Sunday
March 25
Becoming Like Him
By Marsh Chapel
Philippians 3 and John 12
George Marlowe lived in a trailer on the Canadian border. His son Kirk lived there with George, and cared for his father. George had lost his legs—to diabetes or in Vietnam or by a farm accident (the cause itself is lost to memory). The son delivered mail in and around Trout River and was the sole care giver for his dad.
Kirk was a jolly soul—big, brawny, full of life and humor. He claimed the border country mosquitoes could stretch up to open the mailboxes into which he delivered the daily post, they were so large. This was hyperbole, but also contained a grain of truth, as hyperbole does. George and Kirk lived together for several years, and largely in peace. They did sometimes argue loudly when by nightfall they had drunk too well. Their neighbors, Lyle and Pat Wilson, in the next trailer down, a double wide, checked on George during the day, when they could. Or they would send one of their daughters to look in on him. Or, if no other remedy was available, they would call the preacher to ask him to stop by on his way down into Canada, to visit with George.
The midday summer heat on a single wide trailer by the 4th of July is just a simmering oven heat. You would not want a breeze, even if there was one, which there was not. George’s self-medication and relaxed housekeeping, and chain smoking made of the trailer a singular environment. In the summer of 1982, the last of his life, George offered his neighbors a reminder of mortality. In the summer of 1982, emerging into adult life, Kirk offered his neighbors the example of loyalty. Kirk was a simple person. He simply offered and lavished the loyalty of love on his dad, by day and by night. He poured his life like perfume onto the body of George Marlowe, his father.
Our two readings, Philippians 3 and John 12, recall Kirk and George–these readings, that is, along with the hymn we have sung about ‘love and loyalty’. Philippians is about loyalty. John is about mortality. Kirk taught us something about loyalty. George taught us something about mortality. ‘Thy guiding radiance, above us shall be, a beacon to God, to love and loyalty’. George was buried near the border and near where he was born, on July 26, 1982, at 2:00pm. In the blur of activities, come Sunday, in Christ, one is accosted by loyalty and mortality, through whom, in Christ, ‘we become like him’.
Two very different readings from Scripture greet us this Sunday morning. One describes loyalty. The other evokes mortality. Both are good news, and each story amplifies and explicates the other. For you this morning, the lesson and the gospel raise a mortal question about your forms of loyalty, and a loyal question about your sense of mortality. A hymn of love and a reminder of death are somewhere, somehow buried in every sermon and every service of worship. In decisions about loyalty and in the encroachment of mortality, we become like Him: Jesus Christ, the loyalty of God; Jesus Christ, the mortality of man.
There is today a tendency to minimize Paul’s change of allegiance, as expressed in Philippians 3, and elsewhere. So this scholarly trend would argue: Paul did not really distance himself from his earlier religious expression. Paul did not really reject his mother tongue, mother land, mother religion. Paul did not expressly depart from the eighth day, the tribe, the law. Paul did not really intend to step aside from his inheritance. Paul was born loyal and died loyal, and his loyalty at birth and death were of a piece. So, your teacher here at the Head of the Charles, Krister Stendahl, and so my teacher in Montreal, Bishop NT Wright, and so EP Sanders and so many others. I suppose that scholarly trends, like fashion, move in and out of vogue, for and with some regularity. Certainly, the work of these mentioned scholars, and that of many others, reminding us of the depth and breadth of Jewish background to the letters of the APOSTLE TO THE GENTILES (emphasis added for emphasis), carry much of importance. Still, there is the little matter of rubbish.
Paul calls his inheritance rubbish. SKUBALA. It is a remarkable Greek word, whose force you can hear in its simple repetition. SKUBALA. Rubbish. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and I regard them as rubbish. It will not do to muffle Paul’s apocalyptic sense of loyalty. In fact, much of the work of late that tries to do so ends up representing a view of Paul that is much more akin to the views of his opponents than to those of Paul himself. But what of the particular inheritance, yours and mine and Paul’s? What of our particular, idiosyncratic, experiences and cultures and hues? What of circumcision, of covenant, of history, of torah, of valiant duty past? I regard them as…SKUBALA. We may wish Paul had been more temperate. He was not. The gospel of Jesus Christ brings an apocalyptic, cataclysmic, sea change in the fount of loyalty. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Across town, across the Scripture that is, and in the heart of the Fourth Gospel, meanwhile, we are engaged by another story. Now mortality, not loyalty, addresses us. If there is a richer set of eight verses in the entire New Testament than John 12: 1-8, honestly, I do not know where you would find it. Here is the Passover, the third in the fourth Gospel. Here too is Bethany, site of earlier astonishment. Here is Lazarus, who emerged from a tomb, covered with bandages, odorous and squinting. Martha, of serving fame, and Mary, of praying memory, are here, too. A year’s wages are here poured out on feet, feet of course being of sacramental power in this Gospel, as we saw two weeks ago. There is fragrance, the fragrant scent of perfume poured on holy feet, perfume dried in loving hands, perfume gathered on the hairs of the head. An astounding scene, already, but there is more. In comes Judas Iscariot. There arises an argument about money, surely not the last religious argument about money. The poor and the present are set against each other, surely not the last religious argument about the good and beautiful. And then a dominical pronouncement: keep it for the day of my burial. After so many visual, audible, tactile, olfactory and savory images, we are sensorially exhausted and ready for a nap. These images share a common trait. They evoke mortality.
The Passover is the scene of death. Lazarus was raised from death. Mary has a premonition of death. Martha and Mary pleaded with Jesus about death. Judas Iscariot is the agent of death. The plight of the poor is mentioned to avoid a confrontation with death. The perfume is a symbol of anointing at death. If there is one thing more significant in all of Scripture than justice—and it is not clear that there is anything more significant in Scripture than justice—but if there is one thing more significant in all of Scripture than justice—it is mortality. Our gospel lesson this morning pulls out every stop to evoke mortality.
Reminders of mortality, like attendance in worship itself, which is one such reminder on a weekly basis, may make us squirm. We have a way of thinking that death happens always to somebody else. We find ways to change the channel. In the last four years we have become experts at changing the channel. Our misdeed in the Middle East, preemptive, unilateral, imperial, reckless, immoral, post-Christian, and wrong, has brought death. Interruption of to the regular routines, rhythms, lives and dreams of 200,000 loyal, heroic soldiers of ours. Physical death to 3,200 of those. Serious injury to 25,000. As yet uncountable losses—50,000 to 500,000—to Iraqi civilians: children, women, older adults, young people, daughters with child, young men not twenty, recent grandparents, eight year old boys, three year old girls. Diminishment to a part of the gentle hope, for a real spiritual culture and community, across this land, in our time. Harm to some of the soaring ideals of a young republic, now seen from abroad as a pre-emptive behemoth. Defeat to a part of the great dream of those who built the United Nations. Yes, reminders of death make us squirm.
So let us return to loyalty for a moment.
Meanwhile, back in Philippians, our APOSTLE TO THE GENTILES (emphasis added for emphasis), has now stated for us the force and source of loyalty in Jesus Christ, as he does with equal power in Galatians 2 and Romans 5 and 2 Corinthians 5 and 1 Thessalonians 4. That I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through the faithfulness of Christ, the righteousness of God based on faith. (The loyalty of Christ, the righteousness of God based on Christ’s loyalty.) Paul has been found in a new life. His earlier code and covenant have come to an end. They are set aside. They are good and true and beautiful, but not by comparison with the truly good and the beautifully true and the divinely beautiful. It is the loyalty of Christ to which Paul sings his hymn of praise as read this morning. The rendering of these verses depends upon a reading of the phrase, ‘faith..Christ’ as first in reference to Christ’s own faith, by which in faith Paul and we are ‘owned’. It may be that Paul has written these words in prison, and it may be that these words from prison were written at the end of his life. He will have had, as we do on some days, and Sundays, a clear sense of the fragility of life and its brevity.
So let us return to mortality for a moment.
The several marks of mortality set before us in the Gospel of John, chapter 12, are also reminders of divine love. Lazarus evokes such love from Jesus that, in that shortest of verses, we are reminded, ‘Jesus wept’. Mary and Martha are the figures of serving and praying that we know so well in the teachings about disciplined love. Judas is never portrayed as doing ill for the sake of doing harm, but is found to mistake some love for all love. Most strongly, the pouring of perfume in lavish expense is understood as the full fragrance of affection and love.
Our readings today give us grace to live by faith. We may want to consider, on a bright spring Sunday afternoon walk, the examples of abiding loyalty and loving mortality which we have known. We are meant to ‘become like him’, and so we shall want to notice the forms of loyalty and limitation that are ever before us.
We may want to remember something of Josiah Royce, and his evocation of loyalty. You may recall from your own life and family experience, the example of a truly loyal friend. You may recognize that sometimes lesser loyalties must be laid aside in the face of greater loyalties. No one wants the lower lights to occlude the one great loyalty of life. You may recognize the difference, say, between asking forgiveness for a promise broken, and asking forgiveness for a promise that should never have been made in the first place, whether kept or broken. We may deeply recognize the need we have to reclaim the language of remorse out of our religious traditions, so that we might walk again in newness of life, following Lenten confession.
We shall want to find and practice the forms of loyalty by which, and through which we may dimly acknowledge our mortality. Any pastor will tell you that young people live as if they were immortal, and not only young people. There is a youthful courage in this, but also a tragic risk. We may want to recall the verses of Scripture that warn us about limits. Store ye not up treasure on earth where moth and rust consume…All flesh is grass, it withers and fades…Prize your time now you have it, for God is a consuming fire…The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong…This night is your soul required of you…
Here is a potentially saving word. It is the intimation of mortality that puts steel in the spine of our loyalty. It is the practiced sacrifice of loyalty that gives us courage for the facing of the last things. Where there is a sense of mortality there is a sense of loyalty. Where there is a preparation of loyalty there is a preparation for mortality. The one inspires the other. (Where there is no inkling of mortality there is no spur to loyalty). Perhaps that is why, in the mystery of all things, and in the planning for Sunday readings, Philippians 3 and John 12 were yoked. Think this lent about your lasting commitments. Think this lent about your limitations.
On July 26th 1982, the little church, Constable UMC, where Kirk Marlowe had been recruited a few years earlier for youth fellowship, was sparsely populated. Two dozen sweaty souls spread out across a hot church to celebrate the life and faith of George Marlowe. The funeral service was read. Good English sentences, scrip
tural and traditional and not too lengthy. A prayer. A psalm. A Gloria. A gospel lesson. A homily. A prayer. Kirk had also asked to offer a word at the end. So, with the prayer executed, the preacher sat. George’s son stood with a wordless dignity. He surveyed the congregation with a silent dignity. He opened a guitar case and unpacked his acoustic guitar. He would not have used the word ‘solemnize’, but he could have. With a languid ease, and all the time in the world, Kirk tuned the instrument. Then he strummed. In a country beat. Country. Things are slow in the country. Then he began to sing, when the choking was subsided.
His was a hymn of love, sung by loyalty, into the teeth of mortality. Earl Marlatt wrote ‘Are Ye Able’, one of the Deans of Boston University School of Theology. Marlatt wrote, in his last annual report, ‘we have developed a sermon-centered curriculum’. Marlatt’s hymn, and these two texts, Philippians and John, through this sermon, ask you to develop a mortality conscious and loyalty laden life. A mortality conscious and loyalty laden life…
Son to father, loyalty to mortality, Kirk to George:
Are ye able…
Said the Master, to be crucified with me
When the shadows close around you with sod
Still the Master whispers down eternity
Lord we are able…
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