March 29, 2009

Luke Kreider

So it’s the fifth Sunday of Lent, and in our six week journey of reflection on the meaning of Jesus’ life, we’re drawing ever nearer to Jerusalem, closer and closer to the cross where, as John the Gospel writer never tires of telling us, Jesus will meet his demise. In fact, according to the lectionary, we’ve already entered Jerusalem – a bit prematurely perhaps. Palm Sunday, when we celebrate Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, isn’t until next week, but the passage we just heard from John’s Gospel takes place immediately after Jesus’ celebrated parade of palm branches.

So I want to take this opportunity to apologize to pastor John for stealing some of his sermon fodder for next week. John, I’m sorry, but it’s not my fault. These passages were picked for me and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’ve go not choice but to draw on some Palm Sunday themes, and thereby steal some of your thunder. You know as well as I do that we can’t sneak Jesus into Jerusalem through the back door. Jesus enters amidst shouts of “Hosanna,” and there’s no way to tell the story that ensues without addressing this crucial context. So I know you’ll forgive me. If it’s any consolation, I’m going to start my sermon way back in the Old Testament, long before Jerusalem was ruled by Caesar, back when Jesus was barely conceivable, when he was only a shadowy, recurring character in the fever dreams of a few prophets.

Both of our Old Testament passages for this Sunday are the musings of people longing for restoration and renewal, people pleading for (or predicting) renewed intimacy with God. Listen to the Psalmist:

Have mercy on me, O God,

According to your steadfast love…

You desire truth in the inward being

Therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart…

Let me hear joy and gladness

Let the bones you have crushed rejoice!

Create in me a clean heart, O God,

And renew a right spirit within me…

Restore to me the joy of your salvation

And sustain in me as willing spirit. (Ps. 51)

This is the voice of a person who wants desperately to be renewed, restored, cleansed and made whole. In this Psalm, we have preserved King David’s prayer of repentance after his debacle with Bathsheba, in which he longs not just for forgiveness but for renewal. Aware of his susceptibility to temptation, he wants truth and wisdom in his inmost heart; he wants a new spirit. He wants to want to do right; wants goodness and justice to emanate from his core.

In Jeremiah 31, which we heard during the Readers Theatre earlier this morning, we encounter a longing for a different sort of renewal. The prophet Jeremiah has been dragged along with his compatriots from his homeland by an imperial force, a conquering army. He’s been exiled to Babylon; he’s been there far too long, and he’s ready to return to the land of milk and honey. He can feel it in his bones that the time of restoration is coming; any day now Israel is due for a glorious return. Jeremiah paints a picture of Israel’s restoration marked by renewed intimacy between God and God’s people. God will again provide for Israel – Israel will respond with faithfulness.

“The days are surely coming,” says the LORD, “When I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them out of Egypt – a covenant that they broke,” says the LORD. “But this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another or say to one another ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” says the Lord, “for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.” (Jer. 31:31-34)

Jeremiah predicts a time when God’s Word would be among Israel’s faithful, would abide within them, would be made real among them. Those of us who have read John’s Gospel will have images of Jesus dancing in our heads: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory…full of grace and truth!” (John 1:14). Yes, exactly, but lets not get ahead of ourselves. First and foremost, Jeremiah is talking about God delivering Israel from Babylon, and Israel being so grateful for God’s restoration that the Spirit of the covenant comes to dwell within them. Such is the joy of their salvation, that they allow God’s Word to be written on their hearts, allowing the Spirit to animate their daily lives together. Like David, the prophet Jeremiah longs for God’s people to know truth in the inward parts, to seek righteousness not as obedience to an external law but as an expression of inner joy!

For both David and Jeremiah, spiritual and ethical renewal go hand in hand as a response to what the Psalmist calls “the joy of our salvation.” Intimacy with God engenders righteousness, both of which stem from our delight in God’s saving works.

Both David and Jeremiah elicit images of the Bible’s recurring cycle from Exodus to covenant, liberation to law, saving act to joyful response. David, repentant of his sin and pleading with God to be made righteous and wise, recalls the foundational event in Israel’s young faith: the Exodus. David begs God: “Restore to me the joy of your salvation.” He calls to God, wants to be reminded of God’s faithfulness, God’s work of shalom, for these memories and hopes are the true ushers of joy for David, his deepest sources of strength and fulfillment.

Jeremiah wants not so much to reminded of the Exodus, but to have it repeated tangibly in his presence. He envisions a new exodus (out of Babylon), followed by a new covenant (made not in the wilderness but back in Zion), a covenant so joyfully composed that it is written on the hearts God’s people.

And, sorry pastor John, but it’s this same pattern that the Jews believe is being repeated when they usher Jesus into Jerusalem as a king. For years the Jews have sought independence from the Roman Empire. They want a Messiah – a new Moses, a new David – to take control, restore Zion to its glory. “Hosanna!” shout the crowds. “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord – the King of Israel!” Make no mistake: these are the chants of woud-be insurrectionists, the voices of oppressed people who believe that their liberator has just shown up. Jesus, perched a donkey’s colt, appears as the face of salvation.

But how quickly Jesus confounds expectations! In these final hours of his public ministry, Jesus says plainly, “Like a grain of wheat that bears fruit only when it falls to the ground, so I must die to bring salvation to this land.” “Uhh, excuse me? You’re going to do what?” “Die,” says Jesus. “I’m going to die, and those that seek salvation from me must follow me there.”

Well, there were a variety of opinions about what the Messiah was going to do; everybody had their own slightly different version of what salvation was going to look like. But not very many people planned on the Messiah dying. The immediate death of their leader didn’t exactly fit in Israel’s plan for national liberation. So we can imagine their confusion. Perhaps we can even understand their fury later, when Jesus fails to organize an insurrection, and instead submits to the humiliation and pain of Golgotha. This was not the salvation they wanted. A crucified messiah? What good is that? What kind of joy does that engender?

The question that confounded the Jews of the first century is the question that may still confound us today. Jesus? Didn’t that guy die? What kind of salvation is born of the crucified – the lynched? Where’s the joy in that?

The followers of this lynched man, the Apostles, don’t seem to offer much in the way of explanation. They simply told the story. And people responded with joy. They recognized this as gospel, as good news, as salvation.

The question of what salvation means can be contentious and divisive. I’m going to put my neck out a little bit this morning and suggest this remains an open question in Christian faith. The apostles don’t spell it out. Neither does Jesus or the Gospel writers.

The one thing that does seem to be clear is that the followers of Jesus believe that salvation is at hand, that it is both a present reality (we are saved) and a future hope. Salvation means personal and communal transformation now and later. The present offers a taste of the future; a sneak preview of God’s ultimate redemption, the final reconciliation, the peaceable kingdom.

Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians (2 Cor 5:21), says we are to “become the righteousness of God.” That’s one metaphor of salvation. Becoming. Not just receiving, or learning about, but becoming the righteousness of God. It will be written on our hearts, it will be internal to us, we will be it.

Last time I preached, I asked a question stemming from reflection on the function of God’s covenant in our lives: “what are we for? What do we stand for? Not what are we against, what do we oppose; but what’s our constructive, positive vision? What are we for?”

Paul elicits a similar, but perhaps deeper question: “who will we be?” What are we becoming? Paul suggests to us that the popular Christian tendency to ask simply “are you saved or aren’t you” is largely a pious practice of missing the point. Paul says “who are you?” What are you becoming? How are you responding to this strange and compelling proclamation that a lynched man, Jesus of Nazareth, has risen, conquered violence and death, sits as Lord at the right hand of God?

The question “are you saved or aren’t you” is something of a triviality, isn’t it. The biblical question is: “what are we becoming?” How are we allowing the long story of God’s loving, saving work to transform us? Not “are you saved,” because what does that mean? Better is “where’s the joy of your salvation?” And how does that joy make you who you are? How does it sustain you? How does it propel us into the world?

In the Book of Acts, Peter proclaimed that Jesus, the expected Messiah, had been lynched, but resurrected as Lord, and the first people who heard this where like “Sweet! What are we gonna do?” “Brethren,” the cry, “what shall we do?” How are we gonna shape ourselves and our community in response to this story? How is the joy of this peculiar kind of salvation going to be written on the heart of our community?

And the Book of Acts says they set off to create a community of fellowship and love, one in which no one lacked anything, where no one was left in need. That’s how they embodied the joy of their salvation. The recognized that Jesus’ kingship was not the type of salvation that perhaps they expected: there would be no immediate political autonomy; no warrior king, no Mosaic liberator. Their savior was one who, when questioned as a political insurrectionist, said “Pilate, man, you don’t understand. My Kingdom is not like the kingdoms of this world. The salvation I offer is real, and it’s lasting, and powerful, but I don’t suspect you’ve got the imagination to recognize it.”

The hope that Paul expresses and the challenge that he poses to the church in Corinth is to let our joy tease our imaginations to make the meaning of our salvation recognizable, tangible. To offer a sneak peak of God’s peaceable kingdom. In Paul’s words, to “become the righteousness of God.” Not by doctrinaire obedience to a particular code of conduct. Not by public piety or ritual purity, but by inscribing the Spirit of a new covenant on our hearts; in the Psalmist’s words, by “instilling within us a new and right spirit,” born of joy at the wonder of our salvation.

May we, like David, rediscover the delight of God’s saving Word; may we courageously, and with pleasure, be renewed in Spirit.

May we, like Jeremiah, envision a near future in which God’s people are recognizable by the covenant that is written on their hearts; may our communities bear witness to the Word that is within us.

And may we, like Paul, ask ourselves: “Who will we be?” “What are we becoming?” May our answers be born of joy as we remember, experience, and hope for salvation.

AMEN