Bob Kaylor

Daily Bread

NOTE: This is the text of today's sermon as it was written, not as it actually came out "live." To listen to the live version, check out the podcast on our web site. I'll have it posted there by late tomorrow morning. The text for the morning was John 6:1-12. For my text-based readers, however, here's the manuscript that the Holy Spirit kind of circumvented:

If you’ve been reading through the New Testament along with us, you’ve probably noticed that it is filled with meals. Jesus, in particular, seems to always be around food. Think about all the eating that goes on – ceremonial meals, potluck suppers, wedding receptions, grand banquets, intimate dining, parties, and, like today’s story, even large outdoor picnics. While we’re phasing through diets, Jesus seems to be carbo-loading as he goes from place to place.

But there’s a reason for this (with Jesus, there’s a reason for everything!). Remember that in first century Jewish culture, eating a meal was really more of an event than simply horking down fast food. Meals were about hospitality, about sharing, about bonding. If you ate with someone it meant that you were friends for life. Jesus goes around eating with lots of people, from the religious elite to the outcasts of society – for Jesus, eating with people was a sign of things to come and was very much tied into his mission of proclaiming God’s Kingdom. One of the images of that Kingdom is a banquet – a grand feast where everyone is invited. Jesus was acting out the idea that the Kingdom is a party thrown by a God who sits down with everyone and feeds them only the best. It wasn’t so much what he ate, but who he ate it with that counted.

The story that was read for us this morning is about one of the most famous of those parties—the feeding of the five thousand. It’s a story that shows up in all four of the Gospels—the story of taking scarce resources and turning them into an abundance. I think it’s a great story for tough economic times, you know…rather than thinking we don’t have a lot to offer, Jesus invites us to think that there’s always enough if we’re willing to trust him.

I think about this every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer and get to that part about our “daily bread”—that Jesus encourages us to focus on God’s provision for the day, the moment, and not worry about the future. It’s only the next meal that matters. If we trust God for a little, we can trust him for a lot.

“Bread” in the Bible is the term used for subsistence, for life, for that which satisfies the deepest human hunger. In our Old Testament lesson, the children of Israel are grumbling about their situation – they’re thinking of their plight as a whole – we’re in the desert, we’re hungry, we could be here a long time, how are we going to survive this? Well, God gives them a lesson in “bread” – he tells them that daily they will receive manna (a type of flaky substance from a coriander tree that grew out there in the desert) and quail. God will supply this daily for them. But, Moses instructed them, they could only gather what they needed for that day – hoarding it meant that anything you took beyond what you needed for that day would spoil overnight. You had to trust that there would be more in the morning – in other words, you had to trust God for your daily bread. You had to live from meal to meal!

With this in mind, Jesus instructs his disciples that life is best lived one day at a time, one meal at a time. He says in the Sermon on the Mount “Do not worry saying ‘What shall we eat’ or ‘What shall we drink’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things and your heavenly father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

I got a graphic lesson in this when I enlisted in the Army after high school. I left Slippery Rock, PA very gung ho, but once I got to Ft. Jackson, S.C. I began to think that I had made a very big mistake. I also knew now why they always bring in new recruits at night—so they don’t know where to escape!

Despite all the screaming and exhaustion that was now part of my life, I came to realize early on that no matter what the drill sergeants did to us, the Army had to feed us three meals a day, no matter how much they screamed, no matter where we were or what we were doing– didn’t matter if they were in the mess hall, in the field, or just a C-ration…there were three times in a day where a meal was going to happen. At each mealtime I would have at least a minimum of 5 minutes where I could simply focus on putting food in my mouth – didn’t matter what it was (often I couldn’t identify it anyway).

Knowing this, I deduced that my survival was predicated on making it to each meal, one meal at a time. And so I began to live meal to meal. I’d be awakened at 4:00AM for physical training – usually pushups, situps and other exercises, followed by a long run – and while I was running I would think to myself – if I can just make it to breakfast! After breakfast we’d road march somewhere and train all morning in the hot South Carolina sun and all I could think about was making it to lunch – even if it was something called (and I am not making this up) “ham and chicken loaf”. After that, then I was concentrating on dinner, which usually involved some type of something over rice

For me, then, each meal was like a party! Woo hoo, I made it! Green eggs, spam and grits were as good to me then as a night out at Grappa! Grey creamed beef on toast (which we called something else, mind you) was a royal feast! And that C-ration candy bar – stiff as a board - was absolute heaven.

Pretty soon the 8 weeks were up and I did graduate from basic training – and now weighed 140 pounds! To this day, I’ve always seen meal-times as a reason for celebration (which is why I like to meet people for lunch so often!).

I never made the connection before, but I have an inkling that this is what Jesus was talking about when he told his disciples to pray for their “daily bread.

We have been saying for several weeks now in this series that the Kingdom of God that Jesus preached about is an in-breaking reality – the future breaking in on the present. God’s rule, God’s reign, God’s presence is here now and is also coming. The Kingdom is a day by day, ring by ring, meal by meal progression. Keeping that long view in mind, says Jesus, and hungering after the Kingdom in the present is much more satisfying than worrying about the future. When we seek the Kingdom daily, then daily we find the right amount of bread to live – to make it to the next meal.

We live in a culture that says to us “make all your bread now so you’ll have enough later.” We’re taught to hoard our financial and material resources, protect them, shelter them. Now there’s certainly nothing wrong with having a long term financial plan, but if it’s all about personal gain and building our own little material kingdoms, then the bread can become spoiled – spoiled by greed or gluttony. Every day we see scandals where people who have made a lot of bread for themselves wind up spoiled and spiritually hungry.

Praying for “our daily bread” is a way of reminding us that ultimately, every good thing comes from God who, according to Paul, “supplies all our needs according to his riches in glory” (note - “needs” not “wants”). When we live life dependent upon God’s provision, we begin to hoard less and give more so that every one may receive their daily bread. When we recognize that our individual lives find their meaning in the larger purposes of God, the Kingdom of God, we begin to worry less about our survival and enjoy the day to day blessings that God bestows on us.

It reminds of a story I once heard about how they used to trap monkeys in the wild. What they’d do is put a small piece of fruit inside a hollowed-out coconut with a hole just big enough for a monkey’s hand to go in. The monkey comes along, reaches in and grabs the piece of fruit in his fist – but his fist is too big to come back out through the hole. Rather than let go of the fruit, though, the monkey would continue to try and ram that fist through the hole without success – his greed not allowing him to move to freedom. All he has to do is open his hand and let go.

Praying for our daily bread is a way of reminding ourselves that we must live life “open-handed” in order to experience real freedom – freedom from worry, freedom from security, freedom from dependence on our stuff. If we’re seeking after God’s Kingdom first, says Jesus, then we’ll live our lives with open hands – hands that give more than they receive, hands that insure that everyone is receiving their daily bread. We live day to day, meal to meal seeing every thing as a gift from God – a gift to be shared.

It can be easy for us to lose sight of Jesus’ vision of the Kingdom, and to start worrying about everything that seems to be crashing down on us. Perhaps a better way for us to live is to put aside worry about the big picture problems we’re facing – whether it’s illness, a financial crisis, or some other worry -  and instead break it down…living meal to meal, day to day, piece by piece, and seeing each new provision of God’s daily bread as a celebration! You made it!

Jesus demonstrated this type of thinking in his own life. In a sense he, too, lived from meal to meal and for him every meal, it seemed, turned into a party! There was that wedding in Cana where he turned water into wine for everyone to enjoy, there was today’s story of the feeding of 5,000 people and then 4,000 – huge picnics on the hillside. He seemed to always be around some kind of celebration or starting it.

One of the knocks against Jesus by his contemporaries was that he partied too much, seemed to enjoy his meals a little too much. Not only did he party, but he did it with all the wrong people – tax collectors, prostitutes, the sick, lame, and lazy, the distressed and the disillusioned. He was accused of being a “wine bibber and a glutton” – charges which were, according to the law of Deuteronomy – punishable by stoning.

But there was a method to Jesus’ apparent madness and it has to do with the Kingdom of God. The Jews of Jesus’ day were looking forward to a future day when God would once again dwell with his people in Zion. The cycle of their worship involved various feasts and festivals. The great banquet would occur on that day, when God once and for all would destroy evil (kick out the invaders) and dwell with his people in the Temple.

What Jesus was doing was turning this expectation on its ear – that God was dwelling among the people in his own person, that the great banquet is already beginning to take place and that every one – and I mean everyone – is invited, not just those who have deemed themselves worthy. For Jesus, every meal was a sign of the Kingdom of God that he was announcing – a great party to which every one is invited.

Remember the parable of the prodigal son? When the wayward boy returns home, after squandering his inheritance, his father embraces him and throws a party. The older son, who’s been home all this time, is furious. Why throw a party for this kind of person? But the father says, “We’ve got to rejoice! This one that was lost is now found! It’s party time!”

Praying for our daily bread, then, is a way of also remembering that the Kingdom of God is a party to which we and everyone else are invited no matter who you are, where you come from, or what you’ve done. In John’s Gospel, Jesus says “I am the bread of life” – I am God’s presence, God’s promise, God’s daily provision, your personally engraved invitation to the Kingdom party. When we receive the “bread” of Christ, we go away satisfied, transformed, nourished, made new and looking forward to the next meal.

This is a big part of why we celebrate holy communion – it’s always “the next meal” that we look forward to – another celebration, another party, another way of saying “we made it” and “we’re all here”! It’s a sign and sacrament of the great Kingdom feast where all can be fed.

In the early church, communion always took place in the context of a larger meal – a banquet if you will. It was a way for them to share, literally and figuratively, their bread with each other – the daily bread they received as a gift from God.

In our day, we’d call this a “pot luck” or as it’s called in Western PA a “tureen dinner” (I never did know what a tureen was when I was a kid, but I guessed that it probably had something to do with Jello Salad Tupperware). It wasn’t just about the food, but about a gathering of the whole community where there were no strangers, only friends.

And so we pray “our” daily bread. The bread that we receive is meant to be shared – that those who hunger and thirst not only for God but for the basic needs of life – food, water, shelter, love – will be fed. Praying this prayer means that we pray not only for our own bread but for that of our neighbor – that we walk across the street or around the world to share the bread we have.

Today we bring our financial commitments to God as a congregation. It is an opportunity for us to share our bread with the world—to buy into Jesus’ vision of abundance in the face of the world’s fear of scarcity. Jesus calls us to “enough-ness” – to focus on God’s daily provision over and against the illusion of economic security. We ask God for our daily bread, we see how Jesus was offering it everywhere he went…now we are called to imitate him.

Can we live with open hands? Can we see all that God has blessed us with? Can we capture Jesus’ vision for the Kingdom and realize that we are being called to build for it day by day, using God’s provision and resources?

 

We are a community of faith…a community that is called to share our time, our talent, and our treasure for the Kingdom. May our giving and our vision reflect that call. And may we always be asking, “With whom can I share my daily bread?”

Grave Matters - A Sermon for All Saints Day

    Last night was Halloween, which is a “holiday” that just about everybody celebrates in one form or another. But while you may come here this morning still a little loopy from sampling the kids’ candy stash, I want to introduce you to another really “holy day”—All Saints Day.

            Now. Traditionally, All Saints Day has had a couple of meanings. In the old days there was All Saints Day, which celebrated those Christians who had been singled out as exceptionally “saints” of the church—your Mother Theresa types, that sort of thing—followed the next day by “All Souls Day” when the rest of the departed hoi polloi of the church was honored—your regular Christians.

            But, biblically speaking, “saint” is a word that is most often used to connote a regular, faithful Christian. There was no celebrity saint distinction in the early church, so a lot of traditions have dropped All Souls while still others have dropped the whole concept of honoring the righteous dead altogether.

            I think it’s a total God-thing, though, that All Saints Day happens to fall on a Sunday where we’re scheduled to talk about the resurrection of Jesus as part of our year-long journey through the Bible. Last week we talked about the crucifixion, about what Jesus’s death means for us, so this week we need to address the event that is inseparably joined to the cross and stands at the center of Christian faith—Easter and the empty tomb.

            My doctoral dissertation is focusing on the resurrection of Jesus, so I’ve been doing a lot of reading in this area. A couple of weeks ago I picked up a book, Accompanying Them with Singing: The Christian Funeral by Tom Long who teaches preaching at Candler. It got me thinking a lot about the nature of death and the meaning of resurrection (I’ve also been reading books about burial practices, the concept of the soul, and other creepy stuff). Long does a great job, I think, of setting us up to celebrate All Saints Day not as a day of death, but as a reminder of Easter and resurrection.

            Long argues, and I think correctly, that the Bible tends to talk about three kinds of death, and knowing the difference can help us begin to understand what’s going on in the Gospel accounts of the resurrection. Using Tom Long’s categories, we might call these “small-d” death, “capital-D” death, and, finally, the death of Christ.

            Small-d death is what we might also call natural death. It’s simply the recognition that we humans are mortal—that we have a certain life span, whether it is short or long. Some might wish that we had life spans like those we read about back in Genesis (Methuselah – 969 years old—imagine how much he had to save for retirement!), but we have to remember that by chapter 6 God had already set a limit on human life – 120 years—which seems to be true even today. The world’s oldest man, Walter Bruening, was 113 on September 24.

            Truth is that each of us has an expiration date, which reminds us that we are human and not divine. Our mortality is thus a mixed blessing. On the positive side, the fact that we don’t hang around forever means that our lives have a sense of urgency that can generate things like creativity and faith. If you’re a procrastinator, mortality reminds us that you can’t procrastinate eternally! There is a deadline for all of us. Small-d death keeps us from living in a state of atrophy.

            Small-d death also has the somewhat positive affect of assuring us that suffering does not last forever. I’ve sat with a lot of families whose loved ones were suffering terribly in pain and for whom death was a blessed end to their suffering.. While we can never say that small-d death is desirable, sometimes it is a release from the prison of pain. Sometimes death might even be considered a friend to those for whom drawing breath is a struggle.

            We’re even more familiar of the downsides of small-d death, however. It reminds us that every day we live we are one day closer to dying (aren’t you glad you came to hear all this today?). And when we die, there’s a pretty good chance we will be forgotten. I’ve done plenty of funerals where a family member will try to say something helpful like, “He’ll be remembered forever.” Well, the truth is that Park City cemetery is full of people that nobody remembers. Very few people are remembered for more than a couple of generations after their passing. Psalm 103 reminds us of this fact: “As for mortals, their days are like grass; they flourish like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it and is gone, and its place knows it no more” (v. 15-16). Knowing that we’ll likely be forgotten, we can get trapped by what Tom Long calls “the anxiety of impermanence” which can cause us to a “what’s the point?” way of thinking. When people think that their lives won’t be worth much in the long run they can wind up wasting their lives in self-destructive ways. Maybe sin itself is really a byproduct of mortality. Conversely, people may also simply try harder to stave off their mortality and drive themselves to an early grave trying to “make their mark” in the world. I once heard somebody say that lying at the root of perfectionism is an inherent belief that if I could just do everything perfectly then I just might be able to avoid death. We all want to be remembered, but will we? Small-d death is a great equalizer, but also a great antagonist.

            Capital-D death, however, is a different reality. Capital-D death is never welcome under any circumstance and is never a gentle friend, but “an alien and destructive force.” It is an enemy—in fact, Paul says that it is the enemy (1 Corinthians 15:26). It is God’s enemy, and it not only steals life from individuals but also captures “principalities and powers” (to use Paul’s terms). Capital-D death can enslave human institutions, turn people to warfare, cause hate and genocide, lead to systems of injustice and violence, and make a mockery of God’s good creation. Capital-D death seeks to destroy hope for the future, mocks our very existence, and “scorns human beings who are set down in the middle of history with aspirations for eternal worth” (Long 40). Capital-D death wreaks havoc in the world and we see it at work every time we open a newspaper and read the accounts of madness and mayhem perpetrated by human greed, malice, and sin. Capital-D death convinces humanity to embrace consumption over compassion, greed over grace, and self over our neighbors. When we begin to believe that the world is a dark and evil place, rather than God’s good creation, Capital-D death is at work. I wonder sometimes if our celebration of Halloween is really just an unconscious homage to Capital-D death—the spattering blood and axe murderer caricatures being seen as innocent fun instead of a symptom of our casual alliance with Capital-D Death.

            You may want to chew that over with all your candy…

            The point is that there is a difference between small-d and Capital-D death. Small-d death ends our life in time and place. Capital-D death seeks to end humanity altogether, consigning it to a future without hope. Sure, people have often thought that they could simply act better and the world would be better, too. The whole Enlightenment project was about human progress—that things will just keep getting better and better and eventually things like war and disease and even death will be conquered by reason, science, and technology. New Atheist voices like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, direct descendants of Enlightenment thinkers like Nietzsche and Kant, write screed after screed decrying faith and calling for pure reason. But how has that Enlightenment project been working out? Is war being eradicated, for example? No—and now we have nuclear weapons (which science gave us, by the way). Try as we might, humanity hasn’t been able to beat back Capital-D death, or even small-d death for that matter. If we’re thinking that we can change things on our own, well, I’ve got bad news. On our own, we’re still subjects of King Death. So we might cry out with Paul, “Wretched people that we are. Who will rescue us from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24)

            Well, the answer is why we’re here this morning. Sunday morning. An echo of Easter. We read the story of Jesus’ crucifixion last week—all that happened on a Friday—the day that Jesus was nailed to a Roman cross, enduring the pain and agony of death—small-d Death in his broken body and Capital-D death in the form of the evil and violence of empire and hate that put him there. “Death and death apparently had won, as they always do” (Long 42). And Jesus’ friends did the only thing they could do in the face of death and death—prepare for a funeral.

            Jesus’ body was taken down from the cross—which was unusual given the fact that the Romans most often left the corpses on them to rot for days and weeks as a warning to others—a reminder that Capital-D death was still in charge. But Jesus is allowed to be laid out in a tomb, which was a temporary state. Burial in the first century was a two-stage process. The body was laid out on a slab in the tomb, wrapped in cloths and anointed with spices to hasten the decay and cut down on the odor. One year later, the family would return to collect the bones and put them in a stone box called an ossuary. Go to Israel today and you’ll see that there were so many of them that many ossuaries are used today as flower boxes. First century people were intimately acquainted with the process and bodily byproducts of death, more so than we are in an age of sanitized funeral homes and graveyards. Jesus had been a reason for hope—now he was just a statistic. Another in a long line of those defeated by death.

            But that was Friday.

            Sunday morning, the women came to finish the anointing process and found the stone rolled away from the entrance, the tomb empty, and the graveclothes laid aside. The body had moved and the funeral was over. Jesus’ body was gone and he would appear in his resurrected body to his friends—not a ghost, not an illusion, not a magic trick not a collective fantasy—but a body. There were continuities; the body of the risen Jesus was in some ways like his former body, like our bodies. His followers looked at his face and recognized him, he ate food with them just as before, and he invited them to touch his flesh so they would know he was not a ghost or a dream. But there were also discontinuities; his risen body was not like his former body and not like our bodies.“ He could stand with his friends yet they did not immediately recognize him. He could walk through doors and could vanish in an instant. “This was not just the old Jesus given a shot of new life.” Rather, the Gospel writers were saying that this was a transformed body, a glorified body—but a body nonetheless. The risen Jesus was embodied, but it was not precisely the same body he had once had. This was not a mere resuscitation of a corpse—a la Lazarus--it was a resurrection.  (If you want to explore some of the evidence for the bodily resurrection of Jesus, I invite you to Bible study this week)

            What does the resurrection of Jesus mean for us? For death (small-d and big-d)? Well, for the early Christians, it meant nothing less than the defeat of death itself. In the human Jesus, God had done a radically new thing—he had gone through the small-d death that we all experience and had taken on directly Capital-D death and all of its sneering power. Humans have long sought a life of eternal significance—to be remembered, to have our lives count for something, to make our time valuable in a larger sense. Death has always blocked that from happening. In the resurrection of Jesus, God has removed that roadblock and the life-crushing threat of death.

            Yes, we still experience small-d death, but the resurrection tells us that this is a temporary state of affairs. Ultimately, we look forward to a resurrection of our own, made possible because Capital-D death will no longer have dominion over us. Our lives have eternal significance, our work in the present matters for eternity, we have a place in the coming Kingdom of God and a role in building for it. When that Kingdom becomes a reality, as Jurgen Moltmann puts it so wonderfully: “Death will die, not-being will be no longer, hell will go to hell.”

            So, we might add a third kind of death to our list—Jesus’ death. It is Jesus’ death and resurrection that trumps small-d and Capital-d death with another—the death we experience in baptism. When we are baptized, our death becomes enfolded into Jesus’ death on our behalf and in the victorious reality of resurrection. I like how Long describes this:

“Because God did not raise only the idea of Jesus or the spirit of Jesus but the body of Jesus, what makes up the embodied stuff of our lives—our relationships, the words we have spoken, the acts of love we have done—counts, counts eternally. The commitments of our lives and the places we have placed our bodies are gathered up by the power of God and transformed in the resurrection into the very life of God” (45).

On All Saints Day, we celebrate this reality—that those saints who have gone before us, whether we hold them in our conscious memory as loved ones or whether they are not yet known to us will all be known in the Kingdom and their work and life celebrated in the light of God’s new creation. We will join together with them in this new reality, unimpeded by death in any form, and become part of God’s glorious future—a new heavens and a new earth, with new bodies for new work, new worship and new life.

            In the interim, we still deal with death and the pain of loss, but we do so knowing that it isn’t the last word. Through our tears of grief, we remember resurrection and can shake our fist in the face of death: “Where, O Death, is your victory. Where, O Death is your sting? But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” shouts Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:57. We celebrate today because we know that great cloud of witnesses has come before us and we build on their legacy. “Therefore, my beloved,” Paul continues, “be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (v. 58). Resurrection means that our lives matter for eternity!

            I continue to use N.T. Wright’s metaphor of a medieval cathedral as a vision for how our lives are fitted for the Kingdom. You may recall my sharing with you his image of a guild of 11^th century stonemasons  in a yard, each chiseling out a design on a block of granite or limestone. Each has his own piece, and none has an idea of how it fits into the whole project. Only the master builder knows how it all fits together. Then, after many years, comes the great day when the master builder announces that all the work is finished. He gathers all those stonemasons together and leads them through it, pointing up at the ceiling or to a column and saying to each craftsman—“There’s your piece. Here’s yours. You did this.” No matter how small or seemingly insignificant, every stone matters. Every stone is part of a cathedral.

            Someday, I imagine, God will take each of us by the hand, as he will those who have chiseled out their work for the Kingdom before us, and tour us through the new creation. He will point out—“There’s your piece. Your act of compassion built that, your prayers did that, your visit, your giving, your leadership…all of it has a place in the eternal work of God’s Kingdom.

            So, today we honor all those who have gone before us and we thank God for their witness in our lives. This morning I want to invite you to offer a special prayer for a person or persons who is now part of the great cloud of witnesses, awaiting the resurrection at the last day. Thank God for their influence in your life, thank God for those whose influence you may not even realize. And, because of resurrection we can be this bold, pray for those who will come after you and build on the work you are doing today for Christ and the Kingdom. And if you can’t figure out what work that is, then maybe it’s time for you to use the sense of urgency that small-d death gives us and ask God to fill you and show you your piece of the Kingdom project.

            We gather on a Sunday morning, every Sunday morning, as Easter people. Every time we gather in this place we are really spitting in the face of death. We gather here to remember our baptism and celebrate the death of Christ that defeats all death by sharing in Holy Communion. We sing songs of resurrection and not dirges. We greet one another with peace and not fear. We are Easter people…and so we pray…

             

 

Random Gleanings from the Graveyard

For Halloween and All Saints weekend, here's a list of "I never thought of that" death-related stuff that may, um, leave you howling (Caution--if you are squeamish or don't like talking about death, now is the time to click out to a happier, fuzzier blog):

• WalMart has apparently begun selling caskets and funeral urns via its web site. That's nothing new really--Costco's been offering theirs for about five years. It's not like their stacked up next to the toilet paper, but you can still get a decent casket for a lot less than the funeral home will charge (and, by law, a funeral home has to accept the casket you bring in and can't charge you extra for doing so). I just finished a fascinating (and kind of gross) book by Mark Harris titled Grave Matters which looks at all the possible ways one's body can be laid to rest. Bottom line is, no matter how embalmed, sealed, vaulted, or encased your body is after the funeral, it's going to wind up a decomposed slick of--well, read the book. So, it doesn't really matter what kind of casket you get--it's just delaying the inevitable.
• Then there's the whole process of getting the body ready for viewing and casketing. Harris describes it in detail in the book. Let's just say that the chapter he writes about that is something one shouldn't read right before bedtime, like I did. The toxic chemical stew that results is also a real environmental problem on a whole lot of levels. 
• Harris also writes about cremation and about "green" burial in the book, which was intriguing. When we visited the Trappist monastery in Kentucky last summer, we saw a film about how the monks bury their dead in a simple grave with the deceased simply wrapped in a shroud. A natural process then takes place. Green burial sites are popping up (okay, probably not the best description) all over the country as people seek a more natural way of burial with no chemical embalming and no expensive metal caskets.
• Thomas Long's book Accompany Them with Singing: The Christian Funeral is one I've been recommending to colleagues recently. Long describes the interesting history of the early Christian movement and burial. Seems that in first century Rome common people were simply tossed into a ditch when they died (the Platonist idea that the body didn't matter dominated the landscape then as it, unfortunately, does now). The early Christians, however, would take the bodies of the poor, wash them, and prepare them for a proper Christian burial. Why? Because of their belief in resurrection of the body. The funeral and burial was thus an act of farewell and preparation for the resurrection to come. The body still mattered. 
• Jesus' own burial comes into discussion here, too. First century Jews practiced a two-stage burial process. In the first stage, the body was washed, wrapped in cloths and laid out in a tomb or burial cave hewn out of rock. Spices were applied to the body to both hasten the decomposition process and cut down on the odor. A year after this first "burial," the family returned and placed the bones in an ossuary or "bone box" which was then put in a niche elsewhere in the tomb or buried. There are so many of these ossuaries in Israel that people now use them for flower boxes (sans bones, which have been long buried elsewhere).
• But what happens when we die? I'm now reading Joel Green's interesting book, Body, Soul, and Human Life: The Nature of Humanity in the Bible. Green takes a monist view of the body--that the body, mind, and "soul" are not separate entities and that science is proving this out. His discussion of what it means for humans to be created "in the image of God" is very intriguing. Point is, however, that it all goes to the importance of the idea of bodily resurrection over and against the immortality of the soul. I'll review it further when I'm finished.  For a more popular (and humorous) discussion of science and the idea of the soul, check out Mary Roach's Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife.Her description of MacDougall's famous experiment where he tried to prove that a separate soul existed and that it weighed 21 grams is fascinating. I also enjoyed her other book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers.
• Some of you may think I've gone off my rocker, but this stuff is actually fascinating. Hope you pick up some reading for "the day of the dead!"

WNYC - Radiolab

Radiolab believes your ears are a portal to another world. Where sound illuminates ideas, and the boundaries blur between science, philosophy, and human experience. Big questions are investigated, tinkered with, and encouraged to grow. Bring your curiosity, and we'll feed it with possibility.

via www.wnyc.org

As an insatiable podcast listener, I love stuff that makes me think. "RadioLab" is one of the most interesting and mind-blowing pocasts out there--a mixture of science, anthropology, culture, and a whole bunch of other stuff that makes for a fascinating and entertaining hour. Subscribe via iTunes. And if you're not listening to podcasts (mine included) then what are waiting for?

The Meaning of the Cross

Click here for the audio of this week's sermon or subscribe to "Bob Kaylor's Sermon Podcast" on iTunes.

Download MeaningoftheCross - the Powerpoint presentation for the sermon. 

This week, we looked at what it means when we say, "Jesus died on the cross for our sins." The answer lies within the whole narrative of Scripture that we've been studying throughout the series. Jesus reinterprets and opens up some key symbols and understandings from the Old Testament to form a new community for a new creation. I hope you find the message thought-provoking and spirit-lifting!

Reflections on the Clergy Retreat and the Missional Leader

Just sitting here in the Denver International Airport waiting for my flight home from our annual Rocky Mountain Conference clergy retreat and thought I'd do a little reflecting for my readers. Some of you who attended the retreat may want to add your comments.

• I was really excited that our Bishop, Elaine Stanovsky, was leading the retreat. It's so refreshing to see an episcopal leader with a vision and passion for ministry that is contagious. Her choice of "The Missional Leader" as our basic text for organizing and understanding our work together and individually was exceptionally helpful for many of us. Unlike some other books that we've read together as a conference, Bishop Elaine has already been integrating some of the learning about Pastor/Leader teams into her own work with the Cabinets of RMC and Yellowstone. I come away with a lot of hope for us as a Conference that is looking at emerging ways of doing ministry.
• I had the privilege of leading the group through some of the material on the missional church, which is a great imaginative exercise for both lay and clergy church leaders. There was a lot of energy in the room about the material and in our small groups we had the chance to do a little evaluating on where we all find ourselves and our congregations. For those in the "Red Zone," there is hope. For those who are comfortable in the "Blue Zone," it's a great time to be evaluating how you might look ahead at some emergent ways of thinking and doing ministry.
• As always, though, the best part of the retreat is getting reconnected with a lot of old friends. Since coming to Rocky Mountain in 1998 I have been blessed by many friendships that are vital to me despite the miles that separate us all. Some of my friends are very different than me theologically, but somehow we find ourselves doing well together in community. The collegial spirit of the retreat is always a blessing.
• As a (nearly) life-long drummer, I was excited to see that one of our exercises was getting all of the elders together for an hour or more of playing in a drum circle. It got me reflecting on the fact that we are, indeed, part of the "dust of the earth" and that primal, earthy, embodied way of living resonates in us. Playing drums together was deeply moving for many...but it's been therapeutic for me for a very long time! I was wondering how we might be able to do some of this in our local churches. "Instead of our regular order of worship, this morning we're doing some drumming." How cool would that be once in awhile?
• I continue to be impressed by the preaching of many of my colleagues. We never get to hear each other and the retreat gives us a chance to do that. All of those who preached blessed me with their words that resonated with the Scripture text for the week (Luke 10:1-12). I loved the fact that we focused on one text during the whole retreat.
• Line of the week: "We have to remember that every once in awhile a chihuahua kills a bear." - Chuck Schuster, talking about how all things are really possible.
• I was sad to see that Snow Mountain Ranch is not as, well, appealing as it used to be. Most of the trees are gone due to disease, which gives the place a stark look. They also got rid of their fitness center, which means no workout equipment anywhere on a YMCA camp property. What's up with that? The food was also pretty substandard. When that happens I always compare it to Army field rations. To put it succinctly, I would have welcomed an MRE. For what we were paying, that was pretty weak. Accommodations were fine, though, and the staff very pleasant.
• With doing some presenting and playing in the worship band I didn't have a whole lot of time to just relax. I was kind of hoping that I'd get a little down time after all the hectic work of the last few weeks and much more to come. Still, I was energized by the experience and very glad I was able to be there.
• Dan O'Neill's presentation on Central Conference pensions was moving for me. I am making a pledge to that cause to support our brothers and sisters in Africa with pension funds after retirement. My guess is that many of them have pastored in the "Red Zone" for a long time with very little resources, but who have done amazing things to make Africa one of the fastest growing places for Christianity in the whole world. I will also be donating the money I get from the HealthMiles program for working out this year both as a thank offering to God for my own health and to support my colleagues in Africa.
• And, last but not least, I always enjoy traveling with my friend Dave Hiester. Our conversations are always interesting and we have a lot of fun together. Great time last night at Hernando's eating stromboli and watching the NLCS. Thanks, Dave!

Missional Leadership Slides

Download AdBoardRetreat09-2 for the missional leadership slide presentation from the 2009 Clergy Retreat at Snow Mountain Ranch.

The Good News: The Gospel of Mark

Focus Text: Mark 2:1-12

As this passage of Mark’s gospel opens, we find Jesus in Capernaum in a house that the context suggests was actually his house. When word gets around that he’s returned home, people begin gathering at the house – clamoring for attention, to hear him and experience some of the healing that he had been offering (note the previous passages in chapter 1). His fame was already spreading, and people camped out wherever he went (like a rock star). I sort of imagine him fighting his way into the living area of the house and, feeling obligated and compassionate to those who had shown up, began to preach.

But while he’s preaching, over the din he hears the sound of digging in the ceiling. Now first century homes like this one had flat roofs with an outside staircase leading to the top, so it wasn’t unusual for people to be on the roof – but as the mud and dirt begin to rain down on him, Jesus looks up to see an ever-widening hole appear and then a stretcher being lowered in front of him. Talk about an intrusion! You think a brick tossed at your Jag is a hassle – imagine someone digging a hole in your roof!

But Jesus is seemingly unfazed and recognizes what is happening – four friends go to extraordinary, audacious lengths to get their friend in front of Jesus, believing that Jesus could do something for him. And Jesus is slowed down enough in his spirit to engage the young man and hear the cry for help without anger or indignation.

After all, that was a primary focus of Jesus’ mission. Turn back to Mark 1:15. Here we see the theme Jesus’ preaching and activity boiled down to one sentence: “The time has come. The Kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” For first century Jews, the phrase “Kingdom of God” had both spiritual and political connotations. When they heard  “Kingdom of God” or “Kingdom of Heaven” (the terms are interchangeable), it meant to them the “reign” of God – that God would somehow return to dwell with them (in the Temple) in a powerful way, and that also God would throw out the pagan Roman oppressors who occupied their land. Jesus’ message that “the Kingdom of God” was at hand would have been music to their ears at first, but it would become clear that Jesus’ interpretation of that phrase was much different than the peoples’ expectation.

The mindset of much of first century Israel was focused on who was “in” and who was “out” as the true people of God. Those who followed the Torah (the law) to the letter, those who were healthy and strong, were “in”. Sinners (prostitutes, tax collectors, and the like), Romans, the blind, the lame, the infirmed, were out. It was a very exclusive definition of the Kingdom. Jesus, however, focuses his idea of the Kingdom of God on bringing the outsiders in. Mark wants us to understand that in Jesus’ ministry healings and exorcisms were evidence of God’s Kingdom breaking in. Look at the previous context in chapter 1. The healing of the leper is a classic example in 1:40-45. Lepers (leprosy being a horrific skin disease) were outcasts, living in colonies outside the community. Jesus heals the man and commands him to “show himself to the priests” – a restoration to the community “as a testimony to them”. The healing of the body, the healing of spirit through the exorcism of evil, were not just cool miracles but pointed statements by Jesus on the inclusive kind of Kingdom he was preaching.

In fact, the ministry of Jesus was largely about making people whole. In the Bible there is a deep connection between body and spirit. Those of us in the Western world have bought into the mindset of ancient Greek philosophy (Plato) that we have a body and a soul and they’re separate parts. That’s not the worldview of the Bible and the ancient Hebrews. The Bible sees the person as a whole – body and spirit as one part, not separate entities. What we do with one affects the other.

This week I’ve been reading Thomas Long’s excellent new book on Christian funerals, Accompany Them With Singing, where he points out how we are to understand the relationship between body and spirit from a biblical perspective:

"Christians…do not believe that human beings are only bodies, nor do they believe that they are souls who, for the time being, have bodies; Christians affirm, rather, that human beings are embodied. What others call “the soul” and “the body,” Christians call the “breath of God” and dust; and when it comes to living human beings, they form an inseparable unity. There is no such reality in the Christian lexicon as “the real me” apart from “the embodied me”

In fact, a first-century Jew would have thought that if one was sick or infirmed it was because either they or someone in their family had done some terrible sin. See John 9 for a great treatise on that.

The point is that one does not heal the body without the soul and vice versa. There’s evidence for this in modern medicine as well – witness the number of articles by physicians on the connection between prayer and healing. We are only truly “healthy” when we recognize this connection and recognize that we can’t destroy our bodies through excess and abuse and expect to have a peaceful spirit, nor can we harbor anger, evil thoughts, grudges, stress, etc. and expect our bodies to be healthy. One affects the other.

For Jesus, then, the basic prescription for healing is forgiveness. The word “sin” in the New Testament is translated from the Greek word “hamartia” – a term borrowed from archery that literally means “to miss the mark.” That’s a broad definition of sin that’s more than a simple list of  “bad” things we might do. The Bible sees sin more like a disease – a spiritual and, oftentimes, physical illness that separates us from God and each other. When we “sin” we’re not becoming the whole and healthy people we were created to be.

The cure, then, is forgiveness – the forgiveness of God. Jesus looks at the young man at his feet, the hole in his roof, the anxious faces of his friends staring down and says, “Son, your sins are forgiven”. Now, you can read this a couple of ways: Jesus might simply be forgiving the man and his friends for trashing his house or, more likely, Jesus recognizes the desperation in this young man, his friends, and all the people gathered in the house. They are all in need of health and wholeness – they are all in need of a new start, a fresh target.

Who could offer that? In the first century view, forgiveness could come from God alone. That’s why when Jesus says to the young man, “Your sins are forgiven” there seems to be a collective gasp from the crowd gathered in the house. Jesus had just done what only God could do, thus Mark makes it clear that healing and forgiveness were signs of Jesus’ divine authority. The religious leaders cried “Blasphemy!” They would do this often, because Jesus would constantly claim this authority – and then back it up. “Which is easier” Jesus asks them, to say “Your sins are forgiven” or “Get up, take your mat and walk? But that you might know that the Son of Man has the authority on earth to forgive sins…get up, take up your mat, and go home.” And the young man does just that – released from the infirmity and the weight of sin on him. Jesus had indeed done what only God could do. The implication? Jesus is God’s own representative – the “son of man” – God himself – with all the authority in heaven and earth to forgive sin.

In Jesus name, the disciples would be granted that same authority (that’s what we see in Acts 3 and in many other instances throughout the New Testament). To forgive and be forgiven, to be able to start anew and heal, is the authority and commandment of God given to us. The cure for what ails us is grace – receiving and transmitting the forgiveness and reconciliation of God.

But forgiveness, while we all agree is part of Jesus’ agenda, is much harder for us to embrace in practice. In fact, for many people forgiveness is offensive. The religious leaders of Jesus’ day very much embraced their authority to punish people for their transgressions. Their thinking was that people should “get what they deserve”. That’s one of the reasons Jesus is nailed to a cross – to punish him for believing and demonstrating that everyone is eligible to receive the grace and forgiveness of God. We read about them, see them on the movie screen, and shake our heads – how could they be so blind?

Well – how many people in reality feel the same way? How many people wear their grudges and desire for revenge as a weight around their necks every day? Someone has wronged me, someone has taken from me, someone has messed up my life. They deserve everything that’s coming to them. And if they want forgiveness, they’ll have to come begging for it. Forgiveness is elusive while revenge is sweet. But it’s that sweetness that makes us sick.

And while forgiving someone else is hard, forgiving ourselves is even more difficult. Many people are held down by their past, regretful, spiteful, depressed – all because they can’t forgive themselves for their sins.

Forgiveness is hard, but it’s the only way to spiritual health.  Forgiveness doesn’t mean that we forget the wrong someone has done to us or what we’ve done ourselves. It doesn’t mean that our actions don’t have consequences. What forgiveness means is giving up our desire to punish and giving ourselves over to God’s grace. Forgiveness means that we release the anger and regret, knowing that holding on to it only hurts us in the long run. It’s the only cure for the disease of sin.

All of us need the forgiveness of God that is offered through Christ. Sin is a chronic disease. For what do you need to be forgiven? What are the things in your life that keep you from health? What is the sick bed that you need to leave behind – to rise take up your mat and walk into a new future that God is offering you?

And who do you need to forgive? What feelings do you need to let go of? Who needs the forgiveness of God coming through you? Remember, forgiveness is not so much about the other person’s response but about our need for health and wholeness. We need to slow down and recognize that often the bricks that get thrown at us and holes that get punched in roof are cries from others for our help!

As we move through Mark’s gospel, it’s important for us to remember that it begins with Jesus proclaiming and offering forgiveness, health, restoration – and it ends the same say – when even amidst the pain of the cross, the violence of injustice and revenge, Jesus calls out “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.”

That’s a powerful message for us. May you find health in giving and receiving the forgiveness of  Jesus Christ.

The Gospel of Matthew: Jesus the Teacher

This week's sermon podcast is up on iTunes and on our web site. I really enjoyed talking about Matthew this week and all the thematic stuff that's so important to understanding where the text is taking us. I've also attached the Powerpoint slides from this morning's sermon so that you can follow along and have the notes Just click on Download Matthew.

Review: Born to Run

 
Despite spending ten years in the military, I can't say that I've ever been much of a runner. Maybe it was the whole obligation thing or, perhaps more likely, it's just the pain of it all. I remember in basic training that I got shin splints so bad that I had to go on sick call (the one and only time I ever did). They sent me to the hospital for some physical therapy for half a day, where a pretty second lieutenant nurse gave me a leg massage and showed me some stretches to do to loosen up the leg muscles. Best moment of the whole basic training experience, I might add.

The next morning, we ran another ten miles and a couple of buddies carried me up the barracks stairs. But the stretches (and the memory of the nurse) helped me get back on my feet each day. From then on, running was way more like work than anything close to fun.

Christopher McDougall's book Born to Run, however, may have convinced me to try it again (I've become more obsessed with the bike in recent years). His look at a tribe in the remote wilds of Mexico and their running habits was inspirational and informative. Imagine, for example, running 50 miles at a pop and actually enjoying the experience. These folks run ultramarathons like they were a simple walk across the street.

Turns out that there's a reason for it--as humans we were, indeed, born to run. Our physiology and structure are designed for us to cover long distances, which our human ancestors used to literally run down food like deer, who are designed for the short sprint. McDougall's discussion of all the anatomical and cultural background of that is a fascinating read.

What interested me even more, though, was the assertion that we were born to run but born to do it with very little padding on our feet. Running shoes, it turns out, are actually what cause most of the pain in our bodies when we run as our feet search out a harder surface to push off on and covet the opportunity to splay outward. I now know why my kids insist on running around outside in their bare feet--that's the natural thing to do! I'm trying to imagine an army platoon running in bare feet, but you get the picture. McDougall's case is compelling and backed by a lot of evidence.

The book is structured around an impending race between the Tarahumara and some American ultramarathoners that takes place in the remotest of wilderness areas, out of the limelight of media coverage. Those sections read almost like a novel. McDougall's a good writer and this book will hook you.

I was a little disappointed that he didn't offer much in the way of tips for those of us who may have been inspired by the book. I, for one, am a little skeptical about running being that much fun, but this book at least gives me the impetus to try it the right way.

All in all, a really interesting book about changing one's perceptions and expectations.