, and wonder, and figuring it out, and messing things up.

But their lives are changed. Their lives are new. There is new life, and there is resurrection. The truth of Easter is that God has swallowed up death with life. Even for you. For you, life can be made new in Christ. That is Easter. Maybe it will take a little bit for it to sink in. Maybe we don’t realize it fully yet. Maybe we have to take small steps toward resurrection before we know what it means. Maybe we are still working resurrection out. But the promise of new life is ours. Today is a day of resurrection, and I hope that we let it seep through every part of us. New life is ours for the receiving. Let us go, and share the good news.

            Amen.

             

Superstar

Tomorrow night, I will be participating in perhaps my very favorite Holy Week tradition - I'll be heading off to see Jesus Christ Superstar, performed by the Salt City Center for the Performing Arts. Sadly, Joe Lotito, the longtime director, died last year, and the theatre itself is no more - the building was forever falling down and 'under construction' and finally sold. But the company still performs in other locations. 


If you read this blog, or have known me for any length of time, you know that I *LOVE* Jesus Christ Superstar. I can't remember ever not knowing at least a fair amount of the music from Superstar. We had the record? tape? in my home growing up. But the first time I saw it performed live was when I was in 7th grade. My pastor at the time, Rev. Bruce Webster,  took our youth group to see the long running community theatre production at Salt City Center for the Performing Arts in Syracuse. (That year was their 15th anniversary production.) I instantly became enamored with the actor who played Judas. Being an extremely shy person, I never would congratulate him after the show, even though the actors came right out to mingle with the audience after the performance, but despite never speaking to him, my crush thrived, and sparked a fascination with Superstar and Judas that has lasted for over half my life now!  


So where has this love of Superstar and Judas taken me?


*I've seen Superstar performed live about 25 times - maybe 2/3 of those at Salt City (yes, some years I saw it more than once), and 1/3 seeing various incarnations the touring version with Ted Neeley. 


*I've dragged countless friends and family members, church members, and parishioners along with me to see Superstar, and even gotten some of them hooked on it too, although, honestly, no one is as big a fan as I am...


*I convinced my Junior High Select Choir teacher to let us sing a Superstar medley that I tracked down in 9th grade, and got to sing the solo from "I Don't Know How to Love Him." 


*I wrote a letter to now-non-existent Youth! magazine (for UM Youth) asking about whether or not Judas went to hell, after a heated debate with my Junior-high Sunday School teacher. The editor wrote me back a lovely letter filled with words about God's grace that I will never forget (even if I can't find that letter. I'm sure it's somewhere...)


*Two of my friends and I in high-school made a serious attempt (at least serious for our life-stage) to organize our own Superstar production in Rome. Some day, some day. 


*My sophomore year, I wore one of my (many) Superstar t-shirts to school every single day for several weeks until the day of the show. 


*In college, I wrote my senior religion paper on the relationship between Judas and Jesus in literature, with, of course, a big segment about Superstar. (I just looked at the current course requirements for the Pre-Theology major - I wouldn't even have to take the class I wrote the paper for if I was at Ohio Wesleyan now!)


*Last year, I convinced my wonderful music director in Franklin Lakes to let us focus on Superstar as our musical theme for Lent. For me, at least, this resulted in one of the most meaningful Lent experiences I've had in a long time. Highlights included getting to sing the part of Mary during worship (as close to the role as I will likely ever get!), and our Maundy Thursday Service, with an actor from the touring production singing "Gethsemane," giving me chills. 


*Also last year, after seeing the touring production in a matinée on Holy Saturday with my congregation at NJPAC, my mother and I got in the car, drove to Syracuse, and saw the 30th anniversary production by Salt City. And then we got back in the car, and drove back to NJ, so I would be there for Easter morning. It was totally crazy, and involved getting pulled over once, but it was SO worth it! 


So, as I prepare to see Superstar again tomorrow night (with Henry Wilson starring as Judas again...), I've been thinking - aside from my crush, what about Superstar drew me in so deeply? Why do I love it so much? 


I've always been a fan of theatre, and musical theatre in particular. But Superstar - it was a combination of theatre that I loved, and the faith that was already becoming more meaningful to me. And Superstar brought the Passion story, the story of Holy Week, alive for me in a powerful way. Ever since that first year, I have looked forward to Holy Week very much. To me, understanding Holy Week means being able to see yourself in the story, somewhere. Who would you be? Where would you be? I think that Superstar helped me wonder about those questions in deeper ways. 


Judas - my curiosity about Judas is a curiosity about the fullness and boundaries (more accurately, the lack of boundaries) when it comes to God's grace. Romans 8 talks about nothing in life and death being able to separate us from God's love. Who more tests that truth than Judas? For me, wondering about Judas' eternal fate was wondering about God's love and grace and how far it goes. Because, really, aren't we all betrayers, when to betray means to fail, to desert, to be faithless, to go astray? If there's no grace for Judas... 


I'm looking forward to yet another Superstar viewing tomorrow night, the perfect preparation for Easter morning.