The Church of the Undomesticated Jesus Christ

Who will lead the sacrifice?

Which organized body of people have something to teach the world about sacrifice?

What community of people is spiritually equipped and resourced to lead lives of sacrificial, redeeming love?

What does the world desperately need in an age of global climate catastrophe but to learn how to sacrifice for the health and future of the whole?

The Church of the undomesticated Jesus Christ is what the world needs now.

Why do I say, ‘undomesticated’? Because much of American Christianity is the domesticated sort; warped by our individualist, competitive consumer culture to sanctify the desires and behaviors cultivated by mass culture. Domesticated Christianity teaches us to conform to the dominant narrative and to feel justified in our wealth, greed, overweening pride, and grasping, defensive self-interest.

The undomesticated Jesus Christ shared the Beatitudes with his followers (Luke 6:20-31): “Blessed are the poor...blessed are you when people hate you, exclude you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man...woe to the rich…woe to the full, etc.” Jesus is turning the culturally compromised religion of his time on its head. He is challenging the assumption that a faithful life results in prosperity. He is directly challenging the notion that conventional goodness is rewarded by God with material blessing.

Blessed are those who make sacrifices for the sake of discipleship. Blessed are we who respond to the security and favor bestowed on us freely by God with lives that demonstrate who and what we really trust.

Slowing, and possibly reversing, the global climate crisis will require sacrifice. My wife and I are having a serious and unhappy conversation about major changes to our future travel plans. Airplanes are huge contributors to global warming and I feel called to radically restrict my airline travel as a sacrifice for planetary health. I love to travel and I especially love to travel with my wife. In retirement we had planned to see the world together. When we sacrifice we give up something we love for a greater good. In faith, we know God will provide consolation.

“Even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord.” - 1 Peter 3:14-15

So I will be poor in air travel. God will bless me and others in that poverty. This is the type of life the undomesticated Jesus Christ invites and supports. I know that I struggle against persistent feelings of entitlement, as in, “I deserve just as much tourism as anyone else,” or, “I have worked hard my whole life, so I get the reward of travel now.” The deeper sacrifice is letting go of entitlement - living life in the spirit of what is owed to us, what we demand from life - and the air travel, that is merely a symptom.

Blessings,
The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel
Rector

Luke 6:20-31
Jesus looked up at his disciples and said:


“Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
“Blessed are you who are hungry now,
for you will be filled.
“Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.
“Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets."
"But woe to you who are rich,
for you have received your consolation.
"Woe to you who are full now,
for you will be hungry.
"Woe to you who are laughing now,
for you will mourn and weep.
"Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.

"But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.

Scripture text from the Revised Common Lectionary readings for All Saints' Day, November 1 available at https://www.lectionarypage.net. The Bible translation used is The New Revised Standard Version.

Good News! Christian Primacy is Over

A sermon I heard on a podcast was very helpful to me and I want to share it with you. Good news always wants to be shared.

The preacher - Timothy Keller* of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York City - took the first three chapters of the Book of Daniel as his text. This book tells the story of its namesake and his Hebrew companions as they make their way during exile in the sadistic and dangerous kingdom of Babylon.

Keller’s first point is about displacement. The Hebrew elite have been transported to an alien land where they are surrounded by a polytheistic and hedonistic culture. Where before they lived in Jerusalem in a culture that fully supported their religious belief and practice, they have now been stripped of that external reinforcement. They can choose other gods.

Losing cultural primacy is God’s gift to God’s chosen people, says Keller. The challenge to the faithful is to live in a strange land while refusing assimilation or separatism, to remain faithful to the one true God while praying for the city where they find themselves.

Christianity has lost cultural primacy in North America. Thanks be to God! Like Daniel and his companions we find ourselves between the temptation to fully assimilate - putting our faith in all the other gods our consumer culture offers - and the temptation to withdraw into a religious privatism - where our faith is a private matter with no message for the world around us - on the other. Keller believes, and so do I, that the best possible place for folks who want to follow Christ is to be caught in this tension.

The death of the Sabbath is only one symptom of the change that is underway. Church is only one option among many on any given Sunday morning. Leaf blowers and lawn mowers at the Cricket Club intrude on the peace of our 8 a.m. worship. Motorcycles rev and scream past the church on Sunday morning. The culture has lost all reverence for the sabbath.

And this is Good News! Sabbath worship is set free to be what it is, fully counter-cultural, a practice that contravenes the dominant transactional culture around us. To attend worship means making a choice and paying a price. Because there are other things one could be doing with valuable time, worship is what it was meant to be - a sacrifice.

We make a sacrifice of thanksgiving in worship. We come not just to get something out of the “experience” of worship (a very modern notion). We come because we owe this sacrifice of thanksgiving to our great God who has given us everything. We come because we want to give witness to the world that God is love. We come because we want to support our neighbor who worships with us, adding our prayers and presence to encourage each other in faith. We come not only to get, we come to give back.

Blessings,
The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel
Rector


*Rev. Keller and I do not agree on all things. Even though I have key disagreements I can still learn from him in other areas like the one I share today. I refuse to join the “cancel culture” which reduces every person to the sum of their worst day or worst opinion and then discards everything else they say or do as tainted. We are all sinners and we have all fallen short! The “cancel culture” principle would leave us in a wasteland of condemned and discarded neighbors.

Meditating on the Risen One and His Wounds

Before Easter, I spent every morning for two weeks meditating on the story of Lazarus. Since Easter, my meditation is on the story of Jesus appearing to the disciples in the locked room after his Resurrection.

In the Gospel of John (20:19-31) Jesus appears to the disciples who are huddled in a locked room for fear of the people of Jerusalem. Evidently, the city is still in an uproar after sending Jesus to be crucified and the disciples are afraid that they will share their master’s fate. Jesus enters the scene and says “Peace be with you” twice which underlines the terror of his followers. Then he shows them his wounds and breathes on them. 

Sharing this moment of Jesus breathing on his friends is fun in Children’s Chapel, because the kids immediately get the weirdness of the gesture. Yet this breathing is Jesus passing on his Spirit – the animating core of his life, his inner peace – to his followers. He is breathing them back into life. The locked room is the tomb their fear has created. The breath of Jesus is the ‘ruach,’ (in Hebrew “breath” or “spirit”) of God which moved over the chaos of creation and brought the world into being as told in the book of Genesis. Jesus is making them a new creation, a patch of new goodness in a sea of chaos, fear and violence.

Appearance of Christ to his Disciples by Anthony Van Dyck

Jesus also shows them his wounds. What an interesting detail. The one who is risen is the same one who was brutally executed. The signs of his death are not removed or healed by his new life. The wounds assure us that the life Jesus lived that led to his death is the life that God is vindicating through the resurrection. The way of life-giving sacrifice for the other is the risen life that God favors.

For me, meditating on these wounds is incredibly liberating. I can be incredibly punishing of myself. The hurtful and hateful things I think about myself on an hourly basis are as familiar as they are toxic. The same negativity – I hate to say – is something I too often inflict on the people and world I love. When I meditate on Jesus’ wounded hands and imagine the wound surrounded by and overcome by his risen body I can say, “Thank you Jesus for taking all of my negativity and toxicity into yourself. Thank you for absorbing and defeating it. Thank you for showing it to me, so I can grieve the pain I cause and learn to give life instead.”  

This is not masochistic thinking, but just the opposite. I am learning to recognize my hurtful fault in a spirit of hope and redemption, absorbed into a greater life that will lift me into a new creation.

I invite you to meditate on this story and to see how it speaks to your heart. Simply breathe in the breath of Christ and receive his peace. Breathe out your fear and all that keeps you locked away and stuck in an airless room. Follow the breath and see where it leads.

- The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel