Cheap Grace

Luke 2: 22-40

Here we are with Christmas all over. Here we are with the life of Christ just beginning. After all of the prophesies and waiting, all of the angels and the shepherds, Jesus is born and thriving. And his parents are beginning the hard task of raising a child. Luke writes that they are being good, dutiful parents. They’ve brought their baby home and have brought him their first son to be presented at the temple. They are following the ritual law that Jesus will fulfill. The presence of Jesus in the temple does not go unnoticed. Two people identify him as the Messiah. One man and one woman, both “great in age.”

As a society, we don’t deal with aging well. After about age 21 birthdays are no longer occasions to be celebrated. If my dad overhears someone gripping about an upcoming birthday, he always says “well, it’s better than the alternative.” And some people get around this by turning 29 or 39 or 49 over and over again.

We also do things and buy things to avoid looking or acting older. Our pharmacy shelves are filled with anti-wrinkle creams and products for youthful rejuvenation. Not to mention botox and plastic surgery. As a society, we fear growing older. And unfortunately, we do not honor and respect our elders.

Luke honors two—does not lament their age, or pity them, but praises their wisdom and faithfulness. Simeon is a man, on whom rests the Holy Spirit. He comes to the temple this particular day because the Spirit guides him. Had he not listened to this prompting and staid home, he would have missed seeing the Messiah. He sees the child, holds the child, and says great and terrible things about him: Jesus is the fulfilling of God’s salvation, but also the falling and rising of many, a sign to be opposed. It’s good news, overall, but not terribly cheerful.

Simeon, upon seeing the child Messiah, does not lament his own life. He does not ask for further longevity, he says “now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word.” A man who faces his death with full confidence and no fear. This is basically the same brave sentiment from Mary that we heard last Sunday: “here am I, the servant of the Lord, let it be to me according to your Word”

Luke is telling his story with those faithful, humble, pure-of-heart people. Simeon, who knew that he would see the Messiah before his death, now faces that death in peace. Perhaps a lesser person would have bargained for more time, as if Jesus were a wish-granting genie, but not Simeon, he has peace in God both in life and in death.

One of the characteristics of the book of Luke is his mention of women. Sometimes his is called the “gospel of women” because women are mentioned so frequently. While Luke does mention 10 named women, he mentions 133 named men. While 10 is great, it’s no match to 133.
He pairs stories of men with stories of women. We start off with Zechariah and Elizabeth. Later, there’s the healing of the centurion’s servant, then the widow’s son. The masculine story of the lost sheep is followed by the story of the woman and the lost coin. Luke also pays a lot of attention to widows. So it’s no surprise, that the story of Simeon is followed with the story of Anna as complement. Note; this does not make Luke a feminist gospel. The inclusion of women may hint at inclusion of women in the Christian community, but this is not a standard of equality. Though he includes women, even by name, which is unusual, he still characterizes them based on their relationships to men and gives them less power and autonomy. Luke identifies Anna through the naming of her father and tribe. He then discusses her husband and identifies her as a long-term widow. Though she also speaks of the child, we do not get to hear her words, even though we hear Simeon’s. Simeon, too, we learn, has been blessed by the Holy Spirit, and while Anna is a prophet, Luke does not include the Spirit in her description. It’s hard to tell exactly what’s going on with Anna. She’s a prophet who never left the temple, but worshipped with fasting and prayer night and day. She sounds rather extreme and perhaps a little batty. Like she might be a lone woman who’s set up camp in the temple and then starts blabbering about Jesus. We don’t know because Luke doesn’t tell us that the Spirit was upon her, that the Spirit led her to the temple and to Jesus, or that she was righteous and devout.

At the time that Luke’s gospel was written, there were various communities of women, particular older widows, who formed religious orders in places like Qumran, like a Jewish form of nuns. Anna may have been part of a like community, or a “consecrated widow” serving the temple through ministry and prayer. Anna is likely, not just an older woman with nothing to do but loiter in the temple. She is the honored prophet and widow who carries out the work of God in the temple.

But whatever else, Anna is not pitied for her old age. Luke honors her both for being a widow and for being of “great age.” Both she and Simeon demonstrate wisdom and devotion. Like the shepherds, they are not confused by a messiah who shows up as a baby. They understand that this is their salvation, their redemption, and their hope.

In this instance, we begin to learn the implications for Jesus’ coming. Now that the redeemer has come, we can settle in to what that will mean. The light is here, the baby is born, peace and justice may roll down like waters. The words of joy roll in. But this redemption comes with a price. It’s not all joy.

After Simeon praises God for this light and revelation, he turns to Mary. He acknowledges the great hope of the event, but then has a word for the mother. Simeon says: "This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed--and a sword will pierce your own soul too." Not exactly the words she might have wanted to hear about her new baby boy. Your baby boy, so cute, and fresh, and squishy, with the cheeks that no one can resist, will be opposed. And a sword will pierce your own soul. Parenting is never easy. But here’s Mary, who so willingly gave her life to God, to be blessed with such a son, a son to bring healing and wholeness to the world, but will also bring division, and certain pain for you.

Mary, so willingly, said “let it be unto me according to your word.” Opening herself up to whatever God might have in mind, even accepting that this child will bring her great pain and heartache.

Jesus is a litmus test for falling and rising. A truth serum. A line drawn in the sand. There are those who recognize him and those who do not.

Wonder and mystery, the holy chaos of this infant God.
In the temple, Jesus, the Incarnation, becomes public, legal fact.
This is cause for both praise and caution. This grace comes with a cost: opposition and swords. It is not “cheap.” It will cost a mother and father their son. It will cost us our complacency and comfort. For anyone, who thinks that Jesus is for the feint of heart, Dietrich Bonhoeffer once called this “cheap grace.” He says: Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace.... Such grace is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: "ye were bought at a price," and what has cost God much cannot be cheap.
God’s grace goes before us and with us. It went with Simeon and Anna as they saw the truth of Jesus.

Behold. Jesus has come. He will grow and become strong, filled with wisdom, with the favor of God upon him.

May we have such favor. May we be strong and wise. May God fill us with grace. May we see Jesus. May we open ourselves up to God, to be available and willing according to God’s Word.

I finished reading all of those books I mentioned a few posts ago. The Shack continues to pop up in my life. Members of both sides of my family are reading it. I love it. I cringed at a few parts, but by chapter 4 or 5 I was completely hooked. I’ve never read a fictional portrayal of the persons of the Trinity before. I thought it was magnificent and certainly helps make a confusing concept so much clearer. I also felt very safe and happy as I was reading.

I am twittering. Or tweeting. I’m not sure. I’m exploring Twitter and the world of “micro-blogging.” Do you want to Twitter with me?

I’m preaching on Luke next sermon. Luke 2: 22-40. This is when Jesus is blessed in the temple and Simeon and Anna recognize him as the Messiah. Any thoughts?

I need to finish my Christmas shopping. I really can’t believe that Christmas is next week. This really has been a time when I don’t feel like buying gifts or really receiving them. I just want to relax and see my family.

This past Sunday at church was really wonderful. Our usual Sunday stuff went smoothly. Brunch with the young adults was nice. The Advent Lessons and Carols was simply inspired. The young adult Bible study was lovely.

I’m looking forward to an evening of cooking stew and keeping warm. I hope you keep warm too.

Full Disclosure

John 1:6-8, 19-28


Shawn and I watched the movie Elf last night. I know this is a favorite for some of us around here and I’d like to explore the whole concept of the “Christmas Movie.”

The Christmas Movie, has become quite the phenomenon. When I was a kid, it seemed like there were about 3 of these movies: The Grench, Rudoph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and Frosty the Snowman. These movies are now lost among the hundreds of Christmasy movies and shows that come through the TV. They seem to all end up depicting the same scenes, despite their variances in plots and mishaps: maybe he was left home while the family went to Europe, maybe she kidnapped her date for family Christmas, maybe he’s losing the light competition to his neighbor, maybe that obnoxious brother has parked his RV in the driveway, maybe he’s killed Santa Claus and now has to BE Santa Claus. You know, everyday stuff.

In the end, the movie is always about love and family. The girl gets the guy, the child and parents are reunited, the feuding brothers call for a truce. Everyone exchanges gifts, and eats large turkeys, while the snow falls softly outside and for a moment all is calm, all is bright. For these shows, things become possible at Christmas, like in no other time. People tell the truth, they help each other, the lost return home, the prisoners are set free, wars cease. All kinds of miracles happen—Christmas miracles.

I picked movies to talk about our cultural ideas of Christmas. I’m guessing we’re all smart enough to know the difference. To not think that Santa might really pull through this time with that wish we’ve always had. But there’s still something about it all that holds sway with me. I feel the nostalgia creeping up in the fall, the second I start to smell cinnamon candles in the grocery story. It hits me when I see a snow flurry, hear a particular song, think of a Christmas Eve candlelight service, or a beautiful tree. The first time I saw this sanctuary all decorated, it caught my breath. Because Christmas is coming. In all of its glorious, magic, feel-good possibilities.

When we meet John the Baptist in today’s scripture, he is busy. He is crying in the wilderness, he is preparing the way, he is baptizing with water, he is testifying to the light, to the coming Messiah.

In our wider culture, Christmas is about Christ only in name. Even the local Christian radio stations talk more about listeners’ “favorite xmas memories” which are things like “decorating cookies with my mom” “finding the tree with my dad,” “snow.”
Nothing that sounds like the true meaning of the coming of an Incarnational God in the body of a human baby boy. It all sounds more like traditional family values and Northern weather.

Instead we have this strange, overly sentimental holiday which might have more to do with getting us all through the depressing slump of winter than anything else. A holiday in which we honor the celebrations instead of the true event. The way we might celebrate a wedding, more than a marriage.

And then we come to church, and it’s all ruined. We hear about buying less and giving more, about sacrifice and courage in the face of fear and change. We talk about Jesus. And we don’t sing Christmas carols. We’re not buying poinsettias. We honor the waiting, the coming before we honor the presence. To that end, Christmas is just the beginning. It’s the birth of God Among Us. Not the day that it all is unwrapped, opened, and then quickly put away.

The thing I love about cultural Christmas, is the hope and joy. And maybe not everyone needs Jesus for that, but I do. And maybe Christmas ought to be just about Christ. And the Winter Festival of Hope and Joy can be for everyone else.

I wonder if our churches haven’t become more like Christmas and less like Christ. I wonder if we haven’t replaced Christ with warm, accommodation, if we have become culturally comfortable instead of radically disreputable.

John the Baptist is radical. He lives on the fringe of society and preaches an urgent message of quick repentance. He baptizes with water, as part of a cleansing ritual of purification in the face of the end times. Jesus comes to baptize with water and the spirit, as the Son of God.

To those who interrogate him, John tells them who he is not and who he is. He is not the Light. He is the voice crying in the wilderness. John knows his reason for existence, his purpose, and the one whose way he is preparing. As we prepare for Christmas this Advent, do we know for whom we are preparing? Are we repenting?

Like John, we are to testify to the light. Not the trappings of the holiday, but the light that it’s supposed to celebrate. Not the sentimental light, not twinkly lights, but true blazing light. Not light that sparkles politely in the night. The light that ends all darkness. The light of a baby who turns out to be God the Father Almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth, lying in a dirty trough, tiny, helpless, and squalling. What can we do with that other than drink another cup of eggnog?

From the very beginning, God chooses to be in the suffering. God doesn’t come as an earthly king, not into a rich family, not to experience the luxuries of wealth, but the realities of poverty, dirt, and hard work. The incarnation reveals exactly what kind of God we’re dealing with. A God who comes to us as both God and Human Being. Who comes as a baby—helpless and dependent—unable to do anything but the most basic of creaturely functions. And born into a poor family at that, with young, unmarried parents, who couldn’t find a decent hotel to stay in.

The baby grows up to become a man, who, like John the baptizer, is not always someone we’re comfortable with. But someone we’re supposed to testify about.

Words like witness and testimony have become like the bogeyman in many of our churches. We don’t witness to Jesus, or testify about our faith, because then we sound like THOSE Christians: the pushy kind, those who debate people on the street, who say things like “if you were to die tomorrow, where would you spend eternity?”

Instead, I think we need to reclaim those words. Instead of thinking of winning a debate, of converting another person as a competition, in the purest sense, testimony just means telling our story. It means witnessing to the light of Christ in our lives, whether or not we are convincing. It doesn’t mean memorizing scripture to be able to proof text it in a theological street fight.

We all need to be able to tell our story, of how we got here, and not just how we came to be at Washington Street, whether it’s been 40 years or 30 minutes, but how we understand the pull that God has on us, the claim that Jesus has on our lives, the Holy Spirit that we feel moving.

I’ve had to tell my story a lot, and it’s never been in a church service. It’s usually with a group of other preachers, and we call it “THE CALL STORY.” It’s deeply personal, but it’s fair game in almost any gathering that we will tell of our callings. Even these aren’t necessarily about how or why we’re Christians, just how or why we think we should be ministers. The Christian part goes something like this” Well, I was raised in the church and as a I grew up, I found that I still found my faith in church teachings.” Everyone nods knowingly and we go on to talk about family reactions and so forth.

John came to testify to the light. I am not the light. I have no confusion that I am anyone’s savior, but the more I see and experience of humanity, I realize that we are deeply, deeply in need of a redeemer. It makes sense to me that a divine “thing” would have created this world and everything in it, that it didn’t happen by accident, however it happened. But that belief doesn’t make me a Christian. It just means I’m not an atheist.

With all our pain and brokenness, it’s hard to breath sometimes, just thinking about it all. We are not all fine on our own, even with a loving God somewhere, it’s not enough. When God the Word came to live on the earth as Jesus, God validated us in a wholly unique way. God said not only have I created you, but I am one of you too. God came and validated and honored our existence and our life: our joys and our pains, the full spectrum of all that it means to be a human person. When he died, he just went that much further, to share death, the immortal God, sharing in death and suffering, and then he vanquished that death once and for all.

And that’s the kind of God I believe in. The kind that lived in a human body, and allowed himself to break in order to save the world.

The hope and joy of the season, radiate from and point back to the hope and joy and promise of Jesus. It’s kind of nice to see everyone embracing these and striving for happiness and joy and merriment. But it’s also sad, like in so many instances, we cherish and celebrate the effects of something, instead of the actual thing. Perhaps it’s because the party, the celebration is much more fun then the actual event, then the actual caring and raising of a baby. Or we don’t know what to do with Jesus. It’s nice when he’s a baby even if it’s weird that he’s also God. But he’s manageable, small, and sweet. But he grows up, lives a strange life, and dies a gruesome death. We don’t get to keep the Christmas Jesus, the tiny omnipotent baby God. Our sweet images of baby Jesus will soon be replaced by an embarrassingly skinny, rib showing, half-naked man nailed to a cross. Then that will be replaced by an even stranger image of a scarred man dressed in white ascending into heaven. Maybe Santa Claus and flying reindeer really do make more sense.

Irresponsible Privilege

Matthew 25: 14-30

Perfectionism just thrives inside the beltway. If you look around this room, I bet you’ll spot many perfectionists in our midst. At the root of this all, is the fear of failure. If we’re not perfectionists, we may still be ridden with self-absorption and anxiety, with the persistent thought that we’re not good enough. Not good enough parents, not good enough for the job we really want, not good enough to find someone to spend the rest of our lives with, not good enough to be and do all that we’ve ever wanted. Or all that God has ever wanted for us. That is if God really is a loving supportive God, and not the demanding punitive one.

For the first slaves in our story, self-esteem is a not an issue. They receive their tasks, tailored to each one’s ability, and go about fulfilling their work. The last slave, however, is overcome by fear: he fears this master who is ruthless, who reaps what he does not sow. He wouldn’t be able to do the job anyway, so why try? Better to bury the talents so they will at least be safe. In the end, when confronted by the master, the slave doesn’t blame himself, he points his finger at the master, for being a cruel man who would never have been satisfied anyway. Maybe this is an accurate depiction of an assertive and creative God, or maybe it’s a fearful projection. It’s not his fear that matters, but his inaction in the face of it.

We are made in the image of a God who loves us. Our being begins and ends with God, how could we not value who we are?

The talents, whether we think of them as money or abilities are resources: God-given resources that the can be put to good use in service of the Commonwealth of God. We are responsible for our collective values, decisions, and stewardship. Like those slaves, we are both entrusted and accountable with much of sacred value.
The mistake for the third servant is the assumption that he had anything in the first place. The only thing he had of value belonged to the master and he sat on it, as if it were really his. No glory came out of it. What do we have that doesn’t ultimately belong to God? And who are we to squander that gift?
This idea of wasting God’s gifts reminds me of a poem by Marianne Williamson:
Our deepest fear
Is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear
Is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light,
Not our darkness,
That most frightens us.
We ask ourselves,
Who am I to be brilliant,
Gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking
So that other people
Won’t feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest
The glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us;
It’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine,
We unconsciously give other people
Permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.

We are entrusted with the glory of God, for the love of God. This isn’t glory so that we can outdo others, it’s glory and liberation for everyone. That we can glorify God through ourselves. Not that we can love only ourselves, that we can get over ourselves enough to love God and others. We don’t have to waste time wondering if we’re good enough, but we get out there and actually do something.
The talents come to represent power for the slaves. For those who invest well, they are given more. In this same story in the gospel of Luke, the productive ones are given more cities to rule. God has given us each a measure of power and influence in our own lives.
Now before you go off to take over the world, let’s think about what these means. If God gives us power that we are to invest and not squander, what does that mean? How do we use this power for good and not to co-opt others?
It’s easy for most of us to deny that we have any power or gifts: that we have nothing to bring to God’s kingdom, but ourselves. We may feel poor in earthly power, there’s a long list of people who have more.

The real truth is that every person in this room is powerful. As individuals, families, and congregation gathered here for worship: we have a lot of power. We need to use that to be involved in God, and not give in to the apathy of “there’s nothing I can do.”

The Carpenter’s Shelter, just up the street, provides many services for the city’s lost: the homeless, the hungry, the needy. The people who run the shelter and those who volunteer have a lot more power in the world than those who come seeking help. Generally, these are the people society who can hold a job, pay for their own housing, buy cars and groceries, balance their income, and invest wisely. They are self-sufficient citizens. The people who come seeking help have very little power in the world. For whatever circumstances in their lives, they are not able to play the game of life in America without guidance.
For this situation, it would be all too easy, for the powerful to help the needy without changing the hierarchy of power. Never ending hand-outs and bailouts would keep the helpless helpless.

In the shelter’s early years, its dedicated workers noticed that many folks who staid in the shelter and then left, would end up at the shelter again. Perhaps they had trouble keeping their job and paying the rent, or for some, the shelter was the safest home they had ever known. The Carpenter Shelter now provides an extensive list of programs that help people find jobs and keep them, helps them find and secure affordable housing, helps them get into college, helps in ways that break the cycle of dependency. Currently, for every 100 people who pass through their shelter, 90 never have the need to return. The shelter workers have not buried their talents, but have invested them in the people that they serve. They have used their power to empower others. They have used their privilege responsibly.

Think about verse 29: “For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away” (Matthew 25:29). In the midst of November, we find ourselves making our lists: our wish lists and our shopping lists: in the midst of thankfulness for what we have we face the excess consumerism of the Christmas season. We temper this with our charitable giving: so both our consumerism and our charity reach new heights. But we don’t hear as much about social change. Our Christmas consumerism and charity are all about this moment, but not usually about lasting changes.
VOICE stands for Virginians Organized for Interfaith Community Engagement. You’ll be hearing more about VOICE in the coming months, as we plan and dream about the future of the mission here at WSUMC.
VOICE represents a collection of faith communities: Christian, Jewish, Muslim, people of different backgrounds and economic levels all united around the common cause of improving life, based on the challenge to care for all of God’s children. They seek to work with the government to change policy, to help create more affordable housing, immigration reform, and affordable medical care.
They are faith communities who are coming together: combining their power and their influence to get the attention of elected officials: to work for the greatest needs of the Northern Virginia area. They are combining their power to help those without power.
The Rainbow Fish has everything when it comes to beautiful scales, but no friends. He gives away his scales, and so he looses, he only has one instead of many, but his scales are distributed among all of he new friends, and he has more than he ever had before. He loses most of his scales, but he becomes rich in friendship and love.

Love is one of those “talents” that easily multiplies the more it is given away. We can never run out of love. The more we love others, the more love we receive. Loving someone else means not being afraid: it means investing ourselves, our gifts, and abilities, in the world: in the lives of other people, and not hoarding everything to ourselves because we’re afraid we may have nothing to offer.

Jesus invested his whole life in the world. He gave us everything he had. On the night before he was arrested, he shared a simple meal with the few that he had entrusted to be a community of God in the world. They were a group of people, many of whom buried their talent in the face of fear, but who came to have enough faith in themselves and God to carry out Jesus’ work.
Jesus took food from the table: common, ordinary food and told another story with it. He picked up a loaf of unleavened bread, the kind their ancestors had eaten in Egypt, a bread already rich in redemption and said “it’s as if this were my body and its broken for you, that you may live, remember me when you eat it.” And he took a cup of wine, made from grapes and vines, grown out of God’s good earth and said “it’s as if this were my blood that is shed for you that you may have eternal life in God, think of me when you drink it.”

Food for the Journey

Matthew 22:34-46

Change is one of those things that happen whether we like it or not. Usually, we don’t like it. We fear it. As mortal human beings, we know that nothing ever stays the same, and that in some sense stability really is a myth.

Today we celebrate Reformation Sunday, as the anniversary of the day that Martin Luther made his dramatic break with the Catholic church. As Protestants ourselves, we generally think of this as a good change. Of course as Methodists, we trace our denominational heritage back to the Church of England which broke away from the established church through its own reforms, both theological and political.

Phyllis Tickle and many other current church scholars see overall church history as a series of change and settling, change and settling. They have suggested that every 500 years the church goes through a giant rummage sale. About 1000 years ago the church split between the West and the East. About 500 the Protestant Reformation began. Now, we find ourselves in a general state of decline and social change and confusion: some say the overall church is dying and some say it is being transformed into something new. There’s no doubt of a “decline” of mainline Protestantism: we see it here in all that empty space in the pews, the empty overflow chapel downstairs and the balcony seating that we don’t really need. But we can hope for a transformation and renewed life. The fact is not that the church will change, but that the church is changing.

If this is true, then current forms of church will not die out and end. The Eastern Church continues to exist. The Roman Catholic continues to exist. During the period following Luther’s reform, the Catholic Church underwent its own changes and adjustments.

The Protestant Reformation didn’t destroy the established church, instead new branches arose and everyone changed and transformed into something new.

Like 500 years ago, we find ourselves in the midst of great social and technological change. We now have a global culture and limitless information at our finger tips. We’ve taken our sense of individual identity quite seriously to the neglect of our communal nature. Many people are suspicious of institutions that remind us that we are dependent on each other and not merely individuals. And so we hear lots of folks say they are “spiritual” but not “religious.” They believe in God, but not organized religion. They may have been hurt by religion, or jaded by its sense of hope, or just don’t want someone else telling them what to believe. Sadly, the church sometimes looks like a place where not everyone is loved and accepted, is full of empty platitudes and a false kindness, or a narrow set of beliefs that demand strict adherence or else. Ideally, the church is a true community, where each person is strengthened and challenged in faith and loved and accepted. That it is a genuine place where folks can come with their questions and wrestle to find answers together—can be genuinely caring and yet fully cognizant of the depth of the mystery we find in God. And that we ultimately arrive at our beliefs together, that there is room for doubt and questions and no one has to take what the preacher says as law.

About 2000 years ago there was a reformer. He looked at the current religion and showed them a way to live more faithfully: more by grace and less by law. He taught amazing lessons about love, about feeding the hungry, about loving God, and loving all other people just as much as we love ourselves. Like other reformers who would follow, he made the status quo uncomfortable, he rubbed religious and political leaders the wrong way and they sentenced him to capital punishment just like any other radical renegade. But this guy wasn’t just a crazy fool, he was also God. Christians are not alone in worshipping God. But we are unique in that we believe in the kind of God that would become so humble, who would walk in our shoes, who would show us what love really looks like, and would willingly die because of it. God incarnate, in human flesh.

One way we celebrate this incarnation is through Communion.

We eat every day. In most homes, the kitchen is the central place for family and friends to gather. It’s an obvious, basic part of human survival. But, for the most part, it is also something inherently pleasant. If most human beings did not enjoy food, we wouldn’t have so many restaurants, and so many types of food, and so many chefs. We’d eat something basic and move on. Because they were all human, Jesus and his disciples ate meals. They physically had to, but they also did it for the fellowship.

John Wesley actually participated in Communion as frequently as he could because he found it to be a source of daily sustenance for the spiritual journey. Wesley also called it a “means of grace” meaning that the Lord’s Super is one of the ways that God communicates directly to us: we have prayer, we have scripture, we have communion.

In early American Methodism, churches could only have communion every few months because that’s how long it would be before a traveling preacher could be with them to preside. Then they bumped it up to once every four months and now to once a month. Those days are long gone and we still tend to treat communion as an occasional element of worship instead of a regular one.

When we share in this meal, we have to get up, if we are able, and come forward. We might bump into each other, we might be clumsy, but there’s no wrong way to come to the table. We touch and taste the bread and the juice, we can kneel at the altar, we can sing, we can smile at each other, we can pray. We have the chance to be awake and alive and connected during worship. We’ll see how worship can’t always be something that we can do all alone in our living room, watching a service on TV or listening to a sermon pod cast. It isn’t just a walk alone in the woods. There’s a reason to get out of bed and come to church. It’s not something we can do alone or online, it’s not personal enlightenment, it’s not just “me and God.” Christian practice is loving God and loving all other people. Worship requires coming together because the love and grace of God comes to us and then immediately must go back out. Our communion liturgy reminds us of this. The bread and cup become the body and blood of Christ so that we can be Christ for the world: so that we can work Christ’s loving, sacrificial redemption in a hateful, selfish, unforgiving world. Communion reminds us of who we are and how we’re supposed to be.

Jesus broke bread with his friends and followers on many occasions. He ate with sinners and saints alike. He fed 5000 with a few loaves of bread on the shores of the Sea of Galilee and turned water into wine at a wedding in Cana. He described the kingdom of heaven as a glorious feast and spoke of food for the hungry.

Jesus loved his disciples and he loves all of us. He was willing to let his physical body die in order to show us what sacrificial love truly is. His sacrifice would feed our spirits. Before he died, his disciples never quite understood that Jesus was going to die and then live again. Before he was arrested, Jesus shared one last meal. And in an attempt to help them understand, he took a loaf of bread and blessed it and gave it to them and said: this is my body: physical food with spiritual meaning, for you to eat when I am gone and to remember me when you can no longer see me. The wine, he took and blessed, and said this is my blood, its new wine, poured out for you as my love is poured out for you: when you eat and drink, remember me.

BookShelf

There are some books that are floating around WSUMC. Almost literally. Take This Bread by Sara Miles is one such book. It has popped into my life, it found its way into one of Mike's recent sermons, and I spied a bag of copies in the sanctuary on Sunday. The Shack by William Young is another one. I know a few folks have read it, I saw it on a coffee table in 112 a few weeks ago, I bought my own copy yesterday, and then a stack found its way to a committee meeting this morning. I haven't read this, but you can be sure that I'll be reading it as soon as possible. I am also reading The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by A.J. Jacobs. I've only read the first chapter, but its enjoyable and interesting so far. So here you have three books: one I've read, one I intend to read, and one that I am reading. I invite you to join me, share your thoughts as we go along, and add to the list of books we all ought to be reading!

It's Not Ours

Matthew 21:33-43

Generally, vineyards are lovely places. Think of picturesque wineries in France, California or the hills of Virginia. The wine makers watch as the grapes grow and then turn that fruit into a new creation—all on one estate. The kingdom of heaven, the new earth, must look a bit like this too: plump grapes growing on a hillside, people who take pride in their work, and fine wine and delicious banquets for everyone. Jesus talks so much about vineyards and wine. He talks about himself as the vine and us as the branches. He turns water into wine to quench the thirsts of wedding guests at Canaan and he turns his blood into wine to quench our thirst.

Let me tell you a story.

There once was a deity who built a church. He had lots of churches, but he placed this particular church in Old Town Alexandria. He built a fine sanctuary and a large education building. He underestimated the need for parking. Then he leased the church to tenants. These tenants were charged with the responsibility of nurturing the faith community, with genuinely reaching out to strangers, with worshipping the deity with vigor and thoughtfulness. Throughout the decades the church saw many changes in the world. It struggled and grew and struggled again. The congregation wrestled with who it was and who the deity wanted it to be. In times of growth they were strong and confident, in leaner times they became anxious and distraught.

Jesus doesn’t say much about the vineyard tenants. Whether or not they grow grapes and make wine, if they drink it all themselves, or sit around and do nothing. All we know, is that when the owner sends slaves to collect the produce, the tenants kill the slaves. Twice. When the owner sends his son to collect the harvest, the tenants kill him as well.

The tenants are wicked because they seem to have forgotten that the vineyard isn’t theirs and they are willing to murder the landowner’s messengers. The owner should then take that vineyard and give it to responsible tenants who will produce and yield fruit. So too, Jesus says, God will take the kingdom of heaven and give it to people who will produce fruit.

In our local vineyard on Washington Street, are we producing fruit?
Are we deepening our spiritual connection to God? Are we praying and exploring other spiritual disciplines? Do we bring our full selves to worship? Do we allow ourselves to invoke and experience the Holy presence of God? Are we deepening our relationship with God?

Are we welcoming the strangers in our midst, are we hospitable to our visitors and our new members? Are we nurturing and caring for one another?

Are we risking our comfort level and reaching out to those in need in service and mission? Are we sharing God’s love and connecting deeply with our broken, suffering world?

Are we using our financial gifts to benefit the kingdom of God?

Are we opening the doors to our community? As a down-town church on the cusp of Washington DC, how are we finding and living out our unique calling?

If it is at least our desire to do and be these things, then our hearts are in the right place. But that’s not enough. We need to work harder in our vineyard.

Drive around the countryside and you may find a closed, abandoned church. Travel through the city and you may find an old church with a new congregation now residing in it. To stay alive and vibrant the church has got to want to live. The people must produce fruit and gifts and graces. It must exist for reasons other than itself. It must engage God and its community.

Church is more than a Sunday morning activity, it’s a faith community that really hopes to help God change the world. We need to give our tithes, not out of guilt, but out of joy, as an investment in the life and vitality of our spiritual community. We need to make a commitment to be present, to be here for ourselves and each other, to nurture our community, to reach out to the suffering, to plant our spiritual roots and reach out in love to others.

Our church is a family. It is a place for us to tend our spiritual lives, to feed our physical bodies, to connect to our human family, and to reach out to our broken world. Your giving keeps everything going here. The hope is that we will give, not because we have to, but because we want to.

Being fruitful is not an option. Jesus comes across a fig tree without fruit, curses it, and it withers on the spot. He speaks of taking away a vineyard and giving it to those who will produce fruit. Those who will carry out his message, those who will do what he’s talking about, those who will comfort the poor and challenge the rich those who will love the unlovable, those who will risk everything for truth and justice and mercy.


As much as we may love our church, we have to remember that it does not exist solely for our purposes and joy. It is not a private winery. It’s not ours. It’s God’s church. It is God we worship we when come here, God that we seek for relationship, God that we look for in each other, God’s word that we proclaim and God’s word that we feast on. When we come to the table we realize that this act is one of the few that make us uniquely Christian. We speak of body and blood and bread and wine, flesh and food. The Eucharist is not supposed to make sense in our minds. It’s meant to connect our bodies to Jesus and to each other throughout the world. Christ is as near to us as the food that we eat. How could he communicate such closeness other than to lift the bread and say take this as my body. I’m going to die, to show you what it means to take love seriously, to live a life of integrity, to stand up for your convictions even when facing death. Jesus showed us how to live and love and he had to die for it because the status quo couldn’t handle what he was saying. Rather than search themselves for the truth, they murdered him. Jesus is God incarnate, God in human, fleshly form, fully human, fully God. Facing his death, Jesus knew he wouldn’t share that human form for long. He knew that his followers would no longer have a savior that they could physically touch. With bread and wine, Jesus created a symbol, a physical element that they could see and touch and smell and taste to represent a God they could no longer physically experience. Jesus didn’t shy away from the ickier parts of being human. He could talk about blood without being grossed out, because he knows that without blood our bodies cannot exist. When he took the cup, and said that the wine is his blood, he simply meant that blood gives us life and his blood gives us life. His cup is one of renewed life, of restorative wine. We’re acknowledging our human bodies and Jesus’ human body and we’re sharing the spiritual food that Jesus has prepared for us. Jesus provides us food, the way a mother’s body feeds her baby. This Sunday in particular we celebrate World Communion Sunday. Various other churches, or other denominations, in other towns and states and countries are also coming to the table of Christ. Together, we make up the body of Christ and together we seek to honor love and peace in a violent and broken world, to bear fruit and bring about unity for the present and coming vineyard of heaven.

As We Forgive Our Debtors

Matthew 18: 21-35

When it comes to forgiveness, we’re in a double bind. We like to be forgiven. But it’s much harder to forgive. We ask forgiveness for our sins just as we forgive those who sin against us.

We’ve domesticated forgiveness to the point that it’s become something soft and fluffy. It has some supernatural powers since God forgives all of our sins, and the baptismal waters wash them away. It sounds kind of easy, but we still sin, and we still need forgiveness, both to be forgiven and to forgive.

There are some other wilder, scary words, that we don’t hear as often: confession, confrontation, reparation, reconciliation.

Jesus’ answer to forgive those who sin against us 70 times 7 times has become a sound bite to encourage Christians to be forgiving. But that’s it. Be willing to forgive. If someone wrongs you—no matter how atrocious and painful—you forgive them and let it go. Turn the other cheek. Do what Jesus would do.

You know, there’s a certain movie rental company that I’m not pleased with. I rented movies from them a few years ago and stopped when they decided to threaten me with charges for a movie I had long returned. They informed me that I would own this movie within a few days and that might have been fine if I hadn’t already returned it. They did, at the last minute, discover that I was telling the truth and they had the movie all along.

When we moved up here and that was the closest rental place to us, I thought, well, it’s been a while since that last indiscretion maybe things will be different. Then I returned some movies that we’d rented last week. And on Thursday, got a phone call that I would once again be the proud owner of these movies sometime next week if I don’t return them. I’m feeling that perhaps I forgave this company a second chance too quickly. Here we are, in the same position we were a year ago and nothing has changed and I’m just as irritated as I was the first time. But you see, that first forgiveness was a one-sided deal. I did not confront them with their mistake and they did not apologize. They did not confess or offer any sort of reconciliation action. There was no coupon for a free rental. They did not reform their organizational structure to keep better track of their inventory.

Obviously, this is a minor insignificant example, but I’m just saying. I don’t like being accused of things I didn’t do. Forgiveness in this situation is just a mechanism for me to get over my frustration. It doesn’t invoke or require true transformation and change.

The most classic example—and obviously more serious—is in cases of domestic abuse. For too long, abused women seeking help from their priests have been exhorted to forgive their abusers and go home. Victims have been told to “suck it up” more or less, forgive and move on. Because Jesus says to forgive infinitely.

Except that forgiveness is about more than getting over something. And in cases of violence, it’s about more than going home to a never ending cycle.

When Jesus tells the story of the master and the slaves, he demonstrates a true change in behavior—at least the expectation of true change. As the master pardons the debt of that first servant, he assumes that this goodwill ought to trickle down and the slave would go and do likewise. Instead, the slave is just as vindictive and petty to his debtor as we might have expected the master to be. Instead of offering forgiveness and pardon, he shows no mercy. Upon hearing this news, the master takes back his forgiveness and severely punishes that offending slave.

Jesus says that God will do no less to us. Refusing to forgive can result in feeling spiritually tortured.

To the ones that God has forgiven, we must also forgive.

I recently ran across this story of a small California family. The daughter, Amy, went to South Africa to work against apartheid. While there, she was murdered by a mob. Her parents, in an unbelievable act, left California to finish their daughter’s work in South Africa. They started a service foundation in Amy’s name and now, two of her killers are working for that foundation as an act of atonement. Her parents have forgiven them and even befriended them.

This seems like almost a perverse level of forgiveness. To pardon and befriend a love ones killer?

We all know what happened this week 7 years ago. And seven years later, we know that justice, while dramatically sought, has not come full cycle. We have neither revenge nor reconciliation. But what about forgiveness? Can we forgive while our attackers are still out there? Do we need them to confess, repent, and atone before they can be forgiven?

The following is a statement from Desmond Tutu, Archbishop of Cape Town: regarding the US and 9/11. He says:
“Forgiveness is not to condone or minimize the awfulness of an atrocity or wrong. It is to recognize its ghastliness but to choose to acknowledge the essential humanity of the perpetrator and to give that perpetrator the possibility of making a new beginning. It is an act of much hope and not despair. It is to hope in the essential goodness of people and to have faith in their potential to change. It is to bet on that possibility. Forgiveness is not opposed to justice, especially if it is not punitive justice but restorative justice, justice that does not seek primarily to punish the perpetrator, to hit out, but looks to heal a breach, to restore a social equilibrium that the atrocity or misdeed has disturbed.”

This isn’t a comfortable place to be in. It’s not a distinction between forgiving and forgiven, wrong and right. Instead, we’re both. We are to offer an open, loving forgiveness to those who have sinned against us. And we hope for a change, for true reconciliation and repentance, but we can’t require it. We can only hope. And for us, as people who know we are forgiven, we need to remember that that forgiveness comes with a price. God forgives us abundantly, but not without cost. Like that slave that took his forgiveness and turned it into retribution against his fellow slave. As forgiven people, we must also be able to forgive.

The acts of forgiveness remind us that we are all connected to each other. Our actions have consequences and affect the wider web of humanity. We sin, both as individuals and as groups. We sin as a church, as a nation.

We are all forgiving and forgiven. Its not about being nice, but about being honest. Not about escaping accountability—for ourselves or others—as we also have to be accountable.
We can ask God to help us forgive and thank God for forgiving us first.

As forgiven and reconciled people, we are to go and do likewise

The Church Around the Corner

There's so much talk about the decline of Mainline Protestantism that I’m bored just writing these words. Mainline churches are suffering. We are low in numbers and low in money and Washington Street UMC is no different. Our ability to sustain ourselves is on shaky ground. For many churches it’s because it’s no longer the 1950s and people are not flocking to church and giving it their time energy and funds. So many fixtures around our buildings have not changed since then. So many plaques date to that period as if nothing substantial has taken place within these walls for 50 years.

In many ways, that’s the simple truth. Our culture has massively shifted and so have our churches, but we have not done anything to catch up except wallow in the self-pity and loss of our golden era.

Have you watched the Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks flick You’ve Got Mail? I feel like we’re The Shop Around the Corner. We’re the local store that’s trying to survive. But there are Fox Books churches out there that are easier to drive to, offer slicker merchandize, intoxicating interiors, and cheap grace.

People should come to us for some of the same reasons that they don’t want to go to a super store. Some of it might be out of an interest in reconnecting to the local, the organic, the fair-trade side of life. We do have fair-trade coffee on Sunday mornings. We do serve organic meals on Wednesday evenings. We are a local church with local folks.

We live in such a time of anxiety and uncertainty. The churches that are growing are ones that can offer stability and certainty. You have questions? We have answers!

Well, let me tell you I have questions too! More questions than answers really. And my answers do not always satisfy me. We don’t have certainty here. Stability is a myth. Security never really existed anyway.

But if a church doesn’t offer answers, then what good are we?
Is it worth your time to go to a place where everyone, including the pastors, have just as many questions and doubts as you do? Is it worth it to sit in a Sunday School and wrestle with issues and never come up with anything definitive? Is it worth getting to know people who don’t have it all figured out?

It turns out that I do have an answer: Yes. It’s worth it to come together with other people and wrestle and fight and question and talk and cry and sing and pray. It is good to not be alone. It is good to find other believers and doubters, to figure out what that means, to figure out who we want to be, and to figure out what we can do for those suffering around us.

I don’t know how the story at Washington Street ends. I hope that we don’t fight a good fight only to close our doors anyway. I hope it doesn’t “become something really depressing like a Baby Gap.” Like everything else, we’re facing great times of change. I’m not sure what its going to look like, but I hope you’ll join me in figuring it out.

Holy Innocents

Exodus1:8-2:10.

Exodus makes it clear that Pharaoh finds threat in the sheer numbers of the Hebrews. In the midst of hard labor and difficult living conditions, God has allowed the Hebrew people to flourish and multiply with their numerous descendants. This Egyptian king is not pleased. With this possible threat to his security and authority he enacts his plan of ethnic “cleansing.”
This great evil is thwarted by two women who refuse. Pharaoh’s command is a state-issued eugenics movement. It’s not about one woman and one baby, one life or one choice. It’s about a whole lot of women and families and no choice. The midwives offer their action, their noncompliance with evil. They refuse to obey Pharaoh. Baby boys continue to be born and to live.
It should not escape our attention that the scripture gives these two midwives names. With so many generic wives and sisters, they could have simply been “the midwives,” but instead, they are also Shiphrah and Puah. Also striking is the fact that Pharaoh has no name. Our unnamed Pharaoh is afraid of the Hebrew men. He finds two women to take care of this matter for him and reduce the number future Hebrew men. In commanding Shiphrah and Puah, he is expecting total obedience. He underestimates these tenacious midwives, two Hebrew women, and his own daughter. Ironically, even though he fears the Hebrew males, it’s actually Hebrew and Egyptian females who are responsible for his undoing.
Shiphrah and Puah are not acting out of political convictions. It’s not clear whether they are Hebrew or Egyptian or something else. As “midwives to the Hebrews” we don’t know. It’s not clear that they disobey Pharaoh on the basic principle that they will always disobey Pharaoh. It has nothing to do with their view of his foreign policy or general treatment of the Hebrew immigrants. It’s not as if this is the last act against the Hebrew people and they are FED UP with his treatment of them. Or maybe it is.
What is clear is that they are midwives. Their job is the sacred task of bearing both mother and child safely, of caring for both. Their job is to deliver babies safely and to help them live. Pharaoh’s command is a direct affront to their life’s work. They’re going to help the babies because it’s their ethical concern that all babies be born safely. It doesn’t matter who these babies are, it’s just what they do. And so they defy Pharaoh. When he calls them back in to see why all these babies are still surviving, they are willing to lie to this king about the reality and nature of childbirth. Knowing no better, he falls for it.
Shiphrah and Puah not only have a commitment to life. They also have a fear of God. Pharaoh fails to grasp their allegiance to God and their secret knowledge of childbirth. The midwives live into the courage of their convictions. In their lies, they speak to a different truth. They side with life and love.
When Pharaoh’s plan with the midwives did not work out he turned to “all of his people” to carry out the genocide. And yet, there is a mother and father who have a small son. This mother hides her child for three months. When hiding him is no longer possible she does indeed cast her son into the Nile, but she does so carefully, in a water-proof basket. The child’s sister looks after him and eventually Pharaoh’s own daughter comes to rescue and raise the child.
Like the birth of Moses, the birth of Jesus brought out a similar massacre. Again, a human king, feeling threatened by the people of God, orders a mass killing of babies.
It’s almost exactly the same story. On one hand, it places Jesus squarely in the plot of a rich story of a people who escaped from Egypt. So too, Jesus’ birth is touched with a death threat at the very beginning. We come to see just how close God was to being foiled by an evil human being and yet still manages to prevail against all odds. It takes a dream for Jesus, an angel to appear to Joseph and a flight to Egypt. For Moses, it takes his mother and sister who refuse to abandon him and a princess who feels sympathy and adopts the foundling.
Moses ends up growing up in Pharaoh’s household, grows up with a sense of privilege and good education and the ability to see how his people are treated and more importantly see how this shouldn’t be continuing.
This is a story of human power feeling threatened or disgusted. From Pharaoh, to Herod, to Hitler, it’s all basically the same sad story. For the Biblical stories, these tyrants are always outsmarted in the end. The midwives disobey, the wise men disobey. In small ways, tyrannical authority is thwarted.
The midwives found a way in their daily lives, a natural way, to act. They simply would not allow themselves to be used for corrupt political purposes. Their king could not sway them. They feared God and did what was right.
His mother, his sister, and Pharaoh’s own daughter. A whole team of women who say no, out of love for one baby.
Jesus taught a message of love. We are also a people, who stand and say “no, out of love for one baby.”
In our daily living, may we be as brave. May we act out of love, may we be instruments of good, may we be noncompliant with evil , may we reject apathy, may we examine our choices, may we serve as midwives to the birth of love in the world, may we witness the in breaking of the Holy Spirit, may we live with the courage of our convictions, and may God deal well with us.

This sermon has a footnote:

I have to admit I’m wrestling here. In researching this sermon I discovered that Pharaoh may have been asking these midwives to kill the male babies before they were born, a form of abortion. I’m not sure if this text has been used as a rallying cry for protestors at clinics, but I think it could be. I don’t want to talk politics here, to get into pro-life or pro-choice, but I am taking a bit of pastoral license here.
I feel confident in calling acts of eugenics or genocide evil. The state mandated killing in Exodus is very wrong and Shiphrah and Puah were brave and right in their actions. God blessed them.
I approach this carefully because we never know who is among us. I cannot, as a pastor, leave this sermon with the idea that all abortions are acts of evil. I don’t wish to be that judge.
Once upon a time I was talking to a young woman who I’ll call Rebecca about religious topics. She wanted to know how I felt about big issues like abortion. I told her what I thought in the most honest terms.
Rebecca later confided in me that she had had an abortion a few weeks earlier. She explained all of the factors that went into her decision.
She described an excruciating decision. She was not asking for my judgment, but for me to listen. To hold her story and her secret, to let her speak it out loud. She said that it was absolutely the right decision for her but if she had to do it over again, she wouldn’t have. The aftermath was worse than she had anticipated.
The only thing to do now is to grieve and move on. She doesn’t need anyone to condemn her. She needs comfort and acceptance that she is still a child of God.
Sadly, the church is not always a good place to come with our full selves. I want to offer a safe space. For anyone here who has been touched more personally by the reality of abortion, someone who has faced that dilemma, or has a sister or friend or aunt or cousin or daughter who has. Rebecca didn’t have enough people in her life to talk to and she didn’t have a faith community or a pastor, but her grief was very real and she needed someone who could help and not cause more hurt.

Us, Bread for the World (Matthew 14:13-21)

We need to back up to what has just happened. The disciples have just told Jesus that John the Baptist has been killed. Jesus’ cousin and fellow prophet, the one who leaped in his mother’s womb at the news of Jesus’ conception, the one called to announce the coming of Jesus, to be the voice crying in the wilderness, the one who baptizes Jesus. Go back to the beginning of chapter 14, on your own time, to read about the ridiculous way that John dies. Suffice it to say though, that John was killed in a callous and careless act, for palace entertainment.

Imagine if you’re Jesus hearing this news. Jesus gets in a boat and withdraws to a deserted place. He is seeking space for himself. To be alone. To be away from all of the noise and chaos of everyday life. To begin to mourn. To perhaps try to grasp what this death will mean for himself and his followers.

But he can’t get away. Many people know what’s just happened to John and the crowds follow him immediately. They coming streaming out of the towns. What could they be thinking? Are they looking for a revolution? To go storm Herod’s palace in an act of revenge?

When Jesus sees them he feels compassion for them, he knows they feel this sorrow and confusion too. Instead of turning away, he goes to the crowd and heals the sick. He’s hurting too, but turns that energy into healing power. He can’t bring John back and make that right, but he can work in the lives of other people.

He does this healing work for a long time. So long that day turns into night and the disciples come up to him and say “you know, Jesus, it’s getting late, we’re all getting hungry and restless, let’s send everyone away so they can go get something to eat.” Instead, Jesus says, “no, feed them.”

Since when is this our problem? We ask God to “give us our daily bread,” but does that mean we have to give it to others?

The disciples have never cooked for this many people before. They don’t know where to start. The crowd, it turns out, is not your average summer gathering. It’s 5000 people. And by people, we mean men. So there are at least that many women and children as well.
The loaves and the fishes is one of the stories that makes Jesus so amazing. He shows such utter love and patience. He’s already been tired and sad for hours, but he keeps going. He’s still teaching the disciples and showing them how the world ought to be. When people are hungry you feed them. It’s basic human care. If people are hungry, not much else matters. We can talk about world peace all we want. We can take military action and mandate sanctions. But if people are hungry, there won’t be progress. We all need to be fed before we can work together.
We live in a time of plenty. Statistically, there is enough food in the world that no one should have to miss a meal. According to a study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, we waste 96 billion pounds of food in America each year. Jesus demonstrates good stewardship of their food sources. They are able to pull together their resources and share them across a wide expanse of people. There ends up being so much, that after everyone has eaten, there are still leftovers.
There’s a long history of debate in the church about how Jesus was both human and divine. Some have thought that Jesus was all God and only appeared to be human, or had a human body and a divine mind. This would save Jesus from have to deal with the messy parts of being human. He was an apparition of sorts. God doesn’t have to eat or do other bodily functions. Some that Jesus was all human with an unusually close relationship to God. In 451, the Council of Chalcedon declared that Jesus was both “truly human and truly divine.” The standard mathematical formula is that Jesus is 100% human and 100% divine and of course, that may be good theology, but it’s terrible math.
The point of the incarnation, of God becoming incarnate among us, means that God has to go all out and be fully human as well. Christ is united body and mind with humanity so that he can redeem us fully. The gospels do a good job of reminding us that Jesus was completely human. Of course he is also God, but he lived the full life of a human and took no short cuts.
Jesus weeps. Jesus goes off to be alone to rest. And Jesus eats a lot. It’s clear that Jesus thinks that meals are a wonderful thing. He eats them with everyone he can find including those people that he’s not supposed to eat with like tax collectors, lepers, and sinners. Jesus also sees meals as a great time to get to know people. The food and the fellowship are two of Jesus’ favorite things. Now, this is not to give you a permission slip to jump off of your diet, Jesus is not telling you to eat that extra piece of cake. But Jesus does think that proper nourishment is a good thing. He worked hard. He traveled much. And he knew how to sit down and eat. He didn’t do this alone. He didn’t sneak off for a granola bar and keep going. He gathered whoever was near him, regardless of who they were, and called them to sit around his table.
This was the best way that Jesus could literally demonstrate how he thought people should behave. Like a family. We are the children of God, the body of Christ. And we ought to act like it. We are to sit down and talk and share bread with everyone.
Jesus frequently describes the kingdom of heaven as a banquet. It’s like a large banquet that a rich man planned for his closest friends. And when the time came, his friends were busy and would not attend. And so this man sent his servants out to the streets, to invite everyone they could find to come inside for a good meal and a fine party.
Jesus demonstrates this sort of radical hospitality with the loaves and the fishes. Rather than sending folks away to fend for themselves, Jesus says to his disciples, you will feed them. It’s not enough to heal the sick and pray for them and show compassion. They need to eat too. We don’t live by bread alone, but by the word of God. But Jesus knows that we also physically need food. Spiritual food can only take us so far, and then our bodies start to complain.

In a troubled world, Jesus gives us all the tools that we need. Prayer, healing, and bread. These are our mighty weapons in the face of great evil. In response to the death of John, Jesus heals the sick and breaks bread. What more can we do? If we are Christ for the world? We, who are just little bits of time and energy? What gifts can we give?
Jesus says “for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” And we say, “when? When did we do these things?” And Jesus answers, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Matthew 25)

Jesus offered bread on another night too. And then he offered himself. He gave everything that he was. Don Saliers, says that “Jesus loved meals so much he became one.”
When we share the common loaf, we share much more than a bit of bread. The bread satisfies more than a physical hunger. As United Methodists, we believe that jesus is spiritually present in the bread and the juice. We ask the holy spirit to pour down and make the elements Jesus’ body and blood. We also ask for the Holy Spirit to transform us gathered here that we might be Christ’s body for the world. Communion is not just about us and God. It’s also about us and the world. Jesus thanks God for the bread and fish, then breaks and gave it to the crowd. So, too, Jesus thanks God for us, then breaks and gives us to the world.

Sighs of God

Romans 8:26-39

At first go-through, the words of this passage sound tame and sweet. Nothing can separate us from God. All things work for good. They sound like benign platitudes: It’s all okay, This happened for a reason, It’s all a part of God’s plan. Oftentimes, these well-meant words, are empty. A baby just died and that’s God’s plan? Yet another person has been diagnosed with cancer and we’re supposed to accept that “all things work for good”? A lot of things are down right awful and unacceptable.

For people of faith, the concept of theodicy is an important one. Theodicy is a relatively new term for me it’s a “seminary” word, so don’t feel bad if you don’t recognize it yet. It’s the word used to talk about God’s role and action in relation to suffering. It’s Greek: Theo: for God, dicy: meaning justice. God’s justice. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do good things happen to bad people? How can God allow suffering? The question of whether or not God causes illness or disaster or healing and blessing are all issues of theodicy

Last summer, I worked as a chaplain in a hospital in Atlanta. I spoke to a very religious man one evening in the hospital lobby. He told me how his wife was in the hospital recovering from a stroke. To my efforts of sympathy he said “oh well, she had it coming.” He seemed like a loving, concerned husband. Why was he pleased with his wife’s suffering? He continued to explain that he and his wife worked as evangelists, they were traveling preachers and his wife had not been living up to her full potential. He had known this for quite some time, and this stroke was God’s way of giving his wife the wake-up call that she needed.

Unfortunately, when we try to figure out where God is in our sufferings, sometimes this is the answer that we get. God is trying to tell us something, trying to wake us or scare us or elicit some sort of desirable response out of us miserable creatures. We know that we are frequently deaf to God’s voice and we think God must be like an impatient two year old who suddenly has to throw something at our head to get our attention. Or God is the abusive partner who chooses to use physical violence to “get the point across.” Or God is a teacher who makes us go through trials to learn the hard way.

Friends, this is not a faithful portrayal of God. Sometimes, we’re just wrong. We can’t look at natural, national, and personal disasters and say “well, they had it coming.”

But what do we do with God? God has to be in this mess somewhere and if not causing it, then what is God doing? Are we just on our own, hugging our free will tightly to our chests?

In Romans 8, Paul tries to be comforting, but slips in a few places. Toward the end of the scripture, he quotes Psalm 44. In this passage, the Israelites lament that they are being killed like sheep for the slaughter for God’s sake. And Paul says, that even in these situations, we are not separated form God. The problem, though, is that Psalm 44 actually places God to blame. The Israelites aren’t just being killed because of God, instead, they are being killed BY God. God is handing them over to their enemies. God is wielding the sword against them. They aren’t worried about being too far away from God, instead, they are feeling too close to God and to God’s sword.

Paul’s message, is that even in the midst of all the terrible things we can imagine, God is with us. Indeed, in Jesus, we have Emmanuel: “God with us.” Nothing we can do, nothing that can happen, can put distance between us and God. No matter what, God is with us and will never leave us.

Paul also points to Jesus’ death as an example of the depth of the gifts that God will give us. This image is also mixed. Like the slaughter of the Israelites, Jesus’ death is also portrayed as God’s divine action. In some interpretations, God needs the death of Jesus to appease a blood sacrifice. In order for us to get to the resurrection, we need death first. But does that mean that God needed Jesus’ death for the sake of that death? It helps to remember that Jesus faced his death willingly. He wasn’t thrilled about it, but he didn’t see any alternative. Remember, too, that Jesus is also God. They are one and the same being. The cross is what happened to Jesus, when he lived his crazy, radical life, and the powers that be were threatened. The divine met humanity and humanity sentenced it to death.

On the cross, instead of an abusive God, we see God in the midst of suffering—deep down in the lowest point of history . .
As Christians, this is our big fat paradox: a loving God who allows the death of Christ.

A cruel God would have left Jesus on the cross, end of story. That would be the lesson, life is hard and in the end you die. But God doesn’t stop there, and the cross is not the point of the story. The point is 3 days later. The point is the resurrection, the eternal life and union with God. God watches that violence with us, and then works to redeem it in the resurrection. In death, we cannot be separated from God.

Theologian Paul Tillich writes that “Faith in divine Providence is the faith that nothing can prevent us from fulfilling the ultimate meaning of our existence . . . that there is a creative and saving possibility implied in every situation, which cannot be destroyed by any event. . . that the daemonic and destructive forces within ourselves and our world can never have an unbreakable grasp upon us, and that the bond which connects us with the fulfilling love can never be disrupted.” (The Shaking of the Foundations)

When we look at our lives, at the way things happen, we take the events, and sort them out into the patterns of our lives. We weave them until we have a story of what has happened and how we got here. If anything had been different, this current moment might not exist. And how you feel about the present, will shape how you interpret that path. The bumps may become necessarily, character building teaching moments. But if you’re in a rough place, then those times may still be the cause of your downfall.


If the holy spirit comes in and expresses sighs too deep for words, then God suffers with us. God sighs when we are distressed. God also wishes for a better world.
The other hospital story I’ll share today was that of a father and his two young adult children. The children had had to make the difficult decision of taking their unconscious father off of life support. I stood with them in the room, as the machines were turned off, and waited for a couple of hours, as their father breathed his last ragged breaths. We waited, in the holy space of near death, agonizing, terrible, devastating death. As this brother and sister said goodbye to their last living parent, the spirit of God was in that room. It was not the spirit of the angel of death or the grim reaper anxiously awaiting its prey. It was not that of a God who selfishly needed this man to come live in heaven. It was of God, who mourned with those children who would never again be hugged by their dad.

The same way, in Christ’s death, God was not pleased. God cried that day too. God was happy on Easter. But that does not make suffering pleasing. God does not delight in our suffering and death.

God is present in the tears and the sighs. When we are so helpless that our mouths cannot form a prayer, that is when the Holy Spirit prays for us. God shares our sorrow and gives us comfort.

The point of the resurrection, is that God turned suffering into a thing of beauty and wonder and amazement. God didn’t require a payment in blood, but God took the raw material of a bloody death, and gave us a living savior.

God doesn’t sit down and map out a messy pattern to our lives.
Instead, god has a lot of mess to sort out and weave into a pattern. Like a woman gathering her skirts to sit down to her weaving, weary and heavy, with the toil of the world and the sadness of her task. God pulls out our broken strands, smoothes them, and lovingly weaves them together into a magnificent tapestry. Without the blood and tears, the artwork would not be as beautiful.

Calling

The following is my "Call" story or Faith story or autobiographical statement. I wrote most of it in January 2005 when I was applying to seminary. It took me several weeks. The fun thing about trying to become a minister is the frequent need to tell or write about one's calling to the ministry. It's a deeply personal story of a painful and wonderful journey.

My faith story begins at my baptism with all of the mystery and promise through which my infant self slept. My father is an ordained minister and my mother is his active partner in life and ministry. Church, specifically the United Methodist Church, has always been a natural and familiar part of my life. My presence and participation was always expected, though not particularly forced, and I was happy to perform my role as the perfect daughter. My parents and I form somewhat of a triumvirate. I identify closely with both of them, and in personality and appearance I am a decent reflection of both. Their excuse for only having one child is that “You don’t mess with perfection if you got it right the first time.” I did not really challenge my parents’ faith in my early years. My father has a very active, exhausting faith in God. He never sits still and runs around all day from visiting the sick to running the community food pantry to writing his sermon to changing the oil in our cars. My mother’s faith is somewhat more relaxed and patient. If the answer to the question one is pondering is a fruit that is still hanging on the tree, my mother is likely to look at it for awhile, and then sit by the tree and wait for the fruit to fall. My father, on the other hand, is going to be trying his hardest to climb the tree and pick it or, at the very least, shake the tree with all his might until the prize drops. I tend to be a tree-shaker myself, but I’m trying to cultivate patience, especially as I have come to realize that the answer may not even be in the tree at all.

My childhood was what I would call fairly uneventful. I grew up in the lovely small town of Orange, Virginia. I was an imaginative, fairly content only child. There were no great tragedies that pierced my awareness. My paternal grandparents died when I was old enough only to know that something was wrong and someone was missing. The grief touched me in a mild irritation that my grandfather was not around to kiss me. I spent many hours in the back yard, climbing trees and making up stories to tell myself, always wishing for a big brother.

I usually do not have dramatic, lightening bolt flashes of truth. Inspiration and revelation tends to come in the moments of quiet truth, comfort, relief, happiness. I was always intrigued by the mystery of our stories, of Creation, the Psalms, the birth of Jesus. I loved stories of angels. There was one time when my grandmother heard voices singing a wonderful song that was familiar, but she couldn’t quite place. She claims she heard angels. When I was in third grade, I really wanted my own angel experience. My mother advised me to pray for a sign and so I did. After a while, I forgot about my request, but one morning I awoke to a moving image on my bedroom wall of a laughing, shimmering girl. I was imaginative, but I knew that that was something from outside of my own self. God had given me a glimpse of my guardian angel.
I went to the University of Virginia and basically plowed straight through four years of anthropology and English literature, loving most minutes of study and critique and writing. When I first got to college, it was very important for me to be on my own. I wanted to be as independent as possible and chart my own course of life. I desired a complete separation from my parents and childhood to prove my individuality. While I still felt connected to God, I did not want to participate in a faith community. I entered the Wesley Foundation only a few times in my first year mainly because I had known the director, a fellow Orange county native, for most of my life.

In my classes at UVa, I met brilliant thinkers and new evidence. In my anthropology and cultural criticism courses, I found a new language for expressing the injustices in our world and society. I was better able to understand how we create our own worlds. Our less than wonderful society, national and global, is a combination of many different forces, and is thus something that can be analyzed and understood and eventually improved. I loved studying other cultures and stories, but I most valued the backward light that those stories cast on my own. I didn’t want to go off to document and “preserve” culture, which I think is and ought to be fluid and constantly changing. My concerns were more for the people. Everyone deserves to be able to write her or his own story. I liked the power of stories, which brought my interest in literature and culture together. We create ourselves and our worlds with our words and our stories that can be narratives of power and dominance, or submissiveness, or we can tell stories of hope and action and justice and love.

During Christmas of my second year in college, I experienced a sadness and longing. I felt distant from God and wanted to get closer. I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted. I was hesitant to join a college group, having never been part of a large peer faith group. I wanted genuine grounding and acceptance. I went to the Wesley Foundation and found a welcoming, understanding community that was deeply concerned for caring for our world and each other. I was a cautious participant, and it took many hard months outside of my introverted social comfort zone, but eventually a mission/service trip to Mexico helped form the bonds that would keep me connected to this community even after college. That was one of the first times I can recall feeling absolutely insane trying to explain to boyfriend and friends that I had to go eat and talk and play with people I was unsure of yet strangely drawn. Once back to the church, I reexamined the language of my faith, the things I’d learned to say and memorized. I found that I really liked that language, that’s it’s one that I not only know, but also feel. In a roundabout way, I came to discover that my yearnings to help heal humanity had a great deal in common with Methodist ideas of Social Justice.

I found myself in crisis as my final year of college came to a close. I was happy with my life thus far. I was content with my plan to enter the archaeological field. At this point, God was more of an advisor. I picked my course, planned my life, and God would sign the release papers of approval. However, God started nudging me in a different direction. I was restless as graduation approached. I likened the experience to falling off the edge of a cliff. I had gone to college because that’s what I was supposed to do. But I didn’t have a template for afterwards. I felt I was supposed to go to graduate school or get a real job, but nothing inspired me. As radical as I felt archaeology was, I was depressed by the fact that all of this amazing information is almost only read by other scholars, when it should be out in the general public. I was more involved in the Foundation than ever, participating in Disciple Bible Study and a baptism small group. This intense theological study gave me a thirst for more, and I started entertaining ideas about seminary. Gradually, I began to think more of vocation and the possibility of ordained ministry. I had two very distinct choices before me. There is always grace and promise in the very presence of options. I felt that I could continue with my male, advisor type vision of God, or I could embrace a fuller, complicated, seemingly contradictory vision of God, both male and female, leading and testing. I knew that I hadn’t been living my fullest, God-desired life. I had not been as bold and brave.

My choice, ultimately, came down to courage. Instead of worrying about a serious job, I took a summer internship with the Wesley Foundation’s program Project Transformation. I had the chance to put my faith and action together as I helped to lead day camps for children. Project Transformation gave me the opportunity to work with children and churches and communities and to see firsthand, some of the prejudices that our very churches harbor. Something is wrong when a church will not allow Hispanic children to play in the front lawn for fear of their self-image. It would be terrible indeed if a church was a safe-haven for society’s undesirables.
If a language of love and justice is to be found, it ought to be first in the churches. If we all live our truest lives, out of concern and love and care, the rest will fall into place. The church is where this all makes sense to me. At it’s best, the church community reflects a micro-vision of the world: an inclusive family that takes care of each other, shares a story and a language of God, and holds a responsibility to live as radically as Christ. Church is a place to be known and held, where each question leads to another, until we can shape and test and transform our view of God and ourselves. Being in ministry is a part of being in the church. All members participate in ministry because it’s our call. The least we can do is be willing and available for God.

I spent a couple of years working at Barnes and Noble, figuring myself out, learning to love myself as my own and no one else’s, learning to be more outgoing and confident. I went to Candler in Atlanta for seminary. Married Shawn, graduated, and moved back to Virginia. I know there will always be a learning curve and I’ll always be growing and changing and assessing my self and figuring out where to go next. I’ve learned that most people don’t know what they want out of life, and that is part of the mystery. We are all restless and searching in our own ways and we need each other, we strange, fragile humans. We need to be understood and loved and listened to and held. We need to take care of each other, our coworkers and next door neighbors, and those in other countries. We need to be conscious and careful in our living.
I know that I have followed the God who called to me out of the darkness, and will continue to do so, along my own unique journey that our creator has graciously designed for me.

Welcome!

I'm Sara Keeling, Associate Pastor at Washington Street UMC in Alexandria, Va. I'm glad you've found me and I hope that we can get to know each other a little better. My hope is to be able to share a little bit of myself--not everything I had for dinner, but more than I will share in my sermons. Please feel free to leave comments, send email, or stop by the office. My door and my inbox are always open. Blessings!