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Greater Than > - The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel
Tune into the sermon from The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel for the Fifth Sunday in Lent, April 3, 2022.
Support St. Martin's mission and ministry by giving online: stmartinec.org/give
Today's readings are:
Isaiah 43:16-21 Philippians 3:4b-14 John 12:1-8 Psalm 126Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/
Please join me in a spirit of prayer.
Lord God by your grace help us join Mary in our worship today. Help us join her in her extravagant adoration and her loving sorrow, her profound awareness of the cost you will pay and the cost of following you. Lord God help all of us who go out weeping and come back rejoicing in song. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.
Back in elementary school I liked math. Math was fun. Each year began with fresh new workbooks fragrant with new paper and printer's glue. The teacher passed out wonderful blue on white dittos. We pressed them up to our faces, inhaling that inky, oily, mimeograph musk. We learned fun mathematics like roman numerals. Who knew how helpful that was going to be? I can tell you what page I am on in a preface.
My favorite unit each year was "greater than, lesser than, and equals to". I love those neat little rows of numbers and the horizontal carrot we would have to draw to indicate that 101 was greater than 99 and so on down the page.
In future years the teacher would add greater than or equal to, lesser than or equal to, adding a straight line under that horizontal carrot. What rich concepts they were giving us. Concepts that enchanted my mind and stayed with me: greater than and including, greater than and affirming what came before, greater than and surpassing all, in one simple sign.
That greater than sign, although not intended in my very secular public school, became for me a favorite symbol for God. I scribble it on notepads. I hold it in my imagination when I need to remember who my God is, a greater love than I could ever imagine. A greater healing than I could ever hope for. A greater goodness than I could ever generate on my own. A greater faithfulness, a greater steadfastness, a greater mercy, a greater hope, a greater creativity than my cramped heart and mind could ever approach under my own steam.
God's ways are greater than my ways and so I praise God, so I give thanks to God, so I place my trust in God. This greater than of God inspires extravagant praise, super abundant, repsonic, excessive, gushing love. It is the order of the day in both Paul to the Philippians and Mary in the gospel. In fair warning if you were raised to be repressed, reticent, reserved, such overflowing might trigger hot shame in your face, some embarrassment or at least some discomfort, but let us let Paul and Mary pull ourselves into adoration, pull ourselves into infatuation. These faithful souls were not afraid to pour out their souls and love of Jesus.
I want to start by re-reading Paul's letter to the Philippians as enraptured and repsonic rhetoric.
We know from his letter to the Romans that he affirms the goodness of the Torah and holds it as precious and not less than the new covenant in Christ. It's just that for Paul, Christ is equal to and more than. He has finally found full participation in the eternal life and goodness of God through his new life in Christ, and for him this affirms while surpassing his former righteousness under the Torah. And this is important for me to spell out because we're being offered the same gift as Paul. We're invited into the same rapturous life with God. It's also important to spell out because too many have read St. Paul through a northern European anti-semitic lens that reads Paul as in either/or between law and gospel.
What I recall is much more subtle on the topic and I need to affirm this because too often I hear folks mistakenly compare, quote, the "God of the old testament" and the "God of Jesus." Same God.
The Torah, the law, is affirmed in the gospel. We must watch our tendency to demean it. The Torah is a good gift from God, the God given instructions and obligations to a priestly people set apart to live in covenant with a holy God. The Torah marked and continues to mark to this day the ultimate allegiance of Israel to God, so marked Israel represents God among hostile nations that create peril and cause to themselves then and now. Torah fidelity is risky. It's courageous identification with God and I so appreciate the risks it calls out by naming the sacred for what it is.
We need to bring a subtle reading to the Gospel of John as well. This is my day for subtle reasoning. The author of John likes to set up these either/or situations that heighten the drama through conflict. Do we follow Mary or do we follow Judas? I think John's not subtle about that one - he has an ax to grind, an agenda, and he shares this critical fault with social media algorithms that juice up conflict and polarization to maximize attention regardless of the terrible effects on our common life.
And I could, even as I read the story of Jesus, Mary and Judas, see the memes, see the social media treatment of the passage oozing the snark about virtue signaling on both sides. Oh isn't Mary so pious? Oh isn't Judas so righteous? All used to throw confusion, antagonism and agitation around.
Sadly enough John would probably be on social media. It's his style too, so permit me to reframe the scene not as a meme but as an icon, an icon that includes Jesus, Judas and Mary as an image of God's loving work. Let's start with Mary. Here's Mary, her admiration at the feet of Jesus says love the Lord your God with all your soul, all your heart, all your mind, and all your strength. This is the first commandment. She embodies the first commandment. Mary is, in this icon, the first commandment, and the second is like unto it, love your neighbor as herself. Judas plays the part of the second and co-equal commandment. Love of God and love of neighbor. Mary and Judas go together.
In Christ, those forms of caritas, both forms of charity and love coexist and support each other. They cannot have their full power without each other. Adore God, serve God in nature, serve God and neighbor, adore God. It's all one piece. They are not in opposition. They're not opposed to each other.
But that extravagant adoration of merit, anointing Jesus with perfume worth a year's worth of wages, takes us deeper into the greater than of this icon that I'm imagining. Mary is preparing Jesus for his death. This icon is not only an illustration of our highest callings, this icon is a prelude to the final showdown, the final battle where Jesus confronts and defeats the powers that prevent our faithfulness.
Mary is preparing Jesus for that final conflict that will make faithfulness possible. In her loving sorrow, in her mourning, she's loving him. She knows what comes next for a prophet. She knows that he is marked for death. The authorities have already met and he must die. Why? Because he raised her brother Lazarus from the dead. Why? Because challenging the power of death rattles the empire to its core. If we cannot terrorize the masses with death how will we control them? How will we retain domination?
And so in following Mary, what is revealed is that death in general is not the ultimate source of our fear and anxiety. It's when death is used to erode the faith and courage we need to resist the forces that manipulate death, that is when death is an enemy needing to be overcome. Death can be a friend to suffer, a gentle release at the end of life, and in all my experience with dying people very rarely are they afraid. Rather they are mourning, saying goodbye to people they love, and they're mostly concerned with causing them distress.
Jesus will overcome the tool of death. Death as execution. And this is the greater than. This is the greater love we cannot give ourselves but it must be done for us by God in Christ. This is the greater than that opens a greater life to us, greater than we can even begin to imagine, a peace greater than we can understand. God is greater than us so I praise God. In Christ God means to be greater than and equal to us so we may surpass our former lives and be found in Christ. Amen.
- - - - -
Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
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By St. Martin-in-the-FieldsTune into the sermon from The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel for the Fifth Sunday in Lent, April 3, 2022.
Support St. Martin's mission and ministry by giving online: stmartinec.org/give
Today's readings are:
Isaiah 43:16-21 Philippians 3:4b-14 John 12:1-8 Psalm 126Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/
Please join me in a spirit of prayer.
Lord God by your grace help us join Mary in our worship today. Help us join her in her extravagant adoration and her loving sorrow, her profound awareness of the cost you will pay and the cost of following you. Lord God help all of us who go out weeping and come back rejoicing in song. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.
Back in elementary school I liked math. Math was fun. Each year began with fresh new workbooks fragrant with new paper and printer's glue. The teacher passed out wonderful blue on white dittos. We pressed them up to our faces, inhaling that inky, oily, mimeograph musk. We learned fun mathematics like roman numerals. Who knew how helpful that was going to be? I can tell you what page I am on in a preface.
My favorite unit each year was "greater than, lesser than, and equals to". I love those neat little rows of numbers and the horizontal carrot we would have to draw to indicate that 101 was greater than 99 and so on down the page.
In future years the teacher would add greater than or equal to, lesser than or equal to, adding a straight line under that horizontal carrot. What rich concepts they were giving us. Concepts that enchanted my mind and stayed with me: greater than and including, greater than and affirming what came before, greater than and surpassing all, in one simple sign.
That greater than sign, although not intended in my very secular public school, became for me a favorite symbol for God. I scribble it on notepads. I hold it in my imagination when I need to remember who my God is, a greater love than I could ever imagine. A greater healing than I could ever hope for. A greater goodness than I could ever generate on my own. A greater faithfulness, a greater steadfastness, a greater mercy, a greater hope, a greater creativity than my cramped heart and mind could ever approach under my own steam.
God's ways are greater than my ways and so I praise God, so I give thanks to God, so I place my trust in God. This greater than of God inspires extravagant praise, super abundant, repsonic, excessive, gushing love. It is the order of the day in both Paul to the Philippians and Mary in the gospel. In fair warning if you were raised to be repressed, reticent, reserved, such overflowing might trigger hot shame in your face, some embarrassment or at least some discomfort, but let us let Paul and Mary pull ourselves into adoration, pull ourselves into infatuation. These faithful souls were not afraid to pour out their souls and love of Jesus.
I want to start by re-reading Paul's letter to the Philippians as enraptured and repsonic rhetoric.
We know from his letter to the Romans that he affirms the goodness of the Torah and holds it as precious and not less than the new covenant in Christ. It's just that for Paul, Christ is equal to and more than. He has finally found full participation in the eternal life and goodness of God through his new life in Christ, and for him this affirms while surpassing his former righteousness under the Torah. And this is important for me to spell out because we're being offered the same gift as Paul. We're invited into the same rapturous life with God. It's also important to spell out because too many have read St. Paul through a northern European anti-semitic lens that reads Paul as in either/or between law and gospel.
What I recall is much more subtle on the topic and I need to affirm this because too often I hear folks mistakenly compare, quote, the "God of the old testament" and the "God of Jesus." Same God.
The Torah, the law, is affirmed in the gospel. We must watch our tendency to demean it. The Torah is a good gift from God, the God given instructions and obligations to a priestly people set apart to live in covenant with a holy God. The Torah marked and continues to mark to this day the ultimate allegiance of Israel to God, so marked Israel represents God among hostile nations that create peril and cause to themselves then and now. Torah fidelity is risky. It's courageous identification with God and I so appreciate the risks it calls out by naming the sacred for what it is.
We need to bring a subtle reading to the Gospel of John as well. This is my day for subtle reasoning. The author of John likes to set up these either/or situations that heighten the drama through conflict. Do we follow Mary or do we follow Judas? I think John's not subtle about that one - he has an ax to grind, an agenda, and he shares this critical fault with social media algorithms that juice up conflict and polarization to maximize attention regardless of the terrible effects on our common life.
And I could, even as I read the story of Jesus, Mary and Judas, see the memes, see the social media treatment of the passage oozing the snark about virtue signaling on both sides. Oh isn't Mary so pious? Oh isn't Judas so righteous? All used to throw confusion, antagonism and agitation around.
Sadly enough John would probably be on social media. It's his style too, so permit me to reframe the scene not as a meme but as an icon, an icon that includes Jesus, Judas and Mary as an image of God's loving work. Let's start with Mary. Here's Mary, her admiration at the feet of Jesus says love the Lord your God with all your soul, all your heart, all your mind, and all your strength. This is the first commandment. She embodies the first commandment. Mary is, in this icon, the first commandment, and the second is like unto it, love your neighbor as herself. Judas plays the part of the second and co-equal commandment. Love of God and love of neighbor. Mary and Judas go together.
In Christ, those forms of caritas, both forms of charity and love coexist and support each other. They cannot have their full power without each other. Adore God, serve God in nature, serve God and neighbor, adore God. It's all one piece. They are not in opposition. They're not opposed to each other.
But that extravagant adoration of merit, anointing Jesus with perfume worth a year's worth of wages, takes us deeper into the greater than of this icon that I'm imagining. Mary is preparing Jesus for his death. This icon is not only an illustration of our highest callings, this icon is a prelude to the final showdown, the final battle where Jesus confronts and defeats the powers that prevent our faithfulness.
Mary is preparing Jesus for that final conflict that will make faithfulness possible. In her loving sorrow, in her mourning, she's loving him. She knows what comes next for a prophet. She knows that he is marked for death. The authorities have already met and he must die. Why? Because he raised her brother Lazarus from the dead. Why? Because challenging the power of death rattles the empire to its core. If we cannot terrorize the masses with death how will we control them? How will we retain domination?
And so in following Mary, what is revealed is that death in general is not the ultimate source of our fear and anxiety. It's when death is used to erode the faith and courage we need to resist the forces that manipulate death, that is when death is an enemy needing to be overcome. Death can be a friend to suffer, a gentle release at the end of life, and in all my experience with dying people very rarely are they afraid. Rather they are mourning, saying goodbye to people they love, and they're mostly concerned with causing them distress.
Jesus will overcome the tool of death. Death as execution. And this is the greater than. This is the greater love we cannot give ourselves but it must be done for us by God in Christ. This is the greater than that opens a greater life to us, greater than we can even begin to imagine, a peace greater than we can understand. God is greater than us so I praise God. In Christ God means to be greater than and equal to us so we may surpass our former lives and be found in Christ. Amen.
- - - - -
Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org