Sermon for Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A, "Threats and Promise," Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25, (Proper 27, Ordinary 32)

Sermon 9/27/2026 

Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25

Threats and Promises

If Dr. Jathanna confessed to you on Tuesday that he drew on sermon material he’s already wrestled with, I have perhaps a twin confession for you: I’ve been preaching sermons for a few decades now, but I have never preached a sermon focused on the book of Joshua. I looked through my sermon archives to be sure. The closest I ever came was when I was preaching a sermon series based on one of (now Senator-elect) Adam Hamilton’s books, using his scripture selections, and I spent about a paragraph of a sermon mostly about Exodus mentioning the beginning of Joshua. Otherwise, I have skipped it whenever it appeared as a lectionary option, choosing another of the texts instead, and have never included it in any non-lectionary series I was doing. The lectionary, to be fair though, seems as prone to “skip” Joshua as I am. Although Joshua is a decently-sized book of the Bible,  the lectionary only includes a few selections from Joshua. And they’re pretty selective selections. That is, we get some selections from the beginning of the book, and the end of the book - but the middle of the book, which is full of not just God-sanctioned but God-directed death and destruction, never appears in a set of readings for a Sunday in the three year cycle. The standard lectionary, it seems, does not want to deal with the book of Joshua. 

And neither do I. I can’t really call my inattention to Joshua a careless oversight: it is not an accident I’ve never preached from Joshua. Rather, it is an apathy at least, and antipathy more accurately that I feel for this book that focuses mostly on the utter destruction of those unfortunate enough to be standing in the way of God’s people entering the so-called Promised Land. Here’s a characteristic example from the middle of Joshua: 6:17 [Joshua said] “The city and all that is in it shall be devoted to the Lord for destruction.” 21“Then they devoted to destruction by the edge of the sword all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys.” “The total of those who fell that day, both men and women, was twelve thousand—all the people of Ai (Ay-ee). And again: 26 For Joshua did not draw back his hand with which he stretched out the sword until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai … 28 So Joshua burned Ai and made it forever a heap of ruins, as it is to this day.” What, exactly, does one preach about that? Some of the best preaching advice I’ve received is to keep asking yourself, “what’s the good news in this text?” It’s advice that’s served me well. But what if there is no good news to be found in a text? 

Still, today we’ve got an “easy” text from the end of Joshua, one best known for the second half of verse 15, which you might find on any number of decorative wall hangings, “But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” That, at least, will preach, right? As long as we don’t think too much about the context of why Joshua is making this declaration, can’t we pull out some sort of message about allegiance, and being on God’s side, and godly families? 

Ah, but alas, I have the voice of our own Dr. Filler in the back of my mind, talking about her preference for a plain sense reading of the scripture. In her article "Difficult Jewish Texts and Contemporary Political Crisis,” she writes, 

I propose that the preference for textual ease, as strategically comprehensible as it certainly is, might encourage a communal unwillingness to confront and engage the most difficult questions outside the text as well. An insistence on interpretive honesty, even, or especially, of “difficult” texts, and a healthy skepticism of hermeneutical facility may indeed allow fewer invocations of selective Jewish sources in the public square … To acknowledge the disastrous depth and breadth of political injustice, and the difficulty (even perhaps impossibility) of complete repair requires a thoroughgoing commitment to collective interpretive honesty all the way down. (emphasis mine. Filler, Emily. 2023. "Difficult Jewish Texts and Contemporary Political Crisis" Religions 14, no. 5: 652. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14050652) 

Interpretive honestly. I’m afraid that leaves cute Joshua wall hangings out. 

What does it leave in? The rest of our text from Joshua reveals that Joshua - a military leader at the end of battle, whose people are about to enjoy the fruits of their labor - Joshua is also a persuasive speaker, using this victory speech to offer the people a blend of threats and promises as they prepare for their new life as settlers in the the land God “gave” them. As with the Exodus text that Dr. Jathanna preached on similar themes on Tuesday, Joshua makes clear that there is no room, no tolerance for the gods of Egypt, the gods from beyond the River, the gods of the defeated enemies. You can only serve one set of gods, and Joshua chooses to stick with the God that brought him victory. The people, of course, insist that they too want to serve only the God who brought them up from Egypt and drove out all the people who were already living in their new home. But Joshua says he’s not so sure he can trust their words. “No, you can’t serve God,” he says. “Don’t forget: God is really jealous. And even though God has done good things for you, if you screw up - God will consume you - harm you.” And the people have no doubt of that - they’ve just lived through it! Of course, then, they insist that they really, really  want to serve God.  Joshua says they’ll be held accountable - witness against themselves, since they’ve chosen God.” “We’re witnesses, they agree.” And so Joshua and the people covenant together. 

What do we do with this threat-breathing, people-annihilating God? Do we want to serve this God? Some people certainly do: I think about Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and his Crusades-inspired tattoos, including the phrase “God Will It” in Latin, which was a battle cry for “Christian” knights. More recently, the slogan has been adopted by anti-Islamic and White Christian nationalist groups. I have almost nothing complimentary to say about Hegseth - but he isn’t making something out of nothing in the Bible to find support for his warmongering theology. And if others embrace narratives like Joshua, we certainly cannot just pretend it doesn’t exist. 

And yet, maybe one of the most fascinating things about the book of Joshua is that the events it describes - it seems they didn’t exist - they didn’t happen. Many scholars argue that there’s no physical evidence in most of the places named in the text of the kind of destruction the book of Joshua describes. Israelites, they argue, slowly became differentiated in their culture and their religion from their counterparts in the region, emerging over time, rather than abruptly. Distinctions, cultures, and religious practices were shaped over generations, not through violent conquest. No total annihilation directed by God! What a relief! Right???

But where does Joshua come from, then? What purpose does this violent story with a demanding, threatening God serve? Joshua was likely written centuries after the time period it describes, along with some of the other “history” books of the Bible. They’re books that are attempting to carve out a distinct identity for the Israelites - distinct from all the Others around them. And Joshua is a kind of nationalist propaganda story, one that casts Israel as mighty, victorious, faithful, willing, in turn, to follow a demanding but faithful God, no matter the cost, no matter the task. It is meant to reinforce a sense of group belonging, over and against other options - other threats to group identity. If Joshua and his house choose to serve God, the audience for whom Joshua is written is being asked to serve God, reject the Other, and reject the gods and practices of the Other too. Joshua is a story a community wanted to tell about its origins, its history.  

I wonder - what are the stories we are telling about ourselves? Our origins? Our histories? What do the stories we’re ourselves and telling others say about us? We tell ourselves a lot of stories about our identities, and let’s be honest: they are not always perfectly factual. My youngest brother has a reputation for being a storyteller. He’s a theatre professor, so he’s kind of made it into a career. But he called me one time to ask me for the “true story” of how he’d gotten a scar on his shoulder. He’d been telling people a kind of dramatic story of daring-resulting-in-injury about the scar for so long he could no longer remember the real story, which was quite unexciting: it was a chickenpox scar. But even if we try to be less creative with our storytelling than my brother is, we have ways we like to tell our stories, our histories, ways we shape and refine how we recount our stories over time, especially when they’re identity stories, that are important to our sense of self-understanding. 

Friends, here is some good news: we have better stories to tell about who we are and who we want to be with God and in God than nationalist propaganda. But we can’t tell those stories without deconstructing the propaganda. Which means no ignoring the Book of Joshua, or other narratives that make us squirm. We’re in an era in which the Trump government has shown itself to be very aware that the stories we tell about our identity and our relationship to those around us matter a great deal. They matter so much that the government has been actively trying to reshape history, suppressing some stories and rewriting others. 

We can’t counter these attempts at reshaping our identity if we’re not able to own up to our own histories of telling bad stories - acknowledging the tall tales and the outright lies that have shaped our communities, and shaped Christianity. We can’t fail to acknowledge the destruction that has come from our bad stories. Whether or not Joshua is history, Joshua is in our story. What will we say about it? Who have we become because of it? And who might we become in spite of it? What story will we tell? 

Amen.  

Sermon for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A, "Good Trouble," Exodus 1:8-20 (Proper 16, Ordinary 21)

Sermon 8/23/2026 

Exodus 1:8-20

Good Trouble

8 Now a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph. 9 He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. 10 Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” 11 Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. 13 The Egyptians subjected the Israelites to hard servitude 14 and made their lives bitter with hard servitude in mortar and bricks and in every kind of field labor. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them.

15 The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, 16 “When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, kill him, but if it is a daughter, she shall live.” 17 But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live. 18 So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this and allowed the boys to live?” 19 The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.” 20 So God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied and became very strong.

The book of Exodus quickly brings us to troubling words, just a few verses in to the very first chapter. “Now a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph.” Someone doesn’t remember the nation’s history, and it immediately sets the stage for oppression and mistreatment. That’s an unfortunately familiar story, and it is one that is as ancient as the Bible. The “Joseph” this text speaks about is the “Joseph” of coat-of-many-colors fame, whose story we find in the last several chapters of the book of Genesis. He was a favorite child of his father, Jacob, and his jealous brothers had him sold into enslavement and faked his death. But Joseph was smart and clever, and he had a gift for interpreting dreams - well, the dreams of others. He wasn’t so good at understanding his own dreams. His gift led him to become a major asset to the Pharaoh, the King of Egypt, as Joseph helped Egypt, and his brothers and the emerging Hebrew people along with them, avoid starvation during a years-long famine. Joseph was a hero to the Egyptians and to the Hebrews. 

And so when we hear that a new leader in Egypt doesn’t remember any of this history, we know that there will be consequences, and we see that very quickly in our reading for today. The new king observes that over the years, the Hebrews who moved to Egypt were growing in number. And he thinks ahead, calculating, and fearing the day when there will be more Hebrews than Egyptians. When this happens, worries the Pharaoh, surely the Hebrews will join with the Egyptians’ enemies to overthrow them and take the land for themselves. If this sounds to you like the Great Replacement Theory, an ideology of the ultra-far right that suggests that immigrants and minorities are intentionally trying to replace and eliminate white people in Europe and the US, you’re right. It is basically the same fear the Pharaoh expresses, millennia earlier, fueled by the same fear of the “other.” 

So, even though we hear of no such colluding on the part of the Hebrews to work to overthrow the Egyptians, the king decides to enslave all of the Hebrews into forced labor, making the lives of the Hebrews bitter and hard. Yet, this does nothing to reduce the burgeoning population of Hebrews. So the Pharaoh goes a step further. He orders Shiphrah and Puah - two Egyptian women who act as midwives to Hebrew mothers - he orders them to kill any baby boys who are born.

Shiphrah and Puah, though, do not comply, do not follow orders. Exodus tells us that they “feared God,” a description for non-Jewish people who respect or connect with the God os Judaism - they are words that are an expression of a person’s faith. And they let the boys live. When Pharaoh confronts them, they lie. They tell him that the Hebrew women simply give birth too quickly, already giving birth before the midwives arrive. Their actions save lives. Indeed, after this passage we see that a baby boy, allowed to live, and eventually adopted by Pharaoh’s own daughter, is Moses - the very child who will become the leader who leads his people to freedom.  

The Pharaoh says that he’s trying to be shrewd - showing cleverness, practical smarts. But he’s really just cruel. It’s Shiphrah and Puah who are shrewd. They know what the Pharaoh is doing is cruel and wrong. And maybe they don’t feel they have the power to speak up and risk a direct confrontation with him. But instead, they assess the power that they do have, and they use their situation to the best of their ability. They don’t see themselves as helpless. They’re aware of how they can wield their positions, and they do it. They take a risk. And maybe because they’re women, or they’re working with enslaved people, or other reasons - no one double checks what they’re doing. They’re discounted. And they change everything because of their daring. 

It can be scary, trying to resist oppression and injustice. Unfortunately, those who seek to oppress and belittle often have incredible resources of money and position on their side. It can feel like pushing back, resisting, is nearly impossible. And yet, our history, too quickly forgotten, gives us stories like Shiphrah and Puah’s, and more recent stories too. When I was reading over the text this week, what came to mind was the phrase “good trouble.” You might know a little of this history: Civil rights leader and longtime congressman from Georgia, the late John Lewis was the chair of the student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, during the 1960s. Lewis is remembered for a life of activism, often putting himself directly in the way of danger. In 1965, for example, Lewis and others marched from Selma, Alabama and attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge, protesting against the police brutality against civil rights protesters. As Lewis and others tried to cross the bridge, state troopers attacked the marchers, leaving several, like Lewis, bloodied and beaten, an event eventually known as Bloody Sunday. 

Reflecting on his life’s work across various occasions, Lewis focused on the phrase, “Good Trouble.” At a commencement speech in 2014 at Emory University, he told graduates, ““You must find a way to get in the way. You must find a way to get in trouble. Good trouble. Necessary trouble. Use your education . . . use what you have, use your learning, use your tools, to help make our country and make our world a better place where no one will be left out or left behind. You can do it and you must do it. It is your time.” Just months before his death, at a commemoration of the Bloody Sunday events, he said, “I want to see young people in America feel the spirit of the 1960s and find a way to get in the way. To find a way to get in trouble. Good trouble, necessary trouble and redeem the soul of America.” 

These words really resonate with me: “Use your education . . . use what you have, use your learning, use your tools, to help make our country and make our world a better place where no one will be left out or left behind. You can do it and you must do it. It is your time.” Maybe we’re not like Moses, who took on the Pharaoh directly and led a whole people to freedom - although Moses also didn’t think he was Moses - didn’t think he could do what he did! - but we can all make good trouble in the face of injustice, even if we operate like Shiphrah and Puah. They knew what they did have the power to do, they used what they had, rather than dwelling on what was out of their control. They took action. And they saved lives. 

What can we do? Very recently, an issue came to my attention where I could see the opportunity for justice and reconciliation to take place, for reparations for past harm to come to fruition. I don’t mean to be vague, it’s only that the situation is still unfolding. What’s more important than the specifics today is how I responded, and how I wanted to respond. In this situation, where I saw what might be done to bring about justice, my impulse, my first action, was to tell my idea to some other people because I hoped they would do something about it. I wanted to hand it off, the concern I had, and let some others do the hard work. And they did give me advice, but they put the ball firmly back in my court. I’m trying hard not to make excuses for myself to not follow through, to convince myself I can’t make a difference before I’ve even begun to really try. I’m trying to remember the gifts and abilities and experience I have at my disposal to act for justice. I hope I can be brave and persistent, and make some good trouble. 

What good trouble can you stir up? Friends, in a world that seems doomed to ever forget its own history, oppression and injustice bubble up in new and insidious ways. Part of Christian witness is calling each other into remembrance - when we read the scriptures, when we sing the songs of faith, when we remember God’s acts of grace as we share in sacraments together. Remembering our history is part of our witness. And then, inspired by the stories of the good troublemakers, the saints of God who have gone before us, using whatever gifts God had given them, we go forth to join the struggle. Will we take all that we have, all that God has given us, and use it for some good trouble? Let us say yes, with God’s help, we will.

Amen.   

Sermon for the Feast of the Annunciation, "Between the Question and the Answer," Luke 1:26-38

I've been meaning to post this sermon for several months now!

Sermon 3/24/26

Luke 1:26-38

Between the Question and the Answer

I’ve been a United Methodist my whole life, and so I can’t say that I have ever celebrated the Feast of the Annunciation before, which is technically tomorrow, March 25th. The small Methodist community of my childhood, ever mindful of doing anything that seemed “too Catholic,” would definitely have been suspicious of a Feast Day focusing on Mary, mother of Jesus. As I was looking at the lectionary readings for this week, though, I noticed the readings for the Feast of the Annunciation tucked in there, and I just couldn’t pass them over. And then when WoMA focused on Mary’s Magnificat for part of their chapel last Tuesday it felt even more “right,” this tugging toward Mary’s story. 

The Feast of the Annunciation is the day that we remember the Angel Gabriel visiting Mary with the news that Mary has been chosen to carry and give birth to God-in-the-flesh, a child who will be named Jesus. In the Roman Rite, the Feast of the Annunciation is a solemnity, a holy day that celebrates a mystery of faith. And indeed, the incarnation of Jesus, and Mary being filled with the Holy Spirit as means of the incarnation - that is full of mystery, isn’t it? The Feast of the Annunciation is celebrated, sensibly, nine months before Christmas - the length of a pregnancy. And so it falls, always, during Lent - only adjusted if it actually falls during Holy Week itself. Today, then, we celebrate the Annunciation - the beginning of the beginning of Jesus’s life - even as next week we will remember his crucifixion. The juxtaposition is a little jarring. 

I, like many of you, am preparing to graduate from Drew this May, but also like many of you, I am not quite there yet. I have a dissertation that’s written, but not yet defended, and a graduation fee that’s been paid for months, but no diploma in my hand. But even though I am not yet finished, and there is no guarantee yet of finishing, I’m planning for, I must plan for, and imagine the future, working on the assumption that there is a “what’s next” after this. I know some of you are in similar situations - making plans for a future that isn’t yet guaranteed, not quite. To draw on President Obama’s language, it is the audacity of hope. 

And I think that’s what celebrating the Annunciation during Lent is like. It’s this audacious, bold hope that is planning on new life that comes after heartache. In the sombre wilderness of Lent, we’re already hearing about the incarnation of God in our midst that is to come. It’s Dean Tanya’s family preparing for new life in their midst even as they are mourning her death. It’s people living under fascist and authoritarian rule planning for a future that’s dependent on the end of oppressive regimes. It’s building for a future that trusts that the present heartache is not endless, not the only thing, and not the last thing. And so, Annunciation. An announcement of good news. This incredible, miraculous, seemingly impossible hope for the future that shows up right in the thick of Lent.    

So, what exactly happens in this annunciation text, an account we find only in Luke’s gospel? God sends the angel Gabriel to deliver a message to Mary, a young women - a virgin, we’re told, who was engaged to a man named Joseph, who was of David’s house, and who was living in Galilee, in Nazareth. Gabriel shows up and says, “Greetings, Mary, favored one” - which literally means one to whom grace has been shown. “God is with you,” Gabriel says. This greeting alone is confounding to Mary, and she ponders the angel's words - which here means that she has a kind of internal debate about them, weighing and measuring these words. Although it would make for some nice symmetry, the word used here is not the same as when Mary is pondering everything that happens with Jesus’s birth in Chapter 2. This pondering is a bit more deliberative, perhaps even more skeptical, or at least uncertain. 

Gabriel, perhaps reading that uncertainty, tries to assure Mary: “Don’t be afraid.” He reiterates that Mary has found favor with God - God’s grace is with her. And then the Big Thing: “You will conceive and bear a son named Jesus, and he will be the Son of God, who will have an eternal claim to the throne of David, and he’ll reign endlessly. 

Mary asks, “How can this be, since I have never had sex?” 

Gabriel responds that the Holy Spirit will come upon her, and she will be “overshadowed” by the power of the Most High - language that we see again during the transfiguration of Jesus on the mountaintop. Mary’s child will be holy. Mary’s child will be God’s son. And, in case that’s not enough, Mary’s relative Elizabeth, an older woman, who was thought to be unable to have children, is pregnant too. Because, as Gabriel concludes, “nothing will be impossible with God.” 

And then Mary says, “Here I am, a slave of God,” language that Mary returns to in Magnificat, when she envisions the systems of domination-upending that God will do through her. “Let things happen to me just as you’ve said.” And Gabriel, satisfied, departs. 

I don’t know about you, but my initial reaction to this text is that I’d have had a few (hundred) more questions than Mary seems to have. She asks one question, which Gabriel answers in weird language. And that’s enough for Mary to respond, “Yes, fine, that works for me.” Uh, what? How about: Why me? How about: What will I tell Joseph? How about: How much trouble will this get me in? How about: What do you mean, God’s child? How about: Will you protect me if I agree to this? How about: so many other questions! 

I’d like to believe that we’re seeing here what we often see in Biblical accounts of conversations. The scriptures have a different sense of time than we do. This conversation seems to take mere seconds as we read it through. But maybe this exchange happens over the course of hours, or days. Maybe Mary’s pondering lasted for some long time, giving her ample time to think it all over. And maybe we’re not seeing here what we regularly don’t see in Biblical conversations: the whole story. So many conversations in the scriptures seem to drop off without resolution, like how on TV shows people never seem to end conversations when they’re on the phone. They don’t say goodbye. They just hang up. So I’d like to believe that Mary really asks every question she has, but that Luke considers all of this uninteresting. All that matters to Luke is that Mary agrees with the plan. 

And no doubt, that’s an important detail. But there are some other parts of this exchange between Gabriel and Mary that interest me too. What I find most interesting is this: Although we don’t hear Gabriel pose God’s plan as a question to Mary - “Would you be ok, Mary, with being overshadowed by the Most High?” - she seems to receive it as one. Mary says “Yes,” and her yes, her consent, implies her understanding that she was being asked, even if everything we read in this story is expressed as a statement of what will assuredly be according to God’s plan. 

Mary says yes - and her yes implies that she could also have said no. And that is so, so important. Because I don’t believe that “God’s will” is something that is supposed to be visited upon us by force, without our consent, without our participation. Rather, I think we do better when we think of “will of God” as God’s dreams, God’s best hope, God’s most creative, inspired plan for what might be, what might become, what might be called forth if we, God’s partners, God’s co-creators, you and me - if we say yes to God’s imagination. I like all of those images better than “God’s will,” which makes God a dictator, and us passive recipients. Mary did not hear Gabriel’s announcement passively. Indeed, many biblical figures do not. Jesus does not. Mary listens, ponders, and decides that she can see God’s vision, can see that saying yes will lead to the liberative work she proclaims just verses after our text in the Magnificat. 

Mary could have said no, I think. And thinking about that made me wonder - maybe there were others who were visited by Gabriel who did say no. Maybe Mary was not the first. Maybe she was just the first to say yes.  

We do not have to say yes to the potential futures God lays before us. God’s will - if we must call it that - isn’t coercive. We can say, “I just can’t imagine that future right now, I’m sorry.” And I think that’s ok - truly. I don’t think God punishes us for not being ready, for not embracing God’s dream. Sometimes, we are not ready. Sometimes, we have a different vision to offer to God. Sometimes, we need to do some more healing, or more growing first. Sometimes, we need to ask a lot of questions before we’ll be ready to say yes. And sometimes, we just can’t grasp, yet, the new life that’s coming beyond the Good Friday that looms large before us. We can say “Take this cup from me.” We can say no. Or not now. 

But I do think we miss out, then, on being part of the impossible becoming possible. Saying “yes” is like imagining, even in the midst of our worst grief, that there will yet be joy. 

Somehow, Mary could imagine exactly what God was imagining, and ever is imagining: the humbled exalted and the exalted humbled, the hungry filled with good things. Liberation. Justice. Life. She could imagine with God, and so she answered what she knew to be an invitation. “Here I am. May it be so.” 

In these days of Lent, in these quickly waning days of another semester, in these days where we can barely stand to look at the news, in these days when our community is in mourning, in these days when it seems that less and less is possible for our planetary future, in these days when it sometimes feels as if evil will prevail… in these days, can you imagine - will you imagine - will you cultivate your imagination - will you listen to what God is imagining - what comes after this grief? 

Amen.

Sermon for the Third Sunday after Pentecost, Year A, "Laughing at God," Genesis 18:1-15; 21:1-7 (Proper 6, Ordinary 11)

 Sermon 6/18/23

Genesis 18:1-15; 21:1-7

Laughing at God

I had the opportunity to see again recently a production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, one of my favorites of his works. Some of you might remember that my brother Todd specializes in classical acting (although he now is a professor of acting and teaches and directs more than he acts) - his focus and love is the work of Shakespeare, and so I’ve seen him in a number of productions over the years, including more than one production of Macbeth. I’ve always loved it. I’m not sure how many of you are familiar with the plot, but the gist is this (and sorry for the spoiler alert if you haven’t seen or read it yet, but it’s been out for a while now!): Macbeth is a leader who is given more power and authority by his king. His wife, creatively named Lady Macbeth, is eager for him to get even more power and position. Macbeth happens upon some witches who give him a prophecy that Macbeth will in fact become king, though his friend Banquo will be the father of kings. And on receiving this prophecy, rather than waiting to see how things will unfold, Macbeth and his wife scheme to make the part of the prophecy they want to come true come true faster - like right now - and scheme to avoid the parts of the prophecy they don’t like - even if they must murder friends and allies to make it so. They manipulate, they scheme, they plan, in order to claim what was told to them. Of course, Macbeth is a tragedy, so suffice it to say it doesn’t end well for the Macbeths. 

Maybe the story of Abraham and Sarah in the Bible isn’t quite the tragedy of Macbeth, but I couldn’t help but have Macbeth on my mind this week as I was reading our text from Genesis. Our reading this week begins with God appearing to Abraham in the form of three visitors who come to the tents of Abraham and his family. In Abraham’s culture, hospitality and God’s presence are closely tied together, and so we see Abraham going out of his way to welcome these unexpected guests. They are given water, bread made with choice flour, a meal of meat and curds and milk, food washing, rest. 

After a bit, the visitors ask after Sarah, and one of them says, “I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.” Now, Sarah and Abraham are advanced in years by this time, and Sarah being pregnant seems impossible - she’s reached menopause already. Sarah, who is just outside the tent listening when the visitors make their pronouncement, laughs at the ridiculousness of such a claim. “After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?” God - in the form of one of these visitors - the details get a little blurry here - seems a bit taken aback that Sarah would laugh. “Why would she laugh?” God wonders. “Is anything too wonderful for God? I’ll return at the right time, and Sarah will have a son.” Sarah, now anxious and afraid  that she’s offended God, denies laughing, but in a strange back and forth, God insists that she did. The end of our reading skips forward in time. We read that God dealt with Sarah just as God had said. Sarah has a child, named Isaac - meaning, “one of laughs.” And Sarah reflects, “God has brought laughter for me, and everyone who hears will laugh with me.” 

Ok, maybe this doesn’t sound a lot like Macbeth. But there’s a connection, I promise. In our passage today, we get plopped into the middle of a larger story. Way back in Chapter 12 of Genesis, God first calls Abraham, then known as Abram. We actually looked at this passage together back in early spring. God says, “Go to this new place I’m leading you to, and I will make you a great nation. I will bless you, and make your name great.” Abraham goes, but the journey is meandering, with years long detours. Along the way, though, God repeats the promise: I will give you this land, you and your offspring, and your offspring will be as numerous as the specks of dust that make up the earth. 

Eventually, though, Abraham gets impatient. God says Abraham will have a great reward, but Abraham is skeptical: “God, what will you give me? For I continue childless. I have no heir, no offspring. One of my slaves will inherit all I have.” But God repeats the promises already made: “Look at the stars - your descendents will be just as numerous.” And still more time passes. 

Finally, Sarah is out of patience. God’s made a promise, and Sarah is ready to make the promise happen. She does not seem to be getting pregnant, so she will find another way to make sure Abraham has an heir. She gives Abraham her slave, Hagar, an Egyptian woman, and says he should have a child by her. (Hagar, enslaved, has no say here.) Sarah’s plan works, and Hagar becomes pregnant. But Sarah seems to immediately regret her decision, because Hagar is now looking at Sarah with contempt. Sarah complains to Abraham, she treats Hagar badly, Hagar runs away, and in the wilderness Hagar encounters God and is folded into God’s promises. Hagar’s child Ishmael is born. 

Again though, God reminds Abraham of God’s promises to him and his family, this time specifically naming Sarah: “Sarah will give rise to nations” God says. Abraham is skeptical, but God says that within a year, Sarah will deliver a son named Issac. It is after all of this that we finally get to chapter 18, where our text from today begins. 

So, maybe now you see a bit of the Macbeth connection. No, Sarah and Abraham don’t set out on a murderous rampage to receive what they’ve been promised. But they do engage in attempts to bring about God’s plans and promises in a way and on a schedule that works better for them than it seems to for God. And whenever they try to control the path of God’s promises, things do not go as they’ve anticipated, causing sometimes more harm than good. 

It could be easy for us to blame Sarah and Abraham for their lack of trust in God’s promises, for their constant need for reassurance and reiteration, for Sarah’s plans to get Abraham the heirs he needs. But I can’t help but especially feel some pity for Sarah, and the ways in which she’s been kind of a pawn in all the events that unfold. For example, along the way to receiving God’s promises, Abraham twice denies that Sarah is his wife when they’re visiting other communities. Abraham is worried that because of Sarah’s beauty, he’ll be killed by the leaders of the foreign lands he visits, so that they can take his wife. So instead, he just kinds of hands her over, calling her his sister. (She is, in fact, his half sister - an allowable relationship for marriage at the time.) So Sarah has to endure being given over to strange men in strange places, separated from her husband, without any voice in the matter. She also has to bear the burden of her seeming infertility, something that was considered entirely the woman’s fault in ancient culture. She treats Hagar with cruelty - but Sarah has learned that women have few or no choices about their own lives, and so it is perhaps not surprising that she treats Hagar this way - the only person over whom Sarah has any power. No wonder Sarah tries to shape God’s promises into her own timeline, by her own methods! And no wonder she laughs at God’s outrageous plans. Wouldn’t you laugh at the sheer impossibility? 

Here’s the thing though - even though God seems confused by Sarah’s laughter, God isn’t angry. Instead, God is just faithful. God deals with Sarah just as God said, just as God promised. That’s what God does. And Sarah is still laughing - but the laughter of skepticism, discomfort, and doubt has turned into the laughter of joy. 

Friends, I think we are all like Sarah sometimes. Hopefully not like the Macbeths, but definitely a little like Sarah. Skeptical that the joy God promises could be for us. Impatient with God’s timing. Trying so hard to force outcomes that we’re sure will bring us happiness. Frustrated when things don’t unfold according to our plans yet again. Laughing that God has the audacity to promise us such impossible things. 

But here’s the good news. When we doubt, God reminds. From God’s initial call to Abraham, to the time Isaac is born, God repeatedly demonstrates to Abraham and Sarah that the promise still stands, that God remembers, that they are still God’s people, that God still has blessings in store. God is so patient with them. God is so patient with us. And maybe we can learn to be patient with God, letting ourselves laugh in wonder at the amazing ideas God comes up with, and laughing some more when God’s dreams bear fruit. 

“God has brought laughter for me,” Sarah says, “and everyone who hears will laugh with me.” May God bring laughter to us, too, as God’s faithfulness fills our hearts with joy. Amen. 

Sermon for the Second Sunday after Pentecost, Year A, "Mercy and Sacrifice," Psalm 50:7-15, Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26 (Proper 5/Ordinary 10)

Sermon 6/11/23

Psalm 50:7-15, Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

Mercy and Sacrifice

A few weeks ago, just before I came to Central New York for the summer, I packed up my apartment in New Jersey and moved from one town to another. Not a huge move - just about 15 minutes away. And not a huge amount of things - I moved in with other PhD students, so other than my bedroom furniture, I didn’t have much I needed to bring. As far as moves go, since I have moved so many times as an itinerant pastor and often moved from one five bedroom parsonage to another, this one was pretty simple. Except… as a PhD student, I have to move “student-style,” finding a truck and getting some friends who are willing to help for the reward of my thanks and some pizza for lunch. And, except - I was moving from a second floor apartment, requiring a lot of up and down stairs. And, except this: both of my knees need replacing. They’ve been deteriorating for years, and now they’re down to bone on bone, and walking is painful enough but stairs are even harder, and stairs while carrying heavy things are near impossible. Thankfully, I have good friends. But on moving day, I had to basically sit and watch while they did all of the work of loading and unloading my things, taking trip after trip up and down the stairs at my old place, on what was of course the hottest day of that week. And while that might sound great - sitting back and watching others do the hard work - I suspect for most of us, actually, being helped, while we can’t contribute anything, is more stressful than not. I spent a lot of the day feeling guilty, frustrated, and helpless, wishing I could help, wishing things were different. My helpers? They weren’t doing anything to make me feel guilty. They were thoughtful, appreciative of the lunch I bought, efficient, and done and moved on, while I was still wrestling with how much I hated having to rely on them to get the job done. 

You’ve probably heard the expression: it’s more blessed to give than receive. And I think most of us find that to be the case. We love giving to others. It brings us a lot of joy, doesn’t it, giving? Being able to lift others up through our actions? But being able to receive, graciously, thankfully, when we’re in a place of need and someone else can meet our need that we can’t do ourselves? I think receiving is actually harder than it looks. Maybe it’s fine on Christmas, on birthdays, on occasions where being the recipient of gifts is expected. But outside of that? Where we are receiving not even gifts but “help”? Mostly, I think we really chafe against needing help. I think many of us would do just about anything to avoid appearing helpless, being helpless. 

I’ve been thinking about that a lot this week as I read our gospel lesson. Our gospel lesson from Mathew is really three stories in one. In the first part, Jesus calls Matthew, a tax collector, to follow him. Matthew does, immediately. Jesus is then eating dinner - perhaps at Matthew’s house? - and there are many other “tax-collectors and sinners” joining in the meal. Then the Pharisees - the religious leaders of the community - discover who has been at this gathering, they criticize Jesus to his disciples, that he eats with what they consider unfit company. Jesus overhears and says, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice,”” paraphrasing from the prophet Hosea. He continues, “For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”

Then we skip ahead a bit into what might seem to be two unrelated healing stories, both of which you might be familiar with. First, Jesus gets a message from a leader of the community that his daughter has died, but asking Jesus to come and lay hands on her, trusting that the girl will live. On the way to the leader’s house, Jesus is approached by a woman who has been suffering with hemorrhages for over a decade. And she’s confident that if she can just touch Jesus, even his cloak, she will be healed. Jesus takes notice of her right away, saying to her, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well,” and indeed, she has been made well. Finally, Jesus gets to the leader’s house and finds everyone in the household already in mourning over the daughter who has died. Jesus sends them all away, insisting the girl is only sleeping. Everyone laughs - the girl is clearly dead! But when the crowd of mourners leave, Jesus takes the girl by the hand, and she gets up, alive and well. Our text closes with Matthew reporting that news of these events spread quickly throughout the region. 

I desire mercy, not sacrifice, Jesus says. I have come to call not the righteous, but sinners. What does Jesus mean? Righteousness, after all, means something like being in “right relationship” with God and one another. And it seems, throughout the scriptures, that God very much does long for us to be in right relationships, just relationships. Isn’t that what God wants? isn’t our journey of discipleship about just that - learning how to set right our relationships with God and one another? And, what does it mean that God desires mercy? I understand that God is merciful - compassionate and forgiving. But how do mercy, sacrifice, righteousness, and sinfulness relate? I can’t think Jesus means that we have to relish our sinfulness so that God has more opportunity to show us mercy. I don’t think that Jesus wants us to pretend to be in need of help so that God can get the joy of rescuing us. So what does Jesus mean? 

I think first - and this is a hard one - first, God’s primary audience is not always us. Sometimes we’re like the lost sheep - but sometimes, especially if we’ve been on the path of discipleship for a long time, seeking to grow deeper and deeper in our faith - we’re just one of the sheep who is safe in the pasture. God’s priority is the sheep who is lost. And we can be jealous that God is tending to the lost sheep, or we can be thankful that we’re already safe and sound. 

As for righteousness? Well: like everything else we might come to have, it is a gift of God. If we learn to grow in discipleship, and set right all our relationships, it is through drawing on God’s strength, embracing God’s grace, and imitating God’s love. When we start believing righteousness is something we’ve achieved by our own efforts, that’s self-righteousness, and self-righteousness is pretty far from God’s intent for us. Being in right relationship with God and others isn’t a destination we can reach and just settle at. It’s a practice, a discipline, something that we grow in with God’s help. 

And there it is: God’s help. Friends - we need God’s help, always. We stand in need of God’s mercy, always. Rather than this gospel being some strange suggestion that we have make ourselves appear to be in a position of needing mercy in order for us to get God’s attention, we need to recognize that we’re already there. We are in need of God’s help. We need God’s mercy. We do sin. We are broken. We do turn away from God. We do fail to live in right relationships. We can’t do it by ourselves. We need God’s help. Unfortunately, our culture is full of really destructive messages about being in need of mercy, about needing help. Our society implies that if you need help, especially too much help, or for too often, or for too long, you are weak, you’re wrong, you’re less than. Instead, we cultivate this myth of self-made people who’ve pulled themselves up by their own power and strength, no help needed. 

When I look at the vignettes in our scripture today, I see stories of people who knew that they needed help/ Matthew, the unnamed sinners and tax collectors, the leader seeking help for his daughter, the woman Jesus healed - they needed help, and they knew it, and they weren’t afraid to accept the help Jesus offered them. Can we be vulnerable enough to know that we need help, and to accept the help that Jesus offers? Can we recognize our own failings, and receive mercy from God who is ever-ready to offer it to us? It’s not that God isn’t interested in righteousness. I think, rather, it’s that our ability to claim the label “righteous” isn’t the standard for entry into God’s reign that we think it is. Rather, God wonders, how receptive are we to receiving God’s grace and mercy? How ready are we to receive all that God wants to give us? I think, friends, that part of our readiness to receive from God includes letting others receive mercy and grace without judgment from us. Those who received healing, welcome, and a calling from Jesus in our text from today: they demonstrate to us the incredible vulnerability of being able accept God’s mercy. God wants to be merciful to us too. God wants to help us, because we need it. May we open our hands and our hearts, ready to receive what we need. Amen.