"Bodies on the Altar"

July 2, 2017
Text: Genesis 22:1-14

“There’s a body on the altar, God. What are you going to do about it?”

I imagine that man of you have this morning’s Old Testament lesson before. It is a famous story common to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In Hebrew, this story is called the Akedah, literally “the binding”, for that is indeed what Abraham does to his beloved son – and very nearly slaughters him at God’s command.

This story is so familiar that it’s easy for us to become numb to how terrible it actually is. So just to be clear: this is a story about a boy who is about to be murdered. A story about a father who is willing to kill his own son. This is a story about a God who is willing to risk Isaac’s life to get a peek at Abraham’s faith.

Now, Abraham may be one of our founding patriarchs, a man repeatedly lifted up in both the Old and New Testaments as a model of faith. But I want to let you know that if Abraham were to walk through the doors of this church, he would quickly be barred from working with our children and youth. Believe me, “I took my son on a three-day journey to sacrifice him on Mount Moriah, but I stopped right before I killed him,” would not pass muster with any child protection policy.

And for that matter, if God’s character in this story were to walk in those doors, God would not pass that background check, either. What parent would leave their child with someone whose resume read, “Commanded Abraham to kill his son as a sacrifice to me – but don’t worry, I changed my mind at the last minute, once I saw that his faith was pure”? Small comfort, to say the least.

It’s a difficult story, a perplexing story, even a horrifying story. And friends, I’ve wrestled with this text all week, looking for a sign of light, a truth that needs to be heard. Listening for the Holy Spirit to speak a Word from God. And what I’ve heard, and come to see, is that this is a story about bodies. Bodies at risk, bodies in action, even a body laid bare and in danger on the altar of sacrifice.

The entire story of Abraham and his family is a story about bodies, come to think of it. It’s a story about Abraham’s body, in which God locates the promise of a new people through whom the whole world will be blessed. About Sarah’s body, which was unable to bear children and yet in her old age is awakened with the gift of new life. Of Hagar’s body, used against her will by Abraham and Sarah to secure a son for Abraham. It’s about Ishmael’s body, cast out in the desert to die, and then saved by an angel who brings him the gift of water, that substance which all bodies need. It’s a story about Isaac’s body, filled with life and energy, the one through whose veins course the seed of God’s promise to bless God’s people.

In Abraham’s story, bodies roar with laughter at the announcement of a child in Abraham and Sarah’s old age, and bodies heave with sobs when Hagar and Ishmael are left to die in the desert. It’s a story about sex, birth, and death. Even the covenant that God establishes with Abraham is a covenant about bodies, sealed in the sign of circumcision, a covenant made in flesh.

We who are the heirs of modernity and so-called “Western thought” tend to think of the world somewhat dualistically, with the body and the soul as separate entities. And the soul is always the more important of the two. But it wasn’t so for the Hebrew people to whom this story belongs. No, the ancient Hebrews looked at the world holistically. Which means body and soul were intertwined, they could not be separated, and so flesh itself was something sacred and beautiful. For the ancient Hebrew people, bodies mattered.

Which is part of why this story was so shocking to its original audience. Because Isaac is the one flesh and blood descendant Abraham has left in his household. God has promised Abraham, and even made a covenant with him, that he will be the father of a great nation through which all people of the world will be blessed. And Isaac is the one body left in whom that promise can be fulfilled.

This is a story about bodies, but it’s also a story about God.

The narrator begins by telling us that God is testing Abraham. And that is true: Abraham’s faithfulness is put to the test, and he passes. But there is another being tested in this story, and that is God himself. After all, there are two sides to every covenant. This story asks the question “Will Abraham be faithful?” But at a deeper level, it also asks “Will God be faithful?” There is a body on the altar, God, a life on the line. What are you going to do?

In perhaps the most poignant moment in this text, Isaac himself looks up at his father Abraham and says, “I see we have the fire, and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” And Abraham answers, “God himself will provide the lamb, my son.”

Is Abraham making up a story to calm his fearful son? Maybe. Or is he, perhaps, proclaiming that, despite all evidence to the contrary, God will be faithful to God’s promise? Even demanding that God will be faithful – reminding God that there are two sides to this covenant. Reminding God that his son’s own body – that God’s own promise – is lying on the altar, vulnerable, and exposed, and moments away from death.

Because that’s the thing about bodies; they are vulnerable. They get sick. The get injured. They break, and they are broken. They suffer, they hurt, they bleed, and they die. Bodies are so precious, flesh is so sacred, in spite of and perhaps even because of the fact that they can be taken from us in an instant. Because bodies are vulnerable, and both in this story and in our world, some bodies are more vulnerable than others.

This week, as I studied this story of the Akedah – “the binding” – I came across a sermon offered by the Rabbi Tamara Cohen[1] two years ago during a celebration of Rosh Hashannah, the Jewish New Year. Rabbi Cohen spoke of how she was hearing the Akedah differently, more urgently, this year than she had in years past. She attributed this difference to a phone call she received from a friend who called her distraught over the news about Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old black woman who was pulled over for failing to signal before changing lanes, was inexplicably arrested, and three days later was found dead in prison.

“There’s a body on the altar, God. What are you going to do about it?”

At first, Rabbi Cohen admitted, she was confused by her friend’s reaction to this story. Cohen was upset by the news, to be sure – even outraged – but she could not understand the urgency, the outright terror she heard in her friend’s voice.

“And then,” Cohen writes, “I saw it clearly. I saw her daughter, 17 years old, headed to Princeton after graduating as the only black Jewish girl from her yeshiva high school. I saw her suddenly, briefly, through her mother’s eyes. I saw the terror of having to release one’s child, one’s black child, to an unknown world, the terror of having to allow one’s baby to drive on a street through Princeton. Anywhere, really. And I felt shaken awake in a new way to the difference between my reality and the reality of my dear friend, both of us Jewish mothers who love our kids and would do anything to protect them. One of us white, and one of us black.”

Rabbi Cohen goes on, “This year for me, Abraham is a black father. And Isaac is his beloved son. And what happens in this story is that Abraham, through binding his son on the altar, passes on to his son the terrifying truth that his body could be taken from him at any moment.”

“This year,” she says, “I am seeing Isaac – and asking you to see him – as an American boy with a black body. I am doing this because black bodies are the bodies in America today that hold the position of Isaac – the position of fear, of lack of freedom, of being struck, bound between the promise of a grand and fruitful future, and the very real possibility of immanent, unexplained, and incomprehensible death.

“But at the same time that I want us to hold the image of Isaac as a black child, I also want to hold him as every child. Because the binding of Isaac is a story that reveals that we all have bodies. And that, actually, every one of our bodies is vulnerable. Every one of our bodies would cry out, ‘I can’t breathe’ if it was put into a chokehold and we had asthma. Every one of our bodies would be destroyed if it was bound and driven around in the back of a police van.”

“There are bodies on the altar, God. What are you going to do about it?”

Friends, we, like Isaac, are children of Abraham, children of God. And if there is one thing we share with every other child of God, it is this: we have vulnerable human bodies. If you cut us, we will bleed. If you tickle us, we will laugh. If you poison us, we will die. We are all fragile, vulnerable, human beings.[2]

If I understand the text, the truth at the center of this story – this Akedah – is that God chooses to fulfill God’s promises in bodies. God takes the risk of working out his faithfulness and his desires for all of Creation in the messy, dirty, vulnerable world of the flesh. God’s purposes are accomplished in our world. God’s promises are held in our bodies.

As Christians, this should perhaps come as no surprise to us. Because we who have come to know God in Jesus Christ know that the Word was made Flesh, that God comes to us with skin on. If the incarnation of Jesus Christ teaches us anything, it teaches us this: that bodies matter to God. They matter so much, in fact, that God took on flesh, becoming just as human –just as vulnerable – as you and me. Just as vulnerable as Isaac, and Sandra Bland, and Eric Garner, and Freddy Gray. Just as vulnerable as the war-weary refugees we see on the news. Just as vulnerable as the 22 million people in our own country whose access to healthcare hangs precariously in the balance of a Senate vote. 

In Jesus Christ, God said “My story is a story about bodies. Your story is a story about bodies. Your faithfulness, your discipleship, will be worked out and made known in bodies. You will meet bodies who are hungry: give them food. Bodies who are thirsty: give them something to drink. When you see bodies who are strangers: welcome them; and bodies who are naked: clothe them. In this world there will be bodies who are sick: take care of them. And bodies who are in prison: visit them. Do this because you have a body, and they have a body, and I myself, your Lord Jesus Christ, have a body. Truly I tell you, what you do to these bodies, you also do to me.

There are bodies on the altar. Friends, what are we going to do about it?

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[1] https://theshalomcenter.org/binding-isaac-black-lives-matter-bodies-fear.

[2] Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice. Act III, Scene 1.

"I Have Seen the Lord!"

Easter Sunday - April 16, 2017

Text: John 20:1-18

Hallelujah, friends, Christ is risen! !El Señor resucitó¡ The cross that bore our Lord and Savior stands empty, and love has triumphed over the grave! This morning we cry “Alleluia!” and sing for joy because the dark night has passed, and at long last Easter morning has come! The strife is over, the battle is won!

Liturgically speaking, of course. This last week, Holy Week, we remembered and reenacted the events of the final week of Jesus’ earthly life. We paraded into the sanctuary waving palms and crying, “Hosanna!” on Palm Sunday. On Maundy Thursday, we remembered Jesus’ last supper with his disciples, and we shared a meal together at Ranchos Presbyterian Church. On Good Friday, we heard Jesus’ last words cried out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!” And this morning, Easter morning, we gather to raise our “Alleluias” and to give thanks that God has in fact not forsaken us, and will never forsake us. This morning we celebrate the ongoing truth of resurrection, of new life and joy where we thought death and grief were impenetrable.

Perhaps the Easter joy and Alleluias resonate with you this morning…or perhaps they don’t. In the Church, we go through this cycle of remembering every year, regardless of what is taking place in our world or in our personal lives. And so, some years, when we reach Easter Sunday, I am ready to shout Alleluia and sing for joy! But then some years…it just doesn’t feel right. Some years, it seems premature to say that the strife is over, to claim God’s victory in our broken, fallen world.

Some of you may be familiar with a quote by author Barbara Johnson, who says that Christians are “an Easter people living in a Good Friday word.” I like the sentiment of that saying, I really do, but if I’m honest with myself…that’s not how I’ve been feeling recently. I can definitely relate to the part about living in a Good Friday world. Look around us. Bombs are dropping; people are starving. Racism, misogyny, and Islamophobia seem to be gaining new strength in our own country. I see, and I know, that we are living in a Good Friday world.

What I’m struggling with – I’m a little embarrassed to admit this – but what I’m struggling with is the part about being an “Easter people.” I want to be an Easter person. Theologically, I have every reason to be an Easter person. I know that the good news of the Gospel that we proclaim this morning and every morning, is far more powerful than even the most painful circumstances of lives and our world. But when it comes down to it, there are many days when I simply don’t feel like a “Easter person.” It’s almost as if I’ve been living in a Good Friday world so long, that, well, it’s starting to rub off on me.

Which is why I’m grateful for Mary Magdalene in our story today. When she shows up at the tomb on Easter morning, she is not feeling like much of an “Easter person,” either. She is still living Good Friday. She was there, after all, at the foot of the cross. She watched as the one she had called Lord was crucified and laid in a tomb. As far as she is concerned, Good Friday has won the day. 

In fact, in the text we just heard, we don’t actually know why Mary comes to the tomb on Easter morning. In the other Gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb accompanied by other women to anoint Jesus’ body with perfume and oil. But in John’s gospel, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus have already anointed Jesus’ body with myrrhs and aloes before they laid him in the tomb on Good Friday. In our story, Mary doesn’t have a task, a particular purpose for coming to the tomb that morning. She simply shows up.

She shows up, and she is upset by what she finds: the stone has been removed from the tomb. So she runs and tells two of the disciples, Peter, and the disciple that John’s Gospel calls “the disciple that Jesus loved.” They run to tomb, see Jesus’ graveclothes strewn about, and try to make sense of it all. And then, the text tells us, they do not yet understand, so Peter and the Beloved Disciple go back to their homes. But Mary…Mary is still there. The fact that Jesus’ body is gone, that things are not going as she expected them to this morning, does not deter her. She still shows up, and she stays.

And once the hubbub over the missing body is over and she is alone once again, she weeps. It’s as simple as that. Mary does not show up at the tomb on Easter morning expecting to witness resurrection. She has come, as far as we can tell, simply to weep. 

But of course, we know how the story unfolds. As she weeps alone outside Jesus’ tomb, Mary discovers she is in fact not alone. Two angels are sitting in the tomb where Jesus’ body was laid. “Woman,” they ask her, “Why are you weeping?” She hears soft, slow footsteps behind her and turns to see a man who she assumes is the gardener, and he asks her the same question, “Woman, why are you weeping? Who are you looking for? And in her grief, Mary cries out, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him!”

It is then, when to Mary all hope seems lost, that the Resurrected Jesus calls her by name, and she recognizes him. And in that moment, something inside Mary is profoundly changed.

She goes to the disciples and says, “I have seen the Lord!” She has seen what they did not believe was possible – what she did not believe was possible until she witnessed it. We can imagine their astonishment, their confusion. Hadn’t Peter and the Beloved Disciple just returned from the tomb? Their report was that Jesus’ body had gone missing, had been stolen.

But they went home, and Mary stayed. She stayed, not understanding what was going on, and her heart broke for it all. Her heart broke so deeply that when she first saw the Risen Jesus, she didn’t even recognize him! But she showed up, and she stayed – she stayed long enough to hear Jesus call her name.

And when she hears her Lord call her name, Mary’s eyes are opened, and she sees everything differently. She sees this man, this so-called “gardener” who is actually Jesus from a new perspective, yes. But even more so, as Mary leaves that garden, her perspective, her “seeing” of the entire world has changed in light the Resurrection.

She goes to the disciples and says, “I have seen the Lord! I have seen Jesus himself, and he spoke to me. I have seen death at its cruelest and worst, and I have seen life and love triumph over death in the grace of Resurrection. And now I see things differently – I see you differently, and me differently, and the whole world differently because I have witnessed resurrection. I have seen that goodness is stronger than evil, that in the end, love wins. And now I look at the world around me, at the pain and the grief and the confusion and the injustice, and I see it, all right. I know that it is real. I know that Jesus died – I was there, I saw it. But listen to me, because I have seen the Lord, I have witnessed Resurrection, and it has shown me that this brokenness we see around us is not what has to be. There is a new life and hope and way of being, for all of us. And I know this, because I have seen the Lord.”

Mary has gained what one theologian calls a “Resurrection perspective.” She looks around her at the same broken, fearful world that the disciples see. That you and I see. That she once saw. But now she can see the possibility of a new way, of new life out of death, of love’s triumph against all odds. She can see the seeds of the very Kingdom of God breaking into a grieving world. And because of that, Mary Magdalene becomes the very first witness to the Risen Christ. She can joyfully go forth from this moment and live toward the world she believes is possible, a world where love triumphs over hate, because she has seen it.

And lest we misunderstand, this is not because she is optimistic and Pollyanna about it all. Far from it. She has known pain and grief, and she spends most of our text this morning weeping. Mary didn’t show up looking for resurrection; she just showed up. She showed up outside the tomb where Christ was buried…and she wept.

It turns out that’s all it takes for us to witness resurrection. To show up to the places of grief and sorrow in this world. To stay awhile, and let our hearts break over it. And then, simply, to weep.

Friends, the Easter morning, we, too, are invited to show up at tombs where Christ is buried. Those of you who were here on Good Friday will remember that we looked at some of the places in our world where Christ is still being crucified today. Young African American men shot in the streets. Syrian children killed by gas and bombs and war. Immigrants starving to death in the desert. Ourselves or our loved ones living in the grips of addiction, or mental illness.

There is no shortage of tombs in our world, places where disaster has struck, and hope seems lost, and those left in its wake have nothing to do but weep.

Perhaps being an “Easter people” in the style of Mary Magdalene means that we simply show up and join them. That we go to those places of deepest suffering in our world and our community, and do something as simple and prophetic and seemingly unhelpful – and yet as beautiful as weeping.

Perhaps being an Easter people means being present, and making ourselves available to the suffering, feeling it as if it were our own – and sometimes it is. And then choosing to participate in resurrection. 

For friends, Resurrection – life out of death, hope out of sorrow – it is already there. That’s what we proclaim this morning: Christ is Risen, he is Risen indeed! Hope seems lost; and yet, Christ is Risen. Death breaks our hearts; and yet, Christ is Risen. The powers and principalities of our world drop bombs and flex their nuclear muscles, throwing our world into chaos and fear; and yet, Christ is Risen.

It doesn’t cancel out death, and pain, and suffering, that’s not how Resurrection works. Resurrection says, “I see the heartbreaking, death-dealing powers and realities of the world; I see them. But I have seen the Lord, and I know that the way things are is not the way they have to be. And in spite of all that is broken in this world, I am going to show up and live into that new world that I now know is possible. I showed up, and I wept, and I saw the Lord, and now everything is different.”

So friends, will we show up? Will we show up for the poor, the homeless, the strangers, the grieving? Will we show up for each other?

I hope so. Because there is one thing I know: when we show up to the tomb and weep,  the Resurrected Christ will meet us there.

Thanks be to God.

"Kingdom Values"

Preached Sunday, January 29, 2017 at First Presbyterian Church of Taos, NM.

Text: Matthew 5:1-12

The Bible is a funny thing. Sometimes, we open it up to read, and it seems almost alien to us, the time and the culture are so different from our own. The cast of characters contains eunuchs and giants, and even talking donkeys! What are we to make of all this? And then sometimes, we open up the Bible, and the words on that page ring so true, that we wonder if they weren’t written for just such a time as this.

That’s how I feel about our Scripture readings today, the lectionary texts for this morning. Especially our Gospel lesson this morning, a list of blessings we often hear called “the Beatitudes.” They are Jesus’ very first public teachings in Matthew’s Gospel, and they serve as the introduction to Jesus’ famous “Sermon on the Mount”, which we will continue to explore together in the coming weeks. I imagine most if not all of you have heard these blessings before, that you are familiar with this often-quoted, beloved passage of Scripture.

There’s a beauty, a certain comfort in this sort of familiarity, but there’s also a danger in it. A danger that passages like this will become what I like to call “Needlepoint Scriptures.” Passages of the Bible that have become so familiar that we’ve domesticated them. That they make more sense to us framed on the wall of our kitchen, or cross-stitched onto a throw pillow, than coming out of the mouth of a radical first-century Jew who was crucified by the Roman Empire because teachings like these were perceived as a threat to their power.

The problem with Needlepoint Scriptures is that we hear them, but we miss the full impact of what they’re really saying. Perhaps it’d be easier for us to appreciate the beatitudes for what they really are if we reframed them a bit, used some new, perhaps less familiar, language to convey their meaning

What might a ‘modern-day beatitude’ sound like? How about:

Blessed are the unemployed.

Blessed are the refugees.

Blessed are you who receive food stamps, or who work for minimum wage.

Blessed are the undocumented immigrants.

Blessed are the single parents.

Blessed are you who have AIDS.

Blessed are the homeless; blessed are those recovering from a heroin addiction.

Blessed are you who are transgender, when your families reject you, or put you out on the street.

Sounding a little more radical? Anyone want to cross stitch that onto a throw pillow?

When Jesus preached these sermons, pronounced the blessings, he was not aiming for Hallmark Card material. On the contrary, Presbyterian preaching professor Tom Long describes the Sermon on the Mount as a sort of “Constitution” for the Church of Jesus Christ. And if the Sermon on the Mount is the Constitution, Long says, then the Beatitudes are its “Preamble.” These 9 blessings introduce Jesus’ teachings by defining the essence of the mission, vision, and values of the Kingdom of Heaven – the way of living in the world that the Church – that’s us! – is called to embody. These Beatitudes describe the traits and values of the citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven.

So, what do those citizens look like? Jesus describes them as people who are poor in spirit, who mourn, who are meek, merciful, pure in heart, the peacemakers, those who hunger and thirst and are even persecuted for justice and righteousness. But again, these words are so familiar, we’ve heard them so often that I fear they might have lost some of their impact…

For example, some people have said the first beatitude – blessed are the poor in spirit – might be better translated “blessed are the spiritual beggars.” Those who know that they can’t sustain themselves and look to God as their last and only hope. Those who are poor, physically and economically, and those who are outcast by society. Those people who are most vulnerable to sickness, who are mentally ill, those who have given up all hope that life will get better. And so, with no other options, they have given their lives and their hopes over to God.

And when Jesus says, “Blessed are those who mourn”, he’s not just promising comfort to those who are sad, or who grieve the loss of a loved one, though God certainly does accompany us through our personal grief and heartbreak. But what Jesus is talking about here is on a larger scale. Something more akin to, “Blessed are those who recognize that the world we live in is not the world that God intended. Blessed are those who see the brokenness of human life and of Creation, and cry out in lament to God, “O God, do not let your world hurt this way forever!”

Or how about “Blessed are the are meek?” This isn’t Jesus’ shout-out to those who are shy. No Jesus is a Jewish preacher, remember, and so he’s interpreting Scripture – Psalm 37 in this case, which we read together in our call to worship. and proclaiming that those who will inherit the earth – the “meek” are those who wait for God and trust that God will act and will deliver them. And while they wait, the meek do not resort to the violent ways of a violent world. They continue to hold fast to God’s teachings, to pursue justice, and righteousness, and peace.

So Jesus looks at his disciples and at the crowd gathered around, he says, “This, my friends, is what the Kingdom of Heaven looks like. This is what it means to be a citizen of God’s Kingdom. This is what I am about: the poor in spirit, those who mourn and lament, the peacemakers, the meek, the merciful. Those who are persecuted as they hunger and thirst for righteousness.”

I imagine it goes without saying that this was not what the crowd, or perhaps even the disciples, expected to hear. It goes completely against conventional wisdom – in Jesus’ time and in ours! “Blessed are the peacemakers? Good luck with that!” say the powerbrokers, the political leaders who know that ‘might makes right’. “Blessed are the meek? Blessed are the poor in spirit? Good luck with that one – I’m a self-made man right here, and I know you have to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps if you want to get anywhere in this world!”

Jesus’ teachings, the Kingdom of Heaven, turns the world’s values completely upside down. These Kingdom values don’t square up too well with the values of Jesus’ society – or ours, for that matter. In the beatitudes, Jesus pronounces that God is on the side of those considered weak, or despised, or somehow “less” by society. That these are the people closest to God’s heart, the citizens of God’s Kingdom. And we who would be followers of this Jesus, citizens of this Kingdom and even ambassadors of the Kingdom into the world, would do well to see where our lives align with these kingdom values…and where, perhaps, they don’t.

Of course, pursuing these Kingdom values is not without its cost. Tom Long, the preacher who calls the Beatitudes Jesus’ “preamble,” goes on say, “Righteousness is not a ‘sweet’ virtue that everybody in the world desires. Those who take advantage of others for their own gain don’t want the world to be fair and just. Those who benefit from the weakness of others don’t want the world to be compassionate. Much money and power are invested, in fact, in maintaining injustice. If every wage were fair, if every person were honored as a child of God, if every human being were safe from exploitation, many would lose their grip on status, self-gratification, and affluence. Seeking the right does not win universal approval; it stirs up the snakes, and the last two beatitudes are realistic enough to admit it.”

This is the world we live in, is it not? We can see it in the streets or hear it on the news. One person goes hungry, while another feasts. We can find 3.8 billion dollars to construct an oil pipeline, but can’t come up with 55 million dollars to fix the pipes that continue to poison children in Flint, Michigan. And yet into this world, Jesus has the audacity to say that those who are left hungry and that those who seek and long for another way…are blessed.

Are blessed. Not will be blessed. We’re talking about the present tense, right now. Friends, if there is any good news I can bring you this morning, it is this: the beatitudes look forward to a future in which God’s will will be done, yes, but that future has already begun. That Kingdom of Heaven is already breaking in, and it will keep breaking into this broken world we know. And therefore Jesus says, you are blessed. You are blessed because you know that the Kingdom of God is at hand, and you are living accordingly. You are being merciful in a culture that has no time for mercy. You are pursuing justice and right relations with your neighbor in a world that values profit over people. You recognize that nothing – no race, religion, nationality – keeps anyone from being your neighbor.

This is how the citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven live. How the Church is called to lived. Despite all evidence to the contrary. Why? Because of our conviction that love wins, that God and goodness ultimately triumph over evil and oppression and hatred. Because of, as our own Presbyterian Confession of 1967 puts it, our “confidence that God’s purposes, rather than human schemes, will finally prevail.”

In just a few minutes, we will receive new members into our church community and together we will all reaffirm the Baptismal Covenant through which each of us becomes part of the family of faith.

We use this language of “family” when talking about the church, because it speaks to that closeness, that intimacy that we share with one another. When we gather for communion or a potluck, we all eat from one table. When we lift up our prayers in worship, we become vulnerable with one another, as we share our greatest joys and deepest grief.

Yes, the family metaphor is a good one for the church. But you know, I’m starting to really like this “citizen” metaphor that comes out of our text today. I think that it holds a power and a call that is especially important for people of faith in this particular time. Much the same power it held for the early Christians, for the community for whom Matthew wrote his Gospel and those who would inherit his work. In the context of the Roman empire, it mattered pretty profoundly of what “Kingdom” you were a citizen, to whom you swore ultimate loyalty. It’s why so many of the first Christians ended up in jail or martyred. Because to proclaim “Jesus is Lord,” is to proclaim that Caesar – that Rome – is not. That the powers that rule our world and our lives do not have our ultimate authority. In the end, they are not the ones to whom we pledge our final allegiance.

So I invite you, today, as we welcome our newest members of this particular community of faith, and as we remember the vows made in baptism, to reflect on what it means to be baptized into citizenship in the Kingdom of God. Many of us grew up pledging allegiance to a flag, and flags are well and good, but the cross is bigger. Because that cross, friends, witnesses to the truth that goodness is stronger than evil, and love is stronger than death.

“Blessed are you who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for you will be filled. Thanks be to God. Amen.