Sermon — January 31, 2021

The Rev. Greg Johnston

“What do you have to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” (Mark 1:24)

This question has been haunting me all week. “What do you have to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” Isn’t that the question we all have to answer, and the question we all have to ask? Just days after he’s begun his ministry, Jesus travels from Nazareth to Capernaum, just a few miles down the road, and already people are asking: “What do you have to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” This isn’t your city. Stay in your lane. And now, two thousand years after his death, five thousand miles from Galilee, all of us who claim to follow Jesus are forced to ask that same question, and to answer it. What does this man from so long ago and so far away have to do with us? What do you have to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?

And then, more frighteningly: “Have you come to destroy us?”

It may be an odd question, but it’s not a surprising one. It’s one of a few possible answers to this person’s question. Perhaps Jesus has come to do what the unclean spirit says through this man. Perhaps Jesus has come to rid the world of evil, to give people commands with such powerful authority that even the demons must obey.

Or perhaps Jesus has come to do something a little different. Perhaps he is, as Deuteronomy promised, a new prophet, a “prophet like Moses,” one in whose mouth God will put God’s words, someone who will speak to the people everything that God commands. (Deut. 18:15-20) The congregation gathered in the synagogue certainly seem to think so; they recognize him as a teacher with a new and powerful authority, and his fame as a preacher and healer begins to grow.

Or perhaps Jesus has come to help us know God, a tangible human form of an abstract and inscrutable God. It’s ironic, of course, that the faithful are amazed and baffled, and keep asking each other, “What is this?” (Mark 1:27) The unclean spirit’s just told them! “I know who you are!” it cries out. “The Holy One of God!” (Mark 1:25) And of course it’s right. We, the readers of the gospel, know who Jesus is. The demons and (it will turn out) the Roman soldiers know who he is. But his own family, his own people, even his own disciples, haven’t got a clue.

Now, each of these ideas has something to it. Jesus spends plenty of his time casting out demons and ridding the world of evil, and we have to imagine he stands with us against evil in our world. Jesus certainly is a prophet with tremendous authority, through whom God speaks and who establishes a new law of love for us much like the law of Moses. Without a doubt Jesus comes to us to make it easier for us to know God.

But that’s not the whole story. The man with the unclean spirit asks Jesus, “What have you to do with us? Have you come to destroy us?” But no, it’s something worse. Not to destroy us, but to know us.

“Knowledge puffs up,” Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians, “but love builds up. Those who think they know something don’t yet know what they ought; but anyone who loves God is known by God.” (1 Corinthians 8:1–3) In other words: If you think you truly know God, all you’ve shown is that you don’t even know yourself. But if you think you love God, it’s certain that God knows you.

So what does Jesus have to do with us? He heals us, yes; he teaches us, yes; we know God through him, yes; but even more so, through him God knows us. “I know you,” says the man with the unclean spirit. “Well, I know you.” Jesus seems to reply.

For me, this is a terrifying thing.

I don’t mean this in a fire-and-brimstone kind of way, in which God is tallying up all your secret misdeeds and preparing to hold you to account. This is the theology most succinctly expressed in the song “Santa Claus is Coming To Town”: “He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake; He knows when you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness’ sake!”

What’s frightening is not so much that God knows my misdeeds, which are many but minor; it’s that God knows me, really knows me, in the deepest and most hidden parts of myself. God knows the things I’ve never said out loud to anyone, even my spouse; God knows the things I say when I know my spouse isn’t listening. God knows me, really knows me, as I am. And who really wants to be known? Who really wants to be seen for who they are?

Not any human being I know. For thousands of years we human beings have been trying to hide from one another who we really are. We carefully curate our social media feeds, sharing only our most fun adventures on Facebook and deleting Instagram posts that don’t get enough likes. Or at least we did, when there was anything worth posting about—now we dig around in Zoom settings to try to look as good as possible. We ask each other as a matter of course the question, “How are you?” and our answers range from “I’m fine” to “pretty good,” as though anything more honest would be a faux pas. The phenomenon of feeling as though everyone else around us knows what they’re doing in a way that we don’t, that everyone else belongs here and I don’t, is so common among so many professions and areas of life, that it has its own name: “Impostor Syndrome.” To put it simply: it’s very hard for us to be vulnerable with own another, and so—from the moment Adam and Eve first sewed leaves together to cover themselves from God from God’s sight—we hide.

But still, God knows us, in our deepest moments of shame. How embarrassing.

And what a relief.

Because if God knows our deepest secrets, the things of which we are most ashamed, then there’s nothing to be ashamed of anymore. Our secrets are no secret. God sees us, and knows us, and loves us, loves us so much as to lay down his own life for us, just as we are. And God’s love builds us up.

“What do you have to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” we ask. “Have you come to destroy us?” In a sense, he has. Not to destroy us, per se, but a part of us; that part of us that hides us from ourselves, and from the ones we love. That part of us that keeps us locked in shame, for fear of being found out. That part of us that keeps us from being genuinely vulnerable with one another, from honestly recognizing where we’ve fallen down and making it right.

Last week, I found a photocopy of a letter from the Rev. Wolcott Cutler, long-time rector of St. John’s, to the priest who arrived here after him. It was in a box of St. John’s memorabilia that Marie Hubbard had had in her apartment, and that her daughter gave to St. John’s after Marie’s death. Attached to the photocopy was a note from Brian Murdoch, another past rector of St. John’s, to Marie, saying he’d found this letter and thought she might appreciate a copy of it.

Rev. Cutler was a complicated man, and his letter shows remarkable humility and self-knowledge. “Dear Mr. Kelley,” it begins, “I hope that you can persuade Archdeacon Burgess of Boston to tell you some of the things that this parish in Charlestown has lacked during my ministry here… It seems to me that some of the work wherein I have been weak requires not so much time as grace for its performance; and that is where a different personality…can provide leadership that will be greatly needed and, we trust, deeply appreciated.” For three pages Rev. Cutler outlines the joys and regrets of his four decades of ministry here, before concluding: “Each of us, being human, has many blind spots, and leaves certain important aspects of his ministry uncultivated. I pray that our parishioners are now at long last, to be treated to a religious emphasis and an evangelical warmth and a personal concern that they have failed to receive from me. And if they do, I believe that our habitually desultory attendance at the Sunday services will receive an impetus and show a growth that my inarticulate parochial calling has never accomplished.”

It’s rare to find someone so willing to be honest about his own limitations—especially among the clergy. But what Rev. Cutler says of his ministry is true of all of us as human beings. “Each of us, being human, has many blind spots, and leaves certain important aspects uncultivated.”

So what does Jesus have to do with us? He teaches us the way of love, yes, like an authoritative prophet. He heals and comforts us and stands with us against the evils of the world; yes. But more than anything, perhaps, he knows us as we are; he sees us as we are; he frees us from the shame of simply being who we are.  For “anyone who loves God is known by him.” (1 Cor. 8:3) Amen.

Sermon — January 24, 2021

The Rev. Greg Johnston

There’s a Chinese restaurant in Montreal that’s gotten famous recently for its menu. It’s not become famous for its authentic dishes or its affordable prices, but for something else: the owner’s very honest commentary on each menu item, printed just below the photo.

“This is the number-one-choice dish ordered by Chinese customers across China,” one description reads. “I am not a huge fan of our version, to be honest.” “This is a very popular dish,” another goes, “among the customers who don’t care about its greasiness.” And then there’s my favorite: “Compared to our General Tao Chicken, this one is not that good. Anyway, I’m not a big fan of North American Chinese food, and it’s your call.”

The owner of this restaurant is what I call an “imperfect messenger.”

Jonah knows what this is like.

“The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, ‘Get up, go to Nineveh.’” You may recall the first time the word of the Lord came to Jonah. “Get up and go to Nineveh,” God said, “that great city” far off to the east, “and cry out against it; for their evil has come to my attention.” (Jonah 1:2 CEB) So Jonah got up and booked passage on a ship headed not east to Nineveh, to Tarshish—as far west as you could go. You know the rest of the story. God sends a storm. Jonah goes overboard. Jonah’s swallowed by a “whale”—it’s really a fish—and so on.

Now after all this, the fish vomits him onto dry land, and the word of God comes to Jonah a second time. “Get up. Go to Nineveh.” So Jonah gets up and goes to Nineveh, but with quite an attitude. You can see the thought bubbles in the comic-strip version of the story. “Fine, I’ll do it. But I’m not going to like it!”

Jonah gets up and travels to Nineveh, which is a significant trip, to proclaim God’s message to the city. But when he gets there, he drags his heels. He doesn’t even go into the city center. He begins to go into the city, the story says, but he walks just one day, only a third of the city’s width. Geographically speaking—and here I really did the math using Google Maps—it’s the equivalent of walking from Columbus, Ohio all the way to Boston, coming into the city along the Mass Pike and then stopping somewhere in Allston to deliver your message. And not only does Jonah barely breach the city limits; he gives the shortest possible sermon: “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” (Jonah 3:4)

Sure, Jonah will obey God this time, but he’s going to do the bare minimum. He’ll preach repentance to Nineveh, but it’s going to be a short sermon on the outskirts of town.

Although—as a classmate of mine used to say, “If the minimum wasn’t good enough, it wouldn’t be the minimum.” And apparently the minimum is good enough, because the king and the people and even the animals repent and turn from their evil ways, and God changes his mind about destroying them, and Jonah, predictably, sulks.

Jonah is stubborn and resistant; the restaurant owner is maybe a little too honest. But the message is effective, even with such an imperfect messenger.

Now, the story of Jonah is a satire, so his personality is exaggerated. But the disciples Jesus calls in the gospel story today are just as flawed. The gospels don’t have much to say about the disciples. As a group, they’re unimpressive; they mostly appear in the story as a chorus to tell Jesus they have no idea what he’s talking about. Andrew never really appears again. James and John mostly show up to maneuver for top roles in Jesus’ coming administration. The “Simon” he calls with Andrew is, of course, Simon Peter. Peter is the one disciple to recognize Jesus for who he really is, answering Jesus’ question “Who do you say that I am?” with a simple, “You are the Messiah.” (Mark 8:28-29) But he is also the one who denies Jesus three times in his hour of greatest need, claiming he’s never even heard of Jesus just to save his own skin.

You have to remember that none of this is an attack on the Church or its leaders. These aren’t stories written by atheist critics, trying to show its hypocrisy and foolishness. These are the stories written down by the dearest friends and followers of these disciples in the decades after their deaths. It was Simon and Andrew and James and John who kept Jesus’ message alive and shared it with the likes of Matthew and Mark and Luke. So it’s remarkable that these are the stories they choose to tell: stories of disciples who are, at best, imperfect messengers.

I think that the messengers’ imperfection tells us something about the message that Jesus is going to send them to proclaim. “The time is fulfilled,” Jesus says, “and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” (Mark 1:15)

I think many of us struggle with these messages of repentance, these words from Jonah and from Jesus. If we repeat them we seem arrogant and judgmental, as though we were claiming the moral authority to know who needed to repent and to say it to their faces. In part, I think this is because this is how the message often sounds in our own day. When we hear talk of repentance in our culture, it’s usually more Jonah than Jesus; less “repent and believe” and more “repent…or else.”

“Repentance,” though, is not shame or fear. It’s not a confession or an apology that you give to avoid punishment. It’s a transformation. In Hebrew, it’s teshuvah, “returning”; coming back from the places you’d wandered away and returning to God. In Greek, it’s metanoia, a “change of mind and heart.” And so one recent translation renders this verse: “Now is the time! Here comes God’s kingdom! Change your hearts and lives, and trust this good news!” (Mark 1:15 CEB) When Jesus talks about the kingdom of God arriving and tells people to repent and believe, he’s not threatening them with what will happen if they don’t—he’s offering an invitation. The kingdom is coming, and this is good news! Come home and try to wrap your head around it.

And here it helps to have imperfect messengers. Jonah and Peter, James and John are hardly the glossy preachers who can stand up in the pulpit and point their fingers down at you in judgment. They’re stubborn, disobedient, power-hungry, cowardly; they’re brittle and flawed in all the ordinary ways we human beings are. They’re imperfect messengers who can stand among us, like us, and point us toward God, and say with all humility: “This is the number-one-choice religion in the world. I’m not a huge fan of our version, to be honest.”

I ended last week’s sermon reflecting on Philip’s words to Nathanael, before he brought him to meet Jesus for the first time: “Come and see.” When Jesus recruits Simon and Andrew to be “fishers of men,” (Mark 1:17) this is what he’s asking them to do: to come and follow him, to see what he’s about, and then to go to others and invite them in the same way: “Come and see.”

They do this with all the humility that comes from their imperfection. They don’t come to condemn or to judge. They’ve just found something that changed their lives, “The peace of God that filled their hearts / Brimful, and broke them too.” And all they can say to the people around them is: “Come and see,”

There are thousands of different books and videos and articles on how to have a growing or just a healthy church, and people often read them hoping for a magic solution, a secret plan that will fix everything. At the core of every one of them, though, the answer is simple: “Come and see.” We, as individual members of this body, need to be able to identify what it is that draws us here, what’s good about the good news we hear here. And we need to be able to invite others to try it for themselves.

We don’t have to be perfect to do it. We don’t have to be trained to do it. We don’t even have to like doing it. We can, like Jonah, dig our heels in, and refuse. We can, like Peter, hide our faith from sight. But we have found something we love, someone who fills our hearts with joy—and we cannot hide it from the rest of the world.

I maybe wouldn’t lead with “repent and believe in the gospel”—you can leave that one to Jesus, for now—but even if you only have the courage, like Jonah, to walk a third of the way into the city to share your message, you can still borrow that line from Philip, and say to someone who asks why you are here: “Come and see.”

Amen.

Sermon — January 17, 2021

The Rev. Greg Johnston

I think young Samuel would have made a good Episcopalian. He’s always ready. He’s always there to help. When he hears the call, he says, “Here I am!” He’s exactly the kind of person you want on your Vestry.

Like many characters in the Bible, Samuel had had something of a miraculous birth; and his mother promised God that, in exchange for the gift of a child, she would make sure that Samuel’s life was dedicated to God. So when he was a young boy, he went up to the temple at Shiloh to serve under the priest Eli. Samuel’s clearly learned how to be a good member of a religious community. Even in the night, he’s bubbling with energy and activity. He hears someone calling his name, and assumes it must be Eli; there’s no one else around. Maybe a lamp needs to be trimmed. Maybe a candle needs to be lit. Maybe someone needs to form a committee! So he runs up to his priest, ready to help: “Here I am! You called me.” He springs into action like a faithful member of any small church today.

But Eli says: Wasn’t me. You must have been dreaming. Go back to sleep.

And so he does, but he hears the voice again, and again he’s ready for action. “Here I am! You called me.”

And again, Eli says: No. It wasn’t me. Go back to sleep.

And then a third time—because in every human story, there must be three times—a third time Samuel hears a voice calling his name, and this time he’s probably hardly even fallen asleep, but he goes back to his seemingly-forgetful guardian and, with what I can only imagine is a thin layer of politeness spread over increasing frustration and confusion, he deploys his favorite phrase: “Here I am! …You called me.”

And Samuel still hasn’t realized what’s going on, because “the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.” (1 Sam. 3:7) But Eli has. So Eli says to him, “Go lie down. If you’re called again, say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’” (1 Sam. 3:9)

And he does. And oh, what a difference it makes. All along, he’s been hearing his name being called and immediately jumping into action. Samuel assumes that he knows what’s going on. He assumes that he knows what needs to be done. He hears a voice speaking out of the Ark of the Covenant itself, and he leaps into action, ready to be busy somewhere else with important temple business.

But now he stops, and actually answers the call. “Samuel! Samuel!” the voice cries out. “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” (1 Sam. 3:10) And the patient voice of God finally gets to have its say.

In Hebrew, God uses nearly the same phrase that Samuel’s been relying on all along. Samuel says over and over again, Hineni, Hineni, Hineni—“Here I am; Here I am; Here I am.” What do you want me to do? And God turns it around on him: Hine anoki–“Here I am, doing such a thing in Israel that’ll make your ears tingle.” (1 Sam. 3:11)

And Samuel finally hears the word of the Lord.

It’s not until Samuel stops trying to respond and really listens that he understands what’s going on. Perhaps even more importantly, it’s not until Samuel stops trying to do something for God that he learns what God is going to do through him. The moment he gives up his preconceptions about what it means to serve in the temple of God is the moment he learns what it really means to become a servant of God. He’s not meant to help Eli with little tasks around the church forever. He’s been set aside for something more.

We see that same moment of transition in a second call story this morning, in the call of Nathanael to be one of the first followers of Jesus. Samuel’s assumptions about what it means to serve God are industrious and helpful, even if they distract him from what God is really trying to say. Nathanael, on the other hand, is kind of a jerk.

“We’ve found the Messiah!” Philip tells his friend. And Nathanael skeptically replies, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:45) Rude. Nathanael’s just recycling a city-dweller’s disdain for a small-town boy; this is what John’s trying to tell us when he says he comes from Bethsaida, a bigger city down the road from Nazareth.

But his friend Philip insists. “Come and see.” (John 1:47) And Nathanael does. The results are an exaggerated comedy. Jesus offers a casual compliment—“Here’s an good honest Israelite, if I’ve ever seen one”—and Nathanael is shocked. “Where do you know me from?” He asks. “I saw you over there under the fig tree, before Philip called you.” (Before, in other words, you were just being rude.) And Nathanael, inexplicably, loses his mind: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” (John 1:49)

I’ll admit that I was baffled as to what was going on in this story. What on earth is going on to transform Nathanael’s casual skepticism into such an incredible statement of faith, so early on in Jesus’ ministry? (This is only chapter one of the Gospel of John!) I consulted my various study bibles and commentaries, finding nothing satisfying, and eventually I ended up deep in the commentary written by Raymond Brown, an absolute prince among 20^th-century Biblical scholars and the expert on the Gospel of John. He surveys a number of wild theories about where the fig tree was and what it means and even what Nathanael was doing under it that was so remarkable, and concludes simply: “We are far from exhausting the suggestions, all of which are pure speculation.”^[1]

As dumbfounding as Nathanael’s faith may be to the modern scholar, though, I think Samuel’s story helps make it clear. Why was Nathanael so skeptical about Jesus? Because, like the young Samuel at the beginning of that fateful night, he “did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.” (1 Sam. 3:7)

It’s not that Jesus said anything particularly profound. It’s not that he saw deep into Nathanael’s heart and told him his deepest secret. Jesus does do that other times, and John tells the story well. In this moment, though, it’s nothing that Jesus is speaking about that transforms Nathanael’s life. It’s just that Jesus is speaking. And Nathanael is listening.

I don’t know about you, but I find myself acting like Samuel and Nathanael before their respective enlightenments all the time. I hear someone calling to me, and before they’ve even gotten to speak I’m already formulating a response, making a plan; coming up with five reasons it will never work or lacing up my shoes to go do what I think they need. And that’s at my best, when I’m trying to be helpful. At my worst, when I’m tired or angry, I’m more likely to pull a Nathanael and dismiss them right away. (“Can anything good come out of his mouth?”)

This happens in our prayer lives, too. We’re too busy being human doings to be human beings. We’re too busy talking to God to listen to what God’s trying to say. And maybe—just maybe—sometimes our preconceptions close off an opportunity for a deeper conversation with God. (“Can anything good come out of Leviticus?”)

But sometimes, in a moment of grace, we stop. We listen. We hear each other’s voices—not filtered through our own thoughts and preoccupations and prejudices—but as they are. We hear God’s voice calling to us, and we listen, and something breaks through, and transforms us. In these moments of epiphany we catch a glimpse of truth shining through all the confusion of our lives.

And at our best—at our very best—we’re no longer Samuel and Nathanael but Eli and Philip, no longer doers and doubters suddenly turned into listeners, but listeners transformed into bearers of good news. When we’ve listened long enough for the word of God, we learn to find its signal in the noise of the world, and we gain an incredible power to tell others how to find it as well. We gain the wisdom to say to a friend, “Go, lie down. If you are called again, say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’” (1 Sam. 3:9) We gain the courage to say to another person: “Come and see.”  (John 1:46)

Amen.

^[1] Raymond, E. Brown, The Gospel According to John I-XII, The Anchor Yale Bible. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 83.