|
GOOD FOR THE GANDER Deuteronomy 18:15-20 I Corinthians 8:1-13 Sunday, January 29, 2012 So, last Sunday it was ducks; today it is geese. Last Sunday we heard a word that challenged us to get our ducks in a row; today we hear a word that challenges us to take a look at our life gathered up together, especially as we may fear from time to time that our goose is cooked and as we might flaunt on occasion that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Last Sunday we were reminded that God is in the business of redeeming and renewing and restoring life; today we are reminded that God is in the business of providing for and protecting life in community. As we wade into these waters together, consider for just a moment the rich history of which we are a part as we are gathered up together in this space. Remembering that we are still in the season of Epiphany during which we look all over our lives for signs of God’s handiwork, for traces of God’s presence, consider how God has guided and guarded the body of believers in the past in ways that have shaped who you are today. Take a gander at who’s here today and consider as well how your own personal history is tied up with the rich history of this congregation… how God has woven the strand of your life into the whole fabric of this family of faith. Popular author and pastor Max Lucado tells the story of a little boy who fell out of bed one night. When his mother asked him what happened, the little fellow answered, “I don’t know. I guess I stayed too close to where I got in.” Lucado suggests that it’s “easy to do the same with our faith.” We are tempted to play it safe and hang out in one comfortable place when it comes to exercising our faith. Sometimes life won’t let us: dramatic changes and unexpected events confront us with circumstances that stretch us and shake us such that we realize how much we need God and the strength and comfort of knowing that God is there with us and for us. Sometimes we face changes which are opportunities for growth requiring that we set our fears aside and step out in faith. We might dream big but be paralyzed by the fear of failure so we stick to what we know. Last Sunday we were urged to remember that time is short; today we hear a word that reminds us that time is marching on… We expect the future and might even come close to taking it for granted but sometimes find ourselves looking ahead with anxiety because we don’t know with any certainty what tomorrow will bring. That’s where the Israelites were as they worried about what would happen to them when Moses’ time was up: they feared there wouldn’t be anyone to be a go-between for them, someone who would speak to God on their behalf and then speak for God so they’d know what was up. They feared that without another leader their goose was cooked. The news was clear: God won’t let the community die when its present leader passes away. There will be another – God would see to that. So the news was good: God will provide. But the rest of the story was a reminder to the Israelites not to hang out in a comfortable place, in “the way it has always been,” but to move forward into the future God was providing for them. Their job was to not only hear but also to heed the new leader God would raise up. Several weeks ago we distributed commitment forms… a listing of many of the opportunities to carry out the mission and ministry of this congregation as we know it. It is a way to say “yes” to what God is up to with us as a community of believers, a family of faith. It is also a way of affirming our trust in a God who provides for our gathered-up life together… the God who calls some to this aspect of ministry and others to that expression of mission. The invitation and encouragement to fill out a commitment form is to each and every person, no matter how young or old and no matter whether a lifelong member or a new member or a non-member. Part of the purpose of the commitment form is so that the elected leaders of the congregation will have a clear idea of each person’s sense of call and willingness to serve. If you haven’t yet filled out a form or haven’t turned in the one you have filled out, you are encouraged to do so today with the confidence that God is inviting us to step out in faith into a future God is providing for us. That future isn’t completely known to us but the One who provides it is. There will no doubt be many aspects of this year and next year and the year after that which look much like last year and the year before and the year before that but time IS marching on and God IS calling us forward… and God WILL provide for and protect our life together in community. We need not fear or be anxious because God is with us and for us and God can be trusted to bring to fulfillment what God got going in the first place. British author and professor of clinical neurology Oliver Sacks has collected many curious experiences over the many years he has worked with patients struggling with neurological disorders… and along with those curious experiences come many curious stories which he has compiled into books that have been published. One story describes his encounter with a man who repeatedly fell out of bed at night. The gentleman would go to bed calmly and drift off to sleep peacefully but would awaken the nurses on the nightshift with his angry, irrational shouting once he landed on the floor. Dr. Sacks reports that the man apparently believed that sometime during the night the nurses would play a trick on him by slipping the severed leg of another person into the bed with him. Upon discovering the foreign limb next to him, he would, in his horror, toss the leg out of the bed and onto the floor. He would find himself on the floor as well crying out in further horror, believing that the severed leg of another person had somehow attached itself to his body. Dr. Sacks met with the young man one night in hopes of resolving the nightmare by assuring the patient that the leg was his own. The patient couldn’t be convinced, saying “A man should know his own body… what’s his and what’s not – but this leg doesn’t feel right, doesn’t look part of me.” That’s what was going on in the church in Corinth. Some were acting as if they were not joined to the rest… some who believed their personal individual freedom in Christ meant that they could do as they pleased without concern for the impact of their behavior on all the rest. The issue appeared to be about food, specifically whether it was acceptable to eat meat purchased in the market that had come from animals that had been used in pagan rituals… but the real issue was that the fabric of the community was unraveling because some believed that what was good for the goose was good for the gander. The amazing thing is that Paul agreed with the theology of the troublemakers but had deep concerns about the way they acted based on that theology. Christ sets us free from the law – yes – and idols aren’t real because there is only one true God – yes – and God created animals and God’s creation is good – yes – BUT when a new believer sees another believer chowing down on meat “polluted” by a temple ritual, it is upsetting to the new believer who doesn’t have the same theological sophistication of the other. For the new believer, it is a blast from the past… a reminder of a God-less way of life that has shown up in a community marked by a new way of life in Jesus Christ. The word from Paul is clear: just because some are able to reconcile all of that in their minds doesn’t mean everyone has or even can so take that into consideration… take each and every person into consideration in the gathered-up body of believers, the family of faith. Paul stops short of telling them to stop what they are doing but says clearly that he personally has stopped eating meat for the sake of those who might be confused and upset by his behavior. In other words, that’s your leg you are tossing out of bed; just because something is good for the goose it might be disastrous for the gander. We’ve been faced with similar challenges. We’ve heard all kinds of good theological arguments but still sometimes the behavior of some upsets others to the point of splintering the community. Guitars in worship and not the organ? Wearing jeans to church? Lay people assisting with the liturgy? The furniture in a different arrangement? Praise songs that aren’t in the hymnal? A minister who’s divorced? Time marches on and the world in which we live changes. How are we as a body of believers to respond to change, to a future God is providing for us in ways that honor both the rich history of which we are a part AND the preservation of the fabric of a gathered-up-together community moving forward and growing? Embracing the future without anxiety and being embraced by a body which sees everyone as a vital part of the whole is our challenge and opportunity today. Our goose is far from being cooked: God is providing for and protecting the whole gaggle of us gathered up together from forces within and without that threaten to undo us. We ARE free in Jesus Christ… but it is a freedom which binds us together in love. As God leads us forward may we see clearly and act accordingly, stepping out in faith, trusting that love is the only leg we’ve got to stand on!
DUCKS AMUCK Jonah 3:1-5, 10 I Corinthians 7:29-31* Sunday, January 22, 2012 *As you read these verses, I strongly encourage you to keep in mind Paul’s theological perspective that Christ’s return was imminent…” any day now,” along with Paul’s personal admission earlier in the chapter that what he was writing at this point was not a direct revelation from God, and… most importantly… the historical reality of the culture of Corinth into which Paul was commissioned to speak GOD, a culture which makes the somewhat shocking upheaval we went through in the United States thirty and forty years ago seem almost civilized. I hope to be able to share further my great appreciation for the Apostle’s writings with you one of these days! In a poorly-watched and quickly-canceled science fiction television show which aired about six years ago, the lives of several residents of Milford, Vermont were featured… but under extraordinary circumstances. In the completely made up story, the moon has exploded into three pieces – hence the name, Three Moons Over Milford – and the chunks of lunar mass were making their way through the heavens toward earth. No one seemed to know exactly when the collision would occur but it was apparently certain… and promised to be, well, earth-shattering. Some people enjoy active imaginations run amuck! There are numerous versions of this sort of wild wondering, both “real” and imagined, including what we all went through when the calendar year 1999 clicked over into the calendar year 2000. Maybe some people get some sort of adrenalin rush thinking about things like the end of the world as we know it… with the expectation or even assumption that “the end” will be disastrous, cataclysmic, a Steven-Spielberg-esque spectacular. Others have wondered about and written books and scripts which became movie about how a person’s life might change once that person received news of a terminal illness… all the things that person might do to squeeze in every ounce of living before living turned into dying and all those opportunities be lost. Largely thanks to Hollywood, some of us think about this kind of scenario and speak of our “bucket list.” But we don’t need imaginations running amuck to wonder about whether we are living with such precarious possibilities… there’s no doubt that we are. Many of you know this. All of us would be deluded to think otherwise. Disasters happen and happen in the blink of an eye. A group of you gathered for dinner last week spent a good bit of time wondering what you’re supposed to do if you were to accidentally lose control of the car you are driving and end up submerged in a lake. What if? What if? Yes, the Boy Scouts do well to promote preparedness but there are simply realities we cannot prevent by being “prepared.” And yes, Richard Simmons did well to promote exercise and fitness but there’s no getting around the reality that one day our bodies will betray us…if they haven’t already. Cells run amuck and the diagnosis is cancer. Arteries all but shut down and blood gets stuck and the heart doesn’t like that. Genetics within us, potential disasters around us… what if, what if? It’s a fine line to walk… a tightrope of sorts… aware of the temporariness in which we live but not anxious about all the “what ifs” which may or may not happen. Today, as we’re invited into the broken-open Word of God, a question seems to surface: “When in the world are we going to get our ducks in a row?” That was pretty much what Jonah was told to tell the residents of Nineveh, the powerful capitol of Assyria. It was a message Jonah wasn’t interested in delivering to his enemies… maybe just because they were his enemies… but maybe because he knew in his heart of hearts they might actually listen and get their ducks in a row, responding to a nearly-irresistible and definitely persistent God. That was his story (as we well know), hearing God’s word but resisting it, running from it in fact… thinking he could hide on a ship that was nearly destroyed because God stirred the waters of the sea in hopes that Jonah might get his ducks in a row… …his priorities straight, his living in line with what he knew in his heart of hearts to be his calling. God could have given up on the resistant prophet with his ducks running amuck… could have left him sticking to the ribs of a big fish… …but God held out hope as he heard Jonah crying out from the middle of the mess he’d made while letting his ducks run amuck… God held out hope that this human having heard a word from the Lord would bring his living in line with it… …the very same hope God held out for the residents of Nineveh… …the very same hope God holds out for us today… …that we will hear God’s Word and respond to the One who speaks and then live in line with what we’ve heard from the God to whom we respond. If our ducks are running amuck (our priorities aren’t straight), we’d do well to check out all the connections to see where the breakdown is. Is it at the very beginning… that we’re not listening for God? Could it be that we’re not reading the Bible and asking for the Spirit’s help in understanding it, that we’re praying but doing all the talking, that we’re getting together with other believers in Sunday School classes or Bible Studies or conversations over coffee but not sharing those nagging questions or voicing the difficult doubts that prompt us to give more energy and attention to “what ifs” rather than to the One who is “I AM.” Is it that we are resisting or even running from what we have heard, all that we do understand about the God who holds out hope for us and persists in being heard and always has an ear for our cries in the middle of the messes we make of our lives… is it that we prefer the adrenalin rush of sensational predictions or the consuming anxiety of the “what ifs”? Do we spend our energy spinning our wheels because we know God needs us to bring a word of hope or bear an act of kindness to someone we’d rather not associate with? Maybe we just don’t like the idea that there are divine guidelines to follow or, perhaps more problematically, a God who refuses to give up on us but also refuses to control our every move. If everything in life is truly up in the air, why won’t God tells us where to put our right foot in order to avoid disaster or our left elbow in order to escape bodily betrayal?... as if life was like a game of Twister? God COULD, of course, just like God could have left Jonah sticking to the ribs of a big fish, moving on to a more receptive candidate… and just like God could have destroyed Nineveh whether or not they heard the Word and responded in repentance… just like God can do anything and everything God wants to do… …and God does. God preserves human freedom out of God’s love for humanity… and God holds out hope that we will hear God’s Word of love and respond in kind, willingly – lovingly – lining our lives up with that love so that the world as we know it will come to an end… a world where people run amuck all over each other without the slightest interest in the preservation of life. And that’s ultimately what God’s up to in the world. Preserving life. Redeeming life. Restoring life. Transforming life. Taking what’s ordinary and making it holy. Remaking what’s temporal and turning it into eternal. That’s the word that needs to be heard. In his typically tangled-up way, that’s what Paul was trying to say to the believers in Corinth: get your ducks in a row because life as you know it is becoming something else, something seemingly unknowable except that we’ve seen it in Jesus Christ… in the one who heard and responded in love for the sake of a world full of people obsessed with the sensational and consumed with anxieties. Corinth was as God-less as Nineveh was centuries before it. It was Paul’s calling to speak God into Gentile ears which were as clogged as some of our arteries are in order to set them free from the heart attack that was waiting to happen… the fits of lust that refused to hold marriage in proper honor, the spurts of emotions which rendered life a roller coaster ride, the cancer of consumption which fueled an economy of goods purchased for pleasure, and the wheelings and dealings with people which left them all but lifeless in the ditch on the highway of perceived success. That’s the world that is passing away! God is all about LIFE and God refuses to take away our freedom to live it as we choose, with ducks running amuck or all in a row, but oh, how much more is life preserved and redeemed and restored and transformed as God’s Word is heard and received and we FREELY, lovingly line our lives up with it! The gift of life comes with no strings attached: we are the ones who get entangled in our relationships and our emotions, in our preoccupations and our distractions because we seem to have this need to have and to hold what cannot ultimately be had or held. Life as we know it in this world as we know it is incredibly brief because it is constantly changing… and we, with every breath, can be part of its redemption and renewal, part of its preservation and transformation… as we get our ducks in a row, lined up in grace with the love we see and know in Jesus Christ whom God sent into the world because God loved the world so much God refused to destroy it, holding out hope that the world and we who walk in it will not fall to pieces but fall in line behind he who is the Pioneer blazing the trail faith for us and the Perfecter showing us what it’s like to finally arrive in faith. Enough of imaginations running amuck… let’s trust the Word we have heard and respond in kind: loving for love’s sake until love is all there is… in Milford, Vermont and in Kane, Pennsylvania and to all the ends of the earth! And if you are looking for a heavenly trio to set your sights on and line your hearts up with, try this one: “Faith, hope, and love abide/remain/endure; but the greatest of these is LOVE.”
BOOKING FACES I Samuel 3:1-11 John 1:43-51 Sunday, January 15, 2012 You may not be aware of this but God is in the booking business. We’d do well to steer clear of the Hawaii 5-O notion of an apprehended criminal being “booked”! I had no idea there has been a remake of that 40-year-old show which always ended with the line: “Book ‘em, Danno” ... I don’t know if the new version includes that or not but that’s not the kind of booking business God is in! God’s booking business is more akin to the fun-loving, adventure-seeking side to us which, from time to time as time and other resources are available… might book a cruise or a week at a dude ranch out West or a 10-day guided tour through New England. Yes, in God’s booking business, operators are standing by 24-7, eager to sign us up for The Adventure of a Lifetime which many call the life of faith, some describe as a “walk” and others a “journey.” Whatever else may be said of God’s booking business… and much has been and can be and is said about it because we all have our own version of it… one thing that’s perfectly clear is that God is very interested in signing us up for an out-of-this-world consulting service… a personal partnering arrangement… as we spend the time and resources God gives us to use while we’re around on earth. God so wants to add our faces to a line-up that got started when time began… And, no, not a mug-shot kind of line-up but more like… Facebook! Facebook… created less than a decade ago by a college student who hacked into the school’s database to get personal information because information seems to be one of the things we persons enjoy most about each other. So Facebook was launched so persons could get personal information about other persons while putting their own personal information on display all over web pages in a “book” which about 800 million people and organizations hook into daily. It is on Facebook that we may be “friended” by people all over the world, where we can be linked to our high school and church, where we may post pictures and comments that might be “liked” by others, and where we could be discovered on someone else’s Facebook page and “tagged.” God’s booking business is a little like all that. Imagine Samuel’s Facebook page. Parents: Hannah and Elkanah but given up for adoption to an old priest named Eli. Works for: Eli doing whatever he needs for me to do which is a lot because he doesn’t see very well anymore. Imagine the comments he might have posted after hearing God’s voice calling his name in the middle of the night! Or imagine what Nathanael might have said after Philip found him to tell him about a guy named Jesus from Nazareth… “There I was minding my own business when I meet some loser from nowhere who turns out to know me! Guess I was wrong: he’s not a loser at all!” People with names and faces in particular places… people with personal information to share and personal stories to tell… people booked by God in the middle of the night, in the middle of the afternoon, in the middle of their ordinary, daily lives for an extraordinary Adventure of a Lifetime… Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Samuel, Esther, Ruth, Isaiah, David, Amos, Mary, Joseph, Elizabeth, Peter, Philip, Nathanael, Lydia, Paul… people with names and faces booked by God to be hooked up with an out-of-this-world consulting service, signed up for a personal partnering arrangement while walking, journeying through life, spending time and resources while on earth… with the graciously-added ingredient of faith which makes all the difference along the way. It’s fascinating that in the personal stories we’ve heard this morning, there’s nothing asked or required that comes close to the realm of the outrageous. Samuel is young and doesn’t even know the God who woke him up in the middle of the night… it takes the old priest who can’t see very well anymore but who had enough sense or faith or hope to put the divine and the human together, the man who could still “see” with his heart because the light of the Lord hadn’t yet gone out coaching the boy with a name that means “God has heard” to speak up with an offer to listen. Just listen, that’s all. “I got your message, Lord – what’s up?” Jesus invited Philip to follow. Just follow, that’s all. And, at least according to John, Jesus didn’t even do anything miraculous that might have “wowed” him. Jesus was just walking around being Jesus, a person from a town of about 400 people, with a face just like a regular person’s face weathered by the sun, scrubbed by the sea. Jesus with a name that means “God saves” walking around handing out invitations to be booked by that God who saves in a great adventure called New Life, True Light, faith. And Jesus didn’t even invite Nathanael… Philip did but it was only to “come and see.” Come and see, that’s all… get up and bring your skepticism and find out for yourself who this Jesus is. Turns out, Jesus had seen him first. God is like that, God who is in the booking business, always on the look-out for another child to adopt, another disciple to enlist, another lost soul to save. God calls. God invites. God so wants to serve us our daily consultant, our partner for life. We each have our own version of what it is to have our faces booked by God… because we each have a face that God wants to book in this great adventure called faith. Last Sunday, people with names and faces stood in place before you because they got a message from God and answered with a “Yes… here I am, Lord.” Audrey and Jill and Matt and Karianne and John and Kal and Janell and Betsey and Julie are now serving as Ruling Elders and Deacons in and for this congregation. They are people with faces and names and families and jobs and busy lives and Facebook pages with personal information to share and personal stories to tell… and God is in and through it all. The same God who is in and through all the lives of each and every one of us who has been looked for and booked, adopted, invited, saved. Our personal relationship with this God…our “Yes” to God… becomes visible, tangible, evident and expressed in our living and through our serving. Within our gathered-up family of faith with the name The Presbyterian Church of Kane, there are many ways to enjoy living into The Adventure of a Lifetime. Some may see this list as jobs that have to get done, tasks that need to be completed to keep the boat afloat. Steer clear of that Hawaii 5-O understanding that you are being booked against your will, logged into a ledger without a voice and vote! This is an opportunity to respond… just respond, that’s all… respond to the God who calls and invites and is available for consultation and partnership with we who have faces and names and time and resources to share. This is a way of saying “Yes” to God and to what God is up to with this gathered-up family of faith. There are opportunities for each and every person because God is like that… God who is in the business of adding our faces to the lineup of personal friends that got started when time began… Prayerfully take a moment of that time God has given you to complete this commitment form and place them in the basket in the narthex before you leave the building. If you have questions, listen for God’s counsel. If you are skeptical, come and see what God might be up to. If you doubt that you are worthy, get over it… God’s got your back in the middle of the night, in the middle of the afternoon, in the middle of your ordinary, daily lives because God’s like that. Praise God with your “Yes!” in this moment, in this New Year, in this gathered-up family of faith, in this Adventure of a Lifetime… and then listen and be on the look-out because the God who books us promises us “You haven’t seen it all yet!
ORDERING GIFTS Genesis 1:1-5 Acts 19:1-7 Sunday, January 8, 2011 EPIPHANY SUNDAY
The email showed up last Tuesday: “Someone sent you an Amazon.com gift card!” My friend who purchased the gift also sent me an email apologizing for being late in sending me something and hoping that I might find a book or two I’d like to have. I couldn’t think of anything so I went to Amazon.com to search. It’s the way of the world these days… ordering gifts online. Going to the web site to search only complicated my quest to consume the electronic gift card I had received because, much to my wonder did I discover that Amazon.com not only offers books and movies and music, it dishes up small appliances and parades sporting goods and flaunts jewelry and much more for our shopping pleasure… although for me it was overwhelming! Too many choices! Too much to search through! The electronic gift card is still in my inbox.
I need direction. I need guidance. I need focus. So if you can suggest a book I might enjoy (or you might enjoy discussing once I’ve read it) or a movie I would find interesting or a CD I could appreciate, let me know! I’ll carry your suggestions with me like a blazing torch lighting a path for me while navigating the web pages of material goods marketed on Amazon.com!
We all need direction… whether we ask for it or not. We all need guidance… whether we admit it or not. We all need focus… whether we realize it or not. God knows we do… because it’s how God made us. And God, we may see, is a big fan of structure… not the inflexible set-in-stone kind or the alienating four-walls-and-a-roof kind but the directed, guided, focused order we see first and foremost in creation and then all through human history and most clearly in the life and teachings of Jesus and then all over the church (sometimes called the Body of Christ) into which we are drawn oh so graciously by the agency of the Holy Spirit who breathes life into structure so that it is fluid and not inflexible and as vast as God’s heart and never alienating.
That’s what we oh so graciously see in our Scripture readings this morning.
God order light so that God could see the formless void and bring order to it. In introducing light, God didn’t eliminate the darkness… God just brought into existence something that was not-darkness, something separate from darkness, something that established a rhythm and order for life: Day during which light comes out to play and Night over which darkness has more say.
And when the world needed to know that God had surfaced on earth in a stable in Bethlehem, what did God do but order up a giant star the likes of which had never been seen before in order to provide direction and guidance and focus for anyone who happened to be looking for a sign… a bright light advertising the arrival of something new under the sun... a Someone who would make all things NEW.
God knows we all need direction and guidance and focus in the living of our days and nights and God oh so graciously provides. God tried writing it down for us but so many of us aren’t the best at following instructions and more of us seem to get a kick out of intentionally disobeying them… so God reached the point of realizing that a living example might help us… a role model of sorts and yet oh so much more…
We do our best… God knows we do… and we’re notorious for trying to improve our game this time of year. Following the ordered division of time into years, we mark the passing of one into another with intentions and declarations of all kinds of self-made improvements and we call them New Year’s resolutions. If we were to look at them in the light of grace (which helps us see things as they truly are, including we ourselves) we’d probably see that we are searching for some direction in an Amazon.com world, some guidance in a Milky Way universe for the ordering of our days and nights (all those boxes on our calendars that divide years into months and months into weeks and weeks into days and days into hours).
Do we stick to our resolutions, hoping our intentions become actions and our actions become habits and our habits become a way of life? Maybe… maybe not. If we can only muster the willpower, we say to ourselves and sometimes to others, we can do it… we can do anything we set our minds to, we believe. We will structure and discipline and order our lives in order to accomplish what we hope to achieve… whether it’s weight loss or straight A’s or a daily prayer life or having a savings account or mastering a skill or hobby… we can do it!
How’s that working for you?
The story is told… in fact it was written down… that when the Apostle Paul happened upon a group of believers… a dozen to be exact (maybe that number 12 was meant to ring a bell signaling the rebirth of Israel!)… Paul asked them if they had gotten the full benefit of God in their lives. They didn’t have a clue. But Paul knew what to do, he himself having been oh so graciously introduced to the living Lord Jesus in such a way that his days and nights followed the ordering of the Spirit of the living Lord Jesus… he ordered up an all-new baptism for this perfect dozen who had only received John’s water baptism which oh so graciously prepared them for but wasn’t quite baptism in Jesus’ name with the laying on of hands. Luke tells us: that made all the difference.
Talk about receiving direction and guidance and focus! God’s power at work in them turned their tongues loose and set their hearts on fire, opening their eyes and ears and mouths as never before!
Want to be a disciple of Jesus, living in the ways of God, keeping step with the Spirit? Nice New Year’s resolution. We can’t do it alone… can’t do it ourselves. Faith is a gift we may only receive… a sure sign the Holy Spirit has shown up, the Spirit who provides the power to live in step with the rhythm of God’s vast heart… in a dance that is fluid, not inflexible, and which never alienates even the clumsiest among us.
God orders up gifts all over the place and all over our lives which we may oh so graciously see with the direction and guidance and focus of the Holy Spirit. Once we see, we will speak – it is the divine order of things – first in praise and thanksgiving to the God who oh so graciously shows up with gifts in our lives and then in declaring to each other, to anyone and everyone, what we’ve received even if God shows up with gifts we didn’t order. God knows better what we need.
And we all need direction and guidance and focus… so praise God today that some from among you have seen the gifts God ordered up and have now offered them for our common good (because that’s what God’s gifts are for!)… gifts of leading and serving and discerning as those set apart as Ruling Elders and Deacons… and pick up a star as you part from this time and place that is set apart for the worship of the God because God has oh so graciously ordered up a gift just for you today… and let that star shed its light on your life in this New Year… but before going, come…
Come… because we all need direction… here [at the table] we ask for it. We all need guidance… here [at the table] we admit it. We all need focus… here [at the table] we realize it. God knows we do… and God oh so graciously provides, ordering up gifts of bread and cup just for us today! As Rob Bell has written, may it be so with us today: “A group of people taking the bread and the cup, asking, ‘What now, Jesus?’ – the stars sing when that happens.”* Come, let us feast in faith at the table of grace where, in the vastness of God’s heart, one size fits all and our Dance Partner will never let us fall!
*Jesus Wants to Save Christians (Rob Bell and Don Golden; Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan; 2008)
THE POINT OF EXCLAMATION Isaiah 52:7-10 John 1:1-14 Sunday, December 25, 2011 CHRISTMAS DAY!
No offense to the comma or the semi-colon, to the question mark or the period, but I am a huge fan of the exclamation point! How amazing that so much can be conveyed with a single simple punctuation mark! Whatever comes before it is magnified, amplified, multiplied! It doesn’t matter whether it is delight (yippee!) or disgust (yuck!), the exclamation point increases whatever it follows.
Today is one gigantic exclamation point! Christmas Day! Jesus – God in the flesh, miracle baby, long-awaited Messiah, Savior of the world – made a not-so-grand entrance on earth to make the point that God shows up in common, ordinary human life! Wow!
Things could have gone differently. History could have rolled on. Humanity could have remained unchanged. All the hopes, all the prophecies could have been left hanging, unfulfilled and virtually on life support. The creative Word of God which spoke everything into being could have remained a silent love song hummed in the heart of God but… …apparently the size and weight of that love broke open God’s heart and the song spilled out and the world and we who walk in it have never been the same since. When that melody of love surfaces in our own hearts or when we see evidence that the hearts of others of our kind hum to the rhythm of that heavenly refrain, we cannot help but yelp for joy: God is alive and well and living in and among us! If we give in to the impulse, we might shout “Hallelujah!” If we give up our reservations, we might even come out with “Praise the Lord!” If we give ourselves to the God who has given us our truest selves, we will offer in amazed exclamation at least a heart-felt, “Wow!”
I had a friend in seminary who had the most annoying habit of saying, “So what?” It’s a good question. It prompts us to think about and find words for the difference it makes to us that the God of the universe carries the tune of a love song for the whole world of us in that expansive divine heart of God’s, a love song God sang in an out-loud voice which cried in the night, sighed in morning prayer and died in the middle of the afternoon more than two thousand years ago. What IS the point of our exclamation, “Christ our Savior is born!”?
It’s all through our Scripture readings this morning! Isaiah says the point of all that singing and rejoicing is so that all the ends of the earth will hear and see and fall in love with the God who gets the song started. Even all that poetry in the opening chapter of John’s gospel points to the point of John the Baptist’s witness: so that all might believe. And why, oh why, did God’s irrepressible heavenly light come into the thick darkness of a world hell-bent on keeping the darkness in place? In order to hand off the power to human beings to become fully who human beings are created to be: God’s children.
It’s all through these passages because it’s all through the Scriptures because it is God through and through: not passive but active, not dead but alive, not hopeless but brimming with hope, not silent but singing, not pointless but purposeful. The Word doesn’t exist just to be but to be FOR… so the Word became a human being so that human beings could see and hear and fall in love with the sight and sound of Love itself.
One preacher has said that we “cannot proclaim the birth of the baby Jesus without also proclaiming the purpose of that birth. For the wonder of the incarnation is that when Word becomes flesh, human history is irrevocably changed; the relationship between God and humanity is forever altered.”
In Jesus, God gets us and we get God which may seem way too simplistic but we need to consider where the world started out (in the heart and mind of God) before it came into being (created by the Word of God) and how it was once upon a time when a human being dared to ask who was speaking from a blazing bush and the holy, unknowable God became a name. Over time, the name was abused and misused and confused so the holy, unknowable God known only by name became flesh and blood so that all flesh and blood could see and hear life as the Author of life designed it.
Poet W. H. Auden offers the notion that when Jesus showed up in a stable in Bethlehem, “everything became a You and nothing was an It.” God in person not in concept… God who personally rescues persons from anything and everything that would depersonalize… God known by name and knowable by persons in person. Wow! (exclamation point) – that’s the point of our exclamation! – to make our lives and the world in which we live them more person-able!!
Think of times, experiences, places, people in which, through which, where, and because of whom you felt less than human… more like an “it,” an object, a number, a thing, an obstacle, a machine, an asset or liability… and not at all like a person with hopes and affections and desires and gifts and a love song that’s meant to be sung and not suppressed. Christ was born human because God is deeply grieved by all of those times and experiences and places and people which de-humanize human life. Christ was born to return humanity to its Creator who honors and cherishes the human above all the rest of creation. Christ was born to release persons from the prisons of depersonalization. Christ was born to redeem human life which cannot thrive in the darkness of inhumanity.
Do you remember S & H Green Stamps? Apparently they have morphed into S & H Green POINTS which are redeemable online but I remember licking strips of stamps and pressing them into those little booklets which, once full, we would take into a store where we could surrender them and receive something new and different, like a lamp or a toaster. Amazing! Go in with a booklet of stamps and come out with a wall clock! That’s always what I think about when I think about God redeeming humanity in Jesus… that’s the point of our exclamation!
Inhuman becomes fully human… depersonalized becomes deeply personal… nobodies become somebodies… the unknowable God becomes known and creatures become children! That’s life in the broad daylight of God’s love!!
The point of our exclamation “Christ is born!” is to sing God’s love song for the world into a world nearly-deaf to the music of its Maker. It’s not to paint over the pain or sweep suffering out of sight but it is to declare that pain and suffering, sin and death, darkness and dehumanization are not the final word in human history. Because God’s Word cannot be silent or still, because God always has a purpose far more loving than we can imagine, we may sing “Hallelujah” and shout “Praise the Lord” and offer ourselves up with a “Wow!”
Years ago, I clipped a comic strip out of the Sunday funnies which I have long cherished as a cartoon representation of the Christian life. It wasn’t intended to be that – that’s just how I saw it. I couldn’t tell you the name of that particular comic but I can see it clearly in my mind. There were no words – only pictures. It depicted a mother with her children on a snowy day. The mother bundled up her children in winter coats and hats and mittens so they could go outside to play in the snow. Once she had prepared them for a day of play, she herself began to dress to join them in the snow. With each frame of the comic strip as she put on more layers and more cold weather gear, she would shrink in size a little more until at last, when she ran outside to join her children, she was a child again.
As we take on the Light of Christ, as we slip on the life of the One who authored it, as we find ourselves wrapped up in the gift of God’s grace, we personally declare what it is to be known here and now by the now knowable God: children born of flesh and blood and yet also born out of God’s broken heart which could not contain a love so deep and wide, so high and so hopeful, so irrepressible and so strong. It is into our common and ordinary everyday that God comes to sing a love song so that we might catch the tune and hum along until all the ends of the earth see and hear and fall in love with God’s salvation who is Christ the Lord. May our lives always point to him so that others might be aimed in his direction!
GOOD ENOUGH FOR GOD? II Samuel 7:1-11, 16 Luke 1:26-38 Sunday, December 18, 2011 Here’s a quote for you: “Perfectionism is a disorder that occurs frequently in the Christian community.” That’s the opening line of Eugene Peterson’s chapter on David in his book, The Jesus Way. Peterson, a retired theology professor, Biblical scholar and prolific author [you may know him best for his translation of the Scriptures known as The Message], goes so far as to describe perfectionism as a “deviation… from the way of Jesus,” and a “perversion of the Christian way.” In summing up his introduction to the chapter on David, he writes, “The attempt to impose perfection on either oneself or another, whether parent on child, pastor on congregation, CEO on a company, teacher on student, husband on wife, wife on husband, is decidedly not the way of Jesus.” Nice try, we might think; good thought, even liberating idea – thank you very much, Mr. Peterson. We now resume our regularly programmed lives… lives that are indeed programmed around standards and measures and success and failure and quotas and expectations and Santa Claus. Yes, Santa Claus. We sing the words and probably don’t take them too seriously, for some of us, maybe even for most of us, there is a hook in them that snags our deepest fears: “Oh! You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I'm telling you why: Santa Claus is coming to town! He's making a list, checking it twice, gonna find out who's naughty or nice. 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!” Santa Claus has a list and we’re afraid our names won’t show up in the “right” column and we’ll be deemed “bad” or “naughty” and we won’t get any presents and we’ll never be happy and we’ll never be good enough. And if Santa Claus… who else?? Truth be told, Santa Claus is only one in the lineup of a whole host of well-meaning people in our lives who come close to qualifying for Eugene Peterson’s description of those who attempt to impose perfection on us. It’s just the way it is… mostly. When I was young, I don’t remember having the sense that Christmas was on my shoulders, that whether there were presents under the tree with my name on them rode on my good behavior, on my ability to land in the “right” column of Santa’s list… making the presents more rewards than gifts. The three of us seemed to receive gifts not merited by our behavior (heaven forbid!) but simply because we were the children of Larry and Margie Taylor. They gave to us because they loved us and in spite of the reality that we disappointed them from time to time. Yes, we did our chores and our homework… mostly. Yes, we went to church and stayed out of the principal’s office… mostly. Yes, we brushed our teeth and washed behind our ears…mostly. And because of all of that, we were rewarded with a domestic education and with good grades, with the nurturing of the Christian faith and the appreciation of the school administration, and with hygiene habits considered socially-acceptable. The gifts we received at Christmas had more to do with our parents’ budgeting ability than our behavior… and much more to do with their desire to give out of love… Which is not to say that we grew up free from the fear of never being good enough… far from it because we, the children of Larry and Margaret Taylor, are just like you: thoroughly human… as was David. That’s why Eugene Peterson devoted a chapter in his book to him… to help us understand that, as we walk in faith through life in this world, being fault-free is not required. David is a huge hero in the lineup of Biblical ancestors who had a part in shaping the history of God’s people but it’s clear that David was as we all are: thoroughly human. In fact, Peterson says, “The story of David is not a story of what God wants us to be but a story of God working with the raw material of our lives as [God] finds us.” Apparently, God looked at David and said, “Good enough for me!” Do you remember The Shack? It was a widely-read and highly-debated story published in 2007 about a man’s encounter with God. Whether you were upset by it or whether you were inspired by it, there are some solid strands of Reformed theology… Biblical theology… to be found in it. One of the strongest is what the author had God in the habit of saying about humans: “I’m especially fond of that one.” When the main character in the story, Mack, seems to get tripped up on God being fond of humans – the whole lot of them – yet without God having any favorites which means God not having any less love for some than for others, Mack and God have this poignant conversation: Mack asks, “Honestly, don’t you enjoy punishing those who disappoint you?” to which God responds, “I am not who you think I am, Mackenzie. I don’t need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment, devouring you from the inside. It’s not my purpose to punish it; it’s my joy to cure it.” So when the great King David gets it in his head that God needs a place to live – maybe thinking or hoping that God will be pleased with this idea – David makes a thoroughly human mistake of thinking HE knows what’s best for God. David makes another misstep by not even consulting God about this hopefully-pleasing idea: he checks in with Nathan, his prophet-on-hand. Lo and behold, God isn’t interested in having a building built as a place for God to live… AND yet God doesn’t even come close to punishing David for having the idea to begin with! God gently reminds David that, if it hadn’t been for divine intervention, he’d still be in the fields with a bunch of smelly sheep and then God promises David that his “house,” his lineage, his dynasty will stand forever. That’s some cure for David’s arrogance of thinking he knew what was best for God! The Word of the Lord was clear: God’s dwelling place in the world is with thoroughly-human people about whom God says, “I’m especially fond of that one.” Are we good enough for God? Oh, yes! So even when David’s earthly empire collapsed, the hope instilled in God’s people that his house would stand forever didn’t die… and the Good News of the Gospel is that apparently it was enough that Mary was engaged to Joseph who could somehow trace his lineage back to the beloved but thoroughly-human King David in order for God to look at her and say, “Good enough for me!” Who was she? A “nobody” in the eyes of the world but one of whom God was especially fond… a young girl in an out-of-the-way place who found favor in God’s eyes… The same fondness and favor we too receive, we who are thoroughly-human as was David before us, David who thought he’d do something magnificent for God only to discover that God was more interested in doing something magnificent in David… “How can it be?” Mary asks, probably not so much out of biological curiosity but more likely out of that nagging fear that we thoroughly-human people suffer from – that we, not a one of us, are ever good enough for much of anything, much less for God. “How can it be?” The Word of the Lord is clear: nothing is impossible for God and God looks at David and at Mary and at each one of us and says, “Good enough for me!” Eugene Peterson says that one of the things Mary had going for her was that she was apparently a person of prayer which is why, after her initial interrogation of the angel, her response was a prayer. She prayed the prayer of faith: “I am a servant of the Lord; let it be as you have said.” Mary understood her relationship with God rightly in a way that David had to be reminded of: she saw herself as a servant available for… well, service… she understood that she was the one waiting on God, not coming up with plans and ideas for God. Peterson suggests that Mary may have taught her son – God’s Son – to pray the same prayer of faith because we certainly hear an echo of it in the Garden of Gethsemane on the eve of his death: “Your will, not mine, be done.” Peterson also suggests that we would do well to be persons of prayer, thoroughly-human though we be, because (in his words) “The practice of prayer is the primary way that Jesus’ way comes to permeate our entire lives so that we walk spontaneously and speak rhythmically in the fluidity and fluency of holiness.” Wow. There’s nothing forced or imposed about that! Are we good enough for God? Oh, yes! God who is especially fond of each and every one of us… God who doesn’t expect anything magnificent from us but only hopes to do something magnificent in us… God who hopes for servants in the world to walk freely in faith and speak wholly with love… God whose joy it is to cure us of sin and to live with us in a “house” that stands forever… not a building but a person and not just any person but the One whose name we bear: Jesus, in whom and through whom we thoroughly-human people may learn to live loved… (another nugget from The Shack!) What a magnificent thing God is doing in us today! Loving us so, God looks at us and says, “Good enough for me!” There’s no list to land on, no test to pass, no standard of perfection to measure up to… only a prayer offered in grateful response: “If you say so, Lord; let it be so.” And that, dear ones, is LOVE – God’s love – the best gift we will ever receive and the source of our joy! God be praised… and prayed… in us now and forevermore! Amen!
RIGHT SIDE OUT Isaiah 40:1-11 II Peter 3:8-15a Sunday, December 4, 2011
A semi-retired teacher and relatively young widow in North Carolina was eating lunch alone at a Wendy’s restaurant one day. Not long after she had settled into a booth, a young man slid into the booth in front of her with his back to her. She glanced up and discovered that the back of the young man’s tee-shirt displayed a suggestive and, to her eyes, offensive graphic of a woman. Once she saw it, she couldn’t not see it. Determining that she could no longer bear to take another bite of her junior bacon cheeseburger with that sight before her very eyes, she stood up, took several bold steps until she faced the young man and informed him that she was certain that his mother wouldn’t approve of him wearing that shirt. She then asked him ever so politely to take it off or, if he would prefer, to turn it inside out so that she could finish her meal in peace.
The young man scrambled to his feet, turned his offensive tee-shirt inside out and resumed his place in the booth in front of the semi-retired teacher who finished her burger and fries in peace.
That scene could have gone quite differently. The teacher could have moved. The teacher could have stewed but said nothing. The young man could have returned her request with a mouthful of foul language and a bellyful of belligerent defiance. There is no way of knowing whether the young man became more thoughtful about what he put on to go out in public or not but it is likely that the semi-retired teacher’s actions left a lasting impression on him.
It is one thing to accidentally go out in public perhaps not dressed our best… mistaking a dark brown shoe for a black one and wearing one of each or thinking that two shades of grey compliment rather than clash… but it is an entirely different matter to dress in a manner that invites attention or perhaps reaction because, at some level, what we put on on the outside reflects who we are on the inside.
This idea shows up in Scripture. To put on sackcloth was a sign of grief, sorrow, mourning, or repentance. There are numerous references in the New Testament to “putting on” Christ, or the qualities of Christ, and to being “clothed” in Christ. A newly-baptized believer would be draped in a white robe as a sign of a fresh, new life. The writer of the letter to the Ephesians would have Christians decked out in full armor, head to toe. The implication is clear: what we present in public is to be consistent with who we are at the core of our being. We are to walk in this world right side out.
We will sometimes show our support of, love for, and loyalty to a sports team or vacation destination or name brand by what we wear. Living right side out is no different except that it’s not as easy as pulling a shirt off a hanger and slipping it over our heads because it is a matter of what is IN our heads, ON our minds, occupying our hearts. Given that we have been graced with the name of Christ and saturated in his very Spirit, how do we show our love for and loyalty to him beyond the walls of this sanctuary and above saying a blessing at the dinner table?
That’s basically the same question asked in our Scripture readings this morning.
The prophet asks, “What are we to say about human beings? They are like grass and flowers which grow and then wither; they come and go, living by their whims with little stick-to-it-ness. When they find themselves in a stretch of desert or stumble into a dark valley or come upon a difficult mountain, they struggle to trust God’s presence and promise.”
The letter-writer wonders, “What sort of persons are we to be as we live with respect for God and commitment to God even when it looks like the world is drifting farther away from God? What do we dress ourselves in in order to evidence our trust in God’s promise to make all things new while God is patiently waiting for more of the world to turn right side out?”
The prophet offers God’s comfort with some of the greatest words God gives us: “Do not fear. Here is your God.” The writer suggests trying on words in pairs: “holy and godly… waiting for and yet hastening… being found in peace and with patience.”
The story is told that years ago evangelist Billy Graham and his wife Ruth were traveling through the North Carolina mountains when they encountered road construction. The work required drivers to take several detours around the area of repair. After winding around several back-country roads, the Grahams finally returned to the highway they had originally been traveling. A sign on the side of the road caught Ruth’s eye and she told her husband that she wanted her tombstone to bear the same words: “End of construction – thank you for your patience.”
It’s been said that it is a virtue but patience is an outward indication of inward peace. It is automatic. We cannot produce it ourselves… it is the fruit that comes from trusting that God is God and God is with us. As God has been and is patient with us and with the world, so may we be patient with ourselves and with others.
It’s a challenge, especially this time of year. Schedules are tight, crowds are thick, lines are long, products are back-ordered, children are wound up, expectations are unrealistic, traffic seems to creep and time flies. We could easily find ourselves sleeping less, eating more, spending too much, snapping at the least little thing. Evidence that we belong to the Prince of Peace all but disappears because what we show publically is anything but patience.
Besides considering whether we are living as if we’ve gotten up on the wrong side of life, we might ask ourselves if what we are putting on display for all the world to see is embarrassing to God or brings honor to God. If we have an ounce of concern that we may not be honoring God with our words and actions and attitudes, we might consider turning that shirt inside out so we may be found living right side out. We… and the rest of the world along with us… are still under construction; God is doing well with being patient…so can we.
Patient doesn’t mean passive. Our waiting for God to fill the valleys and level the mountains and bring life to the desert places doesn’t mean that we sit on our hands and fill our heads and hearts with bitterness and despair. We can actually help God out since God is waiting for more of the world to turn right side out. As we live right side out, others may witness our patience and peacefulness and want to know where it all came from. Prime time for promoting God!
That’s essentially what we have promised the Ross family this morning and others last Sunday: to model living right side out.
Patience literally means having a long fuse. The image created by the Hebrew word is of flared nostrils, taking in deep breaths. Some may find it helpful to count to ten. The letter-writer reminds us that a thousand of our years is like a day to God so all the better to count on God. And in the meantime, we may take in what we need for living right side out: God’s grace placed before us once again. Come, feast in faith, trusting in God who sets us right side up to walk boldly in the world right side out!
Were you hoping for something more glamorous? Oh, well… simplicity suits we who wear Jesus’ name, we who belong to the Prince of Peace! Perhaps you will consider then joining me in taking the Christmas Pledge*:
Believing in the true spirit of Christmas, I commit myself to…
Remember those people who truly need my gifts;
Express my love in more direct ways than gifts;
Examine my holiday activities in the light of my deepest values;
Be a peacemaker within my circle of family and friends;
Rededicate myself to my spiritual growth.
A trustworthy formula for living right side out!
*Take from Unplug the Christmas Machine:
RIGHT SIDE UP Isaiah 64:1-9 Mark 13:24-31 Sunday, November 27, 2011
It happens without fail every Wednesday afternoon as our young KWT participants pile into Fellowship Hall: at least one, generally two and sometimes three or four break into cartwheels, handstands, back flips and other gymnastic movements that are delightful to watch for those of us beyond the age of doing those sorts of things. As much as we’d like to think that it is the joy of arriving at the church for snacks and singing and learning about “heroes of the faith,” my hunch is that it is simply the fun of turning the world upside down – even if only for a matter of seconds – that sends feet and hair flying through the air.
Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest whom the Presbyterians in Atlanta have co-opted to teach at Columbia Seminary, recalls being the age of our KWT participants in her sermon “Blessed Are the Upside Down.” She describes her memories with these words, “When I was little, I used to like standing on my head. I was short then. Just about everything in the world was taller than I was, taller and very boring, but by standing on my head I could liven things up a little. Grass hung in front of my eyes like green fringe. Trees grew down, not up, and the sky was a blue lawn that went on forever. For as long as I kept my balance I could tap dance on it, while birds and clouds flew under my feet. My swing set was no longer an “A” but a “V” and my house seemed in danger of falling off the yard – just shooting off into space like a rocket – leaving a sidewalk lined with pansies that led to nowhere. I like standing on my head because it made me see old things in a new way. I liked it because it made life seem exciting and unpredictable. In a world where trees grew down and house might fall up, anything seemed possible.”
That’s part of the joy of children… their spirited spontaneity, their wonder at the world and their playfulness within it, their openness to seeing things from a different point of view. Children may unnerve we big people at times, especially if we prefer a calm and predictable life seen from one comfortable perspective; it’s entirely possible little ones even frighten we big people, particularly if we like to think that we’ve got things around us (and within us!) under control.
No wonder Jesus blesses children! Quite the wonder that Jesus showed up as a little one himself! God could have surfaced in the world differently – with a big splash so there would be no mistaking that the Creator of the universe had left the heavens to shake up things on earth.
That’s what Isaiah was asking for, begging on behalf of God’s people for… hoping for with that combination of disgust and desperation over the state of affairs in the world. Isaiah seems to be doing some verbal gymnastics in order to get God’s attention: “Please, God, split open the skies and turn the mountains to Jello so we’ll know you’re still around because we fear you’ve fallen asleep at the wheel! Don’t you remember, God, that you created us? We’re just little lumps of clay which need some shaping up, children who’ve spent so much time on the playground that we’ve ended up pushing and shoving each other!”
[Or was that the shopping malls last Friday?]
One afternoon several weeks ago, the phone rang here at the church. When I answered, I was greeted by a salesman from Long Island. I listened to his sales pitch for some product we would certainly need in order to survive the winter with its heavy snow and ice, made note of his name and number, and thought our conversation would then come to an end pretty quickly. Well, that was an incorrect assumption! He launched into a discussion of the weather… the severe weather the East Coast has experienced recently which he said his “overly-religious” wife interprets to be signs of the “end times.” He came close to poking fun at her for the way she saw storms and earthquakes in light of her understanding of certain passages in the Bible. Thankfully, he shifted his comments to include the endurance of their decades-long marriage and their three lovely daughters before finally bringing the call to an end. My assumption that the conversation would come to an end pretty quickly is the interpretation many people have about the world… and have had for centuries, especially right after Jesus’ resurrection! Maybe, just maybe, underneath that interpretation may well be a hope… a hope that arises out of a combination of disgust and desperation over the state of affairs in the world today, a desire for things to be different in the world.
It’s easy to go there, especially if we are as impatient as children can often be… children who turn themselves upside down in order to see things differently. It’s easy to go there, especially this time of year when it seems there is more darkness than light outside and more brown and barren trees than not. So what do we do? We put up our Christmas trees in order to bring in and surround ourselves with light and green. We drape our houses and shrubs with lights to force the darkness away and we put wreaths and garland on our porches and doors to ward off any indications of lifelessness. We fear the darkness and squirm in the face of our mortality so we do cartwheels and back flips in hopes of manufacturing that cozy warmth and joy we associate with Christmas but we want it now… now when we’ve barely done away with our October pumpkins and cleaned up our Thanksgiving dishes.
We’d prefer to skip all this waiting and anticipating of Advent because we cannot abide the thought that God may have fallen asleep at the wheel once more, leaving us like unfinished lumps of clay without form or purpose. We dare not look to the heavens with our hopes set on fireworks because there is only darkness, stillness, seeming emptiness which we interpret as absence and even abandonment so we cram busyness and activity into every corner of our calendars to keep the cartwheels coming, our lives humming as we flip back and forth from one thing to another.
Maybe, just maybe, there is a hope underneath it all… a hope for things in the world to be different and our lives as well. Maybe, just maybe, what Jesus tried to say to his disciples is a word of comfort about it all… a word of comfort we disciples may hear today if we stop turning ourselves upside down long enough to receive it right side up.
God understands our fear of darkness and God feels our pain over our own mortality. God even gets our disgust and desperation over the state of affairs in the world and in our lives… so the Word of the Lord is so simple we might easily miss it while we are doing our cartwheels and back flips… God says it’s in my hands… and so are you.
The One who set the stars in the sky in the first place and gave the light to the sun and moon is the only One who can change their courses or cause them to fall… which we children might need in order to truly see the Light that shines with such power that no amount of darkness can overcome it.
The Potter who set the wheel in motion long ago with a notion that human beings could be molded of the earth yet fashioned just a notch below the angels hasn’t fallen asleep or died of boredom or desperation over our continuous bashing and smashing of ourselves and others… that Potter became the clay in order to shatter its subjection to death and fire it for good with an irrepressible life.
But God does what God does in God’s way, not ours. God ignored the prophet’s plea to split open the skies, choosing instead to puncture the night with a baby’s cry. God comes to us in our fear and squirming in full vulnerability which might seem to be backwards or upside down by our hopes and expectations but God does so in order to meet us face to face, right side up. How can we see the tender leaves on a budding tree if we’re doing cartwheels around it? How can we be gathered in by the angels from the four winds if we are doing back flips in the opposite direction?
“Stand still,” God seems to be saying, “because my Word is standing still…my Word embodied in Jesus who continues to shed light on your fears and bring peace to your squirminess so you won’t need fireworks to know that I’m still here. Light a candle on that green wreath of yours and hold on to hope… because the day is coming – I promise! – when there won’t be a drop of darkness left nor even a whiff of death… and all my children will be right side up. Don’t worry: I love you too much to leave you alone and I love the world too much to leave things as they are. Just remember… it’s in my hands, not yours!”
In Lewis Carroll’s famous tale, Through the Looking Glass, the White Queen advises Alice to practice believing six impossible things before breakfast every day. Lucky for us – God asks that we try our hand at only one: that God is God, a heavenly Father who never sleeps and a divine Potter who never rests until all things are right side up! Once we believe that, anything is possible!
HOLY REBELLION Luke 17:11-19 Community Thanksgiving Service, Kane, Pennsylvania
As we are gathered in together this evening, I invite us to consider this story from Luke’s Gospel in light of “holy rebellion,” mindful that the truest meaning of the word “holy” is not perfect or flawless… it doesn’t have so much to do with an attribute of something or someone as it has to do with the location of something or someone… holy means being “set apart” for God or dedicated to God.
A number of years ago, a certain commercial aired on television that always made me laugh. I don’t know if it runs any more these days or not but I’m sure it was an ad for a credit card company and I recall that it went something like this: Two women happen upon each other while shopping in the produce section of a grocery store. As they are inspecting their potential purchases, one woman inspects the other and assumes the other is pregnant. “Oh, you must be having a boy,” she coos, “When are you due?” The other woman so accused, in a tone of voice crisper than the beans in the bin between them, snaps back: “I’m not pregnant! What are you saying?!” The reality of the situation hits the woman who cooed too soon and the only words she can think to serve in return there in the produce aisle are, “Thank you?”
The words are completely out of place and not entirely sincere, dished up with hesitation at first, but as the scowl of the sizeable but not expectant stranger softens at the sound of them, they are presented a second time with complete confidence, “Thank you! In a matter of seconds, with the offering of two simple words, two human beings who could have just as easily had it out with each other embrace in the space created by gratitude. Their audience releases a sigh of relief and likely makes a mental note to keep the wonder-working words within retrieving reach for real-life situations that call for holy rebellion. At first blush this somewhat silly illustration wouldn’t appear to represent anything akin to rebellion, much less anything approaching holy, but with more than a passing glance, we just might catch a glimpse of just that: holy rebellion. When we step into the shoes of the strangers in the grocery store, we likely find them a comfortable fit because we’ve said or done things that have offended or hurt or confused or angered others. Our all-too-human blundering thus creates situations in which we must manage ourselves in the waves of the all-too-human thundering of reactions and responses that arise. Our self- management often looks like “oh, just let it rip” or “dig in: do whatever it takes to win” because our all-too-human instinct is to do “what comes naturally” and to respond in kind.
The women in the grocery store could have just as easily had it out with each other over an innocent misunderstanding. We can imagine the unpleasant exchange that might have taken place if the one who cooed too soon had chosen to trump the accused’s crispy tone of voice with cutting words… Cutting words would have given rise to biting words and biting words to stabbing words and stabbing words to raging words and who knows what would have come next as all-too-quickly the situation could have escalated to full-blown conflict. It was the holy rebellion of the one who blundered in blurting her words based on assumption that saved the day. Rather than filling the rift between them with “responding in kind” or with “what comes naturally,” she chose to grace the space with gratitude. Rebelling against the all-too-human urge to “let it rip” and “do whatever it takes to win,” she invited a measure of holiness into their encounter.
Television commercials certainly do not offer any authoritative instruction for us in managing ourselves in the face of real-life situations but Scripture clearly does – Scripture and the God who is revealed through it in the life of Jesus Christ. It is from the lips of Jesus that we hear the uncomfortable words, “Turn the other cheek” and “love your enemies,” words which might prompt the all-too-human response: “Yeah, right – like that works in the real world!” But in the slice of Scripture before us this evening, we see and hear Jesus’ powerful blessing of one example of the rebellion against our all-too-human urges… a rebellion that invites a measure of holiness into the space of our real lives.
We must appreciate Luke’s slant on the Gospel which shows up in this story, a slant that sings the praises of those who see Jesus as the Savior of a world, people who were not only Jews but also Gentiles, not only Pharisees but also tax collectors, not only the rich but also the poor, not only the well but also the sick. So in telling the story of Jesus’ encounter with the ten lepers, Luke dishes up a healthy portion of holy rebellion that goes something like this: On the border between Galilee and Samaria, which was really the rift between the clean and the unclean, the accepted and the unacceptable, the land of the insiders and the territory of the outsiders, ten men suffering because of a skin condition believed to be contagious and dangerous which rendered them unfit for living among the well cried out to the man known as Jesus who had a reputation for healing the sick. Jesus responded with instructions appropriate for one familiar with Jewish religious practice: “Go and show yourselves to a priest.” It was the priest who could inspect one once unclean and declare that one clean, one previously sick and pronounce that one well, one formerly unfit for living in community and deem that one worthy of inclusion.
Jesus’ instructions signaled to the ten that they were, as of that very moment, healed and that they could be restored to their lives among the well again upon following the proper religious protocol. Who among us wouldn’t want an all-new-and-improved life?! Who among us wouldn’t consider anything other than finding a priest as quickly as possible?! The ten men responded in perfect obedience, striking out in the direction of the temple to find a priest and the confirmation of their healing. Eager to experience the embrace of their loved ones, excited about the prospect of resuming a “normal” life working, shopping, sharing a cup of coffee in community again, their all-too-human impulses drove them to fill the rift in their lives first and foremost with their own desires. They followed the path of acceptable religious practice but missed the turn that led to worshipping the ground the Savior of the world walked on. Only one put on the brakes to change direction in holy rebellion.
The Samaritan got it – the one for whom it meant all the more to be healed by Jesus. A Samaritan – the outsider, the outcast, the unclean, the unfit for inclusion in the chosen people of Israel – a Samaritan rebelled against his all-too-human urge to “do what comes naturally,” which was, in this case, to seek the gratification of his desires first and foremost. Instead, he invited the full measure of holiness – the blessing of God – into his encounter with Jesus. In Luke’s choice of Greek words, it is this one who is not just physically healed but eternally saved, not just restored to human community but brought into right relationship with the Divine. What a gift to receive for managing to respond in rebellious resistance against our all-too-human impulses rather than in complacent conformity to them! That’s the gift that fills the rift between God and humanity: grace… grace which arises out of God’s love… grace to which we respond in selfless gratitude. It’s the gift we celebrate here this evening because we’ve have responded in selfless gratitude, resisting the urge to seek the gratification our all-too-human desires first and foremost, managing instead to turn in the direction that leads us to the feet of the Savior of the world where we worship the one who heals and saves us. We could be somewhere/anywhere else tonight, especially with preparations for Thanksgiving. We could have embraced the notion as many have that going to church is out-dated and that worshipping God in community is really not necessary. But we are here and it took an intentional decision for us to be here. So apparently somewhere in our bones we’ve gotten it – that anything and everything we claim to “have” in life is from God, is of God… and what we do with all of it is for God…. Of course, responding in selfless gratitude works really well for us in real-life situations in which we are the recipients of healing and acceptance and restoration – positive outcomes which easily prompt us to kick off our shoes on the holy ground of praise – but what of experiences in which there is hurt and confusion and anger? How do we raise our praise in the pinch of difficult and painful situations?
With God not only ON our side but also BY our side… and even on the inside… we may manage ourselves not according to our all-too-human instincts, doing “what comes naturally” but rather what comes freely in response to God’s gracious and more-than-sufficient love. Life in holy rebellion could look something like this: Thank you, God, for these relationships (these friends, this marriage, my family) in which I get to discover what it means to give myself to someone who doesn’t always agree with me and to commit myself to someone who doesn’t always treat me as I’d like to be treated. I choose not to retaliate!
Thank you, Lord, for giving me the opportunity to show other students at school (or co-workers at work) that their abuse doesn’t undo me and their ugliness doesn’t affect me because I know that you have made me beautiful in your sight. I choose not to respond in kind! Thank you, Jesus, for the power to witness to others who would lead me astray by tempting me to live for myself, encouraging me to seek the satisfaction of my desires first and foremost when I know that my life is from you and in you and for you alone. I choose not to cave in and conform!
Thank you, Savior of the world, for stopping along the way to invite me into your healing presence wherever I am and in whatever situations I find myself because in you there is grace enough to manage holy rebellion against each and every all-too-human instinct that would fill the rifts between me and others of my kind with stuff that deepens the divide between us. I choose to turn my life in your direction!
Thank you… two words that are always just right when they dish up genuine gratitude and perfect praise – our holy rebellion which puts the brakes on all that leads us away from the Savior that we may find ourselves healed and whole at his feet and may, with complete confidence, say: THANK YOU!
THE PERFECT DIET Ephesians 1:15-23 Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24 Sunday, November 20, 2011 – Christ the King Sunday Several days ago, I posted a comment on the church’s Facebook page wondering whether I was inviting trouble with a sermon titled “The Perfect Diet” on the Sunday prior to Thanksgiving. One of you responded: “You won’t get any trouble from me, if the perfect diet includes pumpkin pie with whipped cream.” Needless to say, that’s a mighty big “IF”! It’s actually pretty interesting to think about how often we think about food… and not so much because we are hungry but just because we love the stuff! Our KWT kids always mention FOOD as one of the best things about the day. Within any given week’s time, if you’ll stop to listen, you’ll hear people mentioning what is for them delicious, tantalizing, addicting, can’t-wait-to-get-a-plateful-of-it FOOD: chocolate… black olives… gooey mac & cheese… anything in garlic & butter… pumpkin pie with whipped cream… Holiday celebrations are defined by food. Moods are altered by food. Schedules are organized around food. Special occasions are marked by food. If it’s true that we are what we eat, then we are a smorgasbord of foods we love to eat simply for the pleasure they bring to our taste buds. Anybody thinking about food?! We’re a rotten lot, aren’t we? For most of us, anyway, the foods we enjoy and love have become much more to us than nourishment for our bodies. There’s often an emotional component to what we pile on our plates – why else will we sometimes speak of “comfort food”? It is almost as if we hope that eating for the pleasure of eating foods we love will somehow satisfy something deeper in us, some unnamed craving or… to use a popular spiritual word… a certain hunger somewhere in us. We didn’t make this up… Adam and Eve started it with that apple that was way more than a piece of fruit. The tempter (that voice within us which whispers like a snake ready to strike wherever we’re most vulnerable) tapped into that desire in the first humans which is in all of us humans for something, anything to make us feel MORE… more of whatever it is we think we lack so we’ll feel more… more confident, more competent, more accepted, more at peace, more loveable, more together. We’d like to fill in the cracks in our character, plug up the holes of our weaknesses, and smother the gaps of our inadequacies with something we can’t seem to find or manufacture within ourselves. Another helping of mashed potatoes and could you pass the gravy too, please? The Scriptures don’t seem to tease the two apart much, if at all… the body’s need for food and the human’s need for more. “Daily bread” is both literally the loaf we toast and slather with jam as the day breaks and the patience, grace, strength, clarity, purpose, affirmation and whatever else we may need to get through the hours that follow until the night falls. God knows we are not only a rotten lot who crave the pleasure of eating foods we love but also a lot of lost but not forgotten sheep who need a Shepherd who knows where the best pastures are which will provide all that is needed. God knows how we are put together. And God cannot abide an unfulfilled hunger of any kind in us… we sheep who wander so in search of something, anything to make us feel that MORE we think we lack. It’s not always food we use to try to quash the craving… sometimes we pass on the squash casserole and pursue the illusive More in helpings of gambling, shopping, chatting, stealing, speeding, and the Big Three we caution our youth about while sometimes needing a second serving ourselves: sex, drugs and alcohol. Family members are grieving today and a community along with them because a bright and promising young woman suffered from a craving so strong, so deep, so consuming, no amount of anything could satisfy it. There’s a Cherokee legend that describes an old man teaching his grandson about the realities of life. The elder says, “A fight is going on inside me. It is a terrible fight. It is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person too.” After thinking about his grandfather’s words, the young boy asked, “Which wolf will win? The wise old man sighed and replied, “The one you feed.” By all accounts of what Ezekiel saw of the God who cannot abide an unfulfilled hunger of any kind in us, God is grieving today too… with us and for us as well. The prophet paints a pretty graphic picture… fat sheep pushing the skinny ones around, shoving them away from the thickest, greenest patches in the pasture so they can chow down and fatten up… greedy, aggressive, selfish sheep acting like the shepherd won’t see that they’ve embodied the voice of the tempter, striking the vulnerable whenever they get in the way of the pursuit of the illusive More. The prophet assures us that God has zero tolerance for bullying in the good grazing land: the voice of the tempter doesn’t have the last word on the mountain heights where the Shepherd King is on watch. For the sake of the lean and battered lambs, God destroys the fat and sassy sheep and not by slaughtering them… but by feeding them… feeding them at a table prepared for them in the presence of their enemy appetites… feeding them graciously so they wouldn’t explode of their own obsessive search for the illusive More… feeding them the juice of justice to improve their eyesight so they could see how their insatiable greed was starving off part of their very own kind… feeding them the perfect diet. When we’ve got pizza on the brain a diet shake is hard to swallow. God destroys the fat and sassy sheep by feeding them just what they need to become trim and fit giving the rest of the flock the opportunity to become trim and fit instead of lean and depleted. God’s justice is the perfect diet for the whole flock of whole persons so that not a one will be lost. And it turns out that the perfect diet isn’t a patch in a pasture but a person in a world of hurt, a person named Jesus who spoke with the voice of a Good Shepherd. There was a time when it appeared that the hurt of the world fed by a steady diet of unfulfilled need as it listened to the voice of the tempter had the last word. It was a horrifying word that sounded a lot like silence after Jesus cried out to the God who cannot abide an unfulfilled need of any kind and then died, skewered on a stake and set up on a hill to bake in the heat of the day… and only because he wanted to share the recipe for the perfect diet… he himself being the only ingredient. He tried to tell everyone who would listen with words rich and dripping of the Truth: I am the bread of life. For all who heard and believed, it was the perfect diet… all they needed from the breaking of day to the falling of night. But there were those who couldn’t believe what their ears had heard and so for them, and for we who see and hear him only in faith – for all the lost but not forgotten sheep of the world – God broke the seal of his silent tomb. And because God cannot abide an unfulfilled need of any kind, God resurrected our only hope, our only Lord, the Shepherd King Jesus. Many have found their lives never to be quite the same since being embraced by this single-ingredient perfect diet. By all accounts of those who walked with him and talked with him and touched him before he breathed a last word which unleashed his fiery Spirit, he more than satisfied every craving that gives rise to the search for the illusive More. “Peace” he said and meant it as only the voice of God can mean it and make it so. “Not this world’s peace” he said to be certain the sheep of his fold would understand where he had come from, where he was going, and where he remains to this day… the Shepherd King seated in power at God’s right hand. It is his peace that provides for our confidence, our competence, our accepted-ness, our loveable-ness, our togetherness. He reminds us that he put the cracks in our character, the holes of our weaknesses, and the gaps of our inadequacies in us so that we’d look to him for all we can’t seem to find or manufacture within ourselves. And his never-silent Word assures us that his every prayer is for our good. When one whose life had been changed by the perfect diet tried to write to others (in Ephesus) who’d had a taste and found themselves to be not quite the same since, that writer piled words upon words upon words… layers of praise for the risen Christ whose power cannot be measured and whose reign over this world of hurt is for the good of his church, his body which bears his name. For the good of his church does he still work in this world of hurt to bring to the table of justice the fat and sassy sheep which starve us from within and without for the sake of the whole flock of whole persons… so that not a one will be lost. It is into his Church that he pours himself so that we sheep will have all we need… all we need from the breaking of day to the falling of night, from the rising of the Son to the resurrection of the Son’s Body which, in grace, includes ours. Another slice of pumpkin pie with whipped cream? Oh, go ahead! Just don’t expect it to satisfy you as only the God who cannot abide an unfulfilled need of any kind can… for of the Good Shepherd’s peace, there are always seconds coming our way! For that, for him who is the single ingredient in the perfect diet, let us give thanks!
TO OCCUPY OR BE OCCUPIED – THAT IS THE QUESTION Psalm 90:1-12 I Thessalonians 5:1-11 Sunday, November 13, 2011
Imagine a small auditorium on a small college campus tucked away in the North Carolina mountains packed with over 1,000 high school students, along with another hundred or so adult leaders… all there for a national youth conference. It is opening night so the energy level is through the roof, fueled by the excitement of those who have been there before, the anxiety of those who haven’t and are nervous and overwhelmed, and hormones – they’re teenagers after all! From the stage at the front of auditorium, leaders introduce themselves and some of what they will be leading during the week: music, keynote presentations, and “energizers” which are crazy, silly, get-up-out-of-your-pew-and-move kind of activities set to music designed to… you guessed it: energize the crowd… not necessary the first night but helpful for the morning sessions the rest of the week.
There is an energizer that is always done that first evening just after the names of all the states represented in the room are read out. It’s always amazing to hear how far youth groups travel to go to the Montreat Youth Conference… hours and even days. So the energizer makes fun of what might be heard during the trip there… the same kinds of things that are often heard during family trips with children on board. The auditorium is divided into four groups, each of which has a line to say at just the right time during the energizer as the leaders point in their direction. The lines are “Are we there yet?” “I gotta go!” “He’s touching me!” “She touched me first!” It’s easy to laugh because we’ve been there… we know what it’s like… and not just traveling with children and youth… but especially those last two lines which point in the direction of someone else who becomes the culprit when we feel violated in some way, our personal “space” invaded, our beliefs battered, our integrity interrupted, our confidence punctured. It’s their fault… they crossed the line… she’s the problem… he’s got to be called on the carpet…
It has been all over the news for the past couple of months: the “Occupy” movement. It started with Occupy Wall Street and has spread like wildfire to over 1,500 locations worldwide. The movement is driven by protest, is described as resistance, and is organized as a “people’s assembly.” Well, people have been assembling all over the place, there’s been a whole lot of protesting going on, and it’s pretty clear at least in broad brushstrokes what the assembled protestors are resisting. A Google search will send a searcher swimming through pages and pages of information where one can find the movement’s declaration, the opening statements of which draw lines of separation between two groupings of the world’s population: “the corporate forces of the world” and “all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world.” The declaration continues with a list of twenty-three assertions about corporations. The statements may all be accurate to some degree or the statements may all be generalized for convenience but all of the statements begin with “THEY.” They have done this, they have done that, they continue to do this, they are doing that. There we go… apparently it’s just our nature. Draw the lines. Size up, sift and sort everybody so that they fall in place on one side or the other. Bring out the markers and apply the labels: us/them; right/wrong; good/bad; nice/mean; friend/foe; occupiers/occupied; children of light/children of darkness. There you have it: a neat and tidy world as long as everyone stays in place and the categories never change.
But no one stays in place and most everything changes eventually and yes, sometimes sooner than later because people assemble and protest and resist until reform happens… this isn’t something new under the sun. No organization, no matter how small or large, formal or informal, is immune from corruption because everything runs largely under human power… corporations, governments, businesses, schools, churches, households. Many of us, maybe even most all of us would agree that there’s always room for improvement, for greater health, for stronger cooperation, for deeper respect. The issue is how to help bring that about.
Maybe it would be interesting if Occupy Wall Street protestors were invited to sit on the boards of corporations or were hired by them to begin to address the issues from within rather than from a park in New York City! To occupy or be occupied – that is the question. Occupy Wall Street’s declaration addresses the “people of the world” and urges them/us to “assert your power, exercise your right to peaceably assemble, and [to] occupy public space.” Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I have ZERO comprehension of all things political but it seems to me that that’s what we are doing here today… at least the assembling and occupying space parts. We can’t help it while we live and move and have being in the world… we will inevitably assemble and occupy space. We are families and communities and schools and churches and we get together and we take up room when we do. It’s that “assert your power” part that is the slippery slope we venture on to when we assemble and occupy space. It’s the how we go about bringing about improvement, health, cooperation and respect that can trip us up. To occupy or be occupied – that is the question.
To OCCUPY seems to imply some degree of control. When we occupy a house, we get to put the furniture in it that we like and we get to arrange how we like it. We speak of military troops occupying foreign territory, presumably by force and with some measure of control.
To BE OCCUPIED seems to suggest very little if any control. We are not as familiar with being occupied we might think unless we have breath in our lungs we didn’t invite in and a heart that pumps blood to its own rhythm and gifts and abilities and personality traits and tendencies we didn’t sign up for before we were born.
We are both – those who occupy and those who are occupied. Our Scripture readings today remind us that we will not occupy space on earth in this form forever and that we cannot know when our time will be up or when the fulfillment of God’s reign in Jesus Christ will be complete so… what now?
“Teach us to count our days” the Psalmist prays to the God who is in control of we who are created… teach us so we’ll be wise… so we’ll make life-affirming, righteous and just, liberating and loving choices – choices that bring us in line with God’s desires – while we occupy space assembling together with breath in our lungs.
“Encourage one another and build up each other” Paul writes to the children of light gathered up in a particular time long ago and place called Thessalonica… words we receive as having been inspired by the Spirit of God… words which shape our life together as we are gathered up in this time and space.
You are already doing it, Paul points out, so don’t stop now even in the face of life’s uncertainties… don’t hesitate for one moment because that moment will not come again… don’t worry that you won’t get it “right” because you already have everything you need: that you are even together is a sign that you are occupied by a God of grace who gives you not only flesh and blood but also faith, hope, and love. Crazy as it sounds, the Occupy Wall Street movement has received a similar proposal. It is called “Things We Love.” Instead of firmly drawing the lines that separate people, it proposes that the places where it’s possible to stand together be celebrated. The intent is to “inspire participation” and the proposal’s language is incredibly encouraging: “With all that is wrong in our society and culture and all the problems the occupy movement has begun to address, there is no doubt that there are many things – things that already exist – that OWS feels very, very good about. And with all of the world asking us who we are and what we are doing here, Things We Love believes that OWS has a huge opportunity to focus light and attention on a very wide range of things in our world in a way that is positive and uplifting.”
Almost sounds like a church… although don’t we wish all of the world was asking us who we are and what we are doing here?!
Paul says it clearly: we are children of light, wide awake to the precious gift of life God has given us, living under the occupation of the Holy Spirit and guarded by faith, hope and love, encouraging and building up one another. Even if we’ve not intentionally thought about it, we have our own list of “Things We Love” as Christians and as a congregation. We’ve enjoyed a great celebration of our music ministry this morning – something we love! We are about to slide into the Season of Advent with the gathering of the greens today and an Advent Event next Sunday during which there will be activities for all ages and popcorn to go around as we prepare ourselves for celebrating the birth of Christ – many things we love! Next Sunday morning Thank You cards and pledges will be dedicated and Prayer Partners will be exchanged – all indications that we are bound up together in this body called Church – something we love! It is when we are gathered together that we realize the lines that could separate and the labels that could divide us have no power over us.
To occupy or be occupied – that is the question! As we are so richly blessed to occupy space together in this patch of the planet, may we be occupied with the Holy Spirit who helps us as we encourage one another and build up each other until the Kingdom comes!
Are we there yet? Apparently not… so let’s keep going because there are lives to touch with the grace of God who touches us first! To that God, our dwelling place God, be honor and glory now and forevermore!
WHEN GOD ROCKS AND ROLLS Amos 5:18-24 Matthew 25:1-13 Sunday, November 6, 2011
Whether we are the kind of person who thoroughly enjoys, delights in, looks forward to, and even lives for social events, large-group gatherings, parties, weddings, dances, and community get-togethers or not, it certainly feels good to at least be invited!. And whether we’re the kind of person who thoroughly enjoys, delights in, looks forward to, and even lives for social events or not, learning that one is about to take place that we’ve not been invited to can bruise our sensitive egos just a wee bit.
Friends are prone to do it… families occasionally do it… churches are notorious for it… intentionally or accidentally leaving someone out… out of the communication loop, off the invitation list, out of contact, off the radar screen of remembrance.
The bruise to our egos becomes even greater when our hopes for and desires to be included are higher, of more importance to us… so the garden club and the bowling league might be on one level and our families and life-long friends would be on another. The church may well be bumped up a notch or three because we walk around with this crazy (Biblical) notion in our heads and hearts that the church somehow embodies Christ in the world and that seems pretty important.
We will often find it within ourselves to forgive a friend or family member who left us out when something was going on or who forgot something we wish s/he had remembered but when a wound has been inflicted by a congregation… by its forgetfulness or neglect or cliquishness or secrecy… or by its teaching or policy or unexamined practice that some are included and others are not, that these matter but those, not so much… the bruise to an ego often swells to an all-out infection which may lead to very deep resentment which could harden into a grudge that all the explanations, justifications and apologies in the world cannot heal.
It gets tricky to say the least… holding in balance that we are an imperfect collection of human beings doing the best we can (or so we think) with what we’ve got and that we are those who have been called by God and claimed in Jesus Christ and equipped with the Holy Spirit – a community set apart to embody the life of Christ and the nature of God in the world. We’re fond of offering that we’re not able to be any more than we already are and that we don’t have a clue how to be or do any differently than we’ve already been being and doing but we know in our bones that’s no leg to stand on when we face the God who rocks and rolls through our history as God has from the beginning.
GOD. Oh, yes, and then there’s God… God personally – the deity whom we both revere and represent… oh, how it can worry us whether God accepts us, invites and includes us or not!
We read and hear these two texts today and could easily feel like we’ve been (to use a Southern expression) “slapped upside the head.” If God didn’t receive any pleasure from and therefore rejected the worship of God’s people in Amos’ day, even though it appeared they were presenting the right offerings and songs in proper sequence, and if God slams the door shut on half of the bridal attendants just because they weren’t good Scouts and weren’t prepared for the Bridegroom to take his sweet time before showing up, what are we to believe? How are we to be and do before the God who seems to rock like an earthquake and roll like thunder in our small and fragile lives?
Last Wednesday during KWT, we started to learn a song about Zechariah who didn’t believe the seemingly outrageous and ridiculous news flash from an angel that his old wife Elizabeth would have a baby. Because he didn’t believe, so the story goes, the angel told Zechariah that he wouldn’t be able to speak until that baby was born. One of our youngsters piped up and said, “That’s a mean angel!”
Well, that’s one take on the story… look out for God’s messengers because the news they share will change your life and there’ll be consequences if you don’t believe it! Could there not also be another take on the story… that Zechariah had fallen so deeply into the rut of an ordinary human life spinning its wheels in the midst of ho-hum history that God’s interruption into it all with a promise of something NEW seemed too good to be true? Zechariah’s ears could take in the words but his heart wasn’t prepared to embrace a God who would grace him beyond his small and fragile imaginings!
So maybe the angel wasn’t mean; maybe the angel just wanted Zechariah to know that God means what God says and, more importantly, that God takes seriously our human response even when God seems a tad outrageous or more than a wee bit ridiculous.
The people of God in Amos’ day had gotten it all down pat… which offerings to present in proper sequence… the going up offering, the gift offering, the peace offering… and they had memorized the words to all the praise songs and figured out which instruments sounded the best for each one… it was all just for show. It didn’t make any difference in their in-between worship services lives. Well, God’s not interested in our going through the motions… God is interested in genuine engagement between human and divine. God is not pleased by hollow appearances or empty liturgy… God wants to be loved and listened to and woven into the fabric of our small and fragile lives... for real, honest-to-goodness, cross God’s heart and didn’t Jesus die?
God, through the prophet, cleared the dance floor of all the fake props so that God and the people God so dearly loved could really get down to some rocking and rolling… with changed lives for the sake of a changed world. Justice… what’s proper for the planet according to God’s design… that’s what rocks our world. And righteousness… what’s honorable for relationships according to God’s desires… that’s what rolls through our history… both elements in God’s life-giving, life-renewing, life-changing waters.
The people of God Amos shook up were already the people of God… they just weren’t living into their identity. So, too, were all ten of the bridesmaids included in the wedding party but only half realized what an honor it was to be. One take on Matthew’s Jesus might be that he seems mean but another is that it is incredibly gracious of God to clue us in on how much our response to being included in the family of God matters to God. The parable isn’t about the stinginess of some who leave others out in the cold: it is a wake-up call for us to stretch our hearts to receive God’s acceptance of us, living into that and keeping our dancing shoes polished for the God who rocks us in a cradle of love and rolls out the red carpet for us.
There are some gifts which cannot be shared… and a personal relationship with God by grace through faith is one of them.
We may learn from one another – oh, yes; we may grow in faith together – absolutely; some of one’s love of God might ignite another’s – you bet! But no one can “do” a personal relationship with God for anyone else. As helpful and polite as it may have seemed for the five bridesmaids to direct the other five to someone who could allegedly supply what they lacked, the bottom line is that half missed out because they even though they already had what they most needed – an invitation from the Bridegroom who was so hoping they would hold out for a relationship worth waiting for – they couldn’t believe it with all their heart, mind, soul and strength: the outrageous and ridiculous news that they, of all people, were included in God’s party.
When God rocks and rolls we may feel a little shaking going on… but only because God wants us to wake up to the abundant life God desires for us! We might feel the thundering of the love God has for us which continues to clear all the fake props from the dance floor so that we may earnestly, honestly, genuinely, and graciously be God’s partners engaged in the party now and on into eternity!
Our history need not be ho-hum as it rocks to the rhythms of God’s grace which keeps our heads spinning with the outrageous and ridiculous news that we, of all people, are God’s people, God’s children called together, belonging together, needing one another together, standing equally together before the God who has rolled out the red carpet once again and bids us come… come with outstretched hands and stretched-open hearts to be fed a foretaste of the wedding feast… so let us come and take it all in once again: God’s grace, God’s love, God’s justice and righteousness which invites us as we are which is as we have been remade in Jesus Christ. So let us come and as we come, let’s not forget our dancing shoes!
LIFE IN THE ECHO CHAMBER I John 3:1-3 Revelation 7:9-17 All Saints Sunday: October 30, 2011 Janet’s eyes squeezed shut for a little less than a minute… squeezed shut the way we humans do sometimes when we’re struggling to remember something… searching to retrieve a word, a memory, a connection… but Janet’s eyes were squeezed shut because it was all there for her: the words, the memories, the connections to a man she dearly loved for more than thirty years – her husband and, as she would say, her best friend. Mike was tragically killed in a single-vehicle accident as April was about to turn into May. Their bags were packed for a weekend get-away to the mountains, a small celebration anticipating a much larger one honoring their thirty years of marriage that was to have taken place later in the year. Mike was a man with the energy of a five-year-old bottled up in a fifty-year-old body. He was passionately dedicated to his wife and two children, to his church, to his church’s Scouting program, and to his church’s involvement in mission efforts in Chiapas, Mexico. Janet’s eyes squeezed shut as she recounted the events leading up to that week in July she spent in Mexico on a mission trip she and Mike had planned to lead together, a trip that had become a destination for some of Mike’s ashes… a place of grace where words and memories and connections could be celebrated in two languages. Both of their children were to have gone but their son struggled with the commitment to follow through with this farewell to the father he dearly loved. Janet’s eyes squeezed shut because she could still hear Mike’s voice and not just the sound of it but the words he would have said had he been there beside her… the wise words Janet allowed to guide her as she sadly made arrangements for their son to remain behind in North Carolina. That’s life in the echo chamber… this life we all enjoy and celebrate because it is rich and vibrant with the words and memories and connections of others who have brought wisdom and passion and commitment and joy and faith into our lives for a time, a time in the past that continues into the present as the echoes are heard in our hearts and minds. This is a day for thanking God for those voices we once heard daily, every now and then or even on a rare occasion… voices we may still hear because of the impression they left on the shape of our lives. Technically, Tuesday is The Day… All Saint’s Day… but we are observing it together today in anticipation and because it is appropriate that we celebrate such an occasion together. In my couple of months here, I have already heard the names of several to be celebrated as we thank God for life in the echo chamber… names of folks who once sat in worship where you are sitting now… people who shared their words of wisdom and passion and commitment and joy and faith… women and men, young and old, whose lives collided with yours in grace, leaving a lasting impression on you, on this congregation, on this community. You probably know it already but it bears being reminded that what we now call Halloween started out as All Hallows’ Eve… the night before All Saints’ Day… an occasion when people would gather together dressed up as someone else but not as fictitious characters but as real people to honor and celebrate… those who were “hallowed” or considered holy. It was an occasion to praise God for life in the echo chamber. Curiously, neither of the Scripture readings before us this morning mentions “saints.” The word is sprinkled all through the vivid vision given to John which we know as Revelation but does not surface in the slice that shows up in the readings for All Saints’ Day. The Greek word is strewn throughout the New Testament but is most often translated “holy” rather than “saint” because it is, at its root, an adjective and not a noun (as in “Holy” Spirit)… all of which is to say that when we refer to someone as a “saint,” it is a way of describing who they are becoming in grace rather than identifying what they have made of themselves. We have the tendency to think that to describe someone as a saint means that they are near-perfect… better than the rest of us in their performance in life, particularly when it comes to matters of faith. But, truth be told, being a saint has nothing to do with our achievement or merit but rather everything to do with the God who breathes into us the breath of life and seals us with the Holy Spirit who offers us all the wisdom and guidance any human being could need to be a saint if we’re willing to accept it. So the Scripture readings today are perfect for us as we have gathered together to celebrate life in the echo chamber. Bob Stockton was a seemingly permanent fixture at the door of the church on Sunday mornings and with his wrinkled face and snow-white hair he not only favored Colonel Sanders… he also looked ancient to a twelve-year- old… but this preteen could hardly wait to run up to the door of the church where Bob stood guard because Bob stood guard with an arm that had an automatic reflex to reach out and wrap itself around my shoulder and give it a squeeze. For some reason unknown to me then and understood by me now only as grace, Bob adopted me as his “little buddy.” I can still hear his voice, his words of greeting as his automatic arm gave my shoulder a squeeze: “How’s my little buddy today?” Bob was a saint if ever there was one in that church and not because he stood guard at its door but because he breathed deeply of God’s breath and let it out all over everyone every chance he got. Bob taught me I John 3:1-3, not by quoting it but by living it. That’s life in the echo chamber. Voices from the past shaping us still today… voices which enrich us because they are loaded with the love of God that not only calls us children but turns us into children… voices which leave impressions because they create connections… voices which will never be silenced… Or so it would seem according to the revelation given to John! No one can be quiet in God’s presence! Apparently the first thing that comes out of the mouth of the saints who are gathered up around the throne of God is a profession of faith: “Salvation belongs to God and to the Lamb!” Voices which once breathed deeply of the breath of God now letting it out for good in praise of the God who granted it in the first place… voices released in every language known on earth now heard in heaven prompting the angels to sing in praise of the God they serve. Oh, how the religious can raise a ruckus! And well we should… we who breathe deeply of the breath of God letting it out in praise every chance we get… we, the religious but not in any institutional way but in the root-of-that-word way: we who are bound up together (the same root gives us the word ligament) are family here and now and are a multinational/multicultural/multilingual multitude gathered up and in and around God’s throne there and then… always, at all times and in all places with a voice to raise in praise and proclamation. That’s life in the echo chamber. We who are children of God shaped by the wisdom and passion and commitment and joy and faith of those folks who are now part of that multitude but who once enriched our lives by their professions of faith – both spoken and embodied. We who are children of God in the family of faith now who have daily opportunities, every now and then openings, even rare occasions to share words, make memories, create connections that teach others how to pray and praise, how to honor and celebrate, how to live bound up together in this life in the echo chamber where one day our voices will be but a memory bouncing off the walls of other folk’s hearts. What will they hear then of us now? Wisdom? Passion? Commitment? Joy? Faith? We who breathe deeply of the breath of God may let it out all over the place in ways that honor and praise the God who gave it in the first place. As one seminary professor has said: “Saintliness – in loved ones who have died and in living role models – encourages and orients us, both for individual sanctification and for congregational growth. When the congregation is a ‘communion of grace,’ it is the curriculum from which new members and outsiders learn how to live as Christians.” That’s life in the echo chamber… the religious raises a ruckus that lifts the roof of the sanctuary a notch or two closer to the throne of God and that praises the God whose love makes us as holy as the Lamb who leads us from life into life everlasting! Now… deep breaths! In a moment, we will voice our profession of faith and sing our praise that this chamber may echo God’s love in as many words and ways as the Spirit inspires… the same Spirit who led the faithful in the past and who leads us today… the same Spirit who inspired the writers of Scripture and who recently inspired one teenager participating in Confirmation to say: “God loves everyone, but it’s the ones who know it who enjoy it the most!” That’s praise and proclamation worth repeating that it may echo in our hearts and minds and be reflected in our living to the glory of God! Alleluia! Amen!
BE BOLD, BE FOOLISH, BUT BE HAPPY Psalm 1 I Thessalonians 2:1-8 Sunday, October 23, 2011 Sarah Ott was in the eighth grade, a year ahead of me, and she lived down around the corner and two streets over. Sarah’s mother was my third grade teacher and Sarah and Sarah’s mother were members of my church which, for me, even in the seventh grade, meant that there was a bond between us that was thicker than being acquaintances or even friends. Sarah didn’t ride the bus - she walked home from school. I asked to walk with her so walk we did, the two of us with that indestructible bond between us. It was a little bit of a struggle for Sarah to walk home and not so much because she was pigeon-toed and a little on the heavy side and not so much because of her half-inch-thick glasses but because of the teasing, the taunting, the shouts that would shred her to pieces. At first I walked along in silence taking it all in, that barrage of abuse polluting the air and wounding the spirit of Sarah Ott to whom I was bound like a sister. And then it happened: after a particularly devastating description that stabbed at her spirit and stung so deeply she started to cry, I launched our defense in her tormentors’ direction. YOU LEAVE HER ALONE; SHE’S MY FRIEND! Without a thought for my personal popularity, without consideration of the verbal abuse that might come my way, without hesitation I took my stand at Sarah’s side because there was a bond between us whose name is Jesus Christ. I might have been labeled weird but apparently if I was going to be weird in the world, I was going to be weird for Jesus. About a decade ago, I was living in Charlotte and working as a paralegal for a large, uptown law firm while serving a small church north of Charlotte on the weekends. My job included taking documents to the Federal Courthouse to be filed. As you might guess, I walked the half-dozen blocks between the Hearst Tower and the Courthouse, grateful for the opportunity to escape the confines of my cubicle. One afternoon as I passed by the First Presbyterian Church, a young man grinning like a fool took a step toward me and asked, “Do you know Jesus?” I couldn’t help myself – I laughed and said, “I never leave home without him!” Gutsy, I thought to myself, to stand on the streets of a city known best for the Bank of America and shout out for Jesus… gutsy and weird. The next time I saw him, he was the one who laughed; “I know,” he said, “you never leave home without him!” Worse things in life to be known for than being weird in the world for Jesus. That’s the invitation that is before each and every one of us who wear the name of Jesus wherever we are: be weird in the world for Jesus. Better yet, BE BOLD! Be way weird for Jesus. Say your words with grace. Lace your actions with love. Come out in the open with full-blown compassion. You might turns heads. You may turn a heart or two inside out and upside down and in Jesus’ direction. You could do that because you are one weird walking witness for Jesus in the world. You know, the Apostle Paul is sometimes bashed for being brash… arrogant, boastful, self-serving. But Paul’s confidence wasn’t in himself after his conversion – it was in the God who called him out and turned him around 180 degrees. Being an apostle wasn’t Paul’s idea – it was God’s. Witnessing to a resurrected rabbi wasn’t on his list of career choices. Unlike other crooks around at the time who could stir up a crowd with charismatic speeches they themselves didn’t believe in and then reel in gobs of ill-gotten gains, being bold for the gospel of Jesus Christ cost Paul personally and dearly. But he couldn’t help himself and so he didn’t: he witnessed loudly and largely wherever the Spirit sent him. He left a successful career in the religion business to be as weird as anyone can be for Jesus in the world. He even risked being FOOLISH for Jesus’s sake. The Medieval Feast aside, how many men want to be considered a woman? Tender and gentle… I’m not talking about professional football players who do needlepoint because they are “in touch with their feminine side” but a man begging to be understood as a mother lovingly devoted to her children. Would a former Pharisee sign up for that? That’s exactly what Paul said about himself and exactly how Paul acted. Paul was passionately concerned for the wellbeing of the baby believers he felt responsible for, even risking being considered a fool as he nurtured new-born communities of faith toward maturity. It was nuts. He was criticized like crazy. He is still misunderstood and misinterpreted. He was simply willing to be weird in the world for Jesus no matter what. Two college freshmen roommates were talking as they were getting to know each other; they were sharing their hopes for the future, their dreams for life after graduation. One described her desire to marry a doctor, be financially secure, live in a nice house and be happy. The other spoke of serving God even if living in a shack somewhere. The first shook her head as if that was the silliest thing she’d ever heard; the second shrugged her shoulders and offered further explanation about material things holding no interest for her… only a desire to live for God. The first young woman (who went on to become first runner-up to Miss America) sighed as she said to the second young woman (who went on to become a preacher): “I’ve known people who were deep, but you’re way down there!” (That preacher is standing in your pulpit, by the way!) Be bold, be foolish, but be happy. Be weird for Jesus in the world. Take risks. Don’t worry about what other people think of you. Be happy. But not so much happy in a superficial way, subject to the weather or the whims of those around you but happy in the Scriptural way of trusting God and relying on God’s Word and staying connected to God’s people through that bond named Jesus Christ. It’s the Psalm 1 kind of happy, tapped into God as Source of Life and rooted in God’s Way of Life, prospering like a tree being the tree it was created to be. It’s the Beatitudes in Matthew 5 kind of happy, conforming your life to the compassion of Christ and knowing in your bones that the things of this world hold no lasting joy. Happy which is the joy of being a child of the God who sent the Son into the world to be way weird for us and who commissions tons of mother-like emissaries who mirror the Son in sacrificial love all around us and with us and for us. An attorney in Virginia felt a tug in his heart several years ago to join a team of Christians working to build much-needed mission churches in Chiapas, Mexico. He swapped his starched shirts for sweaty tee shirts mixing concrete by hand alongside his brothers in that poverty-stricken land. When he returned to Virginia, he realized that the person he once was didn’t exist anymore. He came back with a new heart. Now he’s hanging up his suits for good in order to discover what suffering and struggling for Jesus’ sake means in his life now that he is living more in step with God. His law partners think he’s crazy. His wife doesn’t understand. But he’s happy to tell you that he’s happier than he’s ever been before. Be bold. Be foolish. Be happy. Hard for me to say what that looks like for you… but you probably know… You feel that bond to one another whose name is Jesus Christ. As much as you’d like to be popular and successful and well-respected, you know it’s a higher way of life to be faithful no matter what. You get it that the gospel changes people, including you. You’re up for that. You’d be somewhere else right now if it were not so. Be bold. Be foolish. Be happy. Risk in ridiculously weird ways. Love the unlovable. Lead quietly. Share with the awareness that material things hold no lasting joy. Pray like your life depends upon it. Never give up on understanding the Bible – the Spirit is here to help. Do something new because it seems to be in step with the God who steps up for you day in and day out. Be bold. Be foolish but be happy. Serve on a committee. Help with KWT. Visit the lonely. Witness where you work and wherever you walk. Don’t worry about what other people think about you except to be an advertisement for God. When the time rolls around and the LOGOS program comes to town, sign up because there are children in our community who need the same Jesus you need. Be bold. Be foolish but be happy. Someone who lives in Houston, Texas but shares that same bond that we do whose name is Jesus Christ puts it this way: “To risk is to be called a fool; to weep is to risk appearing sentimental; to reach out to others is to risk being involved; to expose your feelings is to risk revealing your true self; to dream is to risk loss; to love is to risk not being loved in return; to live is to risk dying; to hope is to risk despair; to go forward in the face of overwhelming odds is to risk failure. But risk we must because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. One may, for the moment, avoid suffering and sorrow but he/she will not learn or love or change or grow. Only the person who risks is totally faithful.” Be bold. Be foolish but be happy. Sign on! Sign up! Be a blinking neon sign for Jesus in the world… way weird but filled to overflowing with faith! Maybe you’ll even do some way weird things like… “Reach up in worship through praise, prayer, and song; Reach in through education, fellowship, and spiritual growth; and Reach out through mission, service, preaching and teaching With thanksgiving for the love of Christ among us.”
October 16, 2011 FULL FAITH AND CREDIT Exodus 33:12-23 Matthew 22:15-22 Just a note to any who will read this: this may be one of “those sermons”… one for which the preacher may have over-prepared… they happen from time to time. My intent was to focus on the audacity of Moses, making demands of God, and of the disciples of the Pharisees and the Herodians who, too, did their best to back Jesus into a trap and snap the door shut. How dare we think we’ve got God in a box, Jesus on a leash? I wonder, but at some level we all do it. Let us be reminded, even if not at all gently, that God graciously spares us from God full-strength which would consume us in blazing purity though we do long to see God’s “face”… perfectly clear signs of God’s presence with us [the Hebrew means both face/presence] Yet where does God’s face shine today? It’s all over us, Jesus says... stamped into our very being, the thumbprint of our Maker which trumps any and every other label we may bear, including tax-paying citizen. [This isn’t a springboard for civil disobedience!] God blessedly grants us the freedom to give our faith a full-blown workout, hoping we will “see” that we owe God all the credit for our lives. Please know that I’d welcome your thoughts on these texts!
Can you imagine being God? All the questions, all the complaints, all the constant self-centered requests, all the silence, all the ambivalence, all the roller coaster religiosity, all the self-generated superimposed expectations, all the blaming, all the bad-mouthing, all the arrogance, all the irritation, all the hesitation, all the desperation, all the whatever-else-you-can-think-of we humans hurl at God day in and day out! There’s the taking it all in and then there’s the responding: what to do with it all? How to respond personally and with wisdom and compassion even if that’s not what the human would expect or appreciate? Where are the limits, the lines beyond which the human can push or gamble or stumble or rebel which merit an extraordinary response… and will it be intervention or withdrawal? And in the midst of all that ceaseless responding, there’s God handling God’s own heartaches that happen by the millions each second while never, not for one single nanosecond, failing to be God. Can you imagine being God?
Maybe if we were God we’d do God differently. Maybe we’d opt for selective hearing… just because we can. Maybe we’d respond more logically – you know, on a first-come, first-served basis or, better yet, on a points system, yeah, good old-fashioned merit – that would weed out a ton of wanna-be Favorite Children. Maybe we’d delegate more or recruit some stand-in listeners or develop pre-programed automated responses just to be able to take a break every hundred years or so. Maybe we’d decide to be human-resistant so that some of what gets hurled our way wouldn’t hurt so much, although it would still be hard to take the sting out of all that silence.
Can you imagine being God? Of course we can because secretly we’d like to try our hand at it… not that we’d own up to that outright but our comments convict us… wishing this were different or that didn’t exist at all, wanting certain people to shape up (the way we’d run their lives if given the chance) and voting others off the planet altogether. We’d do all the good we possibly could, of course, according to our preferences, ditching the diseases we despise and annihilating anything that annoys us, tossing out things we think are threatening and junking what we judge to be a jumble. What fun we could have if we were God… we might even rework Wall Street while we’re at it!
Can you imagine being God? Well, we might as well get used to the idea… because in some way, shape or form, in some manner, notion, or nature… we are.
Or so Jesus seems to imply with his well-known response to the disciples of the Pharisees (who must have been too chicken to go themselves) and the Herodians (the Herod-supporters) who asked that well-known question about whether paying taxes to the government is required. Sifting out the difference for them between what bears the image of the emperor and what bears the image of God, Jesus not only wiggled out of the sticky wicket they had hoped to trick him into but also shifted the balance of the conversation by adding more weight to it, throwing their wicket completely out of whack: Jesus brought God into the picture.
Even people who aren’t students of the Scriptures know this line: render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s. It seems so simple, so clear, so wise and even compassionate (as if Jesus had himself discovered how complicated it is to be a human being in the world) and yet it leaves gobs of room for interpretation. At first blush, Jesus seems to be saying, “If it has the face of Tiberius Caesar on it, give it back to Tiberius Caesar; but if there’s a trace of God’s thumbprint on it… well, then, give it back to God.” Okay, we might think: give money to the government through commerce and taxation and give God your life… 100% of your life… Then it gets squishy: aren’t even our financial resources entrusted to us by God and the ability to earn and spend given to us by God and the freedom to exercise stewardship a sign of God’s stamp on us too? So we back up and look at the meaning of the words in Greek and we realize that the conversation is about obligations that are binding, taxes that are due… so yes, of course, we can see that paying taxes is a privilege and not a punishment and beyond that, we are free to give as we choose to give, where and to whom… because that freedom reflects the very nature of God.
Can you imagine being God? Free to love or not, free to forgive or not, free to intervene or not, free to speak or not, free to bless or not, free to show up or not… free to be fully God 100% of the time or not (because God is God and God can do that)… free. In anything and everything, God is free.
That’s where that emotional and almost entertaining exchange between Moses and God ended up… with God reminding Moses that being God means being free – free to show favor or not, free to reveal or not, free to respond or not. Moses had come a long way since the burning bush episode when he dared ask who was doing all the talking: “What do I call you?” - a question God was free to answer or not.
Now, on the heels of the whole golden calf/worshipping false idols incident, Moses is doing more of the talking, begging God to forgive what God had made perfectly clear was unforgiveable, praying that God not abandon them since the whole journey to the Promised Land/Chosen People deal was God’s idea to begin with, forcing God’s hand by demanding to know whether God would continue to be with them or not. Moses knew well enough by then who he was dealing with: a wonder-working wizard who sometimes showed up as cloud and sometimes fire whose very presence left the residue of glory on Moses when they talked face-to-face (so to speak)… but Moses wanted more… more knowledge, more assurance, more signs, more wonders, more indications of presence, more grace, more direction, more God.
Can you imagine being God?
Tough and yet tender, upset and yet understanding, free and yet fettered by that whatever-it-takes love God has in God’s heart, God IS in God’s very being…
God spared Moses the full impact of his request to see God’s glory – no human, not even one so devoted – could survive such splendor… but God freely showed Moses just enough of what it is like when God passes by… so Moses would know it again when he saw it. To have responded in any other way would have taken Moses’ freedom away and God wasn’t willing to do that. God still isn’t willing to do that… take away human freedom, the trace of God’s face that hangs around in billions of ways all over the world today.
God is still God… imagine that! And we are free to accept God as God is or not, a freedom we that requires our full faith, a freedom that enables us to give God the credit as credit is due.
This can still be a little squishy from time to time except that among the many gifts God shares with us is God’s very own Spirit who will never lead us away from God, apart from God’s will so… it is under the influence of the Spirit that we most faith-fully exercise our freedom even when it comes to paying taxes and tithing, not to mention hanging our hearts where God’s heart is hanging out working wonders still, waiting for us to see and pay up with all that we have, all that we are, all that we can and ever will be.
Can you imagine being without God?
No worries there… because God is still God and God has shown us clearly and compassionately who God is and how God works in the world and in human life in Jesus. The poetry of Ann Weems pegs God perfectly:
“Gifts from God” from Reaching for Rainbows (Westminster Press, 1980) The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; God’s mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning.
The Lord God gave the peoples of the earth a garden, And the people said: “That’s very nice, God, but that’s not enough. We’d like a little knowledge, please.” The Lord God gave them knowledge, And the people said: “Now that we have knowledge, we’d like things.” The Lord God gave the people things, But they always said: “That’s not quite enough.” So the Lord God gave them gifts unequaled: The Sun Lightning and Thunder Rain and Flowers Animals and Birds and Fish Trees and Stars and the Moon God gave them the Rainbow God parted the Red Sea and gave them Manna God gave them Prophets And Children And Each Other, But still the people said, “That’s not quite enough.” God loved the people, And out of ultimate merciful goodness God gave them the Gift of Gifts – A Christmas present never to be forgotten – God gave them Love In the form of God’s Son, Even Christ Jesus.
There are some that don’t open their eyes or ears or their hearts And they still say, that’s not quite enough. They wander through the stores looking for Christmas; But others open their whole being to the Lord, Bending their knees to praise God, Carrying Christmas with them every day. For these, the whole world is a gift!
THE REMEDY FOR JOINT PAIN Psalm 23 Philippians 4:1-9 October 9, 2011 The topic at last Monday’s Rotary meeting (which I appreciated attending as a guest) is one that should be of concern to every citizen in this community whether one has children in school or not: bullying. We may be tempted to think that every generation has had its version of bullying, that it’s simply part of growing up, that it’s a phase that will pass, and that it’s really not all that big of an issue here in Kane. The size of our community and its location nestled near the sanctuary of the National Forest do not insulate our children and teens from a behavior that not only takes place on the bus and in the locker room but also – and especially – in cyberspace. And bullying is no respecter of gender – not only boys but also girls are victims of and participants in bullying. Again it may be tempting that think that it is simply behavior fueled by the competitive spirit that is unleashed in school sports; but again, athletes and non-athletes are victims of and participants in bullying. It might also be tempting to think that it’s just human nature: aggression and adrenaline even in adults can be pretty explosive… consider the behavior of rabid Steelers fans as tackles are missed or, better yet, made with excessive contact. And are Penguins fans any different as sticks and skates tangle and bodies hit the glass? We can ignore it, justify it, pretty it up all we like all day long but the reality remains: human beings are capable of horrifying behavior toward others of their kind… and it’s certainly not just physically… it’s mentally and emotionally and, sadly, even spiritually. Sure, it’s true that God made us all different and unique with our very own set of quirks and personality traits and temperaments… which is all theoretically, theologically to be celebrated and affirmed. But it certainly does make it challenging for learning to manage interpersonal relations… it makes it downright hard for understanding each other and getting along. It is part of “growing up,” which we are all always doing if that expression refers to maturing and advancing in age. As long as we are walking around in a web of relationship, we run the risk of experiencing joint pain. Our lives are joined to the lives of others everywhere we turn: at home, at school, at work, in the neighborhood and community, as part of organizations including the church, and online all over the world. All of our God-given and blessed quirks and traits and temperaments come into play as we come out to play (well or otherwise) with others. As we join others in the arena of life, we bring with us our beliefs and our opinions, our emotions and our expressions, our expectations and our DNA and sometimes we rub each other the wrong way; we misunderstand, misspeak, misstep; we blow up; we shut down; we experience joint pain. The church in Philippi had a case of it too. Paul caught wind of it and aired it before the whole community by mentioning it toward the close of his letter. He named names but didn’t describe in detail what happened between the two who were at odds with each other. He knew they knew because the two being out of sorts with each other brought on joint pain for the whole body. Because it affected the whole body, Paul encouraged the full community to be part of the remedy. The imagery Paul uses is borrowed from the Olympic Games or the battlefield where being a victor, surviving, coming out alive, was the only goal… but Paul put a little spin on his version of team spirit. His prescription to remedy the joint pain they were experiencing is best understood as a description of “side-by-side” athletes… not those who butt heads against each other but those who form a united body with each other, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, arm-in-arm, steady, sturdy no matter what. A few moments ago, Tim and Kelly stood with their two children surrounded… literally… by a whole community which publically affirmed, “We’re on your side and we’ll be at your side as you venture into this adventure called parenting especially as you seek to be faithful to Jesus Christ as you do.” Whether it’s comfortable for them and for us or not, what goes on in their lives and the lives of their children is our business… we are gathered in around one table, bound up together in the same waters of baptism, joined at the hip (so to speak) in Jesus Christ. Our Book of Order describes this about us, not in order to tell us what to do so we’ll do it “right” by “the book” but simply to remind us of who we are as a community of believers established by God in grace. In the Worship section, Chapter 6 discusses Christian Nurture with these words, “The Christian community provides nurture for its members through all of life and life’s transitions. The church offers nurture to those entering the community of faith, preparing for Baptism, including them in the life of the community, welcoming them to participate in its worship and come to the Lord’s Table, assisting them to claim their identity as believers in Jesus Christ, equipping them to live as commissioned disciples in the world.” In other words, what happens with and to Adalyn Mae and Abigail Marie, with and to Tim and Kelly, with and to any and every one of us, matters to all of us, just as whatever was going on with and between Euodia and Syntyche mattered to the entire community of believers in Philippi. [There is a message here even in the meanings of those names: Euodia means “success or to meet with success” and Syntyche means “meeting or coming together” so Paul is saying, Let’s have a successful meeting of the minds here!] Help them, Paul said, so that the rift in the relationship, the tiff between the two might be healed and the whole body with it. Remember, Paul chided, that you are side-by-side athletes, teammates together in the work of the Gospel, standing united in the gentle grace of Jesus Christ who is always near. Remembering who we are is the remedy for joint pain. Sheep in the one flock of God (to use David’s imagery); sheep guarded and guided by the same loving Shepherd; sheep – each and every one – cared for whether wandering through the world or feasting at table face-to-face with former enemies or resting in the confidence of God’s goodness and mercy. Co-workers in the Gospel (to borrow Paul’s language), yokefellows (literally) pulling on the same team, plowing the same fertile field in the same direction for the same reason, advancing toward the same goal, laboring and loving side-by-side, celebrating the vast variety of gifts God grants and resisting the many temptations to be divided by difference… difference of opinion, perspective, personality, expectation, expression, mode of operating. Victors, not victims (to consider preacher and teacher Fred Craddock’s comments), winners not through aggressive competition but medalists through no merit of our own; partners, Craddock suggests, who live within a parenthesis which starts with the promise of God’s presence, “The Lord is at hand,” and closes with the affirmation of the effect of God’s nearness – peace which will “keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” It simply follows that once we remember who we are we are reminded of what we are here for… we are here for each other, serving prayerfully in order to advance the Kingdom of God. Methodist preacher and professor Fred Craddock rewrites the prescription for the remedy for joint pain beautifully in these words, “Because the presence of Christ is near and because the peace of God stands guard, the church can rejoice. In the face of abuse and conflict the Philippians do not have to press their case. They are to stand firm, yes, but they can be forbearing not overbearing. In full confidence of their trust in God, they can devote time to prayer, praise, and thanksgiving… [and] they can offer both thanks and petitions in the assurance of God’s care which surrounds them before, during, and after their prayers. Because God’s peace is on duty, they do not have to be anxiously scanning the horizon for new threats. Alert, yes; anxious, no.” The remedy for joint pain, should we ever suffer from it… okay, when we suffer from it…is to remember who we are and what we are here for: we are God’s peeps, Jesus’ sheep who lack for nothing… not one thing… as we wander through this world and walk the wide-open paths before us which always… all ways… lead us as we pray our way Home. Praise be to our gathering-up God who lavishes us with love and feeds us with the freedom of grace, never bullying but always beckoning. Now that’s an IM from the Great I AM that will cure anything that ails us!
WHATEVER IT TAKES Isaiah 5:1-7 Matthew 22:33-46 October 2, 2011 With the first glimpses of the home where I am now privileged to live… the home owned and occupied by the Johnsons… I could tell its occupants were gardeners. The grounds are graced with remnants of raised beds and well-planned plots which, despite the invasion of weeds and the erosion of neglect, still support flowers and shrubs happy to survive. Among my first thoughts about this patch of paradise were, “With some effort, this yard could be restored to beauty and then some! Someone with equal passion for gardening – someone with a little time and a lot of energy and a shovel and a hoe or even a small tiller and a sturdy back – someone could work wonders here. If someone was willing to do whatever it takes, these grounds could become a showcase for nature once again. Whatever it takes is often a tall order. There are many versions of it: whatever it takes to… get my homework done so I can [fill in the blank: ride my bike, watch TV, hang out with my friends, chat online]; whatever it takes to raise healthy, happy, educated and socially well-adjusted children; whatever it takes to be out on my own; whatever it takes to make the team; whatever it takes to make the marriage work; whatever it takes to lose weight; whatever it takes to be able to retire; whatever it takes to care for aging parents; whatever it takes… Whatever it takes is an indication of commitment to something or someone… and underneath that commitment, behind it and all through it is often LOVE. We might think of it more in terms of pleasure or passion or doing what’s “right,” but most versions of whatever it takes are driven by love: love for family, love for the earth, love for self, love for others, love for God. Whatever it takes is all over the life of a disciple of Jesus Christ. Whatever it takes to understand the Scriptures; whatever it takes to live to the glory of God in service to Jesus Christ; whatever it takes to be an address where the Holy Spirit resides in the world; whatever it takes to use the gifts God has entrusted to us… singing and ringing in God’s honor, discipling children and youth in the ways of the Christ, stepping up to serve on committees and governing boards, praying constantly for self/others/church/community/nation/world, giving generously with gratitude, visiting and preparing meals for those in need of companionship and assistance, even vacuuming and emptying the trash. Whatever it takes to be a child of God, a person of faith is certainly a sign of commitment to something, Someone… but what’s weird about this commitment is that it is only an indication that God is at work in us… not that we’ve “figured it out” and “gotten it right” but simply that we’ve accepted – had it sink in all the way down to our bones – that we are God’s handiwork through and through, head to toe, inside and out, created and redeemed and held in love for love. But talk about a tall order… that love is whatever it takes love… Jesus talked about it when he was on the brink of demonstrating it with his own life. He used the same imagery the prophet Isaiah used… a vineyard prepared by God and planted by God and provided for by God to raise up a people for God… a vineyard, like the earth itself, entrusted into the hands of humans. God did God’s part, hoping the humans would catch on that this patch of paradise called life is a gift of love, a slice of grace served up without a trace of obligation… just hope… hope that the humans would receive it and respond in kind… love for Love. Jesus could see that the humans weren’t quite catching on to it, wanting to make it harder than it needed to be, trying to make it about figuring it out and getting it right all by their little lonesomes. The humans hadn’t paid much attention to the prophets before him but he gave it his best shot anyway, hoping… just hoping… his words might shake them loose from their love of the law (or at least their version of it) in order to take in the Love standing right before their very eyes. God’s whatever it takes Love… God’s Love in the Son who was taunted, whipped, stripped, spat upon, mutilated and murdered with zero understanding and appreciation for the Gift he was… and is… God’s whatever it takes Love is still alive and well and at work in the world today because God is still committed to raising up a people for God… people here, people there… people young and old, people who happen to be male and female, people of every race and nation under the sun, all serving under the Son of God who was raised up on the third day to rule the day and the night world without end because God has said “Whatever it takes” and nothing/no one can put the brakes on the Word of the Lord… which is, in a word, Love. Jesus’ words are painfully, passionately clear… that part of the parable that came back around like a boomerang hitting his listeners between the eyes… if some of you humans won’t catch on and latch onto God’s whatever it takes Love, others will… and they’ll be the ones harvesting the grapes to make the finest wine for the greatest party of all time! Are you ready for the Kingdom of God? Are we ready for the Kingdom of God? Oh, look! God has prepared for and provided a preview, a tasting of grace smothered in Love right before our very eyes! Let’s come to the table and take it all in… God’s whatever it takes Love that raises us up a people for God now and forevermore!
WHEN THE LIGHT BULB DOESN’T COME ON… Philippians 2:1-13 | Matthew 21:23-32 | Sunday, September 25, 2011 | |
Do you ever wonder who decides new things that become everyday things that eventually become old things? Who first determined that two dots and a curved line meant a “smiley face”? Who figured out that a smiley face was a symbol of positive approval to begin with, like giving “two thumbs up” to something or someone? Who made up two thumbs up (meaning, “Oh, yeah!”), and two thumbs down (for “Nah – don’t think so!”)? Who decided all these things we’ve come to accept and use and not give a thought to? Who first substituted a heart… the Valentine-shaped heart… a heart for the word love (as in “I HEART Kane”)? Who got to say that LOL stands for Laugh Out Loud? That BTW is, by the way, By The Way? Who determined that X-s and O-s could stand in for kisses and hugs? Have you seen a garment tag lately, that little flag inside your shirt or jeans that tells you how to care for it? If there’s a tag at all: symbols. Tiny little pictures that we are supposed to understand. Who decided that a drawing of an iron partially covered up by a mostly-open circle except for a slanted slash is to be translated “Applying warm metal to this fabric will prove to be disastrous!”? Who decided that a mostly-open circle except for a slanted slash on top of anything means that thing is a no-no?! Who decided all these things we’ve come to accept and use and not give a thought to? Who got to say? Who appointed whom to alter our communication, to impact our language, to shift our habits, to change our lives? That’s essentially what’s at stake… our lives have been changed… even if ever-so-subtly by these new things we’ve come to accept and use and now not give a thought to because they’ve become everyday things. Who got to say what patterns and practices would parade before us either to be embraced or rejected in the living of our days? “By what authority” was the way it was put to Jesus by the religious leaders… by what authority did you march into the Temple and trample all over our traditions… who gave you the right to overturn the tables of our accepted practices and pronounce judgment on the way we do things around here? Where are your credentials, your papers, your degrees, your pedigrees that give you any standing to act the way you’ve acted and say what you’ve said? A good question and a fair question, all things considered. Questions weren’t new things for Jesus… they came his way on a regular basis according to the Gospel accounts. The disciples asked questions, green and grasping to get it. Strangers asked questions, hurting and hoping to be healed. The religious leaders asked questions, threatened and trying to entangle. Jesus was asked questions about most every angle of life. Jesus was asked questions because apparently people thought they had something to gain by asking him. Maybe some wanted to please and impress this new rabbi by learning what answers pleased and impressed him. Perhaps others were on a hunt for hard-and-fast yet easy-to-swallow remedies for life’s difficulties. Clearly at least a handful of the religious leaders were hoping to set the perfect trap that would deliver Jesus into their hands, ensnared in public humiliation and eliminated from the guru pool. But Jesus asked questions too. A few for his disciples, an occasional one for a stranger, and plenty of his own for the religious leaders. When asked about his authority he fired off a question in return… a question about John’s authority to baptize for the forgiveness of sins… a practice usually reserved for the guardians of the Temple and its traditions. What was at stake in this exchange and what was largely the point of Jesus’ earthly ministry and what remains crucial for us today is essentially this: what do you do when the light bulb doesn’t come on? You know – the light bulb… that wonderful invention that creates light which helps us see especially when it’s dark… the light bulb which somebody at some point in time decided could represent an idea, a thought, a revelation, a new understanding. What do you do when the light bulb doesn’t come on? It’s pretty simple actually: you can remain in darkness or you can change the bulb. The question Jesus presented to the religious leaders and the parable he told on its heels was essentially an invitation to embrace him or reject him as one whose authority to act and to speak had come from God, just as John’s did before him. Embrace him and come to the light or reject him and remain in darkness. The parable seems sneaky at first: which son DID the will of his father? The one who pleased with his answer but dishonored by his inaction or the one who verbally disobeyed but later betrayed his own response by converting it into obedience? Which one rejected the father’s authority; which one embraced it? Which one remained in darkness; which one came to the light? In his verbal volley with the religious leaders, Jesus lobbed this same invitation into the air above their heads, cornering them in the courtyard of what they mistakenly thought of as “their” Temple… and what they did with it was up to them: would they open their hearts to receive his invitation or would they let it fall to the ground? By what authority did Jesus act as he acted and say what he said? God’s. We either believe that or not, embrace that or reject that. We either affirm that he is God’s perfect Son who said “yes” and did as he said the first time, every time… God’s perfectly obedient Son… or not… Maybe he was a great teacher, an interesting rabbi, yet another miracle-worker, healer, prophet… just not God-in-the-flesh, nope – thumbs down to being Savior of the world… Some got it… the ones who seemed to need him the most and were willing to admit it. To mention them in the presence of the guardians of the Temple and its traditions would have made the hair on the back of their stiff necks stand up: tax collectors and prostitutes – poster children for “sinner,” easy-spotted sinners who dared name the darkness that ate away at their hearts, minds, bodies and spirits… named it for what it was and wanted it to be different, who wanted it to go away… lost children longing for CHANGE. What do you do when the light bulb doesn’t come on? It’s pretty simple, actually: you can remain in darkness or you can change the bulb. The religious leaders weren’t interested in change… they either didn’t believe they needed it or they feared it so much they preferred the familiar darkness. And it was clear that this Jesus brought change to anyone who longed for it, looked for it, asked for it, admitted they needed it. When Jesus confronted the religious leaders with the charge that they had witnessed John’s ministry and the impact it had on the lives of sinners but had not “changed their minds,” what he was more accurately saying was that they had not rearranged their priorities... they hadn’t shifted what they cared about… It wasn’t that they had refused to flip an intellectual switch, saying “yes” when they had formerly said “no;” they simply were not interested in cracking open their hardened hearts and loosening up their stiff necks… they were unwilling to bend their knees to the ground and send their praises heavenward in Jesus’ name… they couldn’t be bothered with being meek and hungry for righteousness, humble and thirsty for peace. For those religious leaders… and for all who are self-righteous… if having the light bulb come on, embracing the Light, meant conforming daily living to Jesus’ teachings, the darkness will do just fine, thank you very much. And who gets to say? Who appoints whom to alter our communication, to impact our language, to shift our habits, to change our lives? We do. Because God is gracious, God desires our response to that same invitation Jesus lobs into the air above our heads, an invitation to believe in him and rearrange our priorities to reflect his. It’s not an intellectual switch that we flip once and for all… it’s an everyday, minute-by-minute thing… will we open our hearts to being changed by the Light or will we cling to our darkness which is familiar and safe? Do we affirm over and over again that Jesus is Lord of our every moment, a profession of faith that would infuse our every action and word with God’s amazing grace or do we stiffen our necks and lock our knees and tie up our tongues all the more against the change that would surely come our way if we were to admit that we’d lost it? When the light bulb doesn’t come on, we can remain in the darkness, resisting the change God would love into our lives, or we can invite the light and see what happens! We are free to reject or embrace the living Lord Jesus Christ who willingly, lovingly endured the all the darkness the world could muster on the cross, naming it for what it is... a bulb in need of change… and change it, did he ever! Sin is obliterated by grace, death undone by life! And there’s the switch that will flip us: God “hearts” us! LOL! Light bulb! Two thumbs up! Smiley face! Now and 4ever! Amen!
JUST BREAD – NO BEEF Exodus 16:2-15 | Matthew 20:1-16 |
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Sitting at her family’s kitchen table, seven-year-old Sarah reacted to the news I shared with her mom about my younger sister’s upcoming wedding with this fascinating comment: “But you’re older – you’re supposed to get married first! That’s not fair!!” At the tender age of seven, Sarah already had programmed somewhere inside her the way things are “supposed” to be in life. According to Sarah’s programming, because I had preceded my younger sister in birth, in school, in graduation, in college, so too should I have preceded her in marriage. There is a kind of logic to this programming… if not something rather Presbyterian about it, doing things decently and in order… but life – real life outside our heads – is seldom so tidy and predictable, so logical and orderly.
It’s a rub we’re all likely to feel – some of us perhaps more than others: life doesn’t go the way we think it is supposed to go. The less qualified person gets the promotion; the shiest sophomore is the first to be asked to the dance; the most unimaginative work of art wins the award; the one who contributed least to a project receives public recognition; the youngest daughter marries first. When we feel the rub, we’re likely to echo seven-year-old Sarah’s reaction: that’s not fair! We might even go beyond commenting to complaining, beyond observing to obsessing, beyond griping to grumbling. To use the old slang expression, when we’ve got a beef about something, we bellyache about it.
When we’ve got a beef about something, it’s usually an indication that real life hasn’t lined up with our expectations, with the way we think things are supposed to be. Even our common complaints, our ordinary obsessions, our general grumblings are signs that something is awry for us… a commitment we hoped for hasn’t been fulfilled, an expectation we held hasn’t been met, the course we plotted has taken an unanticipated turn. Real life isn’t always tidy and predictable… and apparently it’s been that way from the beginning of life itself.
It’s clear that complaining, grumbling, having a beef, is a common thread between the Old Testament and Gospel readings for the day. In the Exodus passage, the Israelites, freed from their bondage and oppression in Egypt, grumble about the apparent lack of food in the wilderness. In Matthew’s account of Jesus’ parable, the first laborers in the vineyard complain about the owner’s payment of equal wages to all hired hands despite unequal work among all. These Scripture passages suggest that the God of Israel, the God whom Jesus calls Father, the same God of us today, is interested in JUST BREAD – NO BEEF.
The rub the Israelites felt was fear for their personal survival in the face of the unknown. The life of a slave, while not the most fun, is certainly predictable. Though the Israelites were exploited for their labor, their daily needs were met; they were cared for. The now-free people of God became fearful when it appeared that their basic needs might go unaddressed. With their human eyes, they couldn’t see how they were going to make it to the Promised Land because there wasn’t anything to eat to sustain them on the journey. Life in the wilderness is anything but tidy and predictable, logical and orderly.
In Jesus’ disturbing parable describing the Kingdom of God, the rub the first laborers felt was that the last to be hired were paid the same amount as they who had worked all day were paid. There was an expectation that wages would be awarded based on the number of hours worked… that’s the way the world’s competitive market works… but that wasn’t what the owner of the vineyard promised – he had promised a daily wage. The first laborers had it in their heads that quitting time would go a certain way… their way… and it didn’t. They had been conditioned by the competition in the marketplace. And life outside the competitive market is anything but tidy and predictable, logical and orderly.
The crazy part of the Israelites’ story is that their freedom to journey through the wilderness to the Promised Land was God’s GIFT. The rub happened because the Israelites made up all kinds of stuff about the way it was supposed to be while being free to move about in the world for a change… and the rumbling in their stomachs wasn’t part of the life they’d designed for themselves.
The really whacky part of the laborers’ story is that the invitation to be hired in the vineyard in the first, second, third and fourth place was God’s GIFT. The rub happened because the first laborers made up all kinds of stuff about the way it was supposed to be at the end of the day when the rules of the competitive market should have come into play putting more pay into their pockets than all the rest.
But God through Moses never promised the Israelites a midnight chocolate buffet; God promised personal presence which would protect and provide. And God as vineyard owner never promised the laborers a bigger paycheck for those who work the hardest, the longest, the most stressfully; God promised enough for the day.
In the face of God’s presence with us and God’s promise to provide enough for the day, why would we fear and how can we complain?
We can and we do when we see life through the eyes of a seven-year-old with a strong sense of the way things are supposed to be, all tidy and predictable. We can and we do when we see life through the eyes of the competitive market which values a product rather than a person at the end of the day. We can and we do when we forget that we are the creatures and not the Creator, family members and not the Head of the Household. We can and we do when we believe that we are responsible for earning our own salvation when grace is God’s GIFT lavishly and unconditionally given as God chooses to give.
Episcopal priest, writer and gourmet cook Robert Capon puts it this way: “If the world could have been saved by bookkeeping, it would have been saved by Moses, not Jesus. The law was just fine. And God gave it a good thousand years or so to see if anyone could pass a test like that. But when nobody did – when it became perfectly clear that there was ‘no one who was righteous, not even one’ – God gave up on salvation by the books. God canceled everybody’s records in the death of Jesus and rewarded us all, equally and fully, with a new creation in the resurrection.”
There it is again: grace. Just grace. Grace for all. Grace for the day. Grace that is always enough. Grace from God and of God. With the eyes of faith, this is the God we see in Scripture, the God we know in Jesus Christ, the God whose presence we enjoy and whose invitation we receive daily.
To the extent that we as disciples, we as a congregation, we as Church are interested in what God is interested in, we will happily receive our daily bread without complaining that it’s not what we ordered – no bellyaching because we have a beef with the Head Chef! We may not like everything that comes our way in an anything but tidy and predictable life outside our heads but life wasn’t our idea to begin with. Along with life comes God’s personal presence to protect and provide. Along with life comes God’s invitation to be part of the family business which operates by grace… just grace.
So for seven-year-old Sarah with her programming and for all of us who feel the rub of “That’s not fair!” there is Good News. In Capon’s words, “Bookkeeping is the only punishable offense in the kingdom of heaven. For in that happy state, the books are ignored forever, and there is only the Book of life. And in that book, nothing stands against you. There are no debit entries that can keep you out of the clutches of the Love that will not let you go. There is no minimum balance below which the grace that finagles all accounts will cancel your credit. And there is, of course, no need for you to show large amounts of black ink, because the only Auditor before whom you must finally stand is the Lamb – and he has gone deaf, dumb, and blind on the cross. The last may be first and the first last, but that’s only for the fun of making the point: everybody is on the payout queue and everybody gets full pay. Nobody gets kicked out who wasn’t already in.”
God’s grace for the day… may there be no beef about that today, tomorrow, next week, in another seven years… or ever really… that the Head of the Household, the King of the Kingdom may live in peace with us all! I don’t know about you, but I’ll break bread to that!
FORGIVING LIVING – WHO’S COUNTING? Matthew 18:21-35 Sunday, September 11, 2011
In a Peanuts cartoon published years ago, Charlie Brown confessed to Lucy, “Oh, I love humankind; it’s just people I can’t stand.” His admission points to the reality that, in theory, human beings as a whole are wonderful creatures – intelligent, capable, moral, and sensitive. It is our experience with particular human beings that leads us to believe otherwise. It doesn’t take too many encounters with individuals who are hateful, lazy, ruthless, and self-absorbed before we are ready to retreat from the world to a safe place where we may love humankind all day long without ever having to deal with people. Hurt and betrayal are just a part of human life. Almost literally, from the time we come to understand that we are in a world that includes others besides ourselves, we learn that it is generally harder to get along than to fight, to admit wrong than to blame someone else, to stand up for what is right than to compromise, and to forgive than to condemn.
Throughout the course of our lives we might find ourselves in situations somewhat like these: An argument between parent and teenager prompts angry words volleyed back and forth from one to the other until one reaches a level of emotion at which civility is impossible, turns away, slams the door; Bitter silence and a sprinkling of tears season the evening meal for a husband and wife at a much-too-late hour because of the demands of a job or the schedules of children; A confidence betrayed by a co-worker in the break room spreads into office gossip, erupting into an ugly confrontation, finger-pointing, name-calling, and the irreparable choosing of sides; The slamming of locker doors, the defiant spinning in opposite directions, and the exaggerated slinging of backpacks signals a rift in a friendship between tenth graders that began as toddlers; Unnamed grief, silent stress, and lifelong jealousy all churning to the surface pit sisters and brothers against one another in the splitting up of their parents’ possessions and in the settling of a generous estate.
Hurt and betrayal are just part of human life. It’s hard for us when we bump up against the reality that not all people are good and trustworthy and kind – even those whom we love, those to whom we are related, those in whom we once confided. Over time, it becomes a natural habit to tally the betrayals, to keep tabs on the hurtful encounters, to number the wounds. We keep score, storing up anger and resentment as weapons for our retaliation while stockpiling our every virtuous word and righteous action for our sure defense. When we live by the scorecard for any length of time, the words of a traditional prayer of confession come to resonate with the way we feel about our lives: THERE IS NO HEALTH IN US.
As Christians, as Church, we are called to a different way of living. We are called to forgiving living, as Jesus described it for his first disciples. Matthew recounts for us the question Peter asked Jesus which prompted a parable – a word picture – about forgiveness in God’s Kingdom. Peter wanted to know how many wrongs against him were required before his scorecard could be declared full and forgiveness no longer necessary. Jesus’ direct answer was some absurd mathematical formula in the Greek that amounted to “infinity” which was his way of saying, “Who’s counting?” and then he told his listeners a story…
It was a story about a King (whose name is Father) and of his servants (whose names are Children) and of the settling of debts (which we all know is Presbyterian for “sins”). When the King (whose name is Father) presented one of his servants (whose name is Child) a 30-PAGE scorecard of debts (that is, sins), the servant (whose name is Child) begged for mercy, promising repayment. The King (whose name is Father) had pity and granted the request of the pitiable servant (whose name is Child). This forgiven servant (whose name is Child) turned from the presence of the King (whose name is Father) and encountered a fellow servant (whose name is Brother) and pulled from his back pocket a ½ PAGE scorecard of debts (that is, sins), demanding immediate payment. Other servants (whose names are Sisters and Brothers) witnessed the ruthless action of their fellow servant (whose name is Brother) and turned to the King (whose name is Father) to ask for mercy on behalf of the victim. The King (whose name is Father) had pity as well on the servant under attack (whose name is Child) and with a heavy heart and hand sent the ruthless and unforgiving servant (whose name had become Not-My-Child) away.
What the one servant had received (and so happily claimed for himself) he was not willing to extend to another. He did not earn or deserve the forgiveness he was given yet he expected others to repay him what he was due – much like “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” This parable is a clear illustration of the truth that forgiveness is a gift we receive not just to feel better about ourselves but to live better with others. Not only “out there in the world” but even as we are gathered in together as Church, we bump up against people who rub us the wrong way, who trample all over our ideas, who betray our confidence, who hurt us (and yes, sometimes knowingly). If we are honest, there are times when we feel like echoing Charlie Brown’s sentiment by saying, “Oh I love the church; it’s the members I can’t stand.” What Jesus is implying in his parable, in his teaching about forgiving living, is that it takes practice. Over and over and over again, we are to practice forgiveness. Not just talk about, not merely think about it, not try it once and swear off of it from then on…but practice forgiveness… over and over and over again until we reach some absurd mathematical formula that amounts to infinity which indicates we’ve stopped counting, we’ve let go of the scorecard…
Forgiving living is not easy, especially if we confuse it for being a human doormat, letting people walk all over us, or for being an ostrich with our heads in the sand, acting like nothing has taken place. Forgiveness is neither self-destruction (repeatedly signing up to be everyone’s emotional punching bag) nor is it self-deception (denying that anything hurtful ever happens). Forgiveness is addressing the hurt and working through it so there can be reconciliation - health in us and in our relationships.
One author who has devoted his career to the health of the church writes, “The gospel according to Jesus is one of forgiveness; the church that witnesses in his name can do no less. The sacraments we celebrate remind us that forgiveness is at the heart of the Christian faith. To call ourselves Christians means not only to accept God’s forgiveness on the cross, but also to practice forgiveness as Jesus taught his disciples through words and actions… It is difficult to break out of our self-imposed prisons of hatred or animosity… Too much of our energy and emotions are lost through misplaced suspicions. We are all in need of liberation and NEW LIFE.”
Liberation and new life… that spells and smells like GRACE… God’s grace, an undeserved gift given not just to feel better about ourselves but to live better with others. All of our relationships – children and parents and spouses and coworkers and friends and siblings and fellow church members – need healing from time to time. When we practice forgiving living, we are saying to one another that we want the relationship to continue, even when there are hurts to be addressed and worked through. We are extending to one another the grace of God which we have received (and happily claimed for ourselves) as an undeserved gift. We are letting go of the scorecard so that we may be free (at some point) to embrace each other. When we practice forgiving living, we embody the affirmation, “We love the church and all of its members too because God does. We love humankind and people too because God does.” God the Father who loves the world so much that the only perfect Child became part of it in order to redeem the whole of it…
As we take to heart the teaching, the discipling of Jesus, which is nothing short of a summons to a new way of life, may we hear him asking us, “Sisters and brothers, who’s counting?” By grace, may we remember, “Oh, yeah – God is… counting on us!”
HARMONY Sermon by Jo Ann Wolfe August 14, 2011 When Frances Jo and I were visiting colleges, we would inevitably take in a film or play during the trip. On one such occasion, we rode the train into New York City to see the revival Sunday in the Park with George, a musical inspired by the painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by artist Georges Seurat. This is the iconic late 19th century painting of a park scene where a lady, with a very big bustle, is holding an umbrella. While the lyrics and script focus on Seurat’s style and harmony of color, the chorus breaks out in multiple parts of harmony. One particular song always captures my attention because the harmony is spectacular. After listening to the CD many times, I came to the conclusion of why I am so attracted to harmony. I believe it is due to growing up hearing and singing good old Baptist hymns: Sunday morning, Sunday night, and mid-week services. In our lectionary readings for today, we recall Joseph’s attempt to restore harmony with his brothers and then the Psalmist urges brothers to live in unity. Matthew seeks to establish harmony within man’s heart and Romans reassures us of the harmony found in God’s mercy. Just what is harmony? The word harmony comes from the Greek word harmonia, meaning agreement. Musical harmony deals with how pitches relate (or agree) with one another. Pitches relate in many ways. One way is when groups of pitches are played at the same time forming chords. A second way is when groups of pitches (or chords) are played successively forming chord progressions. Finally, individual pitches can be played successively forming melodies. Harmony, how pitches relate (or agree) with one another, is the theory behind all of these musical relationships. The same is true in personal or spiritual relationships. Harmony is the foundation in these relationships, also. Musicians know that the best sounding harmonies always have some sort of strong, internal logic to them. Our lives, too, have the best harmony when we have a strong, spiritual logic. As Christians, our foundation is in the love of Jesus Christ demonstrated on the cross. If you are sitting in a pew when Frances and I are together, you may hear our attempts to sing the hymns in parts. We are not always successful. So, what does it take to sing in harmony? I believe the ability to harmonize requires three things: I need to know my part well and be confident in singing my part. I need to listen to the other voices. I need to blend with the other voices. In order to achieve interpersonal harmony, the same three requirements apply. Joseph gives us a good example of the first requirement: know your part well and be confident. Joseph knew his gifts and was willing to use them. There in exile, far from home, Joseph applied his gifts to the new situation he found himself in and let God work through his life. When Pharaoh could find no one to interpret his dreams, Joseph was willing to give it a try. He allowed the spirit to work through him and was willing to accept the challenge of overseeing the Famine Survival Program. The scriptures do not indicate that Joseph was hesitant about being Pharaoh’s right hand man. He knew his part and was confident in following where God was leading. God has blessed each one of us with gifts that contribute to the harmony of the church, our community, our world. One of next week’s lectionary passages, from Romans, talks about how we are many parts but one body. In order to sing harmony well, I need to listen to the other voices. When the choir comes forward and sings on the steps, I may be standing right next to one of the tenors, basses or altos. My initial assumption is that I will be distracted by hearing a part different from my own. But actually, I find it helpful to hear the other parts; then I sense better how my melody fits in the grand scheme of the anthem. When circumstances bring us right next to someone who is “singing” a different part than ours in life, we can make the assumption that they are wrong or it will send us off course. When we listen to these other voices, we just may find a lovely melody being sung, although different from ours, and we can fit together to make something beautiful. To make harmony in our community and world, we need to listen to the other voices because they may be crying out in need. I am often guilty of concentrating so hard on my own tasks and business that I miss hearing what is around me. Then, can we ever find harmony if we fail to listen to the voice of God? Here is a voice that needs to be heard in our lives. That is why we come together in this place, week after week, so we can hear the spirit speaking to us through the music, the scriptures being read, the word being spoken, the prayers being offered, and the silencing of our hectic thoughts. Matthew shares Jesus’ teaching in chapter 15, verse 11: man is defiled not by what enters his mouth but by what comes out of his heart. Jesus was teaching that genuine purity would not be found by the dietary and cleansing regulations of His day. It is man’s heart and his will, that needs to be cleansed, not his hands. Today, Jesus might say to us . . . it is not the number of body piercings that defiles a person, but what pierces one’s heart; it is not the tattoos which stain the skin that defiles a person, but what stains one’s heart; it is not the clothes that cover the exterior of the body that defiles a person, but what is in the interior of the heart. When our hearts are cleansed with God’s spirit by listening to His voice, we have the confidence to sing our part; be the person God created us to be in this world. Finally, harmony requires the singers to blend their voices together. The reading from Genesis 45 tells the story of Joseph blending his family back together. Many of you may recall the Kane Players production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, performed back in 2003. Dan Sterba played the role of Joseph, Rev. Higgenbotham was Jacob, and Lori Moore was the vocal narrator. Being in the chorus, I watched the drama unfold of the brothers groveling before Joseph unaware of who he was, but much in need of his storehouse of food. Although the scenes brought much humor to the conflict in the sibling relationships, we are reminded of the conflict so often found between brothers. This is just one of many Biblical brothers who were not on best of terms; for example, Cain and Able, Jacob and Esau. What is often a very close relationship can also be a wrought with friction. Envy and fear are apparently near to the heart of it. Whether it is brother-to-brother, sister-to-sister, or brother-to-sister, one sibling is afraid the other is loved more, favored more, given and forgiven more, or gets away with more. Hardly a situation where the lovely blending of voices is heard. Joseph enters the stage and changes the tune to one of forgiveness and acceptance. What once were pitches of discord, now find new relationships and harmony is discovered. Joseph knows his part well and is confident to sing it out, even to those who tried to kill him. He listens to their voices and cries of need. He is willing to blend his voice with theirs and bring the family into harmony. In Frederick Buechner’s book Whistling in the Dark, he talks about how we are all of us brothers, all of us sisters: the Arabs and the Israelis, the terrorists and the terrorized, the rich and the poor, the right and the left. We are all the children of God. Paul writes in Romans 11 that He has not rejected His children. He knows our foibles, our squabbling, and our disagreements. We are hardly in harmony, yet Paul says that God wants to show mercy on all His people. It was May 27th, 1992, in Sarajevo. A group of civilians were standing in a breadline, hoping for their share of a dwindling food supply when a mortar shell fell from the sky. Twenty-two innocent men, women and children were killed. It was May 28th, 1992 (the following day) when principal cellist of the Sarajevo Opera Orchestra, Vedran Smailovic, took his cello to the crater left by the deadly blast and, amidst the sniper fire, played for 22 consecutive days . . . one for each of his friends and neighbors who had been killed. It was a cold winter’s day in January 1997, when 10 year-old Jason Crowe read about the 1992 Sarajevo Breadline Massacre. That was the day the Smailovic, the Cellist of Sarajevo, became Jason’s hero. Jason wrote: “For him to take his cello and sit at the site of the mortar shell massacre playing, while bullets flew around him . . . painted a vivid picture in my mind. I think it was the imagery that broke through where other horror stories didn’t. Most news coverage is a quick sweep of the dead bodies. This was different. I thought how brave he was to do this alone . . . just one person all by himself making a difference in a dangerous world. Because of his action, news media was attracted to Sarajevo and a lot of the atrocities finally made the headlines.” Jason continued, “As I was thinking about his bravery, it also dawned on me how symbolic his response had been. His reaction was to answer war with harmony. This just really impressed me. I realized all of a sudden that the only reasonable answer to war is harmony. So Mr. Smailovic became my hero, not just because of his personal bravery, standing up for his friends, but because, through this brave act, I came face to face with a profound truth: if you answer violence with violence, you create a vicious, unending cycle. The answer to violence has to be creative energy, not more destructive energy.” To honor Mr. Smailovic and what his actions stood for, Jason raised money and commissioned sculptor David Kocka to create the Children’s International Peace and Harmony Statue. The sculpture, entitled The 3 Spirits, depicts and honors The spirit of all Bosnians who have lived through or died in the madness of ethnic cleansing; the spirit of harmony that cries on like a lone cello in a world full of violence which refuses to listen; The spirit of children around the world who want peace and harmony, not war and genocide, as their legacy in the new millennium. In spite of our differences in race, color, national origin, social-economic status, and religion, we are all the same beneath . . . at the level of the heart. We may each represent a different pitch, but with the grace of God, we can create harmony. What a beautiful sound that will be!
Let Freedom Ring July 3, 2011 – Presbyterian Church of Kane Glenda Buonanducci, Lay Pastor Tomorrow is the 4th of July—a time for picnics, parties, parades and fireworks. It is our Independence Day. Erma Bombeck said, “You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4th, not with a parade of guns, tanks and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but that’s patriotism.” Every year on the 4th of July my family got together at Twin Lakes and celebrated the birth of our nation. I can even remember the year when it snowed on that day and we went swimming in the afternoon. The air was probably still warmer than the water even with the snow. (Tell story about Bristol, RI, patriotism celebration since 1785) The Liberty Bell is one of the most recognized symbols of freedom in the entire world. The echo carried through Philadelphia in 1774 as it summoned the first Continental Congress together, then again it rang after the Battle of Lexington and Concord in 1775 and then again in its most notable ringing on July 8, 1776, when it summoned the citizens for the reading of the most valuable document ever penned next to the Bible—The Declaration of Independence! The old bell of freedom rang its last note on February 26, 1846. The Philadelphia Public Ledger published, “The old Independence Bell rang its last clear note on Monday, in honor of the birthday of George Washington…It gave out clear notes and loud, and appeared to be in excellent condition until noon, when it received a compound fracture in a zig-zag direction through one of its sides which put it completely out of tune and left it a mere wreck of what it was.” Could that be said of today’s freedom—voiceless and broken? “Let Freedom Ring”—we love to spout it, shout it and tout it—but does freedom still have that brilliant ring that helped set a nation free 235 years ago? Has the aging ring gone dead, has the ancient ring been silenced in this great nation? It was March 20, 1775, in Saint John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia, when a 39 year old fiery Christian Senator stood up in the midst of other great Founding Fathers and boldly proclaimed, “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” He was saying, “Keep freedom ringing!!!” Patrick Henry would light the passion to the Revolutionary War with that speech, in order to keep the fires of freedom alive for generations to come! He reminded the states that they had to be brave. Robert J. McCracken wrote, “We on this continent should never forget that men first crossed the Atlantic not to find soil for their ploughs but to secure liberty for their souls.” How did our Founding Fathers understand liberty? What was their concept of freedom? What was their original intent for freedom, liberty and rights in America? Our Founding Fathers understood that there is a powerful connection between faith and freedom, and there is a direct connection between government and God! In Paul’s writings to the Galatians it states, “My brothers and sisters, God called you to be free, but do not use your freedom as an excuse to do what pleases your sinful self. Serve each other with love. The whole law is made complete in this one command: “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” Real freedom is a calling! God does the calling and we do the responding! Where do we get the idea that we should live free lives? Where do we get the basic principles that we are gifted with freedom? Where do we get the freedom of worship and the freedom to speak out? Every ounce of it comes from God! Without God we have no freedom, no liberty and no rights! Our Founding Fathers understood that our freedoms go all the way back to the Garden of Eden! The very first gift that God gave Adam and Eve was life, the second gift he gave them was liberty and freedom. They were totally free from disease, no cancer, no migraines, not heart illness, not even the common cold. They were totally free from disasters, death, no funeral homes, no caskets and no gravesites. Let’s go to the Declaration of Independence and see if the Founding Fathers felt there was a connection between freedom and God: When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them…or We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. James Madison, a signer of the Declaration said, “The law of nature which is dictated by God Himself, is, of course, superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times. No human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this.” In the writing of the Declaration, James Madison insisted on using the word “unalienable”. Jefferson want to use “inalienable” instead. There is a big difference—“Inalienable” means “not transferable, that cannot be rightfully taken away”, while “unalienable” means non transferable to another, but something that can only come from above.” James Madison was saying by using this word, that freedom is not humanly designed by evolution—it’s divinely designed by our Creator. He was also saying the key to maintaining freedom is to trust only in the Almighty—there’s no other way. This document (The Declaration of Independence) is not just a simple secular statement of rebellion from a king but rather a spectacular statement of dependence on God! Thomas Jefferson said, “The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.” Life and liberty cannot be separated or you no longer have freedom. Jefferson said, “Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure, when we have removed their only firm basis—(that basis is) a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God.” Somewhere along the line, we have lost our moorings. We have turned away from God and turned away from the Bible. Righteousness among any group of people has a beneficial effect. Righteousness is when people live by just and godly principles that produce just and godly actions. That kind of behavior “exalts” a nation. The word in the original language literally means “raise to honor; to life up”. It means that when the nation is a righteous nation then it will be honored among many and lifted up before all. Our nation’s founders understood righteousness in a way that we seem to have forgotten. They knew that righteousness was the catalyst to give birth to this nation of people looking for freedom and liberty. Sadly, our nation has become indifferent to God. Many of our political leaders have turned away from Biblical guidance for our nation. Many of our governing bodies and our public school systems have sought to ignore our spiritual heritage. But our founders looked to God and the Bible for direction and purpose. Listen closely to the words in the prologue to the Declaration of Independence: When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. The central point of everything they hoped to accomplish was based in the fact that there was a Creator God who also gave human beings the gifts of Life, liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Accountability to God and God talk has fallen out of favor. Every inauguration a group sues to keep the new President from saying, “So help me God.” The application of separation of church and state is totally out of sync with what our founders intended. The phrase “separation of church and state” is not even mentioned in our Constitution. It comes from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson in response to questions posed to him by the Danbury Baptist Association about the phrase, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” in the Fist Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Here is what Jefferson said, “The First Amendment has created a wall of separation between church and state, but that wall is a one-directional wall, it keeps the government from running the church, but it makes sure that Christian principals will always stay in government.” The value we place on the individual and individual rights is a reflection of the value our founders believed the Creator placed on the individual. Now we use those same rights to distance ourselves from God. By eliminating God from our national conversation, we eliminate our ability to publicly recognize the source of our prosperity. The celebration of our nation’s birthday is really a celebration of freedom. We celebrate the precious gifts of freedom we have because of the price others paid. We must remember that freedom isn’t free. Freedom is very expensive. It has cost some people everything, including their lives. Freedom isn’t free, but it is infinitely valuable. The ideal of freedom is an ideal that our Founding Fathers believed valuable enough to risk everything on. They risked their fortunes, their families, their reputations, and their honor. They risked their very lives and many of them paid for our freedom with their own blood and the blood of their children. Today we worship in security and comfort we do so because thousands upon thousands of people have give their lives and shed their blood both here and on foreign soil. They died in forsaken places with names no longer remembered so that we could experience the joy and responsibility of freedom. In a letter to William Smith dated November 13, 1787, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” No, freedom is not free. The price is always paid in blood. The blood spilled on battlefields called Concord and Charleston and Yorktown was not the first time blood was spilled for freedom. Over 2,000 years ago a young man’s blood spilled upon the ground so that we could all experience freedom. We need to live our lives in a manner that reflects our trust in Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead we put it on a stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” Let Freedom Ring! Amen. Prayers of the People God, you bless us beyond all reason, that we might give all that we have(and all we are) in service to you. You speak hope to our hearts, that we might hear the cries of your little ones in our midst. Your love is celebrated in all generations, Joyous Creator. You befriend all the outsiders of every time and place; you lead us by the right way, if we would be follow; you rescue us from our foolish wisdom, carrying us like babies into the kingdom. Your grace is revealed to every generation, Servant of the weary. You are the goodness from which we draw life; you are the comforter who warms us when death’s chill comes; you are the common sense which helps us to live God’s gracious ways. Your peace is celebrated through all generations, Spirit of rest. In every generation, in our generation, we would sing your praises forever and ever, God in Community, Holy in One, even as we pray as Jesus taught us, Our Father…
Promises, Promises! by Becky Harris May 1, 2011 Today we have been reminded of promises. In the course of a lifetime, we make many, many promises. Most are small; some are very, very big and important. Some are promises that we WON’T do something. Some are promises that we WILL do something! We keep promises, and we break promises. When I was a child , “Cross my heart and hope to die” was the most serious promise I could make. As children, we promise friends that we won’t tell that secret., or that we will be best friends forever. We promise our parents that we will make our beds, or walk the dog if we can get a new puppy, or work harder in school and get better grades next time, or never text and drive at the same time. Important promises all. When we become adults, and move out into the wider world, the promises become bigger and touch more people. We make a mutual promise to love and honor our husband or wife when we marry. We promise our employers that we will perform our work duties. We promise the bank that we will pay for the new house, or car, or the vacation we want to take. We promise our children that we will care for them and keep them safe. Promises quickly fill up our lives, to the point that sometimes, we might just feel that we are burdened down by all of these obligations! As young people, we think, “I can’t wait until I grow up and can be on my own and won’t have to make promises to other people!” As adults, we look back to when life was simpler, and long for the days when the only promises that we had to worry about were to clean our room, and take out the trash. How in the world do we handle all of these promises? Promises that we WILL, promises that we WON’T. Promises kept, promises broken…Do you ever hear yourself saying, “I have too much on my plate already! I can’t do one more thing!” My dreams used to be haunted by a plates juggling act I saw many years ago on TV. There were long skinny poles, vertical on a stage, and a juggler placed a plate on top of one, and spun it round, and then did the same to a second, and then a third, until there were a dozen or so spinning plates. , To keep them spinning he had to run frantically among them so they would not crash and break. Don’t try this at home! And now, this morning, in the scripture, and the children’s sermon, we are reminded of yet another level of promises that we have already made, but perhaps have forgotten, or set aside. These are sacred promises that we have made to God, because God has made promises to us, both in God’s covenant to us , and through our Lord, Jesus. “Hear O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to you children, and talk about them when you are at home, and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.” Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.” Teach your children well. Recently I was listening to a podcast from LOGOS , a Christian Education ministry for children and their families, which we are considering adopting for our Wednesday KWT after school times. The ministry is designed around using parent and church volunteers, and this podcast was specifically about recruiting people to make it work. One of the statements by the presenters that jumped out at me was that in any congregation, there are all of the people with all of the gifts and talents to create a successful children and youth ministry. God has provided us with all that we need. The real task is to help people find their gifts and to know how to use them. In the church family, as in every family, there are jobs to be done, and hopefully, people to do those jobs. It is a pretty simple concept: Identify the jobs and find the right people to do them. As parents, when we are training children to do chores, it helps to match the right child with the right job. That might not be immediately evident, and might involve some experimenting before we discover that little Albert is much better at helping in the kitchen, while Annabelle would really rather be mowing the lawn anyway. We are so used to thinking of work in the church as being only about teaching a church school class, or singing in the choir, or lectoring on a Sunday morning, that we forget all of the rest of the things that must be done. We stay away from volunteering for fear of ending up with a life-long job that might not even suit us. For those of us who are put in a position of recruiting people to serve on committees, or on the session, or as deacons, or to teach a class, we really don’t want to resort to the “warm body” method of filling positions! What we are about in the mission of this church is too important to not make the best use of the skills of our members! And every last one of us is called to serve. Maybe you have even said, “I’d like to do something, but I just don’t know what it is.” What are your God-given gifts and talents? In Paul’s letters to the early churches , he identifies many gifts among them are the “biggies” such as ministry, teaching, wisdom, and utterance of knowledge. But also included are generosity, patience, compassion, organization and planning. Christian Schwartz, in his book Three Colors of Ministry says that sometimes our God given gifts are so much a part of us that we fail to even recognize them! Perhaps you take your planning and organizational skills for granted, and don’t see that you could use them to help a group of middle school students to complete a mission project to benefit families who have lost their homes in floods or tornados. Or you who are especially patient and compassionate might teach girls and boys to make cozy lap blankets for children in hospitals. Are you able to teach a child to play a board game? Or tutor a boy who needs extra help learning fractions? Or read to a group of toddlers? Or prepare an afternoon snack for some hungry 1st and 2nd graders? Or teach a few 5th graders how to properly set a table? Or plan and shop for healthy meals for family dinner nights? Would you be willing to tell the story of your faith journey to a high school student? These simple tasks are as much a part of the ministry of the church as teaching a class or reading the scriptures. The children themselves have told us that they value the promises that we have made, and see God’s love in all that we do from the sharing of Tic-tac’s, to sharing in the Lord’s Supper. We have promised God, and this church, and these children that we will teach, and encourage, and love one another. Christian Schwartz suggests that to discover how to fulfill the promises we have made, we must be open to God in prayer. We must be ready to apply our gifts, by beginning with what we enjoy. We must not be afraid to experiment, and to try something new. We should also recognize the gifts of others, and always prayerfully support one another in the mission and ministry of this church. “Hear O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to you children, and talk about them when you are at home, and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.” Amen
 | CLP Garen Smith and Hairy Harry entertain and teach not only the youth but all as Hairy Harry visits the Children's sermon portion of the worship service.
|
Sunday, February 27, 2011 Rev. Jay Tennies I WILL NEVER FORGET YOU Isaiah 49:8-16a Matthew 6:24-34 all Scriptures from the New Revised Standard Version Does anyone like cake? How about chocolate cake with chocolate frosting? I have a confession to make – I like food and I love eating so much that I decided to become a cook and baker as a teenager. My mother was a great cook and baker, but I figured that if I learned for myself then I would always be able to have what I wanted. You can ask Angie, I’m a pretty good cook. Now, let’s get back to the chocolate cake. Did I mention that it was a triple chocolate cake recipe? Well . . . I made my cake and put it in the oven to bake. About 25 minutes into the baking, I decided to check it and something was wrong. It was more like a brownie than a cake. So I went over my recipe and the ingredients only to figure out that in my haste to get it in the oven, I forgot to put in the water. I know that no one else forgets things, but sometimes I forget and then I’m trying to fix my mistakes. One Sunday a few years ago, I was turning off all the lights after worship services and found one of our teenagers still at the church. He was a little confused because everyone had left the church including his parents. This was in the days before cell phones and it didn’t take long for the church phone to ring and it was his Dad. “Pastor Jay, is Corey there?” “Yes.” “His mother and I drove separate vehicles to church today. She thought he rode home with me and I thought he rode home with her. We were getting ready to eat and couldn’t find him. I’ll be right down to pick him up.” They didn’t really forget him, it just seemed like they did. We can forget – it’s only normal, but our forgetting always brings some kind of consequence. Sometimes it’s like these stories and just a bit humorous as we get things straightened out, but we can forget people and it has devastating effects on relationships. I have sat in hospitals and funeral home with hurting people who felt forgotten by loved ones. The breaks in relationships were real and painful. Some were able to restore relationships and others were not. Did you ever feel like God has forgotten you? Be honest. In the midst of trying times in our homes, workplaces and communities, we often feel like God has forgotten us. When we lose a job, when a relationship is broken, or when we face sickness and tragedy, we start to ask, “If God is really All-Knowing, All-Powerful, All-Present, and All-Loving, why do we hurt so much? Certainly, God’s children wouldn’t have to go through these things. Maybe God has forgotten us?” We are not alone in these feelings. The Bible tells us of Jonah who felt forgotten by God in the belly of the big fish. Job wondered if God had forgotten him as he lost his children, health and wealth. Psalm 22:1&2 are David’s cries at feeling forgotten My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest. In reading from Isaiah 49:14 we hear the nation of Israel echo this cry, But Zion said, "The LORD has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me." Israel had been slaves and they wondered if God had forgotten them. Were they not God’s Chosen People? Again, we can see the questioning of God’s ability to remember in the midst our troubles. The good news is that none of these cries of the forgotten go unheard. The image that God gives us in Isaiah 49:15 is an enduring one for us as we wrestle with these issues. Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Let me see the hands of all the mothers who are present this morning. Can you forget your children? NO – It doesn’t have anything to do with whether you are pleased or displeased with them. It doesn’t have anything to do with whether you see them or talk to them or hear from them. You can’t forget your own flesh and blood. This beautiful picture reminds us that even IF a mother COULD forget, GOD DOES NOT FORGET. If you need a further confirmation listen to Numbers 23:19 God is not a human being, that he should lie,
or a mortal, that he should change his mind.
Has he promised, and will he not do it?
Has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it? “OK, preacher, that sounds good and we believe in God, but in real life things get complicated. There are still day to day things that we need and when times get tough, we have to take things into our own hands. So even if we believe that God doesn’t forget us, we are the ones who have to take care of stuff and that’s a pretty big task. You can’t blame us if we are a bit worried about things.” I’m not going to ask for a show of hands about who worries. We all worry. It’s just that some of us manage it better than others. Our Gospel Lesson from Matthew speaks of the joy of worry. We are reminded that worry cannot add “one single” hour to our lives. The truth is that worry often paralyzes us from fully living the life that God has planned for us. Worry is the embodiment of the feeling that God has forgotten us and left us to fend for ourselves. The last two verses of the Gospel passage lead us into a better way of faithful living But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today." As frail and feeble human beings, we worry about things that we can’t control. It’s not really a surprise that we cannot control things, but sometimes we need to be reminded of who is in control – God. It’s just that sometimes we are so busy living life at our own speed and own way that we forget. It’s kind of like how I forgot to put the water in the triple chocolate cake or parents forgetting their child. We know better than to worry, but we deal with the consequences of doing it anyway. So we find ourselves stressed out and over-reacting to the little things in life while we miss the splendor of what God is providing and how God is getting us through each day. We may need a sign, a string around our finger, a post it note or a to-do list to remind us of what we shouldn’t forget. We still need reminders, but God doesn’t. Today’s sermon is meant to assure us that it is not in God’s nature to forget us. We are known and cared for by a God who can be trusted when we hear the words, “I WILL NEVER FORGET YOU.” Prayer: O God who never forgets, we are so thankful to be created, known, loved, and cared for by You. Forgive us for the many ways that we forget who we are and fail to live in the full joy of being your children. Free us from worry and fill us with enough faith for each day. Amen.
7 Epiphany A, 2/20/2011 Rev. Gail Zachrison Kane Presbyterian, Kane, PA Leviticus 19.1-2,9-18; Matthew 5.38-48 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. We are still in the season of Epiphany - the season of making God known, revealing who God is in the person of Jesus Christ. We have been dealing with the Sermon on the Mount for weeks, and sometimes it can get to sounding awfully harsh. Jesus began expanding the common notions of the Law, the Torah, a couple of weeks ago, and the words can be hard to hear. Again this week the expectations and the demands are high. The common theme that connects the Old Testament lesson and the gospel is love, a foolish kind of love that defies the wisdom of this world. But that’s not the way it sounds at first. Moses is speaking the word of the Lord to the people - “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” We may think of this book as the work of the people being organized into a community after coming out of Egypt but well before entering the Promised Land. They came from being told what to do and how to live into a time of wandering and having to figure out a healthy way of living for all people in the community. Be holy because God is holy. The people of God are to be holy because the one who has called them and made a covenant with them is holy. It’s interesting to look at our common definition of holy and how it contrasts with the meaning it seems to have in Leviticus. Looking online in several places “holy” means “relating to the divine” or “set apart for religious purposes. ”The English word is related to “whole”, as in “entire” or “total”. But I find it most helpful when I’m dealing with lessons such as these to think of “holy” as meaning “separate, different, or other.” These words are all reflected in the dictionary definitions - something that is “set apart” for religious purposes. Then I can see a fuller meaning, a deeper meaning, in these lessons. God says - “You shall be holy because I the Lord your God am holy.” You are to be set apart and different from the ways of the world around you because I have chosen you to be my people. Then follow several teachings that are much like the Ten Commandments and beyond. Each passage ends with the reason for the teaching: “I am the Lord”. “Do not turn to idols or make cast images for yourselves: I am the Lord your God; (19:4) You shall not revile the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind; you shall fear your God: I am the Lord; (19:14) You shall keep my sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary: I am the Lord; (19:30) You shall rise up before the aged, and defer to the old; and you shall fear your God: I am the Lord.” (19:32) There are many more, but this is enough. Most of these laws and statutes were not observed by other cultures, and so observance of them made the Israelites different. These laws and teachings were so that the people would live in a healthier way, a fairer way, for all. These laws and teachings would build up the community, and build trust rather than destroying the community. The people would be “separate, different, other” from the practices and wisdom of the world around them by the way they obeyed the laws of God. God is holy and God was making God’s people holy by their behavior. Many times the word of the Lord came to the Israelites not to live as the people around them did. They were special to God and therefore different, and they were to live different. Later in Leviticus we even hear “You shall be holy to me; for I the Lord am holy, and have separated you from the people, that you should be mine.” (20:26) So originally “holy” means to be separate and different from the ways and wisdom of the world around God’s people. The behavior of the people of God is to reflect the different-ness of God. Then if we examine the types of behavior that God calls for in God’s people we see a mandate against idols and idol worship and anything that comes between God and the people, against anything that weakens the trust of the people in God. In addition we see behavior encouraged that is on the side of social justice, and for better and more humane and caring treatment for those who are oppressed by the social or economic system, or those oppressed by disease or other physical handicaps. The last part of the first lesson sums up another reason why God’s people are to be living this way and acting this way toward others - “You shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” (19:18b) To love your neighbor as yourself means you will be looking out for their well-being in all circumstances, and doing this will be “holy” living. Jesus knew all these laws and statutes, and he knew what “holy” meant, too. Those who were truly holy because God is holy were seen to be different from the world around them. That is precisely what Jesus was calling people to be in these lessons from Matthew; they are called to be different. It is not being different for its own sake, but for the betterment of the lives of those around them. So Jesus wasn’t really saying anything new from what was the core of God-ly living for the people of Israel. But it’s not easy, and we make good news things into legalisms and lose sight of the big picture. I think Jesus was really trying to open up our vision to see the fullness and giftedness of God’s life for us. These words of Jesus are a further explanation of what it means to be salty, or to be a light, or to have the righteousness beyond that of the scribes and Pharisees. These are further guidelines to encourage the people of God to rise higher, to be righteous, to be holy, to be different, to be perfect, which also means “mature”, as their heavenly Father is perfect. More tough words this week to expand our thinking - the system of revenge - how much is enough? In ancient times there were no curbs on the limit of revenge. If one person was wronged, he was just as likely to overreact in his anger. Too many times the revenge was too extreme. More damage or pain was being inflicted than was necessary or called for. The Law of Talion developed over the years - an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. The amount of retaliation could no longer be excessive. This was an advance over the previous way of doing things, but to us it sounds too harsh. Yet sometimes our anger wants to go that far and beyond. Too many times we see the results of unbridled anger. A mob goes crazy and beats someone who later dies. We are seeing so much possibility for explosive mob psychology during all these uprisings in the Middle East, and the relatively peaceful demonstrations are “separate, different, other” from what could be. Our legal system wisely tries to keep “revenge” or “retribution” fair and just. But unfortunately fear and anxiety in the larger society can sometimes set up unfair and unwise punishments. A bumper sticker I once saw declared its own kind of punishment - “Fight crime; shoot first.” That would not fit the Levitical definition of holiness, but it’s what the world would always like to do . That behavior is not separate or different, and it does not build up a healthy community. Instead Jesus goes way beyond the law of talion. There are modern pacifists who practice non-violent resistance. Jesus calls us to go beyond that - no resistance whatsoever. In fact, present yourself and your belongings to the one who hits or grabs or steals. In Jesus’ time a Roman soldier could force a civilian to carry something for a mile. Jesus said to double the assistance that is forced from you. Basically, through all these things, Jesus is saying - “don’t retaliate”. When you remain calm, you are helping to calm the system, which allows people to think, and maybe come up with a different way. Jesus doesn’t stop there - Love your enemy! The word about hating one’s enemy was never found in scripture; in fact verse 17 in our first lesson even says “you shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin;” - it’s just part of tradition and the natural thing to do. But Jesus came out with a word that was astonishing - love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you! It’s hard, but when we can calm ourselves enough to do that, we begin to change the system around us. But this is so hard to do, and so unnatural when we are hurt or wronged that the word of God to love our enemies gets buried and overwhelmed by our anxiety and emotions in the 3 major God religions. Brothers and sisters should love the brother or sister they were angry with this morning; bosses should pray for employees who do not want to work well; salespeople should pray for obnoxious and cheating customers; students should pray for the teacher they have trouble with; pray for your ex-wife or your ex-husband; go beyond - pray for your spouse’s ex-wife or ex-husband; pray for the person who made you feel small, hurt, and vulnerable. Notice also the direction of the prayer - not pray against, not pray about, but pray for. And why this excess of love and mercy and holiness? So that you may be children of your heavenly Father, and because God sends blessings on the good and bad alike. But we balk at these words, we are worn out by them - I don’t have that much salt, or light, or righteousness or chutzpah in me. I can’t even fake it, for my enemies see through me. But God followed through on God’s holiness, God’s differentness, God’s separateness from the world. God sent and still sends blessings on God’s enemies. God has also spoken for them - not against or about, but for them - by sending the Word of God to live among the enemies of God and die for them. God our Father sent Jesus Christ to be born as a tiny baby in desperate conditions, to live the life of a peasant among oppressed people, and to die as a sinner and a criminal among his enemies. When they pushed, he did not resist. When sinful people shouted crucify, he walked to the cross. When we pounded the nails, he bled and suffered and died. For us. To forgive us. To give us new life as God the Father raised him to new life. We have the mark, not of nails, but of the cross upon us, and that means new liveliness and love where we had none or could not before. In our baptism we were buried with Christ, and God is raising us to a new existence. God is making us holy - “separate, different, other” and perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. It is not our own doing but God’s building through the word we hear and the love that nourishes us with the ***(most precious body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.) ***(sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.) We are constantly being prepared and strengthened to be God’s people in the world, those who bring friendship and love to others, even to their enemies. We become, through God’s grace to us, those who continue to love and look up to the big brother or sister who swiped the toy; or the boss who uses the low performance of employees creatively; or the salesperson who befriends obnoxious customers and prays for them; or the student who tries to befriend the teacher and show by loving example a different way of being; or the man or woman who prays for the welfare of an ex-spouse; or anyone who by being different from the wisdom and ways of the world around us brings the love and healing and mercy of God into the world. That is being holy; that is being perfect; that is being mature. Each of us has his or her own special enemies in our lives. Only you know them and only you can bring them grace and love. It is not your strength and holiness which accomplishes this, but the grace and strength of Christ who dwells in you. Be holy as the Lord your God is holy; be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect, for Jesus Christ walks with you, even to the end of the age. Amen.
Choose Life February 13, 2011 – Presbyterian Church of Kane Glenda Buonanducci Webster defines a valentine as, “a gift or greeting sent to someone(special),” It almost always contains a message of love or affection that the sender has for the receiver. God has sent to this world a valentine, a message of love He has for all mankind. From the very beginning God has expressed and manifested the great love He has for humankind. God expressed His love: In the very act of creation…when He said, “Let there be light.” He knew that nothing could live without light. Science teaches that light is independent of the sun. It was created before the sun. God prepared the earth for man before He created him. God expressed his love when He saved Noah’s family from the flood…He preserved a seed so man could be spared and replenish the earth. God expressed His love when He sent Jesus to be born of a virgin and become a human…love caused God to become man. God expressed His love in the life of Christ on earth. How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with Him. God expressed His love in the death of Christ. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. God expressed His love in the resurrection of Christ…because I live, you shall live also. Life is filled with choices. We must choose when to go to bed and when to get up. What to eat and what not to eat. What to wear and what not to wear. We choose what to do with our time. We choose where we’ll go to work and where we will go out to eat. Life is filled with choices. Some choices are easy to make. Some are difficult. Life’s full of interesting choices. You already made several today. Without thinking about it, you exercised one of the greatest God-given qualities you and I have as human beings. We will look at two stories about choosing and how having a choice fits into our lives now and forever. Look for your self in each of these: you are there. One is the instruction from God in our Bible reading given to the nation of Israel right before they entered the Promised Land. It’s about 1406 B. C., during what archaeologists call the Late Bronze Age. After 40 years of wandering in the desert, Israel is getting ready to cross the Jordan River and take over the land God had promised their forefathers. They were at a literal crossroads in their history, and the whole book of Deuteronomy is about getting them ready to go into this new setting. It’s a lot like what we do as a new year begins—looking backward at where we’ve been, and looking forward to what we want to accomplish. Israel has been living in tents, not cities. Settling in, planting fields and vineyards, setting down roots, there were all going to be new things to this generation that grew up roaming the desert. Suddenly, they were going to have peace and stability and prosperity. God knows that tough times are tough, be to remain faithful in successful times can be even tougher. So, through Moses, God gave them a reminder. They were to set up large stones at Mt. Ebal, coat them with plaster, and write the Law on them as reminders to the people, Then, as the people crossed the Jordan, they were to form two squads to bless the people. Just like when the players run out on the field at the beginning of the big game. I can hear them, “We’ve got spirit, yes we do, we’ve go spirit! How about you?!” The priests were to call out the blessings, and the curses, and the people were to all shout “Amen!” after each one. In our reading Moses says, “ I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse—the blessing if you obey the commands of the Lord your god and turn from the way that I command you today by following other gods, which you have not known. “ On top of that, god also told them they would mess up, and that they’d be carried off by their enemies, but that, once again, if they’d obey His law, He would bring them back and bless them. OK, so where are you in this story. First of all, God has made similar promises to us about our relationship with Him. Do what He says, follow His decrees, and live. And you, like me, even have a second chance. We’ll mess up. God knows that, but He promises a second time that He will restore Israel if they will just turn back to Him. That’s a lot like the offer of grace that God gives to each of us in Jesus—a second chance. And just like Israel, we have this choice to make—life or death; spiritual prosperity, or destruction; blessing or curse. And god tells us: choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your god, listen to his voice, hold fast to him. Our other story from Scripture that talks about our choice, and that it comes to us in the form of a parable that Jesus told in Matthew. “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come. Then he sent some more servants and said, “Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’ But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. The rest seized his servants mistreated them and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, both good and bad, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.” This is a parable—a story with an important trust embedded in it. And once again, we are looking at teaching about people’s choices. God. Who is represented by the kind in this story, is giving people an opportunity to enjoy His kindness.
They have been invited to a wedding feast, and now the time to come to it has arrived, so the second call goes out. Just like Israel chose to turn their backs on God, these people choose to disregard God’s invitation. So, there’s a second chance—this time to include people who weren’t even invited the first time. And once again, there’ still another choice to be made that will lead to either happiness or misery. In the beginning, God created all that is, including man. He didn’t have to. It was His own choice. The way He established it all was up to Him too. No one told God what things should look like or how they should work. And when He made man in His own image, that was His choice too. Somewhere, as He put it all together, He gave us something precious. We call it free will—it is the ability to choose. God placed choices in front of us. Just like Israel had a choice, just like the guests in the parable had a choice, we have a choice. We are faced daily with the lies that it does not matter or that we really don’t have a choice—that no matter what we do, there is a right and a wrong to life. “I have to live. If I don’t, I’ll ruin a friendship.” “Everyone cheats on the test. Besides I have to pass this class!” “I’d like to be a better person, but I just wasn’t brought up that way.” “I’d give up the habit, but I just can’t control it.” Victor Frankl, a concentration camp survivor in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, wrote “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” The ability to choose is not only valuable, it is also full of power. By our choices we set the course for our whole lives, whether good or bad. Your choice to smile at someone today may affect that person’s whole day. Your choice to stop and converse with someone, to offer a word of encouragement, could change the entire course of someone’s attitude. Your decision to finally share your faith with your friend this week could change that person forever. It works negatively too. Your decision not to talk with someone who needed to hear from you this morning could feed resentment in that person. Our choices make an impact. This is our work in creation: to decide. And what we decide is woven into the thread of time and being forever. Choose wisely, then, but you must choose. Whether you like the way it works or not, the good news this morning is that you get to choose, I get to choose! Listen to God’s word this morning. See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. Choose life..Amen!
January 2, 2011 Elder Becky Harris May the words of my mouth, and the meditation of our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, oh Lord, our strength and our Redeemer. Epiphany! The word sounds like fireworks! Epiphany! A star bursting in the heavens! Epiphany! Illumination of the darkest corners! Revelation of “God with Us”…. Epiphany! The word “Epiphany” is Greek in origin and it means “an appearance or manifestation”. It is a festival that has been celebrated since about the 4th century after Christ, to commemorate the appearance of Jesus to the gentiles. The actual date of Epiphany is January 6th, 12 days after December 25th. The Book of Matthew, written toward the end of the first century, is the only Gospel that tells the story of the Magi, the Wise Men, learned foreigners who came to Bethlehem, following the star, in search of the King. While the story of the Wise Men may have been passed down in oral tradition, it was not included in Mark, Luke or John. Still, the author of Matthew positions it as the climax point of the nativity story. The celebration of the coming of the Magi, with their gifts to the infant Jesus, occurs at the beginning of both the calendar year, and the church year, making it a natural time for reflection and inspiration. An epiphany, in our usage is also a “sudden, intuitive perception of, or insight into, the reality or essential meaning of something”. It is the “ah-ha” moment when we find the solution to a problem, or achieve an understanding. The lights go on! I have a vivid memory of my first epiphany. I was probably around 5 years old, and I had been struggling to learn to tie my shoes! My very patient grandmother had been trying to teach me, and the lessons only ended in frustration for both of us. Then, one night I had a dream, and I saw how I should twist the laces to make a bow! The next morning, TA DAH, I could tie my shoes! Probably everyone here over the age of 5 has had an epiphany of one kind or another. Perhaps it was when you suddenly understood long division, or French verb tenses, or saw the solution to a business problem, or, even, could perceive your mission and purpose in this life. It is very possible that by including the story of the visitation of the Magi, and their wonderful gifts to the Christ child, the author of the book of Matthew was attempting to create in the early Christians , an epiphany about the nature of their true mission. In the history of the church, these were difficult times. It is easy to imagine the early Church, as the older followers of “The Way” aged, and new believers, with foreign, and sometimes startling, new ideas, entered the evolving faith. Many disciples were expecting Christ’s quick return as King, but instead they were ruled by Caesar, who claimed himself to be chosen by God. Did they feel discouragement, disillusionment, perhaps nostalgia for earlier times, when the path had seemed clearer, when energy was high, and the light was brighter? Into the story of the birth of Christ, the author of the Gospel of Matthew drops the fireworks of Epiphany, and the inspired message that helped to shape the future of the church. The Magi served as a reminder to the early Christians that the Messiah came to all people, Jew and Gentile alike. The old concept of a “chosen people” had shifted to include all of humankind, and the mission of the early church, was then, as now, to spread the Word to all nations! The Gospel of Matthew challenged the early Christians to live in what New Testament scholar, Warren Carter, calls “an active and faithful …community of loving, merciful, inclusive, missional servants, anticipating the completion of God’s purpose.” Like the Magi of the story, once the disciples had experienced the Epiphany, they understood that they must return home, to the heart of their faith, and the message they were charged to share. They would return by a different road, perhaps a “higher” path. In our church we have a tradition of receiving “star gifts” on Epiphany. They are simply words written onto yellow construction paper stars. Some of us have saved them over the years, and have whole collections of words that could probably be assembled into sentences, or poetry, by now! ______,_______,________,_________. Single words that have multiple layers of meaning. Will you find yourself as a giver, or as a receiver of your “star gift” word? How will you grow because of it? Might it be a call to change your life? To change your path? And in what form will Epiphany will come to us in the Presbyterian Church of Kane? Perhaps the recent church survey spearheaded by the “Dream Team” contains some answers. On an evening in October of 2010, Dr. James Rimmer came to us and reviewed our “church health”, based on the how we had completed questions about our church life. While many aspects of his assessment were interesting and insightful, the point of ‘epiphany”, at which I gained a much clearer view of the life of the Presbyterian Church of Kane, was in a drawing of a bell curve of “The Church Life-Cycle”. While I understand the concept of the “Bell Curve”, I also see in the drawing, a path of faith. The fireworks went off for me when I saw how this simple drawing helps to show where we are in that path! I have included a picture of the curve that Dr. Rimmer presented to us, with a little modification, those dotted lines. As he explained it, the left, rising, side of the curve represents the birth, the formation of the future church, when dreams, and goals, and beliefs are being formed. It is an exciting time, when the sense of purpose and mission is strong. At the top is the plateau when the ministry of the church is defined and fully functional. It is a point of maturity and strength, the church of the present. On the right side, is the denouement, the falling side, when memories of the past life of the church can result in nostalgia, questioning and polarization. At the very bottom of the right side curve, only the past remains, and unless action is taken, the death of a church can occur. As I have said, seeing this chart path was an ah-ha moment for me, a real epiphany, when it suddenly became clear to me that ALL congregations experience this life cycle, and that we are not dead yet! There have been events during the last several months that have created stresses. But, truly, are we not dreamers? I, for one, believe that at the heart of it, our sense of purpose remains strong. That was revealed about us in our church health survey. We have recently witnessed the loss of a Presbyterian Church in Bradford. At the same time, and all around us, in this community, we see churches with declining attendance and membership. It is very sad when a church that is 135 years old closes its doors, but the death of a congregation does not have to be inevitable, and it is certainly not the end of the mission of its members. This curve is, in fact, a part of a wave, shown by the dotted lines, an unbroken path that stretches back to the earliest Christians, and well beyond us, to our antecedents in faith. As discouraged as our Christian ancestors may have been, they did not stop. Difficult times strengthened their resolve. They continued to follow the light. We would not be here if it had been otherwise. In reality, this journey is so much BIGGER that we are. It is about God at work in the world, among us, in us, through us! As the Magi, and the early Christians, and all the saints of this congregation before us, we must return home, by a higher path. We, the congregation of the Presbyterian Church of Kane, are called and must resolve to be the people of the Epiphany, bearers of the fireworks, “an active and faithful …community of loving, merciful, inclusive, missional servants, anticipating the completion of God’s purpose.” Epiphany! The word sounds like fireworks! Epiphany! A star bursting in the heavens! Epiphany! Illumination of the darkest corners! Revelation of “God with Us”…. Epiphany!
What Child Is This? December 26, 2010 – Glenda Buonanducci Over the past month we’ve looked at the Christmas story. We looked at how Mary and Joseph had to go to Bethlehem for Augustus’ census; we’ve looked at how there was no room at the inn and so Jesus was born in a stable and laid in a manger, we’ve looked at how the angelic host announced His birth to the shepherds in the field. Jesus was circumcised 8 days later according to the command of God given in Genesis. It was at that time that He was given the name Jesus, the name that the angel told Mary she should name Him. Mary herself had to be pronounced clean by the priests, in accordance with the Law, just like every other Jewish mother. And then she presented Jesus to the Lord. That’s important because earthly parents of Jesus observed all the requirements of the Law. Then Luke introduces us to two people, Simeon and Anna. They were both devout believers and were looking forward to the coming of the Messiah. So Simeon blessed God and then gave a prophecy to Mary concerning both Jesus and herself. He said Jesus was destined for the fall and rising of many in Israel. Many people were looking for a political savior, a physical king who would help them throw off the yoke of Roman bondage. To the people like that, Jesus would result in their “fall,” to the Pharisees who had twisted the Scriptures in so many ways over the years, Jesus would result in their “falling,” but Simeon also said that Jesus was destined for the “rising” of many as well. Now, Mary and Joseph had another surprise coming from God. Wise men came from the East to worship Jesus. Now there are several things we should see here. First of all, these “wise men” were gentiles. They weren’t Jews, they are from the East, probably Persia(modern day Iran). They were Magoi who studied astrology, medicine, religion and a type of eastern philosophy. Again history tells us that those Magoi traveled in large groups. Even if there were just three men, they would have had an entourage of slaves, apprentices, and other workers. There may have been 50 or more in the group of Magoi. We often think there were three of them, because they brought three types of gifts. When the wise men came, they came to worship and in worshiping, they brought gifts. Worshiping the Lord is not just limited to singing hymns and choruses. Our entire church service should be one of worship. The songs we sing, the music that’s played, the tithes and offerings we bring, the preaching of the Word. It’s all included in worship. And the star went before them. The star was moving from north to south, from Jerusalem to Bethlehem! It moved, and then stopped, over where the “young Child” was. So Jesus wasn’t a baby anymore, He was a “young Child,” at this time, and this “star” led these wise men all the way from Persia, or where ever it was they had come from, and then suddenly stopped over the home Mary, Joseph and Jesus were staying in. The Chinese astronomical tables make mention of the appearance of a star or comet in 6 B.C. over the Middle East, specifically the land of Israel. Now this “star” may have been an actual star, it might have been a comet, it might have been an angel, it might have just been some kind of display of God’s glory, like what shone around the shepherds in the fields. The point is that it was God’s doing. Go supernaturally led gentiles to His Son, so that they could worship. We come in the comfort of our cars, and sit in a comfortable church, but do we worship? Did you come this morning expecting to worship Him? Mankind has not changed since the birth of Christ. Some in the world hate Jesus Christ. Most people wouldn’t come out and say that, they will tolerate the nativity scene; but if Christ gets in their way, if He interferes with selfish and sinful ambition, or if His gospel demands they repent, or if His gospel preaches the intolerant message that there is no other way to be reconciled to God other than through His Son Jesus Christ, then the problems start to arise. This is what is behind the efforts to remove Christ from Christmas or to keep Him in the manger. But He didn’t stay in the manger. He grew up, and He died on the cross. That is what He was born to do. To die for our sins, yours and mine. To redeem mankind and reconcile us to God. Some people react to Jesus the way Herod did, others respond as the wise men did. Herod was afraid that Jesus was going to interfere with his life, his goals and ambitions. So Herod reacted with hatred and hostility. People don’t have much of a problem with a baby in a manger, but they realize that that baby grew up, and that baby became a man, a man who demanded that they turn from sin and selfishness. Luke says that Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost. He came because God loves us so much He doesn’t want to punish us for all eternity, so Jesus took our punishment on the cross, and died for our sins, so that we might have life everlasting. Other people are indifferent. Christ means nothing to them. Remember Herod asked the priests and scribes where Christ was to be born, and they knew…it was in Bethlehem, but they never went to worship Him. They knew the Scriptures spoke of the Messiah, but their knowledge wasn’t mixed with faith. Wise men still worship Him though, and bow before Him, but a time is coming when every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father in heaven. But the wise men were wise, because they didn’t wait for that day. They came and set their hearts on Jesus. They were willing to risk it all and worship
| 
