This sermon was preached for the annual sermon ecumenical pulpit swap at Wellesley Hills Congregational Church in Wellesley, MA. The passages for this sermon were: Isaiah 1:1, 10-20 and Luke 12:32-40.
Some time this morning, Protestant Christians in the traditions who follow the Revised Common Lectionary--Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, and others--are being confronted by the same passage from the Prophet Isaiah that we just heard. Even though you make many prayers I will not listen, says God through the Prophet Isaiah. Your hands are full of blood. I wonder how many other preachers felt that line echo throughout their week, as it did for me, each time I went to pray.
And again, whenever I sat down to write this sermon this week, two images kept popping into my head. The first was a graphic photo of carnage from one of the mass shootings from this past weekend, either Dayton, Ohio or El Paso, TX. I can’t remember which one, but that doesn’t matter because it very quickly melded with all the other pictures of blood splatters, abandoned belongings, and evidence markers I’ve seen over the years.
The second was a photo of a long line of Texans standing in the hot summer heat, waiting to donate blood. This photo in turn is connected to a specific memory from September 2001 of sitting at the kitchen table, flipping through the newspaper filled with violence and fear in search of the comics page. I remember finding it, being moved to see that each of my favorite strips featured a character bravely lining up to give blood, with the last panel of each strip detailing how readers could do the same.
These images are all interconnected, almost twenty years of terrible attack after terrible attack, loving response after loving response. They have created a strange sort of double vision for me, the worst and the best of humanity, and it’s impossible to look away.
And yet, our first temptation when we are confronted with this Isaiah passage might be to imagine God’s words here are meant for those other people who are much more directly responsible for the violence and hatred in our society. It is certainly easier to see the blood on their hands. Our second temptation may be to look away from the blood all together. But here’s this passage, interrupting our prayers and praises to demand that we face it all.
A few years back, my grandmother gave me the large crucifix that used to hang in my great-grandmother’s bedroom. Unlike the other empty crosses in my life, this one is filled with the broken and dying body of Jesus. Once, a roommate asked me to take my crucifix down from the wall. She was holding a home church service in our living room and she thought that the image of execution and pain might upset her guests. I thought this was a fair point and took it up to my room. But it somehow felt wrong to hide this cross completely away.
Through the paradoxical double vision of the Christian faith, the body on the cross is a reminder of both the best and worst of humanity.
It asks us to confront the truth that when love embodied down to earth, we killed him. The cross is our violent and bloody no to God.
And yet at the same time, the cross is also a hopeful symbol of the self-emptying love of God. God’s yes to us.
Through this double vision, Jesus is both a bloody victim and a giver of new and unending life. The one whose innocent blood was senselessly taken and the one who said, “Drink this, all of you. This is my blood…poured out for you.” Blood cruelly spilled and blood lovingly given.
There are times in our communal life, like this week, when this double vision comes crashing into our lives in an overwhelming dramatic fashion. Yet this goodness and this evil can be seen every day and everywhere as long as we are willing to steady our gaze. And this is an essential Christian practice, seeing the world through the cross. Not looking away when we find our collective hands full of blood, but not missing the fact that it also flows through our veins, ready to be given.
When we stand or kneel for confession each week, we admit that these twin aspects of humanity are right here inside us. We recognize our capacity for evil and acknowledge the ways our daily lives are wrapped up into it. We look down to see that it is not just those evil people over there who are responsible, it is also us, you and me. We are entangled in sin, we contribute to evil, we ignore its hold over own lives. In both our traditions, we confess corporately as a community of people because our lives and sins are inextricably linked to everyone here and to the ones who came before us.
To be Christian is to live in the in-between, in the double-vision. It is to be alert to both the horrors of this world and to the movement of a loving God within it. To refuse to look away from the violence and to see clearly what is asked of us to prevent it.
I wonder sometimes at our Protestant impulse to empty the cross, to rid it of its indictment of human violence. Just as I wonder at my own temptation to preach a sermon only about that second image--the one featuring the goodness and helpfulness of the people who respond to the need of their neighbors. But how can we understand God's dream for the world if we cannot be awake to the nightmare of today?
In order to learn to do good, we must first see the evil we are called to cease and the injustice from which we are to rescue the oppressed.
In order to defend the orphan, we must first notice the children we’ve abandoned, taken from their parents, or otherwise left behind.
In order to plead for the widow, we have to talk about the women, the elderly, all those who stand outside the protection and care of our communities.
In order to step into the second photo with all the other helpers and blood donors, we must first take a good long hard look at how we are already part of the violence of the first.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus warns us to pay attention. We are to be alert to the painful realities of this world. We are to be dressed for action within it. We are to listen for the one who is even now knocking at the door. Calling us to our better nature.
Some time this morning, Protestant Christians in the traditions who follow the Revised Common Lectionary--Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, and others--are being confronted by the same passage from the Prophet Isaiah that we just heard. Even though you make many prayers I will not listen, says God through the Prophet Isaiah. Your hands are full of blood. I wonder how many other preachers felt that line echo throughout their week, as it did for me, each time I went to pray.
And again, whenever I sat down to write this sermon this week, two images kept popping into my head. The first was a graphic photo of carnage from one of the mass shootings from this past weekend, either Dayton, Ohio or El Paso, TX. I can’t remember which one, but that doesn’t matter because it very quickly melded with all the other pictures of blood splatters, abandoned belongings, and evidence markers I’ve seen over the years.
The second was a photo of a long line of Texans standing in the hot summer heat, waiting to donate blood. This photo in turn is connected to a specific memory from September 2001 of sitting at the kitchen table, flipping through the newspaper filled with violence and fear in search of the comics page. I remember finding it, being moved to see that each of my favorite strips featured a character bravely lining up to give blood, with the last panel of each strip detailing how readers could do the same.
These images are all interconnected, almost twenty years of terrible attack after terrible attack, loving response after loving response. They have created a strange sort of double vision for me, the worst and the best of humanity, and it’s impossible to look away.
And yet, our first temptation when we are confronted with this Isaiah passage might be to imagine God’s words here are meant for those other people who are much more directly responsible for the violence and hatred in our society. It is certainly easier to see the blood on their hands. Our second temptation may be to look away from the blood all together. But here’s this passage, interrupting our prayers and praises to demand that we face it all.
A few years back, my grandmother gave me the large crucifix that used to hang in my great-grandmother’s bedroom. Unlike the other empty crosses in my life, this one is filled with the broken and dying body of Jesus. Once, a roommate asked me to take my crucifix down from the wall. She was holding a home church service in our living room and she thought that the image of execution and pain might upset her guests. I thought this was a fair point and took it up to my room. But it somehow felt wrong to hide this cross completely away.
Through the paradoxical double vision of the Christian faith, the body on the cross is a reminder of both the best and worst of humanity.
It asks us to confront the truth that when love embodied down to earth, we killed him. The cross is our violent and bloody no to God.
And yet at the same time, the cross is also a hopeful symbol of the self-emptying love of God. God’s yes to us.
Through this double vision, Jesus is both a bloody victim and a giver of new and unending life. The one whose innocent blood was senselessly taken and the one who said, “Drink this, all of you. This is my blood…poured out for you.” Blood cruelly spilled and blood lovingly given.
There are times in our communal life, like this week, when this double vision comes crashing into our lives in an overwhelming dramatic fashion. Yet this goodness and this evil can be seen every day and everywhere as long as we are willing to steady our gaze. And this is an essential Christian practice, seeing the world through the cross. Not looking away when we find our collective hands full of blood, but not missing the fact that it also flows through our veins, ready to be given.
When we stand or kneel for confession each week, we admit that these twin aspects of humanity are right here inside us. We recognize our capacity for evil and acknowledge the ways our daily lives are wrapped up into it. We look down to see that it is not just those evil people over there who are responsible, it is also us, you and me. We are entangled in sin, we contribute to evil, we ignore its hold over own lives. In both our traditions, we confess corporately as a community of people because our lives and sins are inextricably linked to everyone here and to the ones who came before us.
To be Christian is to live in the in-between, in the double-vision. It is to be alert to both the horrors of this world and to the movement of a loving God within it. To refuse to look away from the violence and to see clearly what is asked of us to prevent it.
I wonder sometimes at our Protestant impulse to empty the cross, to rid it of its indictment of human violence. Just as I wonder at my own temptation to preach a sermon only about that second image--the one featuring the goodness and helpfulness of the people who respond to the need of their neighbors. But how can we understand God's dream for the world if we cannot be awake to the nightmare of today?
In order to learn to do good, we must first see the evil we are called to cease and the injustice from which we are to rescue the oppressed.
In order to defend the orphan, we must first notice the children we’ve abandoned, taken from their parents, or otherwise left behind.
In order to plead for the widow, we have to talk about the women, the elderly, all those who stand outside the protection and care of our communities.
In order to step into the second photo with all the other helpers and blood donors, we must first take a good long hard look at how we are already part of the violence of the first.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus warns us to pay attention. We are to be alert to the painful realities of this world. We are to be dressed for action within it. We are to listen for the one who is even now knocking at the door. Calling us to our better nature.
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