The Bold Journey

Weeping

2011-04-11T10:17:00.001-04:00

John 11:1-45

Julie hasn’t been to church in ages. She’d grown up in one, but it had been a few years since she’d attended a service outside of her college roommate’s wedding. She’s here on impulse this morning. The sermon title says “weeping” and that pretty much sums up her life lately.

She notes her displeasure as the pastor begins to read the story of Lazarus. Julie remembers this story from Sunday School. She had thought it was creepy and they had joked about Lazarus rising up like a zombie or something out of a nightmare. In youth group, she’d wondered with Martha about the smell or how someone could rise up after 4 days of being dead, and then what happened to Lazarus afterward, cause didn’t he just die again? The story was strange and fascinating.

But now the passage is just vile, a bitter reminder of how people don’t come back to life. Her brother Josh had died five months ago. He didn’t have friends and family around him to even call for help or resuscitate him. And Jesus didn’t raise him back up. He died in a hospital, with strangers around him, hours after he’d been found beaten on the street for no good reason. Just at the “wrong place at the wrong time,” the police officer said.

Julie had cursed God in those days, railed against Jesus and her faith and turned her back on the church once and for all.

Her eyes well up as she listens to this scripture. She’s ready to leave, because what’s the point of listening to this story? A story of the miracle she wanted most of all, the story that happened for one man and his family, but not for hers. A story that teases her with the possibility that someone could be restored to life after death, but that remains so out of reach for her.

She stays, though, because she doesn’t want to make a scene. She steels herself for the rest of this ordeal, called worship. The pastor continues to explain how this is the end of a series of miracles in the gospel of John. Jesus has healed the sick, restored sight to the blind, fed the hungry and now this, his final move, his piece de resistance as he says in verse 4 that Lazarus’ illness is “for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”

Julie thinks back to all the well-meaning, yet misguided people who told her that Josh’s death happened for a reason. That Josh was such a good young man, that God must have wanted him in heaven early. That this death is all part of God’s plan and she should find comfort in that. And her favorite that Josh is now in a better place.

But Julie doesn’t see the point in her brother’s having to die just to prove that God is all powerful or to somehow create something good. Couldn’t an all-powerful God do great things without having people die untimely deaths? Why couldn’t God have just wanted Josh to keep being her fabulous brother and living his life to the fullest? Wasn’t that enough of a good purpose?

The pastor starts to explain how this is a metaphor—one of those likely things pastors say these days, a way of distancing us from questions like if it really happened, and if so how did Jesus actually raise someone from the dead. She then says it foreshadows Jesus’ own resurrection, making us realize that Jesus has power over death and life.

Even though she’s annoyed, Julie understands the idea of the metaphor here—of this snap shot account, being more about the power of Jesus to conquer death, his own eventual resurrection, than it is about the particular resurrection of Lazarus, and how that might have worked or why Jesus chose only him. But for Julie, who sees herself like Mary and Martha, calling for Jesus, wishing he would do something, it’s hard to look past the literal story of a beloved brother who was saved and restored, and her brother who was not. The pastor points to the humanity of Jesus—how he loved his friend and weeps at his passing.

“But,” Julie thinks, “If God wept over Josh’s death, why didn’t God save him? If Jesus could raise Lazarus, why doesn’t he do it for everyone?”

She has this image of Josh, the one she’s dreamed about a thousand times, his lifeless body, his beloved face, his scraggly blonde hair, just laying there—bruised and broken. But this time there is a person kneeling over him, crying and Julie can see that this is God and Josh awakens and smiles at her—and Julie hears this voice saying, “I was with him Julie, I cried over your brother just as you did.” The scene changes, and Julie sees the lifeless body of Jesus, so long ago, and that same shining person who says, “I wept over him too. I weep for all of you, my beloved children. But I cannot save you all from death. Your eternal life is with me, not here on earth. And it’s painful and confusing and I’m sorry that it happened this way to Josh, I’m sorry that some survive longer and some do not, I’m sorry for the evil men who killed Josh, but I love those killers too, because they all belong to me. I work with what I have, I don’t cause disaster, but I help turn it into beauty. The death of Lazarus, the death of your brother, the death of Jesus—my son and myself—all disasters, but in resurrection, those deaths become beauty.”

Julie blinks and sees the sanctuary again and hears these words, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die. Will live, and everyone who lives and believe in me will never die.” The pastor reminds them that this is not to say that we will all avoid the end of our mortal lives. But it’s a message that resurrection can happen in our lives now. Our lives can be made new in Christ. Beauty can come out of disaster. Life out of death. The message of the resurrection of Lazarus and of Jesus too. She mentions that it’s this particular miracle, in the gospel of John, that will cause Jesus’ death, will be the miracle that draws attention to him and raises questions. Jesus will pay a price for this act.

Julie gets that Josh didn’t get to live to 90 like their grandmother did, but his death wasn’t for nothing. She remembers that four other lives were saved because Josh was an organ donor. And even though Josh is gone that counts for something. Knowing that God didn’t need or want Josh to die helps. Knowing that God cried with her when Josh died helps even more. Knowing that God shares in her grief and pain, helps her feel like she’s not alone. Her grief is still with her, but her anger lessons.

By the time she’s singing the final hymn, Julie feels lighter. She feels peaceful for the first time in months. Her faith is restored, just a little bit. She has the glimmer of hope that maybe Josh hadn’t been alone and that God hadn’t really wanted him to die, especially not such a horrible death. And that his death, leads to new life, after all. That in Jesus, through his grace and glory, all life can be made new.

And it feels a bit like resurrection. Thanks be to God.

Today’s Troubles

2011-02-28T09:22:00.002-05:00

Matthew 6:24-34

I don’t know about you, but when I read this passage, I automatically start thinking about the very things Jesus tells us not to worry about: what to eat and what to wear. Are you happy with what you chose to wear today? Are you warm enough or cool enough? Do your clothes match? Are they stylish? What are you going to wear for the rest of the week? Is there laundry to do, dry cleaning to pick up? And what about food? Did you skip breakfast? Are you hungry? What are you going to do after church? Go grab a coffee or a bagel? Eat a good lunch? And what about dinner? What will you have? Will you cook or go out or order in or go to a friend’s house?

You’re thinking about food now, aren’t you? Maybe even worrying about it a bit?

Try to sit here and not worry: Jesus says our life is more than food, but what about the bigger things. Don’t think about your depleted savings account or the fluctuating stock market. Don’t think about your job or school or that interview that’s coming up or that exam. Don’t think about your next doctor’s appointment or procedure. Don’t think about your mortgage. Don’t think about the meaning of life, and what you’re doing, and if you’re really happy or just marking the passing of days. And I haven’t even mentioned war and terrorism and global warming.

The easiest advice that Jesus offers is to not worry about the small stuff. In fact, don’t worry about anything that isn’t from God. Don’t worry about tomorrow, because today’s troubles are enough for today. We could just end it there, with a feel-good, don’t-worry-be-happy sort of sermon. And don’t we all need it?

As a collective, we Americans are more anxious now than ever. We’re anxious, we’re medicated, we’re not sleeping well, we’re not able to be our best selves. Ironically, in many ways, this is the best time ever to be alive. With so many technology advances, medical discoveries, and educational opportunities—we should all be living great lives, and yet so many of us are overcome by anxiety. We have high expectations to live up to, quick technology gives us more tasks to complete in shorter amounts of time. We’ve been told we can be anything we want to be, and yet job markets are tight and competitive, and once we get a job, it’s still really difficult to make ends meet, yet alone buy a grand home and all of the other luxuries of the American dream life. We’re more isolated too have fewer friendships are further away from family.

We’re lonelier, and stressed out, and facing high pressures. It’s normal now to have issues with depression and anxiety—even children are facing these issues—because of the times we live in. It used to be almost shameful, to be taking prozac or Zoloft, but I bet we could go around the room raising hands this morning and find a lot of company. So this passage is both particularly appropriate and excruciatingly difficult for us.

Jesus says, do not worry about food or clothes. He adds the peaceful, comforting illustration of Lilies being clothed in natural beauty. “Birds of the air” that eat without having to grow their own food, grocery shop or cook. But clearly, being a human being is a little more complicated—we cannot disregard a concern for clothing so much so that we run out to a field with nothing on. And we cannot survive on sunshine. Photosynthesis doesn’t work for us. We’re not planted in the ground or covered in feathers.

Food and clothing are two of our basic human needs. It’s quite a different story to tell a wealthy woman not to devote her life to high fashion than to tell a homeless man not to worry about his bare feet in the middle of winter. King Solomon might not have been clothed in glory enough to match the lilies of the field, but that’s not very comforting for a person who lacks food and clothes.

As Jesus urges us not to worry about these things, we need to help others be able not to worry. It’s not to make light of serious needs. Help others not to worry, bring food for ALIVE, bring socks for The Open Table.

You cannot serve two masters, you cannot serve God and money. You cannot serve God and spend a big chunk of time worrying about your own welfare. Because we’ll end up obsessing over money and hating God. Because if we serve money, we undoubted worry a great deal. We worry about interest, security, protection, insurance. We lock up our valuables. We worry about not ever having enough, because somebody will always have more. It’s a game we can’t win. We end up living out of the mindset of scarcity—the fear that there is never enough—which just leads to more anxiety, unhappiness, and the complete distraction from God and all that is beautiful and holy.

If we strive after God, we live into the mindset of abundance. There is always enough God, always enough love, always an abundance of all that is beautiful and holy. We don’t have to strive after money or material goods, can be satisfied with less, without consuming too much, buying too much, eating too much.

Strive first for the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be give to you as well. Jesus is our Lord. Jesus overthrows all other concerns. Jesus is our master and we serve him. Which means that we serve the people that Jesus serves: those who are hungry, those who are thirsty, those who need real bread and real water, and those who need the Bread of Christ and the Wine of salvation. We serve those who hunger for God and long for the clothes of his righteousness.

When we strive after God, we find that what we have is enough. We have enough food, enough clothes, and enough trouble to keep us busy for today.

Let Your Light Shine

2011-02-07T11:18:00.000-05:00

“Shout out! Do not hold back!” God tells Isaiah, and we all know we’re in for it now. Trumpets were used, frequently, as calls to war in Israel, but God finds a trumpet blast a suitable start for this sermon.

The people of Israel are passionate about their worship. They are faithful and regular and devote. They are a nation chasing after God, fasting and humbling themselves, desiring to draw closer to God, filling the temple to the brim, desperate to know God’s ways—imploring God to answer them. Their actions may seem outwardly holy, but their spiritual practice ends at the temple. And they have the audacity to wonder why God doesn’t kiss them on the forehead with gratitude. God is not impressed by their posturing and whining. God says they serve their own interests on the Sabbath and not God’s. They oppress their workers. They quarrel and fight. And that, in short, their fasting will not make their voices heard on high. It’s not enough to go through these actions when their hearts aren’t in the right place. God doesn’t want to hear it. Worship, if it is not backed by action, is not what pleases God the most.

I know that we look around and lament all the empty space in the pews. When we tell stories of our past, we remember times when we needed the balcony and even further back when we needed the chapel downstairs for overflow. We remember Easters when there was standing room only, when the choir loft was full, when there were 20 babies in the nursery. We sit in meetings and wonder how to get back to those days, how to fill up our pews, how to increase our attendance and membership numbers.

And as a church, we are not alone, all across the nation in mainline denominations, other churches are asking the same questions: why are we hemorrhaging members and money, and have been for the last 40 years and how do we make it stop? While some suggest that mainline Protestantism took a liberal turn in the 1960s and can never grow again unless it becomes more conservative: keeping out gays, no longer ordaining women, stopping our focus on social justice or political progressiveness . . . what we’re really looking at is a world that is skeptical of institutions, that is postmodern and diverse. We’re looking back at the end of Christendom, at a time that has long gone, a time when everyone who was respectable went to church, some for religious reasons and some out of social pressure or shear habit.

We live in a land of many different faiths and many who identify as “Christian” but never set foot in a church. The church no longer has the central place in society that it once held, and this is not necessarily a bad thing. I imagine that most of you are here because you want to be, not because you feel pressured or to obey the rules of society—because our wider culture tells us that we should spend a Sunday morning at brunch, or with the newspaper and a cup of coffee—it’s just another morning, afterall, except that the office is closed.

In our passage in Isaiah, the temple is not facing these problems—people are showing up for worship, it’s the central part of their life, it’s what you do on a Sabbath, take a bath, put on your nice clothes, get to temple, shake hands with all the right people, sings songs, say your prayers, make your sacrifices and your fasts, listen to scripture, and then go out into the world, feeling good and pious. Maybe even to grandma’s house for Sunday dinner or out for a Sunday drive. Kind of like it’s 1952 in America again. And that is what we mourn when we look around the sanctuary and wish for more company. Those days when everybody showed up.

Jesus never said anything about being the center of society . . . Jesus was much more focused on saving individuals and forming a community of love and service to carry out his work. His was a radical group, not concerned with social conformity or respectability.

God says to Isaiah, this is not about worship. I don’t care what’s going on in the sanctuary, but I do care about what is NOT going on in the world. Because the point of worship—comes at the very end of our service together—we come to be nourished, built up, encouraged, and then SENT OUT to the world.

Sadly, when we tell the stories of our church, this is what I do not hear: we used to be really active in the community. All over town, we were known as the church to go to if you needed help. The dinners we cooked for the homeless were legendary. We had the best food pantry, we bought the most coats, we worked with the mayor and city council to find solutions to homelessness and poverty in our city.

I know there was some mission work and giving, but it’s not what is highlighted—it’s not what defines our church, not like our fine music program, or our drama group . . . I’m talking about the stories we use to define ourselves, to tell of our history . . . What we talk about is who we were, are, or want to be. And that’s part of why it’s so hard for us to talk about the future, because we still want to talk about worship style and music, we want to talk about our buildings and our finances, we want to talk about our physical appearance and accessibility in Old Town, our presence as a place to worship . . . but what we need to discuss is our presence as a missional church, our presence to those in the community who are in need physically and spiritually.

We’re starting to get a reputation around town as a place to go for a meal and warmth. The Open Table is truly working at Washington Street. We give the hungry bread. We welcome the homeless into our doors. We are starting to be noticed in ways that we haven’t been perhaps for decades. But there is so much more we need to do t owork to end injustice and oppression.

Listen again to what God promises if we are faithful and care for the poor and work to fix injustices . . . “Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt.” A good walk-through of our buildings can show us a thing or two about “ancient ruins” and a good walk through our financial situation and the realestate situation of Old Town can show us just how unlikely it is that we can “rebuild” anything on our own.

There are churches like ours who have managed to turn around when they focus on mission, when they stop navel gazing and longing for an extinct past and stop focusing on their problems—and remember what God really desires, far beyond lovely music and beautiful prayers and full pews

God doesn’t just want us to show up at church on Sundays but “to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke. To share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house;; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin.” Because we are all children of God, and we cannot praise God with our lips and then deny God with the rest of our actions.

Only then, God tells Isaiah, “Light shall break forth like dawn and your healing shall spring up quickly; You shall be like a watered garden, spring of water whose waters never fail.”

In these days of finding a way forward, this is our message of hope. Thank be to God.

To Love or Not to Love

2010-08-04T13:37:00.001-04:00

Hosea 11:1-11

If you’re going to the beach soon or just need something light and fluffy to read, an Old Testament prophet is a good way to go. There is much adventure and juicy drama. The oracles are written in beautiful poetry that just drips with rich metaphors. God is like a steadfast husband, Israel is like a faithless wife, God is like a loving mother, Israel is like a rebellious son. God chases and pursues relentlessly. Israel turns and runs away. We are in suspense as we wonder if Israel will safely return, or if she will continue to lead a life of recklessness. We wonder if God will just give up on the wayward child and abandon him. And God wonders these things right along side of us, caught up in the suspense with us, wondering if God will finally abandon the people (us) who really do deserve it after all.

In this robust passage of Hosea, the prophet takes us on a walk down memory lane, sharing early memories of childhood: teaching us to walk, kissing our cheeks, bending down and lifting us up. The focus is not on us, not how cute we were, but how loving God was, patiently guiding us, teaching us, loving us. Moments we cannot remember because we were too young and naïve (self centered?), but God has not forgotten our babyhood. But this sweetness doesn’t last, we children grow up and are no longer as cuddly, as dependent, as loving. We think we no longer need God, and go in search of other ways to nourish our souls and beings. We no longer depend on the face and hands of God. And God laments at the difficulty of maintaining this deep love and devotion in the eye of such unfaithfulness.

In Hosea’s time, the kingdom of Israel had divided between North and South. God refers to the Northern Kingdom of Israel, as Ephraim. God compares Ephraim to a child he has taught to walk and taken in her arms. God led these people with “cords of human kindness, with bands of love.” She was like a caregiver who lifts an infant to her cheek, who bends down to them and feeds them. God, as a mother, as a father, as an aunt or uncle, as one who cares for small children, remembers how God cared and tended. This is a God who is accommodating, who sacrifices and humbles Godself to be known to us—an almighty, all powerful God, who is humble enough to brush crumbs off of our chins when we are not able to do this for ourselves. When we don’t even know what is happening to us. As Hosea says: “They did not know that I healed them.” God cares for us and provides even when we are unaware. The founder of Methodism Anglican priest John Wesley, referred to this as “Prevenient grace”: of God’s mercy that precedes us, that goes before us, that is at work long before we are aware of it, or even aware of our need for it. God takes care of us even when we don’t know it, preparing a way for us without our awareness or permission.

And all of that love and tender care turns out to be a waste of time, when we repay God by turning away. Hosea outlines the particular punishment that Israel faces: returning to Egypt, the place of slavery, the place that God previously liberated them from. Turning away from God, we all face a return to our previous conditions of sin, of separation from God. Israel faces loosing their nation and being ruled by the neighboring nation of Assyria. God had secured them land and freedom and will take it away and give it away. But God is not comfortable with this decision, God remembers how God took such great pains with Israel, how God loves and tends to us and asks: “but how can I really give them up and hand them over” says God, dangling the child over the pit of destruction, coming just this close to walking away, then realizing that God can’t do that, won’t do that.

The best parents will tell you that no matter what you will always love your kids. If they disobey, talk back, get arrested, marry someone you hate, etc, you still help them, defend them, love them. And this love is completely natural, automatic. Conventional wisdom backs this up, that this parental love comes with the territory, and we’re biologically rigged to always love our offspring.

But reality tells us that parents do not always love their kids, well or sometimes at all. Children are abandoned, physically or emotionally, are abused, are endangered, are not shown love, all the time. The news tells us this is true. Some of our own stories of our upbringing or experiences with our children tell us that this is true too.

God knows this, so in the midst of a parent-child relationship description, God turns and expresses a desire to abandon the child Israel, but makes the point that God will not do this simply because God is God, not a human, not mortal, and therefore not tempted to not love. After considering all the various ways of destroying us, God’s compassion kicks in and grows and God vows to bring us home.

The extent of God’s mercy does not end with Prevenient grace. We cannot rely on God to always take care of us with no effort on our own. As we mature, as we become alert to God’s actions in our lives, to the need that we have for God, as we realize that God has been helping us walk all along, then we realize our own shame and we return home, we “shall go after the Lord, who roars like a lion; when he roars, his children shall come trembling from the west . . . and I will return them to their homes, says the Lord.”

Summer Fruit

2010-07-19T14:10:00.000-04:00

Amos 8:1-12

This is not one of those fun, encouraging scriptures. Not a depiction of God who gathers us close in her arms, and holds us his palm. Amos encounters a different face of God. A God who tosses our clothes out onto the pavement and leaves us standing cold and naked with shame.

This passage is about why we are all doomed, and it’s not why you might think: it’s not about personal immorality, adultery, or war: it is about the poor. Specifically, a lack of concern for the poor. God cares about our individual morality as well, but as far as this passage is concerned, that’s not why we’re all doomed. It’s the sneaky, less obvious ways, the injustices we’re trained not to see. The rich rulers are cheating the poor and ruining the land. God’s mercy concerns not the rich, but the poor. God stakes a claim to say that the divine One cares deeply about how humans are treating each other. And to demonstrate this care and concern, God shows Amos a basket of summer fruit.

When I was little, my grandparents had a basket of plastic fruit sitting on their kitchen table. It was pretty and shiny, and I knew it was fake, but once I chewed on it either just to be sure or because it looked so good. The plastic had a nasty, harsh taste, and bounced between my teeth and my tongue. This was fruit that could not be consumed and digested. This is like the basket of fruit that I imagine God showed to Amos. The image is only visual, Amos does not touch or taste the fruit to experience how this fruit also shows the difference between good and evil.

Imagine with me, for a moment, that our nation is like Ancient Israel. Imagine that we have a shrinking middle class, while the rich seem to get richer and fewer and the poor poorer and more numerous. In which we don’t have a living wage, and yet blame folks for being poor, while we can shop discount and bulk because the workers aren’t paid enough, while a $40 sweater cost $2 to make, but the profit goes to the company and not to the knitter, when the hands in the middle make all the profit, cheating the maker and the buyer, when a grande nonfat latte costs $4.50, but for every pound of coffee sold in the United States farmers get less than 35 cents and coffee pickers less than 14 cents. And all along we exchange the ephah for the shekel and buy the needy for a pair of sandals. We don’t even have to wait for the sabbath to be over, we can do this all on Sunday if we want to. But the God of love and mercy and justice says: I see you over there and I will not forget. The God of Jacob is the same God of Jesus, the same God who holds the poor close to the divine heart. Just Imagine. Our resources not being used in ways that can sustain all people. Our rain forests trampled, oil seeping into our coasts, sweatshop laborers working for pennies so that we can have more wardrobe options, many layers of hands in the middle, from producer to buyer, marking up the prices all the way from shrub to cup.

We’re all linked in this system together. Just as the whole nation of Israel is indicted. God says “No, you are not taking care of all of my people; you are cheats and scamps and things we can’t say in church and I don’t know you. You are not my people and I am not your God.” God will cause the land to revolt and nature will have a final say. Not locusts or a shower of fire, but silence. To the people who will not listen, God has nothing to say.

God threatens that the sun will go down at noon and the earth will collapse into itself and there will be massive amounts of death and mourning. Natural disasters are just that, natural. And we have eclipses frequently and understand what’s really going on. But the literary merit of drastic measures is appropriate for God. We need a drastic reorientation before we recognize that the poor are exalted and that the fortune of God has nothing to do with economics.

The basket of fruit, is a pun and a metaphorical turn: in Hebrew “summer fruit” and “the end” are linked as terms that look and sound similar, so the original audience had a better clue about where this was going. The NIV plays on this stating that the “ripe” fruit indicates that the time is “ripe” for Israel, and while this shows an explicit link it doesn’t do justice to the richness of the original pun. Amos has no easy defense for the fruit that signifies the end. In the earlier vision reports, God showed Amos locusts and a storm of fire and Amos was able to say, no Lord, please not that. But the fruit looks pretty benign. Amos can’t say to God, oh no not the fruit, because how is God going to bring about the end with a pile of produce? But God has a trick here, linguistically at least. What looks healthy and rich, the fruit that is ripe, and the people who are wealthy, are poor in spirit and are withering and dying though they look well.

We are not just like Ancient Israel, the US is not chosen by God, but we do find ourselves in a position of global power. And we also suffer the same problems of labor and land. We can wait for Jesus to make everything right. Israel waits, but by the time of Christ, Israel has long fallen and the Romans are in charge. We thought we were safe and indestructible once, but we are starting to know better. We fear the threat of other nations, of our own economic structures, of our ability to contain and control oil in the gulf.

If we trample and exchange dollars for cents and get rich at another’s expense and do nothing and say nothing. If we turn out shopping carts away and do not look at the roots of our social evil and see the magnitude of our smallest actions, if we do not recognize that this is not God’s way. In the New Testament, James picks up this theme that our existence in God makes us rich, that earthly possessions do not ultimately satisfy and that we are not allowed to oppress others for our gain and comfort. He says: “Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days. Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts on a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you.”[1]

At the end of the book of Amos, God does leave us hope of restoration, but only after all has fallen, and the earth has sunk: until we recognize this, we’re on a dangerous path of shortchanging our neighbors and ourselves from God’s fulfillment….

“The time is surely coming, says the Lord,
when the one who plows shall overtake the one who reaps,
and the treader of grapes the one who sows the seed,
the mountains shall drip sweet wine
and all the hills shall flow in it
I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel...
I will plant them upon their land, and they shall never again be plucked up out of the land that I have given them”[2]

God says to Amos, what you think is a basket of healthy summer fruit, was grown in overworked soil, and picked by underpaid hands, and sprayed with chemicals to appear ripe. The fruit that looks like health and harvest is bitter and poisonous...

You see fruit, says the Lord God, but I am showing you the end.
God will not destroy us, we can do that on our own.
God will not take the word from us, but we will silence our own lips.

[1] James 5: 1-6

[2] Amos 9: 13-15

Live Like Christians

2010-07-04T10:42:00.000-04:00

Galatians 6:1-16

In Paul’s letter to the Galatians we find a bitter struggle in the early church to define mission and identity. Paul argues that Christians are free from much of Jewish law, including ritual observances and circumcision. He emphasizes that we are righteous not through works of the law but by faith in Christ.

It’s a bit strange to us today since we don’t spend a lot of time differentiating ourselves from Judaism. But for Paul and the church of Galatia, the Christian church was still settling into itself. Paul was a Jew who became a Christian after meeting the risen Christ. The people of Galatia were gentiles, pagans, not Jews, who had learned of Jesus from Paul. One of the issues concerned the nature of being a Christian and whether or not one had to be Jewish first—like Jesus and Paul—or just jump straight to Christianity. We don’t worry about this now. We can go right to the Christian part, while acknowledging the importance of Judaism as our religious ancestor, studying the Old Testament and learning about the religion of Jesus and Paul, without having to actually practice or observe it for ourselves. This frees us too. We are able to respect Judaism and Jews, without having to compare ourselves, without having to find one superior and one inferior, without having to take on a successionist idea: that the New Testament is infinitely superior to the previous one, but to recognize that the Old Testament can stands on it’s own with it’s own inherent value as the Hebrew Bible, and isn’t always answered or fixed with Jesus. We don’t think of ourselves as “freed” from Judaism, from the law, and ritual the Hebrew religion, because most of us were never Jews in the first place. Instead, we think of being free from whatever we were before, from our previous condition of sin or darkness that Jesus saved us from: maybe we were lost, maybe we were overly self-reliant, whatever it was that held is in bondage—or that holds us in bondage—Jesus frees us from: whether it’s addiction, abuse, self-loathing, whatever it is, whatever sinful condition we are all in, Jesus offers us freedom.

And that’s Paul’s point in this letter: the Galatians don’t need to worry about other religious rituals, he compares following the rites of Judaism to the rites of their former pagan religions, basically, living as though nothing has changed. For us today, this would mean living as though Jesus doesn’t make a difference, keeping our same habits, attitudes, fears, going through the motions, going to church, making the outward effort, but not changing anything on the inside, not experiencing a change of the spirit. The Galatians are concerned about circumcision as an outward and visible sign which was important when it symbolized the covenant between God and the people of Israel, but unnecessary for the new Christian communities. Paul is concerned that the only reason the Galatians would do this is to mark themselves differently, to differentiate themselves from other people, but in a way that is only physical, instead of being different in spirit and in action—like wearing the cross or the Christian t-shirt without the spirit of belief and service to back it up.

Paul says that through baptism in Christ, we become united—marked all the same, neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. Circumcision was only for a portion of the population, but baptism is for everyone (3:28).

In turn, we are enslaved, not to ways that divide, not to status symbols, but to each other, in loving service. Being a Christian isn’t about playing nice in any kind of false sense.

This is still a widespread problem for us today. Whenever we hear someone say, the problem with church is that it’s full of hypocrites, that’s what they are talking about: a group of people who go to church, claim to be different, claim to be following Jesus, but then go out the door and are just as mean and nasty and back-stabbing as the next person.

Of course, we’re all human, we’re all sinners, and none of us is perfect—but does it make a difference that we are Christians? Are we living into that freedom? The freedom that is in Christ, the freedom that is not self-indulgent, but that looks out and cares for others?

Living like a Christian is seriously different, not like living like others. It’s about authenticity, not just a good showing.

This week we mourned the passing of long-time member Ruth Harvey—in every remembrance of her, friends spoke of her kindness, how she reached out to new people at church and made them feel welcome, how she reached out to new teachers at her school and helped them along the way, how she was kind and nice, living out her faith with hospitality and kindness, not closed off, not ignoring new people, but warm and welcoming. At church and at work, she lived out her commitment to serve others.

Being a Christian means living with hope, living with love, living in service and love to others. The outward signs of our faith matter: but those signs should be the love we have for other people. Paul urges the church to not grow weary doing what is right.

Our Director of Christian Education, Rachel Miller is not doing something normal, or totally understandable, by living in a country where she doesn’t know the language or the customs, where the food is strange and upsets her stomach, but she’s there because of Christ. She’s doing what is right. She is testing her own work. Carrying her own load. Living out the fact that freedom in Christ isn’t a personal freedom, but means a freedom to help others, including children who don’t have the same opportunities—for medical treatment, for education—children with the same hopes and dreams, but not the resources to achieve them. And when asked why she’s doing this, she can only say that God has compelled her to do so, she could have spent the summer as usual, going to work, swimming, spending time with family and friends, but instead she’s in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, serving others out of the freedom she has in Jesus. She may grow weary, she may get homesick, she may be stressed and frightened, but she’s pushing on, learning as she goes, sharing the love she has with all those little girls out of the freedom God gives her.

As we celebrate our freedom and independence as a nation today, may we be mindful of how much greater our freedom is in God. Not just freedom from tyranny and oppression, but freedom from sin and death. Thanks be to God.

Royal Possession

2010-06-17T10:24:00.000-04:00

1 Kings 21:1-21a

Last week we talked a bit about Ahab and Jezebel. Ahab was king of Israel, the most evil king ever, who had married a Sidonian woman and worshipped her tribal god instead of the God of Israel. Because of his worship of Baal, God caused a three year drought and God’s prophet Elijah got to deliver the bad news. Today, we find Ahab, Jezebel, and Elijah again, but we get a clearer picture of the evil of this royal duo.

Ahab’s queen is not just a normal trophy wife who helped him forge valuable alliances with other kingdoms. Jezebel’s name is synonymous with a troublesome, seductive woman, a hussy, a harlot. And while she certainly welds her power for greed and destruction, she’s not the sole downfall of her husband. Ahab is no saint on his own. He has some major character flaws and is generally unfit to be a king, especially a king of Israel. He is greedy, he has poor coping mechanisms, he seems to have missed the whole point of leading the people of Israel.

When Naboth, the vineyard owner, wouldn’t agree to sell or trade, Ahab took to his bed, refused to eat dinner and just rolled over. As if he had no other responsibilities for the kingdom but to sulk over not getting the perfect garden for his vegetables (which, given his childish nature, he probably would not have eaten anyway). This immature behavior let’s us know to just what extreme Ahab was unfit for the monarchy. He wasn’t just evil, he was foolish and petty too, and unable to think for himself. Jezebel had probably figured out this personality trait of her husband’s and takes it upon herself to do what the king will not: take possession. No less greedy, Jezebel at least has the ambition and cunning to get the job done. Of course, she is merciless and cruel and no doubt deserves at least part of the reputation she’s gotten over the centuries. She’s misguided, but decisive. She makes a plan and goes for it. She sets up an elaborate plot to sentence Naboth wrongly to death row. And while Ahab doesn’t come up with this plan, he is not surprised, nor does he question his wife when she promises the desired vineyard and then delivers good on her promise.

King Ahab is certainly not the first king of Israel to look out his window and covet the property of his neighbor. As David looked out and desired Bathsheba, Ahab looks next door and sees the vineyard of Naboth and dreams of his own, royal vegetable garden in its place. He starts off with the honorable thing and offers Naboth a trade of either cash or a similar property, but this vineyard is Naboth’s ancestral inheritance—something God is very clear about in the Hebrew Bible—land and families are important, not to be handed over or sold, but past down to the generations.

Ahab and Naboth were both Israelites, but Naboth worshipped the God of Israel, while Ahab had strayed with a foreign god. Their desire for the same land is a government issue, but also a religious one since Naboth firmly believes that God has given his family this land and that it would be a sin to hand it over. Ahab realizes he’s been out done, he’s been trumped by the God-card and resigns to do nothing but pout. But his wife, Jezebel, has no respect for this foreign God of Israel—she has, after all, already put to death hundred’s of God’s prophets, so that only a few remain—she has conducted her own genocide of sorts. So for her, taking the land, is not a big deal, it’s what a king should do, if he wants something he should just go and get it, because what else is the use of being king?

This was one of the arguments God used against having a monarchy for Israel in the first place because Kings would take up the best resources and the best people for themselves, and the society would be less egalitarian and fair, but the people insisted, they wanted to be like other nations and have a king, so that they could be respected too, since simply having God Almighty wasn’t good enough clout.

The nation of Israel today is back in the headlines, where it never strays far, with the recent flotilla incident. And Obama and Netanyahu will meet again soon to try to find some common ground and work toward peace—but even then peace is so illusive and difficult for that region. Too many groups of people—with different nationalities and religions have a serious stake in the land, and tend to want all or nothing, making compromise basically impossible.

Compromise, had it even been attempted, would not have been possible for Naboth and the King and Queen. When Elijah reenters the scene, God’s judgment is swift. And because Ahab is not on good terms with God, he does not view Elijah’s arrival at the vineyard during his moment of taking it into possession as a good thing.

Ahab and Elijah in a cultural and religious war, not like King David and the prophet Nathan who convicted David of his sin with Bathsheba. Ahab does not see Elijah as a helpful advisor, but refers to him as his “enemy” and ironically as the “troubler of Israel.”

It’s not until after Elijah tells Ahab the consequences for his actions, the terrible fate for all of his family, that Ahab humbles himself and mourns his actions. He doesn’t feel bad for Naboth’s wrongful death, for the loss of such an upstanding man to his family and community, but is only upset when he learns that his own family and household will be eaten by dogs and birds.

His repentance is cheap and while Ahab is spared, Jezebel and Ahab’s sons are not. Punishment still comes to their household and to the generations following Ahab.

This is a grizzly, cautionary tale of not keeping some of the basic Commandments: of worshipping other gods, of coveting your neighbors’ property, of committing murder.

It’s a tale of greed and desire getting in the way of true relationship with God. It’s about loosing sight of God and relying on our plans a schemes.

Unlike Ahab and Jezebel, may we not be cause of oppression, of theft, of murder. May we look for ways to do justice and act kindly and walk humbly with God. Amen.

Wild Miracles

2010-06-07T11:32:00.001-04:00

1 Kings 17:8-24

Don’t you just love how our scripture tends to start right in the middle of things? As though we all remember exactly who Elijah is and what he was up to?

By way of a little background on this story, Elijah was a great prophet, in the time of the kings of Israel, when Israel was an establish monarchy—no longer a roaming, nomadic tribe. Elijah had the uncomfortable job of telling the kings the truth. They would seek out his advice and he would have to tell them what God had to say, and when it wasn’t favorable, he might find himself hiding for his life.

The historian who compiled the book of 1^st Kings tells us that King Ahab “did evil in the sight of the Lord more than all who were before him. And as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, he took as his wife Jezebel daughter of King Ethbaal of the Sidonians, and went and served Baal” worshiped and built a sacred altar and did more to provoke the anger of the Lord than had all the kings of Israel before him.[1]

God is particularly displeased to see a king of Israel worshipping another god. Baal, it turns out is the god of storms and rain, and, by extension, life, death, and fertility. As punishment, Elijah informs King Ahab that there will be a severe drought for three years, to show exactly which god is in charge of the storms and rain, life and death.

And so Elijah, heads on out of town, to get out of Ahab’s jurisdiction, and goes to the Wadi Cherith, a marsh where he will still have some water to drink. God sends ravens to feed him bread and meat, twice a day. But soon, because there is no rain, the Wadi dries up and Elijah must move on.

Which catches us up to today’s scripture lesson, God sends Elijah to the land of Sidon, which also happens to be the birthplace of the Queen Jezebel and the heartland for Baal worship. No ravens this time, God tells Elijah that a widow there will provide for him.

In the Bible, widows are always of God’s special concern. Without husbands to provide for them or give them security and status in Israelite society, these women are vulnerable, with few resources and no power, not exactly the ideal caretakers for Israel’s great prophet. But Elijah has just relied on ravens, so the widow may seem like an upgrade. He finds her, by the city gate, gathering sticks for kindling, which cannot be a good sign that she’ll be able to provide a feast all on her own. Fortunately, God is with her, and after obediently fetching a drink of water for Elijah, she continues to listen to the word of God. She protests, but she does go and make bread and feed Elijah first, even though she only has enough oil and grain for one last meal for herself and her son. She tells Elijah that they are preparing to eat this last meal and then starve to death. It is a drought after all, so there will be no more grain until after it rains again. But she does it: maybe out of an act of faith, or out of a desperate hope that this man is right. In anticipation of the story of Jesus and the loaves and fishes, Elijah assures her that her jars of oil and meal will not go empty. And sure enough, God provides for the three of them, and the supplies hold and they are all able to eat for many, many days.

During the drought, God cares for those who are faithful. Elijah, the widow, and her child, are fed, even while the rest of the land starves. God does not give Elijah good news for the King and Queen, but does give good news to this widow and child who were on the verge of death, showing even more that God truly is in charge of the harvest, life and death.

In his book, Testimony to Otherwise, theologian Walter Brueggemann notes that the story of Elijah makes a break in the historical account of the kings of Israel. Among these stories of war, infidelity, punishment, and disgrace, we find the stories of the prophets that "open to the listeners in daring imagination the claim that the world does not need to be perceived or engaged according to dominant shapings of power, to privileged notions of authority, to conventional distributions of goods, or to standard definitions of what is possible."

These days, we find more and more stories that are told from unlikely points of view. Just think of Wicked, the story of the Wizard of Oz, told from the wicked witch’s point of view or of Wide Sargasso Sea, the story of Jane Eyre told through the eyes of the crazy wife in the attic. In our Postmodern awareness, we are more sensitive to other sides of the story: not just the winners of history, of the rich and elite, but the stories of the ordinary, of the underdog, of the slave, of the victim.

And so, in the middle of this litany of the kings of Israel, of their comings and goings, we find the story of a great prophet and a poor widow and her son.

Brueggemann says that Elijah "enacts otherwise, showing that the world could be and would be different, concretely, decisively different."

This whole business of good news for the impoverished and marginalized and bad news for the rich and royal will continue with Jesus, which is why so many people will call on stories of Elijah to help them process the reality of Jesus. It’d be nice sometimes, or easier at least, if so many stories of the Bible were not so uncomfortable, if they didn’t call on us to help feed the hungry and heal the hurts of the world—but the message of Elijah, of Jesus, is not self-fulfillment and satisfaction, it’s not prosperity and simple happiness,

Elijah spends a lot of time on the run, finding unlikely sources for meals and shelter. He interprets God for the people, he obeys God’s commands, and he challenges God. He and God have a full and rich relationship, sometimes harmonious, sometimes tense. When the widow’s son dies anyway, even with the abundance of food, Elijah cries out to God, asking what God has against him now that the son of his hostess would die anyway. And God hears these cries as Elijah stretches his own body across the child’s, and God answers Elijah by giving the child life again. This is not the sort of miracle we expect anymore. Who among us would expect to be able to stretch out over the lifeless body of a loved one and bring them back? Elijah raises people from the dead, Jesus will later raise people from the dead.

These are the sorts of wild miracles that God is capable of doing. God gives sustenance to those who have nothing, hope and healing to those who have none.

Thanks be to God.

[1] 1 Kings 16:30-33

Language of the Holy Spirit

2010-05-24T09:18:00.000-04:00

Acts 2:1-21 (Genesis 11:1-9)

It can be tempting to celebrate Pentecost as a singular fixed moment in time, as the birthday for the church and just leave it at that, as the day to commemorate the moment when the flaming tongues of the Holy Spirit descend on the apostles as a sign of the outpouring of this divine gift, of the presence of God among them. We could celebrate this event as a final, complete moment in itself, in which no other can compare.

We could box up the Spirit in our tidy, commercialized language of success. I frequently overhear other ministers talk about the work of the spirit in their churches, and more often than not it has something to do with a shiny new building or an influx of new members—God can do amazing things! Like help us build this new gymnasium. As if to say the presence of the Holy Spirit in our congregations is measured by our numbers or by the amount of money we receive. As though God created a finalized product in the church, that we must simply maintain now, keeping up our numbers and appearances. At which point we have domesticated God, tamed the divine down to tiny little expectations.

There are other stories, though rarer, of churches who send people out into the world, who fully embrace mission locally and globally and choose to believe that the transforming power of the Holy Spirit—the flaming tongues of Pentecost have more to do with working to change the world—in very real and tangible ways, that move beyond supporting an established institution and an expensive infrastructure, more than “playing church”, but actually being “church” for a world that is broken and hurting.

The event of Pentecost is truly an amazing, miraculous story, which informs us that amazing, miraculous stories are still possible for the church today. (more than nostalgia for a past when God was active)

Pentecost was already a Jewish holiday occurring 50 days after Passover. The eleven remaining disciples were gathered to observe this Holy Day. Of course, they had already been through a lot at this point—Jesus had left them once again, this time ascending into heaven. And these men from Galilee are gathered to worship and to remember the event of Moses coming down from Mt. Sinai with the gift of law for the people. And in the midst of this—this moment that so defines the birth of their religion, the law and ordering of their lives, their ritual is disrupted by a loud, rushing, mighty wind, that draws attention to them and a crowd forms around the house. They are inundated with the Spirit of God the same that moved across the chaotic waters of Creation, assaulted with tongues as of fire, and babbling in languages they can’t even understand, to be ridiculed by those who do not understand and find comic relief in accusing them of being drunk!

But they are not drunk with wine, they are intoxicated with the incredible power of the Holy Spirit and that is how they are each able to speak the message of God in a language that is foreign to them, but recognizable to the diversity of the crowd. The message of God, instantly translated into a dozen different languages, allowing for clear communication and unity.

In the book of Genesis, we find the story of the tower of Babel. Human beings had become numerous on earth and decided they wanted to build a tower to the sky, to reach God in heaven. But God didn’t like this plan and realized that if the people could not communicate well to each other, they could not successfully pull off a big project like a tower to heaven. So God, who created the world with a single spoken Word, scattered the people to far reaches of the earth and jumbled their languages, thus creating a diverse world.

The event of Pentecost reverses the tower of Babel—at least temporarily. It doesn’t eradicate all languages and unify them into one, rather the people are able to hear the message of God in their own native languages, and to understand. The diversity continues to exist, but there is new understanding, new community within the Holy Spirit.

Language can create and unify and it can destroy and scatter. We are increasingly separated through language. Not just different linguistic families, but also through rhetoric and jargon. It is difficult for Republicans and Democrats, Christians and Muslims, to speak with one another, rather than at and against. It’s difficult to find even an objective news story because everyone has an opinion and hardly anyone can look at an issue from several angles. It’s either all good or all bad, the solution to the problem or the death toll for us all.

For the thousands of Jews gathered in Jerusalem, language kept them divided, but through the Holy Spirit they were able to truly hear one another for the first time.

Hear the words that Peter quotes from Joel: telling the critics that in the last days, God will pour out the Holy Spirit on everyone and sons and daughters will prophesy, young men will see visions and old men will dream dreams, slaves will also prophesy, and there will be signs in heaven and on earth, the sun will turn to darkness and the moon to blood.

There will be much, much more than simply speaking in other languages, there will be visions and dreams, probably some of hope and some of terror, and there will be a reversal of creation as the bright shining sun goes dark and the luminous yellow moon turns blood red to show the “great and glorious,” wonderful and fearful return of the Lord.

The Spirit of God is serious business, powerful and transformative—she is not just sweet and comforting.

In our prayers, we invoke the Holy Spirit, asking God to descend upon us, to unify us. When we say these familiar words, we better know for sure what we’re asking!

Annie Dillard, in Teaching a Stone to Talk writes “On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of the conditions. Does any-one have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake some day and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return."[1]

It is madness to ask God to help us achieve our church or personal goals unless we are willing to ask God what our goals should be in the first place. We may invite God into our lives hoping for protection from life’s trauma and our own foolishness, we may be mostly hoping for good health and personal satisfaction, but we often forget about the terrifying God on the other end of the deal—the one who’s will we ask be done, without the foggiest idea what that will might be, without really comprehending just what God might ask of us, what God might truly demand of us, how God might really shape and form us. The terrifying Poet, T. S. Eliot, has this to say to us:

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.[2]

Pentecost is not some remembrance of a past event, of the one-time only birth of the church, sprung fully formed from the mind of God, instead it is the ongoing, often painful, growing and shaping of the community of faith in the world. Thanks be to God.

[1] Dillard, Annie. Teaching a Stone to Talk, Harper & Row, 1982

[2] Eliot, T.S. “The Dove Descending.”

Hospitality of Lydia

2010-05-11T11:03:00.001-04:00

Acts 16:9-15

In the book of Acts, we travel with Jesus’ followers to new lands as they spread the good news. Paul has a vision of a man asking for help in Macedonia, with his companions, Paul travels to this Roman district in Europe. On the Sabbath, they go to the river. Perhaps there is a temple or synagogue there or just a known place for gathering and prayer and there they find a group of women worshipping God. Among these women is Lydia, a dealer of purple cloth. We know very little about Lydia, but what we do know is fascinating. The rest we could imagine from the text.

Lydia was a rarity in those days, not defined by husband or children, but by her textile business. She was her own woman, successful and free. The leaders and elites of Macedonia looked to her to supply the luscious purple fabric for their robes. And in return, they paid her well with money and respect. They listened to her, this woman who possessed a strange authority, as she measured out bolts of the fabric, she told them stories of a foreign God, not the gods of Rome, not stories of Jupiter, Apollo, or Venus, but stories of a tribal God of Israel—a single God who was greater than the many, a God who created, a God who protected and liberated, a God of love and mercy. Lydia was strange indeed, but the people accepted her.

She observed the Hebrew Sabbath and would gather with other women by the river side. There they would worship this God with songs and prayers. They would tell each other stories of their encounters with God.

One day, several men, foreign travelers joined them. And the one named Paul began to tell them new stories about this same God: about how this God had also become human, had lived and breathed among them, had appeared to Paul, and showed him the error of his ways as a zealous Jew who persecuted Christians, and had convinced him that he, Jesus, was truly the Messiah, the Son of God, for whom they had waited for so long. Lydia was immediately convinced that this man spoke the truth—that the Messiah, whom she had heard about, had really and truly come—had died, and then risen again, and continued to live through his believers. She vowed to do whatever she could to help spread this new message. Since she was already telling the story of God, she would happy tell this story of Jesus too. She asked to be baptized and to have her whole household baptized as well, so that they might all begin this new journey. And finding out that these foreigners were traveling missionaries, with no place to call home, Lydia insisted that they stay at her house and use her good fortune to help spread the good news.

God opened her heart and she, in turn, opened her home. After her baptism, she turns her house into a base for the spread of Christianity in Europe. Her baptism leads immediately to hospitality and a sharing in all the risks of mission.

Luke, the writer of Acts, doesn’t expand on just how important Lydia’s hospitality is, but we can see that she gives them a home-base. A place to sleep and eat, a place to return to from preaching and later from prison. Paul and his companions are in a foreign country, they have no place to call home, and the gift of Lydia’s home provides much needed creature comfort so that they can have the physical strength and sound mindset to continue the work of God. Maybe she went out and preached too, or maybe she continued with her business, providing fine clothes for the rich, telling them her story, of this Jesus she had met and of these travelers staying in her home.

Hospitality: no matter who it is from is a great gift: having a place to go, to stay, to sleep, to eat, to rest weary bones and fill empty stomachs, a place of safety cannot be overestimated. Neither can kindness to strangers.

Lydia is a model, an early church mother, for us now and for the church. Jesus might have asked Lydia to give up her wealth, to sell her house and follow him—but she gives these things to god in different ways: she doesn’t sell her house, but she gives it to Paul for God’s purposes.

What if we extended our resources: our time, our money, our space to help feed those who are hungry? It would be our basic task as Christians, and a clear example of Lydia-like hospitality. It would not change the whole world, but it could help, in small ways, to transform part of the world. What if we served breakfast, once a week, to the homeless and hungry in Alexandria, right here in our social hall?

This might include coming in on a weekday morning before you head to work or go about the rest of your day. It might include scrambling eggs or having a cup of coffee with someone who is struggling and in need. It might include washing table clothes, setting up tables, or buying food. This is not the kind of thing that is easy. It won’t be for the feint of heart, but it will be for the kingdom of God. After all, it is so important to eat a healthy meal in the morning. Most of us know how much some caffeine and protein can make a huge difference. On a cold morning, we could provide a warm place to sit for an hour or two. Our neighbors could find church doors that are open, and people who care—not because of our own agenda or because we have to, but because God cares. For people living on the margins, seeing a volunteer, someone who gives their time and effort just for the sake of giving it away, can give these folks so much hope—just to know there are people in the world who would care for them and expect nothing for themselves in return is life-changing.

Paul responded to a vision from God.

Lydia responded to Paul’s message of God.

How will we respond?

Doubting

2010-04-12T12:41:00.000-04:00

John 20: 19-31

Easter Sunday is rarely an appropriate time to engage in a discussion of the factuality of the resurrection. Congregations on an Easter Sunday want to hear a word of hope, they want to sing their alleluias, they want to know that Jesus still lives. Especially if this is the one Sunday a year they come to church, they want to hear a story of impossible odds, a story of grace and above all love.

But this Sunday we join the disciples, particularly Thomas, in wondering if it’s all true. Though the gospel accounts differ, in all of them Jesus appears first to some of his female followers, then to the rest of his disciples in various locations. In Matthew it’s in Galilee, in Mark on a country road, in Luke on the road to Emmaus, and in John, in a locked room. The main point for all of these encounters is that the resurrected Jesus appears to his disciples and tasks them with carrying on his work because he’s back, but only for a little while. In the book of John, Jesus first appears to Mary Magdalene who then goes and tells the rest of the disciples about the empty tomb and the gardener who turned out to be Jesus. We don’t know if the disciples believe her, but the first thing Jesus does when he appears to them, after he calms them down with a word of peace, is to show them his wounds, to show them that he’s really the same guy. At the very least, their disbelief is a possibility that Jesus has already considered and he’s prepared to offer evidence. Proof that the writer of John then, extends to us with his gospel as his testimony.

The “proof” offered in the gospel of John does not meet our standards. John’s testimony would not hold in a court of law or even a news article. An account of Jesus apparating through a locked door doesn’t prove anything to us 2000 years later—did you see it? I sure didn’t. We’d need video footage and scientific experiments to show the plausibility of a divine person traveling through solid material. We might need Jesus to stand before us and demonstrate what he can do. We’d need much more than just seeing his hands or placing our own in his side. We would need even more proof than poor old doubting Thomas.

The Life of Pi by Yann Martel tells the story of a young man named Pi, who ends up on a life boat with various wild animals when a ship with his family and their zoo animals sinks. It’s a tale of remarkable survival as he keeps himself alive for 277 days with a hungry, adult Bengal tiger on board. It’s a beautiful story of faith and strength and careful managing of the tiger. In the end, when Pi has found safety and a maritime official, Mr. Okamoto is questioning him in an investigation of the ship’s sinking, a slightly different story is revealed than the one he has told through the entire book. The animals turn out to bear a striking resemblance to other people who had been on the ship and the possibility of a much darker story of human desperation while at sea emerges. With the two accounts, Mr. Okamoto doesn’t know what to do, but Pi points out that he can’t prove either story, but will just have to take Pi’s word for it. So he then asks Mr. Okamoto: “So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can’t prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with the animals or the story without animals?” Mr. Okamoto agrees that it is “The story with the animals.” Pi’s response is: “Thank you. And so it goes with God.”

We cannot prove the resurrection one way or the other. We cannot say for sure that it did not happen, that it was merely a resuscitation, or some sort of trick of hide-the-body the disciples played. We cannot say for sure that it happened. But we do know that Jesus really does continue to live and breathe in and among us. We know this because Jesus is God and God is everlasting. This is the important part. Not the mechanics of Jesus’ dead body being restored to life—because how or if God did that, isn’t something we can discover. Is it possible for God? Surely. Does that mean it happened, in any sort of factual historical sense? Not necessarily. Is it the better story, full of the truth of God’s redeeming love? Absolutely.

A few years ago, there was much talk of the “Jesus tomb,” a tomb found in Jerusalem where people named Jesus, Mary, and James had all been buried together, possibly around the time that Jesus Christ had lived and died. There was great speculation about how to prove if this was Jesus the Christ and what implications there would be and the possibility of the death of Christianity and the shattered faith of millions. There’d never be anyway to analyze the bones to determine if this was Jesus of Nazareth, not resurrected, but buried after all. But what if they could prove, beyond a doubt that it was? Christian doctrine would have to change, but would it die? Would we have nothing left to believe in? Could Jesus still be the Messiah? Could Jesus still be God? These are not easy questions, but the truths of Christianity are much more valuable than the provable facts. If it’s a beautiful story of love and redemption, does it have to have happened that way?

The reason this debate is not appropriate for Easter Sunday, is because whether or not the physical resurrection happened, isn’t the point. Believing or not is a matter of faith, not history or science, or fact. Some Christians find it impossible to believe without the resurrection. Some don’t find it necessary at all.

We certainly have doubts now and they range all the way from doubting the existence of God to doubting the goodness of God to doubting our world to doubting ourselves. After his death, the disciples continued to have a very powerful, physical experience of Jesus. And even with all of this physical presence, they still have doubts.

Jesus shows them his hands and his side so that they can see it’s him with their own eyes. He breathes on them, giving them the Holy Spirit, in a way they can feel. When Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit into them, it’s very much like when God the Creator first breathed life into Adam. That account of human creation was also very physical, very tactile, very personal. God formed a human being with God’s own hands out of the dirt of the earth and breathed divine breathe into him so that he might have life. So too, Jesus instructs his disciples with touch and breathe. Jesus breathes on the disciples. Asking them to carrying on—authority to forgive sins, etc—to carry out his ministry, with the guidance and strength of the Holy Spirit.

If we haven’t gotten the message, Jesus continues to be God incarnate—God in a flesh and blood body. Not a ghost, not a zombie, but the real thing. Just how this is possible is one of the mysteries of faith. Because God continues to care about human beings—all of us, our souls and our bodies, because God took great care in forming us in the first place, and continues to take great care with us.

Peace be with you.

The Last Supper

2010-04-06T09:24:00.004-04:00

Luke 22:14-20, 39-46

During the last supper, Jesus uses familiar ingredients to tell the story of what he is about to do. He gives his disciples a tangible way to remember and celebrate him, and a way of bonding them and us together. He uses bread and wine, elements that are already rich in Biblical imagery of wheat and harvest, vines and branches. Since this is also the Passover meal, the bread is unleavened, a sign of the hurry the early Hebrew people were in and the wine, Jesus’ blood, is also the blood of the lamb, a symbol of life and covenant.

For those observing the first Passover in Egypt, death was coming that night. Salvation from that death was immediate, not a promise for a distant future. The Hebrew people had to eat their meal of lamb and bread and bitter herb, prepared in a particular way, that very evening, in order to save their lives, and show their obedience to God. God was done with the various amusing plagues on the Egyptians, this time God meant business.

Jesus’ meal is also close to death—not that very night but soon. His meal comes on the eve of trial. After he shares the bread and the cup, he goes out to the garden to pray, to ask God that the cup of suffering might be removed from him if it would be God’s will.

At the same time of the feast, the high priests are conspiring against Jesus. Judas has already agreed to sell insider information to the high priests who will have Jesus arrested. And Jesus reveals to the disciples that one of them will betray them. As they ask, “is it I, Lord?” Jesus and Judas both know who it will be. And yet, Jesus doesn’t turn Judas away from the table. Instead, he gives him a morsel of forgiveness and a sip of salvation. Jesus’ table is open to everyone, to friends and to enemies alike.

The first group of disciples were far from perfect. They denied Jesus, they fell asleep while he was praying, they brandished the sword instead of resisting passively. Do this in remembrance of me, he says to Judas who will betray him and to Peter who will deny him and pretend to forget.

But when they share the loaf and the wine, they will have the chance to remember Jesus again. Even though this memory is dangerous. Because it is the memory of a man who resisted empire and local religious authorities. It is the memory of a man who did not resist arrest, who did not defend his innocence either physically or verbally, who resisted the entire unjust system that would crucify him on a cross.

Through the celebration of Communion, he invited them to remember all that they saw, and did, and learned when he walked and breathed among them. The fruits of the harvest and of the vine were there to remind them that it had all really happened and to remind them of their ongoing purpose, work, and commitment to make things right in the world—to never stop telling the story of Jesus.

To all of his disciples throughout the centuries, Jesus says: “Remember. I am with you. Even when you can’t see me, even when it seems like I’m truly gone, when you taste bread and drink wine, which you will do every day of your lives, remember me. My flesh, my blood, they live within your flesh and blood. You consume my body, so that you may be my body for the whole world.”

We celebrate our own community of disciples in the shared loaf, the shared body of Christ and in the common cup and common life of service together. Christ is spiritually present in the bread and juice. Christ is physically with us in the hands that give and receive.

We remember the Christ who continues to live and breathe among us. We remember that he was arrested and tried, tortured and killed. And he did this all out of love so that we might live. Amen.

From Joy to Disaster

2010-03-31T14:39:00.001-04:00

Luke 23:1-49

Jesus finally makes it into Jerusalem. It’s a triumphant entry—full of pomp and circumstance, full of hope and possibility as the masses cry out to him “save us!” But their hope and joy will soon turn to disappointment: Jesus isn’t what they expect, salvation isn’t easy, and he will not turn out to be a quick solution. And the cries of praise, will turn to cries of death threats—because we are all Fickle human beings.

Jesus has a full itinerary for the holy city. As he enters Jerusalem, he weeps: “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes . . . because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.” (Luke 19:41-44).

He enters the temple, overturns the tables, and cleanses the “den of robbers.” He teaches in the temple for a few days and all the while, the priests, and the scribes, and the leaders search for ways to kill him. They are supposed to be the religious authorities, and this man is trying to change everything, and completely criticizing their practices and authority. But so far, they can’t do anything, because the people are completely “spellbound.”

The joyful religious expectation of the crowd doesn’t last long and they begin to turn against him. It’s slow at first, but their excitement dwindles. Perhaps it’s when they realize how much Jesus will demand of them. Perhaps it’s when he mentions that their beloved city, of memories and relics, will be destroyed. His critics publicly attack him, looking for any slip up. They confront and try to trick him, on a procedural note, on the question of taxes, so that they might get him into trouble with the government, but Jesus doesn’t fall for it and isn’t about to suggest civil disobedience. “Whose face is on the coin,” he asks. Give that coin to the man who’s on it: “to Caesar what is Caesar’s, to God what is God’s.” He denounces the scribes for their corruption. But then his teachings take a turn, he tells of the coming destruction of Jerusalem and the distress that will follow.

In the midst of all of this action and preaching, his disciple Judas, under the influence of evil and greed, makes a deal. They still don’t have proper charges, and never will, but with the disciple’s betrayal, Jesus popularity is beginning to erode. They probably do not like this talk of destruction and wrath. Jesus isn’t shaping up to be the kind of savior we really and truly want—one to take us, shelter us, and make it all better, to give us power, and a kingdom again. This disapproval becomes just after Jesus’ arrest, did they loose faith when he didn’t escape and save himself? What kind of savior can save us, if he can’t save himself? What strange hypocrisy. Some might have realized where this was all heading, and where Jesus would take them—and it didn’t look one little bit like salvation, it looked like death. The cross has always been a stumbling block. We worship a crucified savior, a risen Lord to be sure, but a Messiah who faced death as a criminal before the glory of the resurrection.

And because his popular approval has eroded, the authorities, both religious and civil, have more confidence in going after him. And suddenly, our triumphant savior, is arrested, we standby, watching him be betrayed, beaten, humiliated. Like any criminal. And we wonder if he was ever really the Messiah. The full scope of emotion in such a short time leaves us reeling.

We know there is blessed victory in the end, but before we get to the celebration, we must endure the suffering first. Before we get to the crown, we must suffer the cross.

The religious authorities take Jesus to the local civil authority, to Pilate. And like any good District Attorney, Pilate doesn’t want to try a criminal that he can’t convict and mercifully doesn’t want to put the wrong man to death. They mount the lies against him, even saying that Jesus told them not to pay taxes, which is clearly not what he actually said. Pilate only cares about the accusation that Jesus is claiming to be a king. So Pilate asks, did you call yourself a king? And Jesus says, “You say so.” Jesus could really use a lawyer at this point, but he goes on defending himself in this enigmatic way instead of stating clearly “No, I didn’t technically say those words.” And Pilate finds that Herod actually has jurisdiction here and sends Jesus on his way.

And Herod, Herod, that fox, who has been waiting to fulfill his own father’s longing of meeting this man, the famous threat. But like Pilate, his questioning gets no where and he sends Jesus back. With no solid charges, Pilate wants to flog Jesus and release him.

But the crowd cries out and beg him to release a murderer instead—to trade Barabbas who is a true threat to society, but somehow not as scary as Jesus. In their minds, it would be better to have a murderer on the streets than Jesus. They choose a murderer because of their fear and misunderstandings. They choose to do the exact opposite of what is good for them

And so Jesus carries his cross and dies beside two other criminals. Even in those final moments, his innocence is recognized by one of the criminals and by a Roman Centurion. But it doesn’t make a difference.

And so Jesus suffered and died. He was brave, he was merciful and full of grace. But he died. Leaving his disciples and his family to wonder what on earth had just happened—to wonder what they had done with the last few years of their lives, and was it worth it, the miracles, the people they had healed and met and dined with, so important at the time, so meaningful, so life changing. But here they are at the foot of the cross, and they just had to wonder why he couldn’t just save himself, why he couldn’t have just said the right words and gotten himself out of it all . . .

I hope for them, in the back of their minds they remembered Jesus’ words, about how all of this was going to happen, but it had to feel like disaster to them . . . they also went from celebrities, to outcasts, hiding out, hoping not to be recognized, even though that had been so visible just days before.

As we head into this week, may we remember the hopeful celebration of Easter that awaits us. May we remember that God can transform anything: even a death by capital punishment, into an act of salvation.

Let us pray:

With holy anger, Christ,

Disrupt the power that feeds

Upon the cruel sacrifice

Of others’ rights and needs.

As you turned over tables

And sent coins

Spinning and jangling

Across the temple floor,

Disrupt the unholy commerce

In our hearts:

Selling faith

For security

And trade justice

For peace.

By your holy anger

Drive out every transaction

That profanes

The house of prayer

By that same anger start

What evil can’t defeat:

A stubborn passion in the heart

To see god’s will complete.

Baptize us with fire

Hotter than Herod’s wrath

Until we no longer mute

The fury in our hearts

At the slaughter

Of the innocents.

Baptize us with fire!

But do not let our rage

Grow bitter as the din

Of fierce mean minds that fail to gauge

When anger turns to sin.

Instead, let anger be

The first note

In love’s ascending scale,

The starting tone

Of heaven’s dove:

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,

if only you knew

the things that make for peace . . .”

Instead, let anger be compassion’s kindling fire

That lights in us the energy to live as you desire.[1]

[1] Troeger, Thomas H. Above the Moon Earth Rises: Hymn Texts, Anthems, and Poems for a New Creation

God’s Justice

2010-03-16T12:58:00.001-04:00

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

The story of the prodigal son is the third in a series of parables that Jesus tells the tax collectors and sinners, the Pharisees and scribes. The stories all share a common theme: there is the lost sheep—in which the shepherd leaves his 99 sheep in order to find the one that was lost. There is the woman who searches her entire house until she finds a single coin. And now the story of the youngest son who runs off, squanders his inheritance, and then comes back, humbled and apologetic, only to be greeted triumphantly by his father.

What was once lost now is found. Even if it’s only one seemingly insignificant thing like a tax collector or a sinner

It’s a comforting story. If we get lost along the way, even if we’re the only one missing, God will come back, find us, and bring us to safety. God isn’t going to choose to save the many over the one; God is going to save all of us. And it doesn’t matter if we’ve wandered off, gotten lost in a couch cushion, or really blown it and run away—God still goes looking. It’s such good news because we’ve all been lost. We are lost. We all desperately want to be found. We want to be welcomed, to be taken in and greeted with a feast. We want that extravagant generosity, from God, and from the people in our lives—that unconditional forgiveness, even when we’ve left, and squandered all our riches, and slept in a pen with pigs.

It’s not such a great story, if you’re a Pharisee or a scribe, the older brother, one of the 99 sheep, one of the coins in the purse, one who has always done what you’re supposed to do, followed the leader, not gotten lost. It’s not particularly fair to the first who become last.

Sometimes we’re the older, faithful sibling, and sometimes we’re the younger reckless one, but the good thing is that God loves both of them, loves us all the same, and none of us deserve it. The father is generous enough to give out the inheritance without strings or questions—able to give out that freedom, suspecting, perhaps knowing that it will be completely abused, but giving out that choice nonetheless. And upon return, the younger son, knowing he has sinned, fully repentant, comes back home with his ears down and his tail between his legs. He doesn’t even ask to be his father’s son anymore, because he’s blown his chance, he doesn’t deserve that honor. He just needs a place to work and sleep, and he’s happy to be a servant. But his father’s extravagant grace strikes again, and he does the unexpected, he opens his arms, and welcomes his son home, as a true son, as a beloved son—no need for penance or second class citizenship, his old place is restored, and he is honored for his return.

Haven’t we ever wandered away from God, haven’t we wondered how God would receive us, if God would receive us, if God would turn away from us, or take us back only after a trial period of good behavior, and even then there would be conditions and restrictions. Maybe we feel that way now. If God really knew us, knew all the things we had done and thought then God wouldn’t love us. We’ve rejected God and turned away too many times, we’ve been told that God won’t love us anymore, doesn’t want us. The comparison to a loving parent only goes so far—because too many times parents really do turn away from their children, do withhold their love, and refuse to face them and welcome them as their own. But God isn’t like that. God doesn’t care why we left or how long we were gone or what we did or thought or said, no matter how truly terrible. No matter if it gives us chills or keeps us up at night, no matter if it’s the most horrible thing a human being has ever done, God is still happy to see us—and it’s a real, and genuine welcome, not hesitant, not conditional, but it’s as if we never left, never turned away, never failed in our own love.

And the real point of the parables is that none of us deserve this extravagance. It’s not fair and it’s not just, but it’s mercy. The big brother, the little brother—neither deserve it.

Sara Miles is the author of two books and the director of ministry for St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in San Francisco. There, she runs a food pantry that feeds 800 people every week. And unlike most pantries, they give away food for anyone who needs it. They don’t keep records, or keep track of who qualifies for food stamps, or who got food last week, or who has legal citizenship. Because if you’re hungry and you need food, then you can have it, whether or not you deserve it, because that is exactly the point. The food is like God’s grace and no one deserves it. What we actually deserve is usually pretty harsh. The world’s justice can also be pretty harsh.

God is not just. God is not fair. God is merciful.

And so our response to others is not to be just, or fair, but to be merciful. John Wesley spoke a lot about social holiness: he said there was no such thing as holiness without social holiness, no such thing as only personal holiness that is devoid of caring for others—meaning we have no choice but to care for others, even our frivolous little brothers.

It could be easy for Americans to look at other countries and wonder why they can’t be more like us—with resources, stable building structures, public water works. Just like it could be easy for the well-off to wonder why those living on welfare just can’t take care of themselves, why those living below poverty levels can’t have healthy meals. It could be easy to say that those who are poor and those who struggle have done it all to themselves, have somehow chosen to live this way—that they have taken all their resources, and all the chance in the world, and squandered them away in dissolute living. That we shouldn’t help people because they’ll just become dependent on us. We should love them, but only at a distance.

Through the United Methodist Committee On Relief, we send help to those who need it, both nationally and internationally. Perhaps it’s not just or fair, that we send aid to other countries that may not deserve it in the worldly sense. Sometimes UMCOR probably helps the younger brother—the one who didn’t take the right risks or make the right plans, because any disaster—natural or human made—has lots of compounded causes, some mistakes, some accidents, some that could’ve been prevented, some that could never have been imagined.

Jesus feeds people, loves people, heals people, and it’s not about whether or not they’ve worked hard and deserve it, because it’s grace, and none of us deserve it.

And this is social justice. Earlier this week, radio personality Glenn Beck urged everyone whose church proclaims social or economic justice to leave it. He said it was all code for communism and fascism. He urged listeners to go talk to their priests, to ask if they were involved in this whole social justice thing, and to leave their churches if the answer turns out to be yes.

Just to be clear, if you are in any UMC, the answer to Mr. Beck’s question is “Yes.” Yes, you are part of a church that cares about social justice, that cares about God’s justice, which may not always seem fair, but is always full of grace and mercy.

We care about the least of these because that’s what Jesus urged us to do.

And the best way to affirm this stance of the UMC, for today, is to give to UMCOR to help ensure that God’s merciful justice continues to spread throughout the world. Amen.

Foxes and Hens

2010-03-03T13:10:00.000-05:00

Luke 13:31-35

For us, now, Lent is an inward journey of the soul. But it also marks the outward journey of Jesus, 2000 years ago, to Jerusalem and to the cross. In some of the gospels, Jesus doesn’t seem to know exactly what is going to happen—he just has a general idea. Luke leads us to believe that Jesus knows exactly what the upcoming days will hold for him—knows that despite Herod’s threats, he will not be killed just yet, not until he has made it into Jerusalem, and he will not give into any threat, will just continue doing his work because he’s too busy to worry about his own life. When the Pharisees, acting on Herod’s behalf, try to get Jesus to stop healing and casting out demons, Jesus lets them know that he knows they’re working for Herod and asks them to pass along just how much he’s not intimidated by “that fox,” so much that he’s not even worried about insulting this puppet king. He channels other prophets like Uriah and Jeremiah who were murdered in Jerusalem when they dared to speak out against the kings of Israel. It is simply ridiculous for the Pharisees and Herod to suggest that Jesus will die before reaching the holy city.

At one time, Israel was a roaming people, people under the covenant of Moses. But eventually, they became a monarchy—with Jerusalem as their capitol of royal complacency—the favor of God evident by their power and military prowess, and not their special relationship with God. Jesus laments over this lost city, and even laments over the Pharisees who live within the holy city’s walls. He tells them he’s not a threat since the city is so unwilling to change, “you get to keep your house,” he says. Ultimately, Jesus is not a threat to them, because they and the people are not willing to let him—he knows he will not be able to save Jerusalem this time.

In case we think Jesus is so brave before a fox because he’s an even tougher beast who could eat that fox for dinner, Jesus reveals what type of animal he is: a chicken. And not just any chicken, but a female chicken. Can you imagine the fox getting a whiff of this? Ooooh, tough! But of course, Jesus is never who we really expect. The scriptures speak of God as an Eagle, able to soar and to protect, but Jesus doesn’t go for this image.

As always, Jesus’ concern is not for himself. The news that Herod wants to kill him is not news, especially since Herod’s father already tried to kill him as an infant. He moves on toward Jerusalem, not with fear and concern for his own life and death, but with sadness over the people—for this brood of baby chicks, who refuse to be gathered up in safety.

When I was little my uncle raised chickens in Rockingham County. Each chicken house had about 20K chickens, and when you’d walk in, the little chicks would scatter, like a moving, yellow carpet. They were surprisingly easy to step on, and yet difficult to catch. He didn’t have foxes to worry about, but he did have a few feral cats who were very good and sneaking their supper. And the chicks were largely unprotected, thousands of babies, and no mother hen.

The people of Jerusalem, like little yellow chicks, are unprotected, with at least one fox on the loose. Jesus is the mother hen, who cannot get to them, because they will not allow her to come close and gather them up in safety. She can protect them, and wants to so badly, but they scatter when she comes close—they do not know who or what is good for them.

Looking out for ourselves, loving ourselves, protecting our own self interest, looking out for number one, that’s the easy thing. Loving others, trying to save them, that’s the most vulnerable, helpless thing. When we stand with our arms open wide and welcoming, not really knowing how our gesture will be received, our heart and chest exposed, we are unable to block or defend ourselves—because this is how you stand when you mean it.

The fox is not welcoming or protective. He’s calculating, cunning, vicious, and a coward. He sends the Pharisees instead of going himself, but Jesus lets them know that he’s not playing that game. He won’t be scared away. But he also won’t put up a fight. Chickens are not known for bravery, do not have magnificent talons, are not even terribly attractive. But they care for their young. They sit patiently on their eggs, keeping them warm until they hatch, and they chase the chicks around making sure they stay where they are supposed to—the meanest ones can peck and scratch, but what is that compared to the chops of a fox?

Jesus longs to gather up the chicks—not just the few he has managed, but all of them. The fox offers is really just a power-hungry fool, and not all that powerful in the grand scheme of the Roman empire.

Jesus the hen, offers only protection with her own body. Medieval mistic, Julian of Norwich wrote of Jesus as our mother, only better than an earthly mother because he doesn’t feed us milk, he feeds us his body. If the fox wants to kill the chicks of Jerusalem, he’ll have to kill the mother hen. He sneaks up on her one night, while she and the chicks are sleeping in the coup, and when he snatches her in his teeth, the little yellow chicks scatter in 20K different directions. She dies, with her wings stretched wide, open, inviting, ready to gather her brood, and yet completely empty.

Something much bigger than the death of a hen is going on. The language of brooding is the same in Genesis, God the Creator “brooded” over the waters of creation, birthing the earth into existence. Jesus the son was present at this beginning, and it’s no accident that he broods over the people of Jerusalem—not with immediate success—but will eventually triumph with the creation of a new heaven and a new earth and a new Jerusalem. The time will come, says Jesus, when everyone will greet him as a king—not like a king Herod, but as the true king as we say “blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”

Transfiguration

2010-02-18T11:39:00.001-05:00

Luke 9:28-36

Exodus 34:29-35

Today is Transfiguration Sunday. It’s the last Sunday before Lent starts and we celebrate the glory of God and God’s acts of salvation through Moses and Jesus—both human beings, both chosen by God to be messengers to the people.

In the popular Twilight saga, there’s something interesting about vampire skin. Like traditional vampires, they do not go out into the sun—but not because they are afraid, or find the sun deadly, but because their skin changes. It’s not painful for them, but if they do it in front of mortals, they will instantly be revealed as something completely other.

When vampire Edward wants to reveal to his human girlfriend just how different and scary he is, he takes her to a meadow and steps into the light. As the sun filters through the trees and hits his skin, he shines with a bright white light, as if his skin is made out of thousands of diamonds—vampire purists make lots of fun of these sparkly vampires. But when mere mortals see this dazzling skin, they are amazed, afraid, intrigued.

This past week, it’s not difficult to imagine something ordinary transformed into something glistening white, but it may be hard, by now, to fully appreciate that glory and beauty especially when it’s still hurting your back or threatening your life with killer icicles.

When Moses goes up the mountain to talk to God, he stays for forty days. God gives him the commandments by which the Hebrew people will live. God blesses Moses with this information, with this conversation, with this time together—but he doesn’t force Moses to see his face, he turns a back to Moses, to save him the pain of seeing God’s face. When Moses comes down off that mountain, to the Hebrew people who are waiting below, his face is shining, a dazzling, white light. They are reluctant to approach him and for their benefit, Moses hides his skin with a veil.

This story of Moses stretches to our Gospel lesson today, extending God’s faithfulness all the way from the Hebrew people in the wilderness to Jesus and his disciples. Jesus, John, James, and Peter go up a mountain to pray—to be with God. And as the three disciples are fighting to stay awake, the see Jesus with Moses and Elijah, and Jesus is suddenly transformed into a glorious, glowing being, transformed face and bleach white clothes.

This glowing effect is the glory of God. In Hebrew the term is Kabod, This is very close to the Hebrew term for horns, which is why if you are familiar with Michelangelo’s statue of Moses you may remember that he has a set of horns coming out of his head! But it actually means “to be loaded down with riches.”

This glory comes from proximity to God because God has seen Moses and seen Jesus—has validated and blessed them—because they’ve been seen by God or have been in God’s presence—seen the way God sees them, as glowing, lovely beings. And they are so loaded down with the glory of God, that this light of God shines out of them.

Oil of Olay is really missing out here on the best skin care regime EVER: drink lots of water and pray daily.

So as we look at our own dull winter skin, what does that say about us? Have we ever shone with the light of God? Is it just covered up with the grime of the world? Is there anything particularly glorious about any of us?

A fun trick, with any story, is to think of which character we identify with the most. Do we pick the most glamorous and heroic character or do we go with the underdog? In today’s stories, do we identify with Moses and Jesus—with the messengers of God, or do we identify with the less than faithful Hebrew people and the disciples.

For me, I’ll have to go with the one who’s yawning through the whole thing, who’s fighting off sleep, and just about misses the entire event altogether, and when he realizes what’s going on, is still clumsy at responding to the wonder if front of him, the scripture even says he didn’t know what he was saying. I identify with Peter.

I’d love to tell you that after a week of sermon preparation that I’m glowing after basking in the presence of God. I imagine that most of us are really like Peter, looking at something amazing: prophets returned from the dead, Jesus revealed as God, the voice of God in a cloud, and thinking okay, let’s build some tents, let’s figure out how to make this permanent maybe that’s how we all are—ready to build something insignificant, to focus on something we can understand—creature comforts and preservation—and not looking to where Jesus is going next, hoping to settle down in comfort, maybe take a nap, instead of moving onward to Jerusalem and all the mystery and terror that will hold. Come to think of it, I’d much rather take a nap on that mountain, build a small commune for Elijah and Moses, instead of travel on toward Jerusalem, to fear and persecution. Peter may be a coward at times, but sometimes the safe route is rather appealing.

But then we completely miss the point. If we fall asleep, we pass the holiness, we’re blind to the glory, we are not amazed or dazzled by the presence of God.

The Transfiguration points to Jerusalem, points to the rest of Jesus’ work, points to the tragedy, the disaster, and the blessed restoration. Thanks be to God.

Water Into Wine

2010-01-21T09:18:00.000-05:00

John 2:1-11

The greeting from our United Methodist wedding liturgy includes these lines:

With his presence and power

Jesus graced a wedding at Cana of Galilee,

And in his sacrificial love

Gave us the example of the love of husband and wife.

Every time I say those words at a wedding, I feel like it’s a bit of a stretch. Not the sacrificial love part, but the part about Jesus at the wedding in Cana. It’s as though we’re saying, in the history of why marriage is important to the church, that part of that reason is because Jesus also went to a wedding and made sure the wine didn’t run out. To be honest, the story of the wedding at Cana doesn’t seem all that solid of an endorsement of marriage, at least not to the extent that our wedding liturgy might have us believe. Yes he was present, yes he was helpful, but he didn’t offer a blessing, or comment really, he was just a guest, and he didn’t disrupt the wedding, didn’t overturn tables or call the whole ordeal a disgrace. It’s just not as compelling as it would be if Jesus had spoken at length on how good and wonderful it is to be married and how we should all do it as soon as possible.

All we really know is that Jesus was a helpful, if somewhat reluctant wedding guest. Jesus didn’t say much about marriage. He talked about divorce, but didn’t encourage or discourage marriage, beyond sticking with your vows once you made them. We assume that he was never married, but as the Da Vinci code has pointed out, there has long been some speculation on the matter.

Marriage is not an original Christian idea. It’s a longstanding Jewish custom to be sure, but the first 1000 years of Christianity didn’t value marriage. After all, Christians were concerned with the quick return of Jesus and personal holiness, and all the trappings of marriage and family were distractions and if not downright evil.

Paul said it was not a good idea to marry unless the alternative were burning alive with passion (1 Corinthians 7:9). But he really thought it’d be better if everyone were single like himself.

But I digress. This story about the wine at the wedding, isn’t really about a wedding and certainly isn’t about marriage. Instead, the wedding is a backdrop for Jesus’ first miracle. John chooses to show us Jesus’ first sign of turning water into wine. At first blush, it seems like a party trick, but Jesus is rather discreet about it, and not at all interested in doing it at first when his mother pointedly tells him that they are out of wine and Jesus says “what’s it to you or me? Who cares, it’s not the end of the world.” It’s certainly not healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, or feeding thousands, it’s giving wine to a few hundred wedding guests, helping the host to save face. In the grand scheme of things, a fancy wedding is not a big deal, then or now.

Can you just imagine, you’re one of hundreds of guests at a wedding, you’re at a reception, and the Embassy Suites has run out of wine and it turns out that Christ is there and he lends a hand?

Can you just imagine being in an earthquake, in say, Haiti, and it feels like the entire world is falling apart and crushing you and it turns out that Christ is there, but the world continues to collapse?

What does it mean that Jesus saves a wedding celebration but not thousands of innocent people in Haiti?

As I was watching the events unfold, and reading the news, I kept wondering if Pat Robertson would say anything ridiculous. And sure enough, he didn’t disappoint.

In case you missed it, the evangelist who famously declared 9/11 and Katrina to be acts of divine punishment for the gays and lesbians in our country, for our acceptance of abortion, and for our overall level of immorality has stated that the Tuesday’s earthquake in Haiti is because of a pact they had made with the devil. That’s right, hundreds of years ago, the Haitians won the rebellion against the French only because of a pact with the devil.

And obviously for Pat Robertson, this abundance of badness has something to do with the poor people of Haiti and God and Satan. Instead of geographic forces, compounded on economic ones. I’m sure it’s hard for him to understand that bad things happen like that but they do. They just do. It’s part of life.

And I’m sorry for going after him, because Pat Robertson is a child of God too. And while he’s extreme, there are still lots of people, even me sometimes, who think that we deserve either our bad or good fates, at least sometimes, and we do, sometimes, but not always or usually and certainly not when it’s an earthquake instead of say, ruining a life because you decide to drive drunk. There are differences.

For Haiti, the miracle is in the response, the whole world sending the troops, food, volunteers, coming to help, all of us praying. The miracle will be in the slow rebuilding of a destroyed country. It’s not immediate or glamorous like water into wine, but it is love and concern and respect and human decency.

And this passage, while about God’s extravagance, isn’t really about the injustices of the world either. At it’s heart, the gospels show us over and over that God wants abundance for us: delicious feasts and flowing wine. The kingdom of heaven is after all like a wedding banquet, and Jesus is happy to provide the wine of salvation. That every day on earth is not a feast day is certainly a tragedy, but it’s not God’s fault. It’s not God’s fault that we don’t enjoy our lives to the fullest, that we don’t stop to enjoy a good meal nearly as often as we should, that we don’t cultivate enough deep and lasting friendships, that we don’t spend enough time with our families, that we don’t read enough good books, or take as many good, deep breaths as we should.

And it’s not God’s fault that tens of thousands of God’s children are dead, wounded, scared, hungry, thirsty, mourning, and in so much need. Tragedy is not God’s design. God’s intention is for those of us who are safe and fortunate to reach out to others because we are all meant to live abundantly good lives whether we live in the US or in Haiti.

When Jesus shared the last supper, he used delicious foods to represent his body and blood. He didn’t offer up a cup of vinegar and say drink from this all of you, this is my blood of the new covenant, instead he chose a cup of wine—something tasty and rich with imagery of grapes and harvest and vines, as he is the vine and we are the branches.

God gives to us out of radical abundance, sacrificial love, flesh and blood, grace and mercy. Thanks be to God.

Homage

2010-01-04T13:35:00.001-05:00

Matthew 2:1-12

In case you are wondering, I am a Pisces. That means I am introverted, dreamy, artistic, sensitive, and fishy. Just a quick survey: how many of you know your astrological sign? And how many of you ever glance, even just casually, at your horoscope in the paper?

Here’s what the prophet Isaiah has to say about the practice of astrology:

“let those who study the heavens stand up and save you those who gaze at the stars, and at each new moon predict what shall befall you. See, they are like stubble, the fire consumes them; they cannot deliver themselves from the power of flame. No coal for warming oneself is this, no fire to sit before! Such to you are those with whom you have labored, who have trafficked with you from your youth; they all wander about their own paths: there is no one to save you” (Isaiah 47). So beware: Astrology is a path that leads to nowhere.

In Matthew’s tale of the Magi, he writes that they have seen a star rising and have come to pay homage to the child who has been born King of the Jews. Because they observe and follow the stars, the magi are astrologers. Biblical translators have not always been comfortable with this, and so the NRSV and the King James call them “wise men” and the hymn we just sang refers to them as “kings.”

Matthew tells us very little about these cameo characters. They could have been Persian priests or Arab kings. They could have been named Melchior, Gaspar, and Balthasar as according to tradition. But whoever and whatever they were, Matthew tells us that they practices astronomy, and were most likely magicians or sorcerers, who found the star of Jesus and followed it until they found him. They were certainly not Jews, but they knew a king when they found him, and they knelt before him, and gave his family expensive gifts. And because of them, we kneel when we pray and we give each other gifts at Christmas.

Of course, the church has not always been so kind to those who conduct alternative spiritual practices. Recently, some folks have been quite upset about the Harry Potter books and Christian children reading and learning about witchcraft. And here, we have a group of star-gazing wizards, worshiping Christ in the Bible. Matthew offers no judgment or commentary, does not explore this interesting relationship between pagan magicians and a Jewish king, just leaves it there, perhaps to show us just how universal Christ is, that even these men recognize the truth of Jesus. In fact, the magi are better informed about the nature of this young child than are the chief priests and scribes who Herod consults.

This story makes it possible for us to consider the validity of different faith practices. Instead of condemning astrology, proving that it is false, or showing that Jesus is better, Matthew lets us know that it actually is quite effective and accurate. The magi find a message in the stars, they follow it through, and they find Jesus. It might not be a conventional route to the Messiah, but it’s a successful one nonetheless. Which leaves us with the prospect that God can be found by alternate faith routes.

The scandalous part is that Matthew doesn’t mention anything about their faith after meeting Jesus. He doesn’t say that they stop practicing magic. Obviously, the astrology they used worked, because it led them to Jesus. What could it mean if they met Jesus and yet didn’t change or convert? We don’t know if they ever found out what happened to Jesus as an adult. There’s a legend that the apostle Thomas baptized them on his way to India.

They might have been like Gandhi, who loved Jesus and his teachings, particularly the sermon on the mount, but was not interested in associating with Christianity. He once said: "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ." And so Gandhi believed in Jesus, followed his teachings, and yet remained Hindu. Perhaps this was also the case of the magi, who found a Jewish king, were in awe of him, but remained astrologers—perhaps it’s possible that they were both pagan magicians and Christians, just Christian in the sense that they worship Christ, but are not part of the religion of Christianity, especially since that wouldn’t exist for a few more decades.

But whatever happened to them afterwards, we know that the wise men went looking for Jesus—and they already knew they were looking for a humble child who would become this king. They were seekers--those who are looking for something, but aren’t sure what, are maybe looking for God, or for meaning in their lives, or for answers, or for community, or just for something bigger and more secure than themselves.

In church evangelism lingo, we contrast “seekers” with “believers” as if when someone finds their beliefs, they stop seeking altogether. Hopefully we’re all seekers, whether we’ve been here forever, or just walked through the doors for the first time, whether we’ve always believed in Jesus, or we’re still not sure what it is we’re looking for or what we believe in.

The gospel reminds us that Jesus comes for everyone, Jews, gentiles, and foreign magicians—everyone can recognize Jesus as the Messiah and pay him homage.

The magi are a small group of outsiders, showing us the proper way to worship Christ: kneeling and offering gifts, showing us that sometimes it’s the seekers who are better able to kneel at the manger than those who have done so their entire lives. As Stephen Bauman writes: “Not every committed Christian in name has a taste for actually kneeling in the dust and muck of a barn in a backwater town with astonished recognition that this is where God prefers to make an entrance.”

We all need regular reminders that no one is above another, that no one has an exclusive claim to truth, and that there are many and varied paths to find it. Epiphany gives us a chance to reflect on holy humility:

What if the magi walked into a church, and were told to leave because of their practices—and yet they were among the first to ever worship Jesus?

What if Gandhi were kicked out for being Hindu, even though he understood the message of Jesus so thoroughly?

The Magi, might not be Christians, they might follow stars, but they were wise enough not to worship the star of Bethlehem itself, but the source that gave it light.

Light has come to the world--the scandalous light of Jesus, that still surprises this cold, dark world. Amen.

Christmas Eve

2010-01-04T13:26:00.001-05:00

Luke 2:1-20

This is the story of Claire, a little angel. Even though she’s not mentioned in the Bible, she was still very much present for the birth of Christ.

All of the big angels are talking and singing—God is doing something amazing for the people on earth, but Claire doesn’t really understand. It sounded like Gabriel told that young girl that she would give birth to God. Claire isn’t exactly sure just how God plans to become a baby, but it sounds like God the Creator, is sending God the Word, to become human, incarnate, and God the Holy Spirit is working to make sure all the right people understand. At least that’s what Claire thinks she’s heard.

Claire and the other angels have been watching over Mary from heaven, praying for her and doing what they can to keep her safe. They have been watching Joseph too, helping him to understand this miracle that Mary so easily accepted.

The time has almost come for God the Word to be born and things are getting complicated. On earth, the human emperor has decided he wants to know just how big his empire is and so he’s taking a census, asking every person to be registered in their hometown. This means that Mary and Joseph have to travel to Joseph’s hometown of Bethlehem. This could be a dangerous trip for them, but it’s also important because it will fulfill the prophet Micah’s prophesy: “you, O Bethlehem, . . . from you shall come forth one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old” (Micah 5).

And so Mary and Joseph are journeying across the rocks and the hills, joining up with various caravans as they enter Bethlehem. It’s such a small town, but so many people are here! Claire has trouble from time to time picking them out of the crowd! Claire and one of the bigger angels, slip down from heaven, and walk among the people on earth, invisible to their eyes. Night is coming, and Claire watches as Joseph and Mary search for a place to stay. They don’t know anyone there and all of the inns are full. Mary’s starting to cry, Claire can see that she’s worried about giving birth to her baby on the street and she sends Mary just the tiniest encouraging bit of warmth to keep her spirits up. Finally, it seems that an innkeeper has taken some pity on them, because they are young and poor, he won’t give them his own room, but he will let them stay in his stable, where they will at least be dry and warm. Claire is upset that God is going to be born in a barn like a calf, but the bigger angel smiles at her, this must all be part of God’s plan, God’s great reversal, that God almighty will be born on earth as lowly as possible.

Claire watches as Joseph faithfully helps Mary deliver the baby. Mary wraps him tightly in bands of cloth and she lays him down to sleep in a feeding trough since it’s the closest thing they have to a crib.

Again, Claire thinks this is just wrong and horrible, that God—now as the infant Jesus—is lying in a food dish! Surely the other angels could have helped with something better. Couldn’t Jesus have been born in a palace with lots of blankets and a proper cradle? But the bigger angel whispers to her, a quick story of how Jesus will one day feed thousands of people, he will share meals with sinners and thieves, and he will even use a loaf of bread and a cup of wine to explain the sacrifice of flesh and blood that he will make. Claire shivers at the thought of this tiny baby, so wrinkly and pink, ever doing these things, ever suffering. But she understands that the manger makes sense, and is somehow a proper bed for this new child.

Claire can’t stop staring at the baby, he is just so amazing, Claire, of course, has never had any doubt of God, but just looking at this baby, she can tell that he’s really a human baby, but she can see that he’s God too. She just has to tell someone, but who? If they were in heaven, they would start singing, but can they do that on earth among these tired, worn out people?

Just then the bigger angel, takes her by the arm, and they disappear, out of the town, to the hills nearby. The bigger angel must have shared Claire’s thoughts, because she leaps into the air and spreads out her wings and her heavenly glory to the shepherds who are watching their flocks. Claire holds her breath as the shepherds cry out in fear—“oh why are they always afraid of us?” she thinks to herself. But the bigger angel is wise and says: “Do not be afraid for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.”

Then Claire and a great many of the other angels from heaven joined in singing their song: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace and goodwill!”

When the song was over, all of the angels, but Claire departed for heaven. She slipped in among the sheep and watched as the shepherds talked of this amazing thing that had happened. They said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.”

And Claire, flew along with them, silently, and invisibly, as they went with haste and they found Mary, Joseph and the child lying in the manger.

And they went out into the town and the fields and told everyone of the angels, and the young family, and the tiny, infant Messiah, of the child who has been born unto all of us, and everyone was amazed. Everyone accept for Mary, and for the little angel Claire, who pondered all of these things in their hearts.

Prophet of Light

2009-12-07T13:02:00.000-05:00

Malachi 3:1-4 and Luke 1:68-79

We continue our Advent practice of actively waiting, preparing for the birth of Christ, for salvation, love, mercy, and divine justice to enter the world once again and one day forevermore. That Christmas is coming is becoming more real with each day. We may hope for happy gatherings, delicious food, entertaining gifts, and overall good feelings. But our scriptures and songs cry out for more than holiday cheer: the prophet Malachi cries out for divine justice, and today, we hear of the birth of the prophet of the Most High, John, who has come to prepare the way of Jesus—to offer repentance and forgiveness and salvation that we might all be ready to behold Jesus when he comes.

John’s parents are Zechariah and Elizabeth. They are good, solid folks. Zechariah is a priest and Elizabeth is descended from Aaron who served as priest for Moses. The book of Luke notes that both people are righteous and live blamelessly according to all of the commandments and regulations of the Lord. Their one source of shame is that they do not have any children. Elizabeth is barren and both have gotten on in years. They are not unlike many couples in the Bible who cannot have children and yet manage, by the grace of God, to give birth to children who will go on to greatness. People like Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and Rachel, even Mary and Joseph fall into this category of conceiving under rather unusual circumstances. This preference of God’s, to acquire great leaders out of impossible reproductive conditions tells us something important about God: that God isn’t concerned with our pesky rules of biology, that nothing, in deed, is impossible for God. These are stories of hope for people not only fighting for a child, but also for anyone who is facing an impossible situation.

And so we have this couple who fit this recognizable motif—they are righteous and deserving, but are still waiting to have a child. Then one day, the priest Zechariah, is in the temple, offering incense to the Lord when the angel Gabriel appears to him. And tells him that he and Elizabeth will have a son who will be a great prophet, right along the lines of Elijah, who will help the people return to righteousness. But like Sarah who laughs at the thought of having a child at her age, Zechariah doesn’t totally believe this glorious being in front of him and expresses his doubt. As a punishment for his disbelief, Gabriel takes Zechariah’s ability to speak away from him until after the baby is born.

After nine months of silence, Zechariah’s first words are a Holy Spirit filled prophesy: first of a savior and then future of his own son, who will become a prophet who will prepare the way for the savior, to enlighten people in the ways of salvation and forgiveness because dawn will soon break, giving light to all of those who have sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, that we may all be guided into the way of peace.

Advent is like Lent, in that it is a time of darkness, preparation, and searching. The way of peace, is a way out of that darkness, but it’s a difficult concept. The Christmas phrase “Peace on earth” always carries a hint of irony. Every year there’s enough stuff happening in the world to remind us of how we have not achieved peace on earth. With bombings in Pakistan, the need for more troops in Afghanistan, it’s not likely that we’ll reach peace in 2009.

It’s easy to fall into disillusionment, especially this time of year. Jesus has already been born, over two thousand years ago and nothing has really changed. Jesus has come, is coming soon, and will come again—but it’s easy to take a look around and wonder if that really matters. And then there’s the darker underbelly to the entire Christmas season, especially for those who feel alienated from the forced cheer of the season, those who’ve lost family members, those who are fighting illness, those who’s children no longer speak to them and on and on. Sometimes there isn’t much to be happy about and holidays make it even worse. And it’s easy, in the face of so much personal and global dissatisfaction, to blame God.

The prophet Malachi notes that the priests are presenting offerings and the people are praying, but they have no hope, no spirit. They question God: claiming that all who do evil are good in the eyes of the Lord and God delights in them” and by asking “where is the God of justice?” Malachi speaks of God’s displeasure with humanity, of our continual faithlessness and how it has actually made God weary. Out of tiredness and disillusionment, God tells Malachi that the Lord will come to the temple, to cleanse and refine and purify the people so that they will be righteous instead of a faithless bunch of doubters. God may be weary of the people, but the people, it seems, are also weary of God. God asks, “when I send my messenger, who will be able to endure his presence?” This cleansing and purifying is a painful process—a good scrubbing with a rough sponge, to scrape away all impurities and doubts.

Like Zechariah, we do not believe the miracles in front of us. We wearily trudge through our own dark valleys, sending God our prayers and our offerings, and for what? Do we believe that God rewards the wicked? Do we wonder if there is any divine justice in the world? As we prepare for the continual birth of Christ, have we given into the idea that things will never change?

In the face of such impossibility, it is important to remember the births of John and Jesus, events that even their parents even have trouble believing. It’s important to remember the ongoing, though seemingly slow, redemptive work of God in our lives and in our world. If peace and justice seem absent in our world, perhaps we need to remember our own roles in perpetuating strife and injustice.

When God takes on all of humanity and becomes a human being that is the ultimate act of trust and inspiration. If God were completely disillusioned with humankind, God would not have become incarnate with us. God would not have become something that God didn’t have value or hope in. In Jesus, God shows us God’s confidence and faith in us.

Jesus comes to show us the way, to announce peace, to shine light, sure that we will be able to see this light and follow, as long as we are willing to avail ourselves. John comes as a prophet, to proclaim the way of this light who can shine through our disillusionment and despair . One who will shine a light in the darkness, one who will not let us hide in our holes of despair, but will confront us with the breaking dawn of a new day.

As we prepare for such light—light that may even be painful to our eyes—may our prayers be daring and bold, may we pray for peace on earth, with the expectation that it will be so.

In the name of Jesus, our light, our way, and our savior. Amen.

Christ the King?

2009-11-30T13:18:00.001-05:00

John 18:33-37

Welcome to the end of our liturgical year! Next Sunday we start Advent. As our undecorated Christmas tree tells us, soon, very soon, we’ll begin to officially anticipate the birth of Christ. But we’re not there yet. We’re still in Ordinary Time, which is where we spend most of our time.

Before we can start to dream of a sweet, newborn Jesus, we remember the events just before Easter-- we must listen in on the confrontation between Pilate and Jesus. Jesus has been turned in and Pilate has to figure out why. Jesus isn’t really on his radar, but he’s obviously upset somebody and so here we are. The only thing that slightly disturbs Pilate is this alleged claim of Jesus’ to be king, for this could signal possible political disturbance and unrest and it’s illegal to just challenge the emperors throne. And we watch this scene, wondering, with Pilate, if Jesus really is a king. But Jesus doesn’t answer, not directly, he doesn’t make the situation any less confusing for Pilate or for us.

Sometimes, reading this, I want the story to be different. I want Jesus to say “No!” I’m not here to challenge Caesar’s throne, I’m not a threat in the ways that you think, I was no threat to Herod, just let me go, back to what I was doing all along.

Sometimes, I want Jesus to say “Yes!” Of course, I am the king of the Jews, of the entire world, and your emperor should still not be concerned with me, because I’m not taking over in the way that you think—I’m not after his particular throne, but out to change the entire world--not as a power-hungry maniac, but as the living breathing god that I am, now let me go so I can get back to what I was doing all along.

But Jesus rarely behaves the way we want him to. Instead, he turns the question back to Pilate. Just as he did to his disciples when they asked if he was the Messiah and he replied with, “who do you say that I am.” To Pilate’s inquiry: those are your words not mine. “You say that I am.” And with Pilate, we wonder, does this cryptic, noncommittal response make Jesus a king? It’s enough to convince Pilate that Jesus is not a criminal, but not enough to save him from death.

This Jesus as King business is no less complicated and strange for us who do not live in the land of kings, than for the people who were much more familiar with the likes of King David. King David had questionable integrity, and yet was loved and chosen by God

Jesus is a king we can feel confident in, no moral ambiguity about this one—not possessing wives and slaves and riches and power, not about control, military might, or coercion.

And while Jesus does not say he is a king, he does lay claim to a kingdom—one that is “not of this world.” If his kingdom were an earthly one, his followers would fight for his freedom—he would have some sort of military might—some fighting power, followers who were organized and motivated to defend and protect their leader—but Jesus needs no such protection.

Not a violent, political image, not a worldly leader with robes and a crown—not a literal reality, but a metaphor. Because this humble man standing before Pilate, the one who is about to be tortured, is not of earthly royalty.

What does it mean for us? Do we say that Jesus is King of our hearts/king of our lives? Jesus is King—as ultimate ruler, or does it mean something else? Something bigger, something more expansive.

Because Jesus is both ruler and servant, both King and subject. It’s a paradoxical image, because Jesus is lowly servant as well as master of the universe—one who comes to save, rather than to control.

He tells Pilate, “I came into this world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice”—those who listen have no need to ask. Pilate demonstrates his cluelessness, his lack of insider knowledge, his missing VIP card to the club of truth, when he asks: “What is truth?” There’s no answer—if you don’t know, you don’t know—and if you read through the gospel of John, you’ll find your answer: It’s Jesus. Pilate looks him right in the face and misses the literal truth that is before him.

It probably wouldn’t make Pilate’s life any easier for jesus to say “I’m not a King, I’m the almighty God incarnate.” Jesus doesn’t say those things so much as let people figure it out for themselves. God generally doesn’t approach us and demand that we recognize God, God is more subtle, more shifty, more difficult to pin down, sometimes easy to miss, and easy to dismiss, and easy to doubt. Faith isn’t easy, isn’t obvious, and so jesus is going to parade around as God the King in any recognizable fashion and demand that we bow before his crown and kiss the hem of his robes. For those who do bow and kiss his feet, he offers praise, but he never asks for such devotion. That is on our part. It’s our responsibility to see God, to be alert, to watch for the truth. Sometimes it hits us over the head like a frying pan, obvious, plain to sight, and yet even then, what we see of as “proof” others can easily call coincidence, modern medicine, friendship, love, luck, but nothing more, nothing divine and holy, not the hand of God.

And so we have our unusual King to crown this morning—one who is humble and subtle, not loud and ostentatious, not obvious, but rather easy to pass by, to mistake as a bruised and battered and misunderstood criminal.

And he is our Lord. When we are bruised and battered and misunderstood, we know he has gone before us, has been there too. He’s not a distant king, living a good and comfortable life, removed from everyday existence. He is a servant who has suffered—most likely even more than we ever will.

And when asked who he is, Jesus says the Truth. Which is still rather confusing and why there are still so many answers in the world: Jesus is Lord, Savor, King, prophet, teacher— to some God, to others merely an exceptional human being, and to some, a complete joke.

And yet he is the Truth—the entire truth of the universe, of existence, of all that is divine, of all that is God—embodied as a human man. No wonder our words fail us.

Commitment

2009-11-09T12:25:00.000-05:00

Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17

Mark 12:38-44

The Hebrew term for loyalty is Chesed. This can be faithfulness between God and a human community or between members of a family or community. Chesed is a major theme in the book of Ruth.

The three main characters—Naomi, Ruth, and Boas--do not have to care for one another nearly to the extent that they do: their family obligations to each other are minimal and yet they come together to form their own close-knit family. They demonstrate a high level of commitment and loyalty to each other and the best part is because they choose to do so.

The story of Ruth begins with tragedy. First a famine in Bethlehem causes a family: Elimelech and Naomi with two sons to move to the land of Moab. There, Elimelech dies of unknown causes. The two sons marry local women—Orpah and Ruth—but after 10 years, the two husbands die also for unmentioned reasons. Naomi, Orpah and Ruth—are left without husbands and without children. They are three women, related only through marriage to deceased men. Because women were entirely dependent on men, these widows have very little status in the world—no one to provide for them, to protect them, or to give meaning for their lives.

Naomi decides to trade in this foreign land of death and sadness for her homeland where the famine that drove them out had ended. As she and her daughters-in-law pack up, she encourages each of them to return to their own homes that they might remarry since they still have hope that life could turn out well for them. For Naomi, she feels her own life is essentially over. She cannot have more children, cannot produce sons for Orpah and Ruth to marry, so their connection should be severed. It’s too late for Naomi to have a good life again, but the young women still have a chance for remarriage and children. Orpah agrees, sadly, and returns to her family. Ruth, however, clings to Naomi, not wanting to leave her. The language of clinging is like that of a husband to a wife, she transfers the faithfulness she had for her husband, over to her husband’s mother and in a vow befitting a marriage ceremony, she professes her commitment to stay with Naomi: “Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die—There will I be buried. May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you!” Ruth is making a claim both of ethnicity and religious identity—there was no conversion then, what you were born is what you were—but Ruth claims that she will no longer be a Moabite and no longer worship the Gods of Moab. She will travel with Naomi and make her home in a foreign land just as Naomi had done. She doesn’t have to do this for Naomi, and that’s why it’s so amazing that she does.

Naomi sees that she will not be able to convince Ruth otherwise, and so they set off for Bethlehem. This homecoming is particularly difficult for Naomi who left with husband and sons, and now returns “empty” as she says.

They return to Bethlehem at the beginning of the harvest—a good sign that more fruitful times may be ahead. In her role as Naomi’s provider, Ruth decides to go out and glean behind the harvesters. Amazingly enough, she ends up in the field of her late father-in-law’s kinsmen. She meets Boaz who has heard of this Moabite woman who has stayed with Naomi. Boaz praises Ruth for taking care of Naomi and encourages her to stay and glean in his fields—he offers her protection—food and drink—and additional grain. He goes far beyond his family duty to care for Ruth and Naomi.

Seeing Ruth return with such a bounty, Naomi suspects that Boas might be a suitable and willing husband for Ruth—she cannot give Ruth another son to marry, but she can still hope for one of her husband’s relatives to be a suitable match. And so she carefully instructs Ruth to visit Boaz on the threshing floor—and yes, this scene is absolutely not rated for General audiences nor is it the socially approved method for gaining a spouse. Even though he’s been slightly tricked, Boaz responds well to the whole arrangement and marries Ruth gives her and Naomi further security with the purchase of land. Not because he has to, but because he wants to.

Their marriage produces a son who will go on to become the grandfather of King David. And so Ruth’s and Naomi’s fortunes are overturned: they have men in their lives again. The story that began with such disaster and sadness ends happily.

They form this tiny, love community out of their own free agency—a system of mutual protection and care and security and a future for two women who otherwise would have had none.

The widow in the gospel, who gives everything she has away, is like Naomi and Ruth. They have very little in the world, and yet they give each other what they can: their love and assistance—giving out of their poverty and loss. Boaz is a wealthy landowner, but unlike the scribes, he does not take advantage of the widows, but restores their fortunes out of his own abundance. Their family works because they are mutually invested in each other.

At it’s best, the church is kind of like this. Whether we give out of abundance or out of poverty, we give of ourselves. For the most part, none of us have to be here, none of us have to love each other, or be loyal to each other, or show any level of commitment to each other. And yet we do.

In a few moments, we will receive our confirmands—three young men—into the membership of our church community. They have been a part of the church since infanthood, baptized and raised in the faith, but today they get to make the decision for themselves, that the God of their parents, is also their God, that their parent’s faith and parent’s church is also their faith and their church. We give thanks for their families, for their mentors, who have encouraged them along the way and helped them to feel that we are all their families too.

Though they do not remember their baptisms, they are living into the promises that their parents and church made for them on their behalf. They come now, to join as full members of this congregation, not because they have to, but because they want to.

And as they promise their Chesed to God and to God’s church, the rest of us, will reaffirm our commitment to support them, to care for them, and to give thanks to God for them—not because we have to, but because we want to.

Thanks be to God.

Vanish in the Darkness

2009-10-13T10:01:00.001-04:00

Job 23: 1-9, 16-17
Hebrews 4:14-16

Common Biblical wisdom speaks of the patience of Job—as the model character of one who endures great hardship and yet remains steadfast in his faith in God.

But the term “patient” implies someone who suffers silently, who does not complain, who remains confident that this too shall pass. Job does endure. He does not give up on the existence of God. But he doesn’t do it gracefully, without complaint, without loosing hope. The fact that Job is alive at the end of the book with a new family and fortune does not mean that he was patient during the darkness.

Job is a righteous man. There are only so many of these men in the Bible. And God is having a conversation with the imperial court—God from time to time seems to have these conversations with others in the divine realm. And one called the Accuser steps forward, his name is Ha Satan, and he’s not our modern concept of Satan, he’s not evil, he’s on God’s side, but he’s more of a CIA operative in God’s service. And he questions how faithful and good the people really are to God. And God says, “See Job over there, he hasn’t given me any trouble, Job and I are just fine.” To which Ha Satan says, “Of course he loves you, you spoil him! You give him everything he wants, you give him the easy life, he’s never had any difficulty ever.” And so God and Ha Satan come up with a test, Ha Satan will take everything away from Job, except for his life, says God. Job must stay intact, but his family, his home, his livestock, his career, even his health—it all has to go, and all at once. And then, God will know what Job is made of and if he still believes and serves the almighty God.

And so, Sebeans kill Job’s oxen, fire falls from heaven and burns all his sheep and servants. Chaldeans run off with all of the camels and kill more servants, a great wind sweeps across the desert and collapses his eldest son’s house killing all of his sons and daughters inside.

In today’s passage, we get a glimpse of how Job is doing with all of that. After his friends blame him and are largely unhelpful, Job speaks of his desire to go to God himself, to plead his case, to discuss his plight with God, like two rational human beings, so that he might find relief. He would argue and God would listen.

Job is furious. He wishes he had never been born. He wishes he could disappear into the darkness.

When I think of anger at God, I always think of a scene from The West Wing

At the end of season two, in an episode called “Two Cathedrals,” we see President Bartlett’s life and presidency spiraling out of control. He’s just lost one of the most important people in his life to a senseless accident involving a drunk driver. He’s announced that he covered up the fact that he had MS, and he’s facing the usual array of national and global crises that a President faces.

The scene takes place in National Cathedral just after the funeral of his beloved secretary and advisor. Clearly agitated, he asks Secret Service to seal the door. As the door thumps shut, we see him turn toward the High Altar and begin to walk down the nave. As he goes along he starts cursing God in English and then in Latin.

He quotes Graham Greene: “You cannot conceive nor can I the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God,” but says the President, “I think you’re just vindictive.” He goes through the list of disasters: both natural and manmade. And then turns to his own confessions: “Yes,” he says, “I’ve committed many sins, have I displeased you, you feckless thug?”

He then runs through a list of all the good things he’s done for the country: creating jobs, setting aside land for conservation, to his personal triumph of raising 3 children. “That wasn’t good?” he asks, “That’s not enough to buy me out of the dog house?”

He stands at the entry to the high altar and continues to rail curses in Latin, telling God where he thinks God should go. He then lights a cigarette and stamps it out right there in the crossing.

Job assumes that God is reasonable. That he could sit down with God, and speak man to man with God, that if God would just listen he would grant mercy. The problem for Job is that he doesn’t know where to find God.

For President Bartlett, he knows where God is, at least metaphorically. He paces down the Cathedral nave like a Lion stalking his prey. If he could just get his hands on God, if God really were just a man like him, we get the impression that he’d let God have it—the stamped out cigarette on the floor is as close to physical assault as he can get, and he has to settle with a verbal rampage—and silence, because God doesn’t talk back.

Job believes God is reasonable and just, God’s just missing.

The psalmist cries out, my God, my God why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? Do not be far from me!

The Bible is full of accounts of God near and far, the promise that God is compassionate and ever-present, but these scriptures remind us that believers from long ago also felt distant from God just as we do sometimes—feel close or far, depending on where we are and what’s going on in our lives, not where God is.

Our Hebrews passage gives us further assurance. We have word on the character of God; fearsome, sharp, piercing, dividing, a fierce judge from whom no one can hide. But also a high priest, one who has great sympathy for us. This priest is Jesus, and he is not unsympathetic--he knows our weaknesses, because they are his weaknesses, he was tested and challenged.

And that means Jesus continues to work on our behalf—Jesus prays for us and is with us in our darkest times. We cannot vanish into darkness, into oblivion, because Jesus will always be with us and will not forsake us.

Even though God does not respond and act the way we want God to, or the way we imagine God should, we can still communicate our desperation and confusion to God.

In the end, Job is not punished for his words. God speaks to him and humbles him. Job repents and his livelihood is restored.

We can take the easy way out and reject God, or we can stand tall and engage the almight—to wrestle, to argue, to curse if we need to because God is big enough to handle our frustration and anger and will not reject us. Thanks be to God.

Esther Enchanted

2009-09-28T09:51:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time about 2500 years ago, in the far way land of Persia, there lived a powerful king name Ahasuerus. King Ahasuerus ruled from India to Ethiopia. The king was not a bad king, but he wasn’t a terribly good king either. He relied on the advice of his officials, instead of his own wisdom. And his favorite part of being king was getting to live like a rock star with lots of wine and lots of women. One day he decided to give a huge banquet for all of his kingdom. He wanted to display his wealth and the splendor and pomp of his majesty. In the court of the garden of the King’s palace he threw a banquet that lasted for seven days. The palace garden was decorated with white cotton curtains, fine linen and purple and silver rings and marble pillars, couches of gold and silver on a mosaic pavement of marble and colored stones, tables heavy-laden with food, jars of royal wine, the fine china and golden stem wear. And the king ordered everyone to drink without restraint and do as each person desired—to experience the life of the king: to drink as much as he liked and to do as he pleased, and to leave the decision making and ruling of his empire to those who were more clear-headed. Wise to her king’s recklessness, the Queen Vashti threw her own banquet for the women of the palace.

On the seventh day of the feast, the King, full of wine, asked his servants to bring Queen Vashti in her royal crown out for all of his guests to see for he wanted to show off her great beauty. But the queen, impetuous as she was, refused to parade around for a room full of drunken men.

The king was enraged, but he didn’t know what to do. He asked his lawyers to find out what should be done to Vashti according to the law. One of the officials spoke: “Vashti has not only caused dishonor to the king, but to all of the officials and all of the people of the kingdom. We cannot have the queen disobeying the king for soon all wives will disobey their husbands. We must issue a degree that all women must honor and obey their husbands or we will have total chaos.” The king liked this idea very much and wondered why he couldn’t think of ideas like this for himself. Vashti was banned from the kingdom and it was ordered that every man should be master of his own house.

With Vashti gone, there was no queen to keep King Ahasuerus happy. He was sad, but he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t feel like throwing a banquet and he didn’t feel like drinking as much as he wanted. Concerned about his well being and zest for life, his officials suggested a competition: they would gather up all of the beautiful young girls throughout the land and bring them to the palace, and after extensive makeovers, the king could choose the one he wanted. The king liked this idea very much and wondered why he couldn’t think of ideas like this for himself.

Esther was a young beautiful woman living in the kingdom. Esther’s parents had died when she was young and so her cousin Mordecai had adopted her and raised her as his own daughter. They were Jews, living in a Persian empire, and Mordecai had been captured from Jerusalem and brought to Susa. Esther’s real name was Hadassah, but Mordecai had changed her name to Esther so that they could blend in with the local culture better. It wasn’t dangerous to be Jewish in Persia, but they were a definite minority and had learned to be careful and private about their identity. While most of the Jews longed for their own land again, they had learned that life in Persia wasn’t so bad.
When Mordecai heard of the king’s request for all the young women, he brought Esther forward as a candidate. She was collected with all of the other women and brought to Hegai, a eunuch, who was in charge of the king’s harem.

There were women from all 127 provinces and Esther was intimated. Esther of course, was quite beautiful, but with women from India and Ethiopia, she wasn’t sure just how much the king would like her. She wasn’t sure she could learn all of the appropriate courtly rituals, wasn’t sure she could entertain the king with her singing and dancing, wasn’t sure she could endure the months and months of beauty treatment, teeth whitening, and plastic surgery. What if she had to diet and give up cake for a year?

She also wasn’t sure about the king: a man who spent most of his time drinking and doing as he pleased was not the sort of man she was used to. Her father had been such a hard worker and kind man—and death had claimed he and her mother much too soon. Mordecai—who she now thought of as her father—was also so kind and protective. They lived alone, just the two of them, and they worked in the garden together and they shared a love of their family, their Jewish religion and culture—they had a peaceful, comfortable existence, and Esther wasn’t sure she wanted to trade their small cottage for all of the riches in Persia. But Mordecai, always planning for the future, thought this would be a good chance for them and indeed, for all of the Jews living in Persia--the thought of a Jewish queen was so scandalous and wonderful that Mordecai couldn’t help encouraging Esther to join the other young women at the palace.

Hegai was in charge of this new assortment of girls. When she arrived, he noticed Esther at once, she was different from the other girls, there was something he couldn’t quite name, but she reminded him very much of his sister when they were young—beautiful, but also full of spirit, as if the deity somehow shined out of her . . . he liked her more and more as the days went on, and like a fairy godmother, gave her special treats, found her the best maids, carefully monitored her progress, and advanced her quickly.

After an entire year of beauty treatment and training, it was finally Esther’s moment to go before the king. Her maids helped her dress in her finest blue robes, they braided her hair with flowers. As she entered his room, the king wondered if he had ever seen someone so beautiful before and he felt himself fall quickly in love. He put a royal crown upon her head and made Esther his queen. Then he threw an elaborate banquet in her honor. And the lived happily ever after, the Jewish Queen and her Persian King.

But wait. It turns out that there was trouble brewing in another part of the palace. During the time that Esther had been at the palace, Mordecai visited every day to find out how she was doing. Since he spent so much time by the palace gate, he heard lots of courtly gossip including a plot to assassinate the king which he had shared with Esther who told the king, and ultimately saved King Ahasuerus’ life.

The king’s highest official was a man named Haman. For his own reasons, Haman had decided that he would like everyone to bow to him and everyone did except for Mordecai. This made Haman furious and he decided that he would kill not only Mordecai but also all of the Jews. As the king’s advisor, he told the king that a lawless people were living in the kingdom and that they needed to be destroyed. The king, full of wine and happiness, liked this idea very much and wondered why he couldn’t think of ideas like this for himself and sent forth a royal decree for the destruction of all of the Jews to happen in a few days.

Mordecai heard of this news and showed Esther the written decree and charged her to go to the king to make supplication for her people. Knowing that the king could kill her for approaching him when she has not been called, but that if she would be killed with her people anyway, Esther decided that she would do what she could. Summoning the strength of Mordecai’s words “perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this,” she began her planning.

Esther had dreamed of doing something important, and even though she was now queen, something she still didn’t believe sometimes, she still wondered if there weren’t something more, she had heard all of the stories of her people, of David and his bravery before Goliath, . . . there weren’t many opportunities for her people to be brave anymore, living as they were in another land—they were scattered from each other, and even felt separate from God, as though Yahweh were no longer guiding them as once before, but had left them up to their own . . . but with destruction so close at hand, it seemed miraculous that Mordecai had even heard of the plot against their people, and perhaps even miraculous that Esther should just happen to be queen right now, perhaps it really was God, working mysteriously to ensure their survival, and if it was truly meant to be, then Esther would succeed her in attempt to change the king’s decree. Surely God would give her the wisdom and the strength to face this horrible task.

There was no magic wand, no fairy god-mother, she could not blink and make it all disappear. Esther would have to do this herself, she would have to use all of the tricks she knew to work for the king’s favor.

She dressed in her finest robes of royal blue and carefully adorned herself in her full regalia including her crown and approached the king’s room—where he was drinking. Even though he had not seen her in a month, the sight of her so dressed up caught the king’s breath and he wondered why he had no summoned her himself. The king liked this idea very much and wondered why he couldn’t think of ideas like this for himself. His heart was soft as he asked her “What is it Queen Esther? What is your request, it shall be give you, even to the half of my kingdom.”

With relief, Esther smiled, and made her very simple request, for the King and Haman to kindly join her for a private banquet the following evening. The king happily acquiesced, for he loved banquets.

With the two men now in her own territory, Esther offered a fine meal and good wine. Sensing she really wanted something else, the king asked again: “what is it Queen Esther? What is your request, it shall be give you, even to the half of my kingdom.” It wasn’t quite the right time. Esther needed to find a way to save all of her people, including Mordecai and herself, but she needed to make sure that Haman’s role in all of this was clear.

And so she invited them to return for a second banquet the following night. Haman was so thoroughly pleased. He thought to himself, “I dined with the king and queen alone! I am nearly the most powerful man in all of Persia.”

On the second night of feasting and drinking in Queen Esther’s quarters, King Ahasuerus asked: “what is it Queen Esther? What is your request, it shall be give you, even to the half of my kingdom.” Gathering her strength, Esther plunged in: “please spare me and my people for our lives have been sold—if it was merely into slavery I would not ask, but we have been sold unto death.”

Enraged, the king asked, who is it that has done this?
Esther replied, “a foe and an enemy, the wicked Haman!”

The king, in great anger, didn’t know what to do. An official suggested he order the destruction of Haman and the salvation of all the Jews. The king liked this idea very much and wondered why he couldn’t think of ideas like this for himself. He promoted Mordecai to be his new vizier and ended his decree to destroy the Jews.

To celebrate their deliverance from death, the divine providence in their lives, Esther and Mordecai decided to inaugurate a great feast for all the Jews living in the province, they called it Purim. The king liked this idea very much and wondered why he couldn’t think of ideas like this for himself. There was great gladness and joy and they all lived happily ever after.

Centuries later, a group of Jews living in a different empire, gathered secretly in a room. Stories of their ancestors weighed heavily upon them, the story of Esther included. And while they shared a meal, their Rabbi told another story of love and bravery, one of triumph in the face of death, one of great sadness and fear, with a happy ending after all.

Wisdom of God

2009-09-17T13:36:00.000-04:00

James 3:1-12; Proverbs 1: 20-33

Though fashion experts will tell you that it’s okay to wear white. Practically of course, it’ll soon be too cold for white sundresses or linen pants. One theory behind this custom, is that once upon a time, the wealthy would take off most of the summer and head for resort locations where they would trade their dark, drab city clothes in favor of cool, white summery ones. The white clothes were a sign of their wealth and time for leisure. Putting them away after Labor Day, marked a reentry into normal, city life. The change of clothes helped mark the change of season.

We are also feeling the change, the weather change, the season change, the back-to-school change. We mark the passing of time with pencils and backpacks, and soon pumpkins and candy. At church, we return to Sunday School and choir, to TOW and to lectionary sermons.

Even if we’re not going back to school, even if it’s been years since we’ve had a “first day” of school, even if we’ve been at work and church all summer and this is not a time for reentry, this is still a great time for renewal, to dust off our brains, to learn something new, to engage God in a new way.

James writes about teachers, and the scrutiny for those who teach, based mostly on the words they choose. He explains that our speech guides our bodies, the way a bridle guides a horse, or a rudder a ship.

He speaks of the tongue as a small body part that guides the whole and can have the impact of a small fire or a small stain. With our tongues we proclaim both praise and insult. And as springs only produce one type of water and trees only produce one type of fruit, we ought not produce both blessings and curses.

For our own reentry, as we gather together more, in our worship, in our fellowship, in our meetings, in our Bible studies, in our choir rehearsals, in community to choose our words with care—speaking to each other with love, or at least respect, speaking up when we need to and being quiet when we need to . . . remembering the fragile human beings all around us.

It is Wisdom that helps us . . . discern when to raise our voices and when to lower them. In the book of Proverbs, wisdom is personified as a woman. She stands on street corners and public squares crying out to the men. Woman Wisdom stands in direct contrast to another type of woman found in Proverbs: Woman Stranger. This woman also stands on street corners and public squares crying out to the men, but her offer is somewhat different . . .

Woman Wisdom offers knowledge and counsel, offers the fear of God—but if ignored, she offers laughter, mocking, destruction. Wisdom is a path for salvation, for security and ease. Not following her is a path to disaster and dread.

She has a striking amount of power, addressing men in the busiest parts of the city, speaking where judges and prophets speak their condemnations and Prostitutes call out to customers and to ignore her teachings equals death.

Proverbs 3 speaks of Wisdom’s relationship to God and to creation. In the very beginning God acquired her and through her all things came into being. Through and with her, God created the world and placed Wisdom within creation so that people could live in harmony and right relation. She is connected or perhaps the same as that Word that was spoken to create the world. In Greek: the male form of Word is called Logos, the female counterpart is Sophia: Wisdom. It is the spoken Logos that is with God from the beginning who is then born in a manger in Bethlehem. Even in the NT, we find Jesus closely associated with Woman Wisdom.

The figure of Wisdom has close connections to goddesses in Mesopotamia and Egypt. She could be a survival of this tradition. Or she could be a combination of all the positive roles of wives and mothers in Israel, just as Woman Stranger is a synopsis of male fears of female temptation.

Proverbs begins and ends with female imagery, both positive and negative, but it is not a book about or for women. The primary audience is male as the book offers advice about the proper type of wife to acquire in order to have the good life. The original was addressed to “my sons” and even though the NRSV changes this to “my children” it is still far from gender neutral.

Nevertheless, the female imagery provides resources for women readers despite the male-centered perspective . .. .

The wisdom tradition starts with experience, as a way of doing theology. The focus on daily life can offer a way of knowing and being for those who have been largely excluded from participation in the older traditions—in the forming of covenant, prophecy, the canonization of scripture . . .

Wisdom is not just about following set rules and ethics,
Wisdom is a path to God, a mediator, a way, a union.
It is learned through life and experience.
The more we see, the more we do, the more we try, the more we survive, the wiser we become.

It is wisdom that helps us know when to speak and when to keep silence

Helps us form right relationships with God, to live well and simply, to live peacefully and harmoniously, to pay attention to creation, to our experiences, to our practices.

During their last supper, Jesus didn’t tell his disciples what to believe, he told them what to do: for the bread and for the wine, do this and remember me.

Star Wars

2009-09-03T12:29:00.002-04:00

Genesis 1:1-5 and John 1: 1-5

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away . . .

There was a complex, multifaceted saga that spanned science fiction, space exploration, technology and most all types of mythology and religion. It was called Star Wars.

These movies essentially chronicle the story of the Skywalker family—the earlier movies detail the lives of the children Luke and Leia, as they meet, and later realize they are twins, and as they battle the evil Dark Lord Darth Vader, who in one of the greatest movie twists of all times, turns out to be their father. The prequels detail the story of Darth Vader before he became evil, when he was called Anakin Skywalker, fell in love with Queen Amidala, and fathered Luke and Leia.

George Lucas, the man behind the movies, interweaves mythological elements from many different cultures and religions: we find echoes of Greek myths, Arthurian legends, and various bits of theology. He covers near universal, archetypal themes of journey, faith, and redemption. We also find more themes of family and friendship, machines and technology, faith, hope—the exploration of humanity—what makes us choose evil or good, and our capacity to have faith in that which we can sense but not see.

In the Bible, both Genesis and John both speak of beginnings, and of the light that has existed since that beginning. In Genesis, the light is a literal light, one that God separates from the darkness to create day and night, sun and moon. In John, the light, is the light of Christ, of the logos who has been with God and is God from the very beginning. In Genesis, the light and the dark are rather equal, things to be separated and balanced so that we can have two good things: day and night. In John, it’s important for the light to have a more powerful and positive quality, so that it is the light of Christ. As John writes: “the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.”

In Star Wars there is a constant battle between good and evil, between The Force and the Dark Side of the Force. As Yoda explains: “Fear is the path to the Dark Side: fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.” (Episode 1). But both sides are encompassed in the Force. It is the Dark Side of the Force that seduces and destroys Anakin, it is not more powerful, but “quicker, easier, more seductive.” The Dark Side depends on greed, fear, anger, control, but patience, discipline, humility are traits of the Force.

Throughout these films. Lucas explores evil and the capacity that each of us has to be evil. In Christian theology, we refer to this as Free Will and Original Sin. We all make choices, just as Anakin and Luke Skywalker make different choices as to how they will handle the temptations to come over to The Dark Side. As Lucas says, “The film is ultimately about the dark side and the light side, and those sides are designed around compassion and greed. The issue of greed, of getting things and owning things and having things and not being able to let go of things, is the opposite of compassion--of not thinking of yourself all the time.”[1]

Not to spoil the ending, but the light wins. Ultimately, even the most evil, dark character is redeemed: In the end, Darth Vader and Luke battle and Luke says to his father: “I’ve accepted that you were once Anakin Skywalker . . . It is the name of your true self you’ve only forgotten. I know there is still good in you.” Luke finds the good in Vader he knew was always in there somewhere, to his dying father he says: “I can’t leave you I’ve got to save you” His father’s response is: “You already have.” This father is saved through the love and trust of his son, because as far as he had gone into the darkness, there was still good in him, there was still something holy and sacred that could be redeemed.

It’s not always easy to determine a director/producer’s goals when it comes to spiritual themes in a movie. Many times they are not wholly conscious of it either, but in a Time magazine interview with Bill Moyer, George Lucas spoke about his intentional decisions to make the Star Wars movie highly spiritual and theological, if not specifically religious.

Lucas has faced some criticism for supporting a New Age religious view, based on a nebulous divine substance and a faith system based on feelings. Lucas, however, did not set out to create a religion in his galaxy, but to address a basic level of truth found in all religions. He said that in the late 1970s, he was worried that young people were no longer curious about faith, that they were no longer asking if God existed or what God would look like or how God would feel or what God would do and he found that to be truly terrifying. It was his hope that his movies, with their emphasis on good and evil would reawaken that hunger for spirituality. That the Force would inspire kids and adults to wonder about God. He doesn’t pretend to be offering answers in the Star Wars movies, but providing a starting point—a place to ask questions.

Lucas created a cosmology to go along with his galaxy, an ancient belief system that permeated the lives of everyone. Lucas also wasn’t attempting to portray any particular religion, though he does find organized religion to be important: He believes that “Religion is basically a container for faith.” And that he hoped to “awaken a certain kind of spirituality in young people--more a belief in God than a belief in any particular religious system. I wanted to make it so that young people would begin to ask questions about the mystery.”

Even with Light sabers and wookies, ewoks, and death stars—These movies are about The Mystery. The mystery of the evil inside all of us, the mystery of the good inside all of us, the mystery of how we are able to (or not) hold the dichotomies together, and the mystery of the Force, the energy, the divine, the supernatural, the God, that holds it all together.

We may not have the opportunity to battle Sith lords, to fight to save an empire from total corruption, to be the one person who restores balance to the force. Our lives, though full of adventure and important moments, will probably not be such epic stories—and while we may not be able to save the world in a grand gesture, we can each work in small ways.

The choice is the same as Anakin’s, the same as Yoda’s, the same as Luke’s, the same as Obi Wan Kenobi’s, the same as Leia’s, the same as Padmes—we can work with the Force, we can use patience, peace, compassion or we can slide into the Dark Side and use fear, greed, coercion. As Christians, we can use our faith in God, our worship, our praise, our prayers, our good works, our fellowship for justice, compassion, righteousness, mercy, peace, and love. Or we can use it for control, oppression, injustice, fear and anger.

As citizens of the world and the Kingdom of God, as believers, as human beings—how will we use the gift of God’s grace? Will we extend it to others—or will we lord it over them—will we offer it in love or with threats of the gates of hell?

Will we fight against hatred, greed, oppression?

Our Washington Street ancestors did not start out this way. We rarely discuss our history that far back. It’s in the red history book written 20 years ago, but we don’t talk about it much as being a part of who we are.

For those of us who are not as familiar with our history, Washington Street split from Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church (which was just across the street before it moved) over the issue that divided the North from the South in those days: slavery. Slaveholding was not allowed in the Methodist Episcopal Church, so Southern sympathizers formed a new denomination the Methodist Episcopal Church South and Washington Street formed as part of that denomination. Funds for this building were raised from other Southern Methodist congregations who also felt that slavery was a scripturally sound institution. Instead of using their faith to help set the captive free, many Southern Christians insisted that slavery in America was just as God intended human beings to live. In it’s first years Washington Street was not a church that could honestly say it was working against injustice and oppression.

We are certainly not the same church today, but our history serves as a powerful reminder of the Dark Side of faith.

As in our membership vows, may we continue . . . to accept the freedom and power God gives us to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves.

Amen.

[1] http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,990820,00.html

A River Runs Through It

2009-08-17T10:31:00.000-04:00

Genesis 4:1-7, Matthew 12:46-50

A River Runs Through It is a movie about fishing and faith—about family and all of the complexities of knowing and yet not understanding our loved ones. It’s also a story of failure: failure to communicate, failure to help, and failure (ultimately) to save.

It’s set in beautiful Montana, with the 1930s life of church, schooling, family dinners, fights, gambling, and speakeasies. It is mostly a story of two brothers, Norman and Paul Maclean and their supporting family and friends. Their father is a Presbyterian minister and their teacher: both in academics and fishing. As the older brother tells the story, he says: “In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.”

It’s not really about a River and not really about fishing. It’s not really about religion either even though the father is a Presbyterian minister and there are lots of scenes in church. On a side note, my Hebrew Bible professor in seminary was both a Presbyterian and an avid fly fisherman. When Norman says, he and his brother were left to assume all great fisherman in the bible were fly fisherman, it’s like Dr. Petersen’s famous lecture in which he attempts to prove that Moses was also a fly fisherman. This lesson came complete with casting lessons for all of us students out on the Emory quad.

In our Genesis reading we had the story of the first brothers, Cain and Abel, and their rivalries before God that ultimately lead to murder.

Norman and Paul MacLean are not exactly like Cain and Abel. They have their rivalries and their fights, but instead of killing his brother, Norman wonders if there was anything he could have done to save Paul from his untimely death—wonders in fact, if it could have been possible to be one’s brother’s keeper. Helping brothers, or mostly not being able to help, is a recurring theme between both Norman and Paul, even Jessie—Norman’s girlfriend tries to get Norman to help her own brother.

But like Cain and Abel, the two brothers are different. Cain tends the fields and Abel raises sheep. Norman travels away for college and Paul stays close to home. Norman becomes a literature professor in Chicago and Paul becomes editor of the local paper. Norman gets married and Paul dates an “unsuitable” woman of a different race. Though they love each other, there is something that inhibits them from truly communicating and understanding each other. After their big fight in the kitchen, (their closest Cain and Abel moment) instead of talking it over and analyzing it, they simply each agree, privately, to be kind to each other again.

If all else fails, if they are disconnected from each other, they can fish, and in fishing, they find away to be together and to communicate their brotherly bond without words. Fishing is an activity that, since childhood, has brought them together. It’s a language they can speak together, to honor their shared childhood and connection.

Their identities, their knowledge of who they are comes to them in different ways, as Norman says: “I knew I was tough because I had been bloodied in battle” “Paul was different. His toughness came from some secret place inside of him. He simply knew he was tougher than anyone alive.”

They are similar though. The MacLean brothers, who fish, who work with words, and yet who fail to understand each other on a fundamental level. And this misunderstanding would not be problematic, but for Norman who wonders if he could have ultimately prevented Paul’s death. His father wonders this too, asking questions about the younger son with a darker, hidden side.

We see Paul’s self-destructive tendencies early on as a child—his desire for danger, for wildness, to push the boundaries—and that only increases as he consumes copious amounts of alcohol in prohibition times, and gambles his way into high stakes debt. Norman observes all of these, joins in at times, and seems unable to intervene in any meaningful way. We are left wondering, with Norman and Rev. Maclean, if Paul could have been saved—if anyone could have done something to alter his path . . .

Toward the end, we see an older Norman, now alone, fishing again—back in the place where it all makes more sense to him and he says: “Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them.” Communicating in ways without words—at the river, casting his line.

It’s a melancholy, yet hopeful movie—of carrying those who we love around with us.

We remain mysteries to each other--spouses, children, siblings—who surprise us—either in small or big ways. We can never understand other people the way we understand ourselves, never know exactly what it is like to be someone else, sometimes not really comprehending what it’s actually like to be ourselves.

Sometimes the families we are born into end up not being the best for us.
Sometimes we are adopted into new families early on—
Sometimes we learn to form new families as we get older.

In the gospel, Jesus chooses everyone to be his brothers and sister and mother—not rejecting the family he had—but opening up his family to include the whole world.

Maybe we never truly understand each other—in all the deep nooks and crannies of our identities—But we know that God knows every little details—knows us better than we know ourselves.

In church, we bump into each other, we see each other, we pass the peace, we commune over bread and wine and coffee and cupcakes. But in so many ways we don’t really know each other. We don’t know each others stories, we don’t know each others hurts and scars, we don’t know each others great moments of happiness.
Of course we rely on the grace of Jesus for our salvation, but Jesus also relies on our work: our ministry in his name to all the world.

There’s a certain loneliness in our “developed” world—rich with resources, technology, and yet poor in relationships and love. We are reluctant to open ourselves up to other people to be available to hear their stories to be vulnerable to tell them ours. There are lonely, wounded people sitting all over this room right now. Part of our salvation from this isolation lies in what we can do for each other. The church is God’s best idea for saving the world. And the church is a community of people, a family of believers who work to help save each other, who provide love and support and understanding and the comfort that no matter what, we are never alone, and not just because God loves us, knows us, and is always with us, but because other people also love us, know us, and are always with us: ready to listen, ready to help.
Writer Anne Lammot says the most powerful sermon in the world is two sentences: “Me too.” In the midst of our pain, embarrassment, suffering, humiliation—if another person can look at us and honestly say “me too,” it can save us.
The movie ends with a mixture of geography and mysticism “all things merge into one and a river runs through it.”
We are all one: one people, one family, one loaf of bread—In the name of Jesus Christ.

Buffalo Springfield - For What Its Worth Video by Rab - MySpace Video

2009-08-05T11:30:00.002-04:00

For What It’s Worth
Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8

Buffalo Springfield - For What Its Worth Video by Rab - MySpace Video

Shared via AddThis

This could be a song about almost any human strife that’s gotten out of hand.
It’s a cry for reasonable thinking in the midst of paraonoia and conflict.

It could be a song about Palm Sunday and Holy Week—a field day for the heat, standing in the street, waving signs, worry about the men with weapons, the ones who will take you away if you step out of line.

It could be a song now about Afghanistan or Iran. Or any of our current political battles: Healthcare Reform, Gun Control—all of the things that divide us by opinion, political party, national loyalty.

It’s a song that seems largely about politics, about the Viet Nam war and the upheaval of the 60s. But the song was written for something a little narrower: the closing of the club Pandora’s Box in West Hollywood, California—that did have to do with local politicians acting against the youth who attended the club, clogging up the main road and not spending very much money—it is still a song that is critical of authority and institution.

For What It’s Worth was written by Stephen Stills and performed by Buffalo Springfield. Stills said that the name of the song came about when he presented it to the record company: He said: "I have this song here, for what it's worth, if you want it." Later they decided that should be its name. It is considered the 99th greatest song of all time by Acclaimed Music

Part of what I am discovering in preaching this series, is that there is a certain holiness in film and music: in our cultural art. Now, not all art is sacred, not all art is well-done or meaningful—plenty of movies and songs seem to be cheaply slapped together. But the ones that are genuine communicate something important about who we are that transcends the decades—how we find meaning in our lives and what’s important to us.
It’s pop culture, but it’s also sacred. Scripture, too, says something about who we are and who we were.

A 2006 documentary on Bob Dylan discussed his uncanny ability to name so many universal and timely sentiments. It also talked about how prophetic his music was, especially in the 60s, but it also showed clips of him discussing how he didn’t really feel like he had his thumb on the sentiments of the American people, but was just writing what came to him—almost as if he were channeling these words without understanding their power, and not wanting to take credit for something he didn’t feel he was really doing on purpose.

For What It’s Worth strikes me as a similar situation—a song that ends up speaking to many people, even now, not so much because of the writer, or the band, but because of it’s call to stop and look and listen to the world around us.

Not a child of the 60s myself, this is a song I usually here in movies. It was in both Forrest Gump and Lord of War. In fact, I really like this song, but didn’t know what it was called until Sean Hagan suggested it. Because the title doesn’t appear anywhere in the lyrics, it’s a song that I hear in a movie and think – I love this song, what is it?—and then forget all about it until the next time that it pops up in a movie and I tell myself that I really need to figure out what this song is. So it’s a song that I associate with movie scenes: with olive green choppers flying over a rice field, with soldiers in Vietnam, or protestors in DC.

I’m poaching the following form a news article about the song—because I like the way it’s written—Lewis Black wrote this paragraph about leaving a protest rally and hearing this song play on the radio:

“Music has always been a balm of enormous healing properties for my soul and well-being, but for a half-decade or so around that time, it was also reporting from the front. The relevance was beyond rational and not even rooted in reason. By its very nature, it was not a typed broadside, a considered political opinion, or an ideological speech; it was a chunk of unconscious reaction ripped up from all of us and offered as a way of dealing with all that was going on around us. They were just people; they weren't leaders, but more akin to impressionist poets, offering complex, emotional snapshots of a truly blasted environment. ”

Scripture is also a complex, emotional snapshot—of a moment in history, but with language and grace that transcends the centuries.

The war and strife mentioned in the Bible is real, and particular—actual battles in historical time and space. And yet, when Ecclesiastes tells us that there is a time for peace and a time for war, that still speaks to us today. Joel tells of beating plowshares into swords, for a battle of judgment against neighboring nations. Isaiah tells of final days, when war will end, when we will beat swords into plowshares.

There is a time to fight and a time to listen
There is a time to act and a time to stand still
There is a time for the things that divide us and a time for the things that bring us closer together

In the midst of conflict, it’s important to remember that our whole lives are not conflict and strife. Paranoia, fear, darkness are not the end of the story. Separation, distrust, division are not the end of the story.

God is not the “man with a gun over there.”

We can all continue in our own battlegrounds, arguing for our opinions, beliefs, and worldviews—we can argue blindly in a “you’re either us for us or against us” kind of way, or we can stop and listen and look at everything around us.

Maybe we don’t all agree on having a government run health care program, but maybe we can agree that all people deserve to have decent care. Maybe we don’t all agree on the path ahead for the church: for The UMC or Washington Street, but maybe we can agree to trust in God’s spirit moving among us. Maybe we don’t all trust each other, but maybe we can each learn to be more trustworthy. Maybe we don’t all agree on all the finer points of theology: but we do believe in all-powerful, all-loving God, who can save us all.

Trust and Obey

2009-07-20T12:39:00.001-04:00

1 John 1:71 Samuel 15:22

The hymn: Trust and Obey is certainly a classic in our hymnal. Written in 1886, it’s been sung for much longer than any of us can remember. It is one of those hymns in which the lyrics and music were written for each other.
The story behind the hymn goes something like this: In 1886, Daniel Towner was leading music for a revival in Massachusetts. During the service a young man stood up to testify. An observer commented that the man didn’t seem to know too much about the Bible or acceptable Christian doctrine, but he closed his speech with the following words: “I am not quite sure—but I am going to trust, and I am going to obey.”

It was these words that struck Towner with their power and simplicity, so that he wrote them down and sent them to his Presbyterian pastor friend, John Sammis. Based on those few words, Sammis composed this hymn and Towner then composed the music.

The simple words of a young man, whose name is unknown, have been sung for so many years and have been important for so many people.

Who knows what happened to him after that revival—if he continued with his new faith, if he learned more, if really did continue to trust and obey.

As he wrote these four verses, Sammis considered the different areas of our life.

Verse one concerns our daily walk with God.

When we walk with the Lord in the light of his word,
What a glory he sheds on our way!
While we do his good will, he abides with us still,
And with all who will trust and obey.

This first verse is very happy and energetic. It focuses on the light of God’s word, glory, good will, abiding with us. It is the promise of companionship of light, of love, of shared journey. Here is the covenant: that if we walk with God and follow God’s will, then God will live with us.

If the song ended here, it wouldn’t do justice to the full spectrum of life and of faith.
This is the first step of seeing the goodness of Jesus, the delight of a God who loves us, who lives with us, and stays with us. It’s the conviction that we need the presence of God in our lives. But following Jesus isn’t about having the good life—it’s not all about happiness and protection.

Which is exactly why the song doesn’t stop, but moves on to verse two: the darker side of life—the difficult times.

Not a burden we bear, not a sorrow we share,
But our toil he doth richly repay;
Not a grief or a loss, not a frown or a cross,
But is blest if we trust and obey.

This verse expresses the assurance we have that God will bless us even during times of burden, sorrow, and toil. If we continue to have faith during these times, we will be blessed even more. Here, our burdens and sorrows—are our toil, our hard labor that God will repay. Here, our grief, or loss, or sadness, and suffering—will all be blest if we are obedient.

It does seem to be true, at least by observation—that our struggles really do make us stronger—the pain we face in life can give us character and wisdom. The most interesting people in life are usually the ones who have survived—and the ones who are shallow and vapid, usually haven’t had to deal with very much.

Too often though it is said that we are facing a particular trial because God wants to test us, God wants to teach us a lesson. Too many helpful people—particularly pastors—are quick to say to those who are sick or grieving—that God can use our pain for good. Sometimes this is comforting, sometimes it simplistic and dismissive. Even if good does come from our pain, it can take a long time. Even if we look back at that pain and think of all of the good that has come from it, that doesn’t diminish the fact that we had to endure that pain and live through it in the first place. Sometimes we just have to sit in our pain and looking at it, knowing that we have to find a way to live through it.

The redemptive part of our pain is that beauty can come out of it. But that doesn’t make the pain necessary.
All of the Bible is written by the oppressed—those without power and authority—and this is the kind of line that gives us courage—that at the end of the day we will in fact triumph, that our suffering will not have been in vain, that it’s all worth it in the end.

What to do in the darkness Marilyn Chandler McEntyre
Go slowly
Consent to it
But don’t wallow in it
Know it as a place of germination
And growth
Remember the light
Take an outstretched hand if you find one
Exercise unused senses
Find the path by walking it
Practice trust
Watch for dawn

Verse three concerns our total submission to God:
But we never can prove the delights of his love
Until all on the altar we lay;
For the favor he shows, for the joy he bestows,
Are for them who will trust and obey.

Laying everything on the altar is the ultimate test of our obedience.

This verse details the lightness of letting go, but not the absolute difficulty of knowing what to let go. Handing over to God that which hinders us while holding on to that which emboldens us.

Verse four is about following God's call for our life:

Then in fellowship sweet we will sit at his feet,
Or we’ll walk by his side in the way;
What he says we will do, where he sends we will go;
Never fear, only trust and obey.

This is the reality of obedience: sitting and walking with Jesus, following his way, do what he says, going where he says, and without fear.
Achieving a sense of peace and sweet fellowship,
Aligning ourselves completely with God.

Dr. Carlton Young points out that this hymn “is concerned with the rewards of trusting God’s word and obeying God’s will.” The ultimate reward, a heavenly one so common in our hymns, appears in the final stanza.

The entire hymn embodies:
Being with God
Trusting God even in the bad times
Submitting to God
Following God

The hymn begins and ends in Communion with God.

Sermon on The Princess Bride

2009-07-08T13:56:00.000-04:00

Song of Solomon 8:6-7

To really appreciate the PB, we have to suspend our reality a bit and step into the world of fairy tales. This is a comedy full of chases, escapes, miracles, and true love. It’s a whacky story of boy meets girl, boy and girl separate, then reunite, then separate, then reunite and live happily ever after.
The movie is filled with charming geographical locations: cliffs of insanity, fire swamp, pit of despair, thieves forest.
It is highly quotable from Westley’s “as you wish”, to the Spaniard’s “my name is Inigo Montoya. You murdered my father, prepare to die” to “the impressive clergyman” presiding over a wedding as he says:
“Mawage is what brings us together today.”
It’s a world of pirates and giants, miracles, sword fights, and Rodents of Unusual Size. And it’s in the countryside of this world that we find our heroes: Westley and Buttercup.
In this world, True Love is the ultimate goal, something to be fought for, something to never doubt in, something that is unique and rare, as Westley says: “do you think this happens every day?” Westley is the first to express his love—with his undying devotion and service to Buttercup with the phrase “as you wish” and he never gives up on it.
Buttercup is slower to realize, but when Westley is captured by pirates and believed to be dead, she falls into a deep depression. She gives up on True Love and agrees to marry the Prince Humperdink.
Eventually, a disguised Westley finds and rescues her. He accuses her of being faithless, of denying her true love, and planning to marry another. But “what else could I do?” She asks, “I thought you were dead.”
He tells her, that “even death cannot kill True Love, it can only delay it.” She vows to never doubt again, though, of course, she will.
In order to save Westley from death she exchanges his life for her freedom and agrees again to marry the treacherous Prince Humperdink if he will let Westley go. But her guilt haunts her and in a dream, she sees an old woman publicly scorning her:
“Booo boooo boooo. You had love in your hands and you gave it up! Your true love lives and you marry another. True loved saved her in the fire swamp and she treated in like garbage and that’s what she is the queen of refuse!”
This is just about the worst thing she could do—and she vows to kill herself after the wedding. Luckily her beloved Westley and crew come to save her and after lots of ridiculous sword fighting, Buttercup and Westley are reunited for good.
In the movie, True Love and fate are deeply interwoven. Because of their Love, fate will always bring Buttercup and Westley back together. Westley has unwavering faith in True Love. He is self-assured that no real harm will come to him, that he is protected because it is absolute destiny that he and Buttercup will be together. We know that’s not how it works. The people we die love and it hurts just that much worse.

In our universe, love is also very precious, but also rather ordinary. And though not everyone finds lasting romantic love, it does happen to someone every day. While special and powerful—even miraculous at times, our human love cannot defy death and does not guarantee that everything will work out the way it’s supposed to.

True love is something we long for. It’s a prevalent cultural idea, a fundamental human desire—to find the perfect person who can know us deeply and love us anyway, who can share our lives, give us companionship, family, and love. Some of us are probably searching for it, some of us may have found it , and some of us may have completely given up on it.

And while this love may give us security and comfort, it does not offer us magic protection from the dangers of the world.
True love wins out as Westley’s and Buttercup’s guiding destiny bringing them back together again and again, helping them fight all of their battles, and keeping them alive against all odds (even through the fire swamp).

The words of Song of Solomon are from one lover to another, and I can imagine them coming from Westley’s mouth:

Set me a seal upon your heart,
As a seal upon your arm;
For love is strong as death
Passion fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
A raging flame.
Many waters cannot quench love,
Neither can floods drown it.

Those words have often been thought to be words from God to the people. Afterall, human love fails—it is not perfect, and frequently not fierce and eternal. But God’s love is perfect and defies death.
But even then, the love of God will not spare us from our mortal deaths, will not keep us perfectly safe—but nothing can separate us from the love of God —through all those dangers, the love of God goes with us, stays with us, and works to guide us through.
Our romances fall short of this ideal. We cannot save each other.
So many of our marriages end in divorce because of unrealistic expectations from movies, from our families, from our churches—from all the places that we get ideas of love and marriage. We think that marriage will save us. Save us from ourselves. Save us from our loneliness. Save us from being broken people and make us whole as though a part of us that is missing will be found in another person.
We have these big expensive weddings—and at least half of them—are good money wasted. Once the engagement is on, too many couples focus on the wedding and reception and honeymoon and forget about the hard landing that happens when they get down to the difficult business of making a life together.
Like so many movies, The Princess Bride ends with a kiss. We don’t know what happens, we can only guess their “happily ever-after” but we don’t get to see it. We don’t see the day when they move in together, we don’t see them struggling to raise children, or struggling to pay the bills. We don’t see what happens as they grow older, as they grow into different people. We don’t see what happens after 15 years and they’re both kind of bored with life and each other.
We don’t see how ridiculously hard it can be to share life with another person. It’s beautiful and miraculous, but it’s also really difficult—and if we kid ourselves and think its going to be easy and perfect from the start—then we’re heading toward disappointment.
Take the Jon and Kate plus 8 situation: they are filing for divorce because they are different people now, with different goals, heading in different directions. Quite honestly, when you get married, you give up the right to go in different directions. You still get to grow and change and explore new paths, but you have to find a way to do it together. Especially with all those kids involved it’s just selfish and misguided to think one person can just start on a new path without trying to work out a path together. (The ridiculous tv show—they’ll keep that. They’re marriage—they can let that go). They’re both treating their marriage like garbage—like something they can toss out—not like something they should cling to and try to fix.
At the very least, Westley and Buttercup show us that there are many forces in the world that can try to tear people apart—from other people to wars to natural disasters. The world that the PB has to offer is too simple: believe in True Love and you’ll be okay in the end. Doubt it for a second and disaster sets in.
Our love for each other fails. Our love for God fails. We doubt the goodness of God, the love of God, the existence of God. And God still loves us. When we have doubt, we’re not suddenly in peril, we’re still held close and God patiently pulls us back in until we are able to believe again—even if it takes years and years.
“Life is pain,” says Westley “if anyone tells you otherwise they are selling you something.” True love does not save either from pain. Both hurt. Both end up scared. But it’s okay in the end.
And that’s how it is with God.
God’s love—doesn’t promise that we won’t get hurt—but stays with us til the end. Even the perfect love of God does not grant us perfect lives.

There is a redemptive quality to our human love. There is the power and grace and healing that God bestows—that deserves work and not doubt.
Yet our relationships require both our faith in them and our hard work: whether it’s communication and compromise or climbing the cliffs of insanity.
We hold this work in tension: believing that our relationships are good gifts from God, and having faith in their power, while acknowledging that no human relationship can ever fill that deep longing that we have for God.
Amen.

this is the one (June 14th, 2009)

2009-07-08T10:23:00.001-04:00

1 Samuel 15:34 -16:13

David’s anointing is full of pageantry and suspense—if it were happening today, I imagine something along the lines of the Bachelor and American Idol.
God’s priest and judge, Samuel invites Jesse and his sons and the elders of the city to a sacrifice. They all arrive, not realizing that this is no ordinary sacrifice—but instead the newest season of “Who Wants to Be The Next King of Israel?!”
After God’s displeasure with last season’s winner: Saul, God is looking for a new king. Unlike Saul’s choosing, this time is filled with more suspense as all 7 of Jesse’s sons are being considered.
Just as the love rarely lasts between the bachelor and his chosen bride, God has regretting choosing Saul and wishing to choose a new candidate. Not to be fooled this time, God has been acting on the sidelines, doing research, and cultivating a new king from among Jesse’s sons.
As the seven sons line up to be considered, Samuel represents God in choosing the appropriate new leader. He assumes, that it must be Eliab, the tallest and fiercest, but no, God has something more unusual in mind—after all Saul was also handsome and tall, and that didn’t work out to well—“I do not judge by appearances,” says God. And so Samuel approaches the next son: Abinidab—a bit shorter, but with a cheerful demeanor—and God says “no.”
On to Shammah—the best fighter in the family—but God says “no.”
And on it goes: past the strongest brother, past the brother with the best diplomatic skills, Past the craftiest brother, past the funniest brother, past the kindest brother, past that troublesome brother who everyone knows mom loves best.
Finally, all sons have been passed over without any sign of approval from God. Samuel is forced to ask Jesse: are you sure these are all your sons? And like the wicked stepmother having to fetch Cinderella for the prince, Jesse admits that there is a younger son, out tending the sheep—when David joins his brothers, the audience snickers—but as we’ve learned from Susan Boyle, appearances are not everything.
Remember, says God, I judge by the heart.
This brother: ruddy, handsome, with beautiful eyes-- “this is the one” God announces and Samuel anoints him—and David’s life of tending sheep is never the same.
What has led to this drama—why is God in search of a new king?
The Israelites are in transition: moving from a tribal society to a monarchy. Saul has been their first king—something of an experiment with whom God is no longer pleased.
God wasn’t really pleased when the Israelites starting begging for a king so they could “be like other nations.” Because their unique value came from being God’s chosen people, the people who were lucky enough to have Yahweh for their lord and king, the people who did not actually need a human king.
But they wanted one: the Moabites, the Amalekites, the Ammonites, the Philistines, all had one—a human king-in-the-flesh who could weld a sword in battle, attend councils, establish treaties.
Yahweh sent judges, priests, prophets, oracles to be human representatives. The Israelites wanted the validation of having a king, of being organized like nearby peoples, to feel more legit and equal—and as a side effect, to deny what made them special and different. They wanted to be like everyone else and they were “determined to have a king over us, so that we also may be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.”
Even when Samuel warns them of the realities of kingdom life—that the king will take the best men, the best animals, the best of the harvest for himself and his inner circle—this was what they wanted.
Though reluctant, God chooses Saul—who turns out to make foolish choices, to make rash oaths, to not follow God’s orders. The breaking point for God, is when God orders Saul to utterly destroy the Amalekites in a form of divine punishment—and instead, Saul almost follows the command, but he takes the leader captive and lets his soldiers feast on the best of the livestock.
And God regrets making Saul king and provides a new king.
The world of 1 Samuel is different than our world—different rules, different customs, different understandings of God. We hear the easy explanation: the God of the Old Testament is vengeful and angry. The God of the New Testament is gracious and loving. As if the God of Jesus is not the same as the God of Abraham. As if the God of Christians is not the same as the God of Jews.
God demands the annihilation of the Amalekites as a form of justice. God does not delight in this human death, but deems it necessary based on their prior behavior.
“Thus says the Lord of hosts, I will punish the Amalekites for what they did in opposing the Israelites when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and attack Amalek and utterly destroy all that they have, do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.”
This type of command is a ban: includes God’s judgment and the required sentence—which in this case includes all humans and animals.
All are to be destroyed and offered back to God as a sacrifice.
In an odd way the ban affirms the equality of all human life—no one person has any value over another—and is communal—all the people share the guilt—no innocent civilians or guilty soldiers. It also affirms that all life comes from God and that all life is a sacrifice to God.
The ban comes awfully close to the idea of ethnic cleansing—an uncomfortable thought following the shooting at the Holocaust museum earlier this week and the anti-Semitism that still abounds. Do scriptures like this legitimize some of the hatred for the Jewish people? In a Bible study, someone recently commented “there’s an awful lot about the Israelites in the Old Testament.” Well, of course. She wanted stories of other peoples too, but those are found in other books—this is a story written by one group of people for their own use—their own version of the story—not a global perspective, but a local and personal one.
This is our Bible too. These are our holy scriptures, these are words coming out of the Lord our God, our provider and protector, our rock and our comfort.
This is a God who requires justice when one nation oppresses another.
The God who has created all life and mourns all of it passing. The God who feels pain and sadness both for Stephen Johns and James von Brunn.

They are both children of God, both sinners in need of forgiveness, and it’ll be up to God to figure out how to cleanse and reconcile both.
And we are left with the mystery of Yahweh: the mystery of God’s choice, the mystery of God’s plan, God’s presence, God’s justice, God’s hand in all our lives: the mystery of the scriptures: of Saul, the Israelites, the Amalekites, David, Jesus.
In choosing David: God goes with the youngest and smallest, the one tending sheep, an unlikely choice that surprises even Samuel, who after a long time of serving God should expect to be surprised.
For God is always on the side of the least, the oppressed, the underdog.
Like the mustard seed that grows into something large
Like the tiniest amount of faith giving us great courage
God brings great things out of small things
King David—will do no better, despite being a man “after God’s own heart” he will be a failure of a king and of a human being. Showing once and for all that God was right in not wanting to give Israel a human king. When Jesus walks on the earth, the people are still expecting a human ruler: one to overturn governments, to lead battles, to take prisoners, to make treaties. But instead, they get a strangely peaceful person who ultimately dies without ever assuming a throne: only crowned and robed as king in mockery.
We human beings always desire the physical, the visible—our God incarnate. Which we continue to celebrate in the tangible bread and wine—remembering the body and blood, celebrating the presence of Christ all around us.

Eve: Mother of All

2009-05-11T09:53:00.000-04:00

Genesis 2: 7-9; 15-25

Many church services on Mother’s Day focus on the celebration of our mothers and stories of exemplary women in the Bible and in our lives. The very first woman, however, gets very little attention, especially on Mother’s day, and as the first mother, doesn’t she deserve some attention? At least a phone call or a letter?

Now, there’s a lot of stuff about Eve that we don’t find written in Mother’s Day cards. This is, after all, the woman who screwed everything up for us by introducing sin into the world. How are we to say “Thank you” to that? Do we buy her pink roses and bring her pancakes in bed?

Eve, is, of course, the first woman, the first wife, the first mother. Hers is the first story of a woman interacting with God and the earth, the first woman finding her way in this strange world.

She’s gotten a bad reputation, and we women have gotten a bad rep because of her. I’d like to take a closer look and see if perhaps she’s been blamed unfairly.

Because she is famous for that incident with the forbidden fruit, her legacy is not that of the beloved matriarch. She is not the revered essence of dignity, obedience, elegance, discretion. Her portraits are not demure and regal.

Let’s take a look at where our story starts to turn
[Read Genesis 3:1-8]

The text says that “the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal the Lord God had made.” Two important notes here: the serpent is really smart and sneaky, AND is a creature that God has made. How many times have we heard that the serpent was really the devil? Note that the text, literally, has no mention of supernatural evil.

The snake is just a snake. But he also speaks in a language Eve can recognize. If this were the Bible according to Harry Potter, we could suggest that this is a form of parseltongue. If you’ve noticed in folklore or fairy tales, a talking animal is sometimes a trickster—a character who is meant to playfully, or perhaps malevolently, mess with the order, for the sake of stirring things up or making things interesting.

The snake may be clever, but he never lies—every word from his mouth is true. The snake speaks truth and entices the woman with wisdom. And changes the way the world works.

If we go with the idea that the serpent tricks Eve who then tricks Adam, we suggest that God is also a trickster: one who wishes to disturb the order of the world. Then God is to blame for sin as God gives the man the woman, and plants the tree with the fruit, and creates the serpent.

[read Genesis 3: 9-23]

This passage and common beliefs about it are so crucial for us because they outline the relationship between men and women, the relationship between human beings and the earth..

As Adam has dominion over creation, he also has dominion over Eve. Along this line of thinking, all men have dominion over all women. This idea is seen as the natural, created order. As the way God intends the world to be, no questions, no criticism. The subordination of women becomes a punishment.

Since Eve’s lips are the first to touch fruit she is the easiest to blame. Many theologians, writers, and persons of faith have suggested that Eve is to blame because she first eats the fruit, and then gives it to Adam to eat, bringing about the entire downfall of the human race down on her head, proving, for the very first time, that women are good for nothing but trouble. In Christian writings we find Eve’s action to be the foundation and justification for the secondary role that women have held in society for centuries. The fact that some of the early church leaders and modern theologians are quick to place such harsh blame on the woman demonstrates their allegiance to male-centered ideas. They are anxious to acquit Adam of his responsibility and eager to read negative ideas of gender into the text.

To demonstrate: In 1 Timothy 2, Paul writes: “I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor” (1 Tim 2: 12-14). Many church denominations today hold this verse as the main reason that women are not allowed to be ministers or have any leadership roles in the church.

Furthermore, Early church fathers, like St. Augustine Bishop of Hippo attacked Eve’s character. Augustine insisted that she used “feminine cajolery” to get Adam to eat the fruit. He claims that she tempted and corrupted and persuaded and cried and pouted and sided with the devil in order to get her husband banished out of the garden. She was a temptress. She was vain and proud. She wanted to be a goddess.

Though Paul sees Eve as the first sinner, Eve is not so easy to blame. Remember, Eve and Adam do not have knowledge of good and evil at this point in the story. They don’t have the skills to understand disobedience until they eat the fruit. They are caught in a circle in which they cannot discern good or evil until they have committed the “evil” act. Given all of the wisdom that Eve has at the moment, she makes a perfectly sound decision. She does not act out of pride or vanity or out of a desire to “be like God.” Like the passage says, she took the fruit when she determined that “the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise.” She reaches the fruit in a desire for health and knowledge, things we generally identify as positive, not sinful.

Adam blames both Eve and God. He acts as if he were fine all by himself but then God created woman and all paradise is lost. Even though Adam was the only person present when God gave the command to avoid the tree of knowledge. God had not created or even imagined Eve. Adam does not protest when Eve gives him the fruit. Then Adam accuses God for giving him the woman. And God also curses the man “because you have listened to the voice of your wife.” We can hope that God is criticizing Adam for listening to another human voice instead of to the divine command, but the text isn’t clear.

The story of Genesis 3 does indeed explain the imperfection of the world, the pain, and the inequality of the sexes . However, that inequality has been present before the disobedience and the punishment, when woman was created secondly, as an unequal assistant to the man—After Adam has named and excercised authority over every living creature. After God has decided that a giraffe might not be a suitable mate afterall. The value of men over women appears right there within the garden walls as part of God’s created order. This makes it very difficult to argue for women’s equality from any Biblical perspective.

So what do we do now? Should we agree with Augustine and Paul that women are not nearly as good as men?

We can never separate our sacred scriptures from the cultural, political, social contexts that formed them over the centuries and finally wrote them down. Misogynistic ideals were already embedded in their culture, much like they are in ours. Ideas they already had about women dictated the portrayal of Eve as everything that was immoral, scandalous, and distrustful about women. Those cultural ideas were also present when this portion of Genesis was written.

We can agree with Genesis, Paul, Augustine and others and suggest that women are limited in authority, power, equality: that we are created to reflect the image of men more than to reflect the image of God. Or we can realize the hierarchy of power that permeates so many levels of reality, including the writing and organizing of the Bible.

Because we view men and women as fundamental opposites, so we view other members of our human family on a hierarchical scale. We can justify the position of some as superior simply by accident of birth. The split between genders demonstrates a deep divide in all humanity. We reach a new level of coexistence and wholeness as women come to be valued equally to men.

We can find both scriptures to relegate women to a lesser level of humanity, but also ones that elevate all human beings equally. We must hold all of this in tension and look for God in the midst of human words. If we go back a chapter in Genesis, we get to the first account of the creation of humanity. In this account, God creates men and women at the same time. God creates them in God’s image, blesses them, and declares this creation to be good: “So God created humankind in the divine image . . . male and female God created them.” Genesis 1: 27. If we flip way ahead, to Galatians 3:28, we read of the new reality in Jesus: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

Thanks and Praise be to God.

Shepherding Love

2009-05-06T10:45:00.001-04:00

Psalm 23
1 John 3:16-24

If you’ve ever been to Israel or seen pictures, you know that their pastures are not bucolic scenes, but instetad hilly and rocky. The shepherds are not clean little children, but dirty and muscular. Their job is not a jaunt through the meadow or a nap under a tree. Instead, they toil long hours in the hot Mediterranean sun, chasing sheep and keeping them safe from predators and thieves.

Psalm 23 is one frequently memorized by our children, a Psalm that then resurfaces at many funerals. A psalm that guarantees safety for the soul of the deceased and comfort for those left behind to mourn. A good sending off and good care for the living—God walking with us through the valley of the shadow of death.

It’s a Psalm that has much to say about God: as a shepherd, one who is deeply involved and active in our lives: guiding and rescuing, providing food, shelter, comfort, and even rewarding us in front of our enemies—the relentless God who chases after us and hooks us by our necks, dragging us back into the fold.

It all has much to say about us, the human sheep: It’s not the most flattering comparison since sheep are not known to be clever, to say we are dimwitted and dumb, that we are not bright, and that we need a shepherd lest we wander aimlessly away and fall off a cliff or get eaten by wolves. We are in need of someone to guide us, to lead us, to even rescue and redeem us—for someone who can set this all right can fix all our brokenness.

The other evening, a couple of us had an interesting encounter, with a man, who must have taken solace knowing he was speaking to a pastor and a church-goer. The conversation started out simple enough, small-talk mostly, but quickly developed into something more as the man shared about his family and about his three children and the difficulty he had in raising them. He spoke of a son who he hasn’t seen in 17 years, his pain over this lost child, and his fervent hope that God will bring him back like the prodigal son, like the lost sheep. As a human parent, he’s pretty helpless.

Ours is a broken world—there is pain and sadness everywhere for everyone—no one is exempt.

Of course, there are other beautiful Psalms, but this one gets so much more attention: collectively we seem to like this one better. We may like it, because it’s simply God and us. It’s very self-vindicating, just God and me: God feeding me, giving me water, finding a place for me to take a nap, holding my hand, and guiding me safely. Maybe we like it, because we’re isolated, alone with God in the pasture. No other people are present, except for the enemies and they are finally getting to see, once and for all, that God was always on our side no other sheep to compete with: God finally saying, see, I always did like this sheep the best—as we secretly suspected all along. Not so fast.

In the gospel of John: Jesus says: I am the good shepherd: and we find a new layer in the image of God as Shepherd.

The Lord is now not only a shepherd as he guides and protects, but is also a good shepherd because he lays his life down.

In the epistle, we follow this sacrificial concept: and now the individualization of Psalm 23 explodes: because Jesus lays down his life for his sheep, we are to “lay down our lives for one another” to help others as we can—for those who “have” to assist those who “have not.”

We cannot waste this gift of the grace of God—we are not, afterall, alone in the pasture with God, but living in a world full of people, all of whom God loves and longs to include in the divine flock.

The writer of 1 John says “little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” Your words are nothing compared to what you can do.
As a faith community, we are struggling with how to pair our inward spiritual growth with the outward mission of the church, which is to transform the world in Jesus’ name.

Our preschool is but one small way that we can help care for the children in our community: by offering our resources, our building, our church, for a safe, faith-filled preschool experience: to offer hospitality to the children and their families. We are proud to be able to celebrate this ministry this morning.

As Christ offered himself unto death for oursakes, so we must offer ourselves unto death for others. Christ centered his life around other people, on their needs, on their bodies, on their souls, and so we must do the same: focus on the world around us, and we’ll discover that we’re taking care of ourselves in the process

We, who experience the love of God—who abide in God’s love, have a responsibility to the world (to go and do likewise), to not recline in the love of God, to not only concentrate on ourselves and what God is doing for us.
Our task is to believe in Christ and love one another. Love God, love neighbor—what else is there?

While Psalm 23 may be safely insular, John expands that concept

No longer merely a privatized God who is only concerned for our souls, nor a domesticated God who is only concerned for me, not a nationalized God who is only concerned for one group of people.

We have Christ: to show us what it means to be both sheep and shepherd: as both frail human and almighty god.

Jesus is our shepherd who guides and protects us, And the lamb of God symbol of salvation and obedience. Thanks be to God.

Resurrection

2009-04-14T15:36:00.001-04:00

Mark 16:1-8

And thus ends the original book of Mark. Later editors felt the need to add more, but the oldest manuscripts end with these verses—and it seems intentional to end in such an unfinished way, because the gospel is never truly finished--

Here we are with three women, an empty tomb, a divine messenger, and the strangest of all: that Jesus isn’t here because he’s risen, and he’s gone to Galilee.

On top of it all, the women are afraid: filled with fear, amazement and terror—not serenely rejoicing in their newfound salvation, not pleased to be serving a risen Lord, not proclaiming a new song to the nations—instead, they are silently running away.

What’s even crazier is that this news comes first to women. All four gospels tell the story of women at the garden tomb. It’s always Mary Magdalene, sometimes alone, sometimes with other women. In 1st century Judaism, women were not actually allowed to be witnesses. In the course of Jesus’ arrest and execution, the men have fled. Peter has denied Jesus. They’ve shown themselves to be vulnerable humans who panic in the face of fear. But the women have watched all of this from a safe, respectable distance. Mark tells us that women have ministered to and with Jesus all along and that many others had come with Jesus to Jerusalem.

The women were there, they were watchful, they prepared spices to care for their beloved rabbi just one last time. Despite the fact that Jesus speaks of being raised and rebuilt several times, it’s clear that no one really expected this to happen—he’s dead and gone and all their hopes are dashed.

And now imagine, as they are trembling with grief, going to the tomb, going through the ritual of burial and preparation, moving and staying busy, hoping the awful truth won’t sink in, hoping against hope that he really isn’t dead . . . and when they get there, the body is gone, they wonder if this is the right place, the right garden, a cruel trick, a mistake . . . after all, when someone dies we wish that she would miraculously come back, we wish that his death was just a dream—a hallucination. But Jesus really did die, they saw him, lifeless and gone, and now this news: he is not here, his is risen, he has gone on before you.

What does this mean exactly? There’s much debate about what Jesus’ resurrection is and what it means for us. Because Jesus’ body is gone, we know that this is a very physical event. In other gospels Jesus does eat and drink, but is also sometime unrecognizable and can pass through locked doors. This is a transformation of the raw physical matter of Jesus’ body into something that is very much the same and yet also very different.

There are various logical explanations out there: one is that Jesus didn’t really die, he faked it or passed out, and then just came too later. Another is that the disciples stole his body. Another is that the disciples experienced the spiritual presence of Christ and talked about it almost as though it was physical.

As for the resuscitation idea: there’s a pretty good chance that Roman soldiers would have made sure he was good and dead. Also, his disciples find Jesus to be utterly transformed, glowing and healed, not half-dead and barely clinging for life.

The disciples never really expected Jesus to rise again. They were confused every time he spoke of it, and are surprised when it actually happens. The enthusiasm and wide spread telling indicate that something happened, something real, that is far beyond conspiracy.
Which leads us to the spiritual experience. This one seems more plausible, after all, that’s our experience of the risen lord today. We don’t physically see Jesus, but experience him in a spiritual sense.

A resurrection of the physical body carries on the validating work of the incarnation. It was Plato who really pushed the idea of escaping the body, and divided the soul from the body, the body as weak, inferior, dirty. But God affirms our bodies, both in original creation, and through the incarnation. It’d be inconsistent for God to affirm Jesus’ human body and then have him escape it in the end.

God is Incarnational, affirming our bodily existence, even beyond death.

In this way, God overturns the human, social order of the world.

In affirming that Jesus is Lord, we affirm that Caesar is not, that no other earthly rulers are Lord and master over us. The Roman government, the Jewish high priests, are all powerless, the one thing they could do is kill Jesus, and, in his rising, they have no satisfaction of execution.

NT Wright, in Surprised by Hope, writes: “And this is the point where believing in the resurrection of Jesus suddenly ceases to be a matter of inquiring about an odd event in the first century and becomes a matter of rediscovering hope in the twenty-first century. Hope is what you get when you suddenly realize that a different worldview is possible, a worldview in which the rich, the powerful, and the unscrupulous do not after all have the last word. The same worldview shift that is demanded by the resurrection of Jesus is the shift that will enable us to transform the world.”[1]

This is good news for the disciples who flee for their lives: Jesus offers them a second chance, especially to Peter, forgiveness, and the chance to learn again what true discipleship means, now, with the ultimate fear of death removed.

We are not likely to be executed for our faith Roman-style, we are not persecuted or shunned, only mildly embarrassed for our faith. But we all fear death, even if we are not constantly threatened by a ruling government. Our lives are in ruin and decline: whether its to sin: to greed and selfishness, to idolatry and covetousness, to addiction and loneliness . . . We are all dying be it from disease, from chronic illness, from cancer, from old age, from the relentless passing of time.

We live with the illusion that the world is getting better, we are curing disease, we are advancing in technology, peace, democracy, we can eradicate hunger and poverty and end the war on drugs—we are moving onward and upward—always improving.

But as soon as we make a new discovery, or find a new solution, there are hundreds of more problems that still exist, or even worse, crop up because of the new solution.

If we feed one person, we discover that there are more who are hungry. If we end one war, another one begins. If we cure one disease, we discover a new one.

Somewhere along the line we will realize that science, technology, medicine, government will not save us: will not create a new earth and a new humanity.

We are constantly in need of resurrection: of recreation and transformation. It’s all beyond us. God is our hope for salvation and recreation.

Think for a moment of something in your life that needs resurrection. Maybe a relationship or situation, an illness, some sort of problem that doesn’t have a solution.

Now try to imagine that fixed, that relationship reconciled, that illness healed, that problem solved . . . not how it would happen or what you should do . . . just imagine it repaired, rebuilt, made right, restored and transformed . . . but in such a way that it is nearly unrecognizable: the people, the substance is the same, but its nature is completely altered and perfected.

I pray that God is at work in this way in all of our lives, in our families, in our friendships, in our community, in our employment, in our church, in our nation, in our world . . .

The resurrection is absolutely crazy, irrational, outside of precedence and scientific possibility: and that is exactly the point. God exists outside of our expectations. God can act in ways we can’t even imagine or hardly believe—the resurrection is supposed to be beyond belief and expectation, and even a little terrifying.

Our story doesn’t end here. It is now up to us, to journey back to Galilee with Jesus, to tell the Good News of a risen savior and to minister in his name to a broken world.

We go with the assurance that Christ has gone on before us and will be with us for all time. THANKS BE TO GOD.

[1] NT Wright: Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. 2008.

Perfect Trust

2009-03-30T11:56:00.000-04:00

Hebrews 5:5-10, Psalm 51, Jeremiah 31:31-34

Submission, obedience, suffering. These are the prominent traits of Jesus in this scripture. He was submissive to God the father, he learned obedience through suffering and became a complete person. As such, he is the source of our salvation if we are obedient to God the Christ, to our everlasting high priest.

This is our difficult task: to believe in the goodness of God, when nothing else seems good. To love God fully when we do not fully love ourselves. To live a life that God is proud of, when we do not feel proud of ourselves, when we struggle with who the world requires us to be with little room for grace and compassion, reconciling who we are deeply as people of faith and as people of the world .

In Psalms, the speaker cries out for God to restore him, to cleanse him from his iniquity, and to put a new spirit within him. In other words, forgiveness and transformation of the heart.

We have almost a response to this request In Jeremiah, it is the language of broken covenant and the need for a new one: written on their hearts: I will be their God, they will be my people. Like the previous covenants, it’s a binding contract between God and the people, each with a promise to uphold. The major lesson: the people almost always fail, but God remains committed, even to the extent of creating new arrangements, new ways for the people to be faithful.

According to Irenaeus: “the glory of God is humanity full alive.” Knowing we couldn’t quite achieve this on our own, as evidence by the slew of broken covenants in the Hebrew Bible, God sent us someone to walk the same paths, endure suffering, and never compromise himself, to show us what it is to be fully alive. Because Jesus remains submissive and obedient, he lives a perfect life: one that is wholly faithful to his identity as a child of God.

Circumstances in our lives sometimes make it impossible to behave as true children of God and to treat other human beings the same way. My stint in the coffee shop business required me to try to sell pieces of cheesecake to customers who might already be struggling with their weight and their wallet, who may have already ordered their days worth of calories in a frappuccino. I didn’t feel good about myself in times like that. It’s hard to be completely at ease with your life when the dollar, the sale is more important than the human being.

I recently spoke with a colleague in another denomination who had just found out that her pension is, in part, funding genocide. She’s now racked with guilt and trying to figure out how to change the investment system. Though innocent and unintentional, she’s not proud of her life before God.

Our sinfulness keeps us from living complete lives: keeps us from our true selves, keeps us from God. Because when we really find God, we really find ourselves, as the people we were meant to be.

We all end up falling short, unable to keep up our end of the deal with God, but God will remember our sins no more.

We have a generous, relentless God, always seeking new ways to connect to us

Jesus offered his obedience even until death, the extent that he is willing to give up his own life to show us how to grow through suffering, how to be saved through our obedience to God.

And as someone who is so complete, is our example to follow: salvation in becoming obedient to God, in becoming exactly who we were designed to be, in discerning out true identity.

To trust God perfectly—to remember that God has our best interests at heart, and we have the responsibility and privilege to live as complete human beings; not plagued by sin and self-doubt

We don’t get to live a selfish life, greed, self-centered. But authentic, meaningful. Not easy, will cause hardship, pain, even death. But to live a life with few regrets, knowing you did your absolute best to live as a faithful child of God, listening to God’s still small voice within your own heart, reading that promise written their, crying out for your loved ones and for the world, praying for a better world, working towards that better world and life for all people, Our lives are worth saving. We are worth saving. That’s what Jesus is for: not a blood offering to appease an angry God, but an offering of love, perfect through suffering and obedience.

Suffering is a given: it’s what you do, how you handle it that makes the difference: Jesus remains steadfast, he doesn’t turn on God, he doesn’t run, he stays to the very end, and becomes complete.

Jesus suffered, not just in his physical torture and death. He offered prayers and supplications, with cries and tears, not on his behalf, but for the people. Jesus suffered every time he saw someone who was sick, hungry, bleeding, dying. He suffered every time he was needed to heal, cast out demons, or raise someone from the dead. He suffered when he saw the amount of sadness, loneliness in the world, and could do so very little to help when he was refused, when he was misunderstood, when he was hated, when he was arrested.

He wasn’t submissive to an abusing Creator God. He wasn’t obedient to a suicidal order. He looked into the face of suffering and never wavered his course, even when that path led to his own death.

It’s true that Jesus suffered and died. It’s true that God didn’t step in and intervene and prevent that death. It’s true that it’s because of a sinful humanity that Jesus was tortured and killed. But it’s not true that this is what God needed or wanted.

Perhaps he knew that his death would demonstrate quit clearly the depths of human depravity, in killing off the one person who could save them all.

And that in rising again, in returning to heaven, he’d be able to continue that healing work, for all peoples and all times, not just Hebrews living 2000 years ago.

Over and over, a God of love, who shows us different ways to live, the better way: as people of God, the simple promise that if we obey God, God will hear us. Thanks be to God.

Temple Overhaul

2009-03-30T11:06:00.000-04:00

John 2: 13-22
Jesus is complex: he’s human and can be love and angry—even angry because he’s loving. This is a story for his “angry side.” Jesus: brandishing a whip, overturning tables, spilling money everywhere! Our Prince of Peace and nonviolence making a public scene.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell the same story, but they put it in a different place. In those gospels, the temple cleansing happens towards the end of Jesus’ ministry and serves as the catalyst for his arrest: proof that he is a dangerous threat to the religious and political establishment.

In John, however, this event happens early on. It’s not a catalyst, but a moment of self-identifying clarity for Jesus. It is also an opportunity for allude to his eventual death and resurrection, which is why we’re reading this text now, during Lent. It’s a revelation of other ideas as well: Jesus points to his death and resurrection as proof of who he is: the sign of his authority is that he will rise again. The temple equals Jesus’ body, as the locus for worshipping and experiencing God on earth—God’s dwelling place within a particular human body.

But because Jesus will rise from the dead and leave earth, the temple will then remain: in the Body of Christ, which is commonly known as the Church. The faith community now becomes the locus for God on earth, whether or not they have a temple, tent, or building with which to shelter God.

The gospel of John was written after 70 CE, after the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. And so Jews and Christians alike were struggling with what to do, now that there is no temple. Rabbis were reconfiguring a faith that no longer required a particular physical building and Christians were arguing for a different understanding. God dwells in Christ’s body, we are the body of Christ, therefore God dwells within our community.

Some interpret Jesus’ action as criticism for a corrupt temple system, that the practice of selling animals, of exchanging money, was unclean, but this is a part of the ritual, a part of the necessary sacrifice that the faithful perform during Passover. Jesus’ act is not just criticizing temple practicing, but is a direct assault on the entire temple system. What we begin to see is a battle: a battle between Jews and Christians: a battle for God.

It’s not unusual for a “new” way to try to claim to be superior to the “old” way: For a Jesus community to want to distinguish itself from Jewish ones.

A quick obersvation of Judaism holds that this religion has a lot of rules and requirements: certain ways to eat, certain ways to dress, certain ways to put your shoes on. It can be argued, that Jesus takes away the need for such rules, that having Jesus means it doesn’t matter what you eat. But that doesn’t mean that God isn’t still present in stricter ways of living or that Christianity doesn’t have rituals.

It’s not that ritual isn’t meaningful. Rituals give meaning and order to a person’s life. AJ Jacobs wrote a wonderful book that I recommend to all of you: it’s called The Year of Living Biblically and it documents his year of attempting to follow every single rule in the Bible. In following the rules and rituals, he finds that they are quite meaningful, he remembers to be thankful for little things, he remembers that all of life is sacred, and he finds that there can be a certain freedom from choice. That certain rules can save you “from a lot of thinking” and free you up to think of other things.

Rules can give clear ways of obeying God—clear paths to righteousness—but if we forget about God, if we forget that its God behind the rules, then the rituals become empty and meaningless—if God shows up, as God does in Jesus—and breaks the rules (because God can) and we forget that God is beyond the law . . . God doesn’t fit in our boxes, we can’t put God in a cage and pretend we’ve got it all figured out.

God is bigger than our churches, broader than our faith, and seems to enjoy a good surprise.

God can live and breath in ritual and God can live and breath in the communal life—God can do both at the same time, but it doesn’t work when the ritual is meaningless and empty, when its done only as the means in itself, when the performer doesn’t really know why or doesn’t care.

Our traditions, our practices, our customs, our rituals and rules of community life all need to be examined, challenged, to be sure they are not empty vessels of preference, but actually help us to connect to God—to remember who we are as the body of Christ.

There was an article in the Washington Post recently on a new monastic community in the District. It’s a group of young adults, recent college graduates, who instead of taking on high profile careers have decided to live together, to live like Jesus in the 21st century. They live in neighborhoods and conditions that make their parents nervous, and they help the poor. They deliver food, help kids get into good schools, visit in the prisons, they offer Christ in whatever ways they can to a hurting community. They love people who have never been loved, who are suspicious, but accept that Jesus is pretty cool, that these Christians mean them no harm. For this community, they wanted more than what they had learned in church, wanted more than to just live a noble life, but wanted to really embody the life of Jesus.

It’s a life that is not in keeping with the status quo. They are breaking society’s rules and expectations. They live in high tension with their surrounding culture, with how they were raised and taught, but they have imagined a new way of living life in God. A way to be faithful that changes everything

Jesus came to show a new way of living.
He asked that we have the capacity to change,
To understand new, fresh ways of experiencing God.

Not everyone finds God in the rituals, in the practice of doing, in the ancient traditions—
We need both: the ties that bind us to the past, that bind us the historic church and bind us to Jesus.

Its why, 2000 years later, we gather on Sunday mornings to share the bread and wine of communion.
Its why we light candles, and sing, and pray, and read the word, even those things have been done before Christ walked on the earth, and we find God in these corporate practices.
But we do not only find God here, not only on Sunday mornings, not only within the walls of a church.
We find God out in the world,
We find God in ourselves
We find God in each other
We find God in complete strangers

Because Jesus walked among us
Because Jesus wore flesh
Because Jesus was God incarnate: God in a human body, with a human life
God gave us life and shares it with us in all our glory and terribleness
And we are a human community, with the divine presence of Christ

Because Jesus lived like us
Because he showed us a life that was worth living
A life that put flesh on the Word of God: since he is the Word of God made flesh
We can also live a different life
One that is not empty of meaning.

In another season of Passover:
Before the Zeal for God’s house consumes him and takes his life,
Before Jesus’ body is whipped with a chord, just as he brandished his whip in the temple,
Before Jesus’ blood soaks into the earth and he utters his final cry,

He shared a Passover meal with his companions.

Wilderness

2009-03-04T10:26:00.000-05:00

Mark 1:9-15

The season of lent is our journey in the wilderness. Faith is an ongoing journey and Lent meets many of us, right where we usually are, on our spiritual quests for the divine, as we try to reconcile ourselves: our lives, our desires, our motives with God’s.

If we think we’ve arrived, if we think we know who God is and exactly what God wants from us, then this Lenten journey may hold some surprises.

Ever pithy, the gospel of Mark tells us that Jesus was in the wilderness, tempted by Satan, with wild beasts, and Angels who waited on him. And that the Spirit led him there.

Before his sojourn in the wilds, Jesus is baptized. We revisit the baptism of Jesus because Lent was originally, first and foremost, a season of preparation for baptism. For those initiates who were to be baptized on Easter, their three years of preparation culminated in a fast with the entire congregation who would renew their own vows on Easter.

Jesus’ baptism is a moment, both of initiation and clarity. The Spirit’s revelation of his divine identity rips through the heavens.

Just as his baptism reveals Jesus’ divine nature, his temptation reveals his human nature. The Spirit descends upon him “like a dove” and then drives him into the wilderness.
These 40 days solidify the identity and vocation of Jesus. He goes in with the Spirit, to find Satan, wild beasts, and angels. Fortunately, for us, Jesus passes through the time of trial and emerges to begin proclaiming “the good news of God.”

The wilderness is his place of discernment, his education, his seminary, his anointing, his commissioning, his ordination. The place where he finds himself and finds the courage to be himself: to be the divine son of God, to except God’s mantle, and turn in ministry to all the world.

Jesus’ time in the wilderness lasts 40 days. This length of time is a sacred period, found throughout the Hebrew Bible. The flood in Genesis lasts for 40 days and 40 nights. Moses spends 40 days with God on Mt. Sinai. The Hebrew slaves roam in the desert for 40 days. Elijah traveled 40 days to Mount Horeb, where like Moses, he received a word from God.

For these fathers of Israel, these periods were holy and uncertain. Times of humility and trust, danger and blessing, fear and amazement. It is no small thing to spend time in the company of God.

In the wasteland, Jesus reenacts the journey of Noah and his family on the ark, of the Israelites release from slavery and wanderings. He meets God as did Moses and Elijah. He lives out part of the stories of his people. He takes into himself the covenantal promises of God after the flood and relives the trauma of slavery. He remembers their past in order to enter into their future. To be their full liberation, to understand their need
for rebirth.

For us, like for Jesus, these days are a time of soul searching and turning again toward God. For taking a hard look at our selves and our lives. Our history and our future. Who we have been and who we are becoming.

As we enter into our period of wandering, we must discern where our wilderness is, watch for temptations, our wild beasts, and our angels.

A couple of weeks ago, our Together on Wednesday group took a trip up to Christ Church and walked their labyrinth.

The labyrinth is a complexly designed path of turns and circles. It’s like a maze, except that there are no choices or dead ins, there is one way to walk into the center and that same way leads you back out. In Christian practice, the labyrinth is very much a metaphor for the spiritual journey. It can be used in place of walking a pilgrimage journey or as a practice of penitence. The one at Christ church is a canvas mat with the paths printed on it. It fills a large room and about 12 of us walked it at the same time, though at different paces.

While all of our experiences were different and unique, they were also similar. We experienced both peace and anxiety on the journey, the desire to slow it down or hurry it up—the feeling like we’d never get to the center, and surprise when we found ourselves at the end. We noticed that we were a community on this journey, sometimes walking side by side, sometimes nearly colliding and sharing space, and sometimes far away, off on our own with our backs turned.

The beauty of the labyrinth is that it is impossible to get lost. We travel it to come closer to God—to quiet ourselves—to focus on the experience—to open ourselves to God—whether we hear God’s voice, or draw closer to God in the silence. It’s a commitment, to walk the whole way without giving up and cutting across lines. But there’s the promise too, that we will find our way to the center and find our way back out.

The advice for walking the labyrinth is the same as journeying during Lent. Travel purposefully. Observe the process. Be attentive. Find the path by walking it.

We join in solidarity with all the pilgrims before—with slaves and prophets. With those who have wandered in the desert, climbed mountain tops, weathered the storms, and have found God—because God was with them, all along.
With Noah in the covenant of a rainbow, with Elijah in the still, small voice after the whirlwinds, with Moses in the commandments, with the people of Israel in the manna—with Jesus in the angels.

We travel on our own paths and also together, as a community.

I don’t know what directions your individual journeys will take: what you will discover about God and about yourself, just as I don’t know what I will discover. As we journey, we may find temptations and wild beasts—there may be dragons in our labyrinth afterall. It can be a frightening journey. We may have to change, we may have to give something up, we will likely be uncomfortable.

But there are also the assurance of angels. And the assurance that our spiritual journey begins and ends with God. God call us out of ourselves, to come and out to the desert, God will go with us, guide us, and lead us home.

We know that Lent will lead us to the cross and then to resurrection, that we go with God and God goes with us, and God is at the end of the journey. And though its not a journey of comfort, there is assurance, because the cross won’t kill God in the end.

Lent ultimately ends with Easter. Jesus survives the wilderness and the cross and the world is a better place because of that.

Listen to this Lenten poem by Jan Richardson:

I am not asking you
to take this wilderness from me,
to remove this place of starkness
where I come to know
the wildness within me,
where I learn to call the names
of the ravenous beasts
that pace inside me,
to finger the brambles
that snake through my veins
to taste the thirst
that tugs at my tongue.

But send me
tough angels,
sweet wine,
strong bread;
just enough.

Amen.

There Your Heart Will Be Also

2009-02-26T13:48:00.001-05:00

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Lent is a time of turning toward God, a time of examining one’s life and planning toward the future. Lent is a journey. A journey that ultimately will take us to Easter. But before we get there, before we get to the celebration, we have to go to the cross. And before the cross, we have to travel in the wilderness for 40 days with Jesus.

What will we find on this journey? We have no answers yet. On Ash Wednesday we can only ask the question.

Part of getting back to God is to become as we all once were: vulnerable and powerless before the almighty. A striping away of all the extras . . . of all the treasures on earth.

Lent is a time for repentance. As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, “Repentance is an absolute, spiritual decision made in truthfulness. Its motivations are remorse for the past and responsibility for the future.”

Remorse for the past and responsibility for the future. Could this possibly apply to us?

This lent we find ourselves in unprecedented times. Our whole country is figuring out what it means to live in these financial times: In fact, across the globe, all of those who are accustomed to money and financial power are figuring out what it means to live with less: less money, less security. Those who have always lived in impoverished nations already know what it is to do without, what it means not to rely on financial markets.

There is talk, in our nation, of repentance: of remorse for the past and responsible plans for the future. But there is also much blame, much doubt, much pessimism, and still, much greed. It is still remarkable, nevertheless, to hear criticism of greed and calls for responsibility and accountability in the market place. Many of us are indeed cutting back either because we want to heed the call to live simpler lives or because we can no longer retain the standard of living we once had. Some of us choose to repent, and others of us are forced into this attitude of penance.

Jesus tells us not to store up treasures on earth—not to consume ourselves with consuming material wealth. There’s a great distinction between goods and people. While not all material effects are bad, their purpose is to serve human needs, to give us nourishment, and shelter, even to help us celebrate in joy. But we are not meant to serve them: we are not here to have more “things” to have bigger and better, faster and fancier. Nor is our purpose to work so that others may enjoy the finer things, nor to infringe on the quality of life for others. We must consider the whole human cost of our lifestyes as well as the cost to ourselves.

Our recent downturn has demonstrated more clearly than perhaps ever before, just how interconnected, how interdependent we are with others around the globe. When one system fails, it causes many others to collapse. Perhaps this will cause a blow to our independence, a blow to our individualism, so that we may remember that we are all connected. And maybe we’ll remember that we can be connected in good ways too: in strength, beauty, kindness, grace, peace, love.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Our treasures must be those things that last: our hearts must live in treasures that cannot be taken from us and things that we cannot take with us. They must also not be the types of things that keep us from this journey of lent: that weigh us down and tether us tightly. We must be able to travel light.

As outlined in our gospel reading: we have three modes of travel for this season: almsgiving, prayer, and fasting. Give of your resources: your money, your time, your abilities, but not so as to earn praise from others, but in secret. Perhaps for us, this means an increase in financial giving, perhaps it means cutting back on one thing to be able to give more to something else. Maybe it means finding what we really need to live, instead of relying on the things that we think we need, and giving the rest to God.

Prayer. Again, not loudly or boastfully, but with humility, in secret. Our prayers this season are for repentance, for God to show us our sins and shortcomings, for God to show us who we are really meant to be, to help us find that way forward.

Fasting, not to receive pity for your piety, and certainly not to loose a few pounds. But fasting that reminds us that we truly hunger for God, that we rely on God for our very sustenance, that we do not live by bread alone, but by the word of God. In a land of abundance that we experience what it feels like to deny ourselves something, to know what it feels like for those who don’t have enough, to be in solidarity with the hungry, and to give praise to God when we have the food to end our fast.

For these things we will find reward on God’s terms. Done for the wrong reasons—for praise or material gain, we will gain nothing, no treasures in heaven, no spiritual depth, no riches for our hearts. For the season of Lent, none of us are forced to repent. We don’t have to go on this journey with Jesus to the cross. We can certainly say no. We can refuse the ashes of mortality and finiteness, humility and dirt.

In the words of Joel:
"Yet even now, says the LORD, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the LORD, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing. Spare your people, O LORD, and do not make your heritage a mockery, a byword among the nations. Why should it be said among the peoples, 'Where is their God?'"

Let it not be said of us: where is their God.

Amen.

If You Choose

2009-02-17T11:36:00.001-05:00

Mark 1:40-45
2 Kings 5:1-14

Welcome to the ongoing story of Jesus in the book of Mark. Let me orient you for a moment: up to this point, Jesus has been baptized, tempted in the wilderness and has begun his ministry. He has gathered four disciples and is preaching, healing diseases, and casting out demons, in synagogues and in people’s homes. While he is garnering a reputation for being both a great teacher and healer, it’s not evident that anyone has really figured out who he is. While interest and crowds surround him, he has yet to cause major trouble . . . he’s still inconspicuous. He’s still safe.

In comes a man with leprosy. Though it’s easily treated today, leprosy is still a serious condition, especially in areas of deep poverty. It can cause permanent damage to the skin, nerves, eyes, and even necessitate the amputation of limbs. In Jesus’ time if one had it or touched someone who had it, this would make them ritually unclean or untouchable. Lepers were seen to exist between life and death: in a state of limbo, but they were also ritually separated from everyday existence. As an unclean person, you couldn’t hang out with other people, couldn’t enter many of the cities, and certainly could not set foot in a synagogue and these are all the things Jesus has been doing up to this point.

Let’s assume this man is a Jew who knows his religion’s stories. Jesus and his followers would certainly remember the story of Naaman that we heard earlier in 2nd Kings.
This story of healing also involves a leper, kings, and a prophet. It is also a story full of political implications. The King of Israel is suspicious. Rather than believing that this is a request for healing, he suspects a trick. Kings had near divine status, and for these two: the King of Syria and the King of Israel, their relationship was already one of conflict. So for the King of Israel to attempt to perform a healing miracle, it might seem that he would claim to be God, and thus more powerful than the King of Syria. The king of Israel says: “Am I God, to give death or life . . . Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me.” The king of Israel takes this as a challenge and tears his clothes in anguish.

When the leper approaches Jesus, this story is already in the background. Jesus hasn’t yet been revealed as the true King of Israel or as God. But his ability to heal the leper, answers the old king’s question: “am I God, to give death or life?” Well, yes. The political implications are still in place: Jesus is a new authority, with divine claims, which will be a problem, both for the current religious leaders and the Roman authorities as well.

When the leper leaves him, Jesus issues a “stern warning” for the leper not to tell anyone—he wants no credit for this miracle. One of the things I enjoy about preparing a sermon, is digging into a text to find details that seem enlightening or even unusual. An alternative Greek reading for “stern warning” suggest that Jesus was also “disturbed” or “snorting.” Imagine Jesus so much more emotional than the calm warning—not just serious, but also upset, and perhaps so angry that some incoherent snort escaped his body. Jesus’ reaction indicates just how much trouble this news could cause him. We see at the end of the passage that he can no longer enter into the town, because of the widespread news, and people have to come out to the countryside to find him.

Another interesting possibility is that Jesus was angry at the very request. The NRSV says Jesus was moved by “pity” but the footnote says that “other ancient authorities say: anger” which may be more likely. Then the text would read, “moved by anger, Jesus stretched out his hand.” Anger leaves us with more questions: why was Jesus angry? Was he mad at the man? Mad at the disease itself? Or something else? What does it then mean for us, to ask Jesus healing, cleansing forgiveness, if it’s possible that Jesus may react to us out of anger. Same questions then: is Jesus mad at us? Mad at our sin? Or something else?

For this instance with the leper, it’s possible that Jesus is experiencing anger for all three reasons. He’s on a clear mission, to enter into towns and synagogues to spread his message. This man interrupts him, and in his healing does two things to Jesus: also makes Jesus ritually unclean and then results in widespread proclamation of Jesus’ miracles. So, Jesus, being human, could be ticked at the reason that his plans have changed. But being God, this seems a little too petulant.

In reason 2, Jesus certainly could be upset at the leprosy itself. Perhaps he sees this man-- his condition and his life of suffering and is angry that such a thing exists in God’s world. God certainly desires better for the world and is never pleased to see suffering in any form: whether it’s leprosy in India or AIDS in Africa.

Or maybe it’s reason 3: something else. The leper doesn’t really ask to be healed, he says to Jesus “If you choose, you can make me clean.” The leper assumes, correctly, that Jesus has the power to cleanse him. Is that a challenge? A humble submission? As in: if it be your will, you can heal me. . . . is it possible for Jesus to choose not to? Could he really refuse—and allowing the suffering to continue? And could the suggestion that he might not choose to heal this man actually cause him to be angry?

This could possibly be a reflection of the man’s faith. Or a character test for Jesus—I believe you have the power, I’m just not sure you have the decency. We hear similar sentiments around us, if God were really good, these things wouldn’t happen . . . our loved ones wouldn’t be sick, strangers wouldn’t go hungry, children wouldn’t die, planes wouldn’t fall out of the sky . . .

Jesus doesn’t choose to be loving and compassionate, because he embodies those things, he couldn’t choose NOT to be. We don’t ask Jesus to forgive us, as he chooses, but absolutely.

Jesus chooses to save us, to heal us, to forgive us,
Salvation is a type of healing: whether it’s from a disease or our human condition—whether or not it’s in the way that we expect.

Naaman expects Elisha to come to see him, to wave his arms around, and perform a great magic trick. He’s angry when Elisha tells him to go take a bath. Like the ruby slippers in the Wizard of Oz: It’s too simple, too obvious. Jesus heals the leper, but in anger, snorting out a warning not to tell anybody—but will later tell his disciples to tell the whole world about him.

Maybe some of us expect God will always heal us, always give us what we want because we believe, because we’re good, because we’re special. God doesn’t heal us of every physical ailment. We all get sick, we all suffer, we all eventually die. Jesus doesn’t change any of that.

The miracles that Jesus performs in the gospel, are largely temporary. The people that he heals, eventually get sick again, they eventually die. The fed get hungry again. The lasting effect is not the healing, but the motivation behind it.

Jesus will not choose not to save us in the way he wants to—from our own desires and expectations—from our own comfort—from our own sin—from our own selves.

Jesus will not choose not to reach out to us—
But will we choose to reach out to him?

God offers grace—in communion—Jesus invites everyone to the table, to see and taste his goodness—but we can choose not to come.

Authority

2009-02-05T13:38:00.001-05:00

Mark 1: 21-28

Jesus has just left Zebedee, with James and John, and they’ve gone to the synagogue: Mark portrays Jesus as a great teacher: a rabbi who’s students don’t yet know that he’s not like any other rabbi.

We learn that Jesus is both a really good teacher: with authority that surpasses others, and who also has the power to back up his teachings. He speaks both for himself and for God.

Mark doesn’t tell us exactly what Jesus is teaching, but it’s quite possible that it’s the same message from Mark chapter 1: 14-15: The good news of God: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

Immediately after Jesus begins teaching, he is challenged: a man with an unclean spirit goes after him.

It’s ironic that we find this unclean spirit in the synagogue: it’s a sign that there’s already trouble. This demon that Jesus finds is in temple, a church. Not on a street corner or in a bar, but in a sacred place: a reminder that evil can lurk anywhere, that the doors of a temple do not bless you as you walk in . . . we have unholiness in a holy place.

The man is one of those listening to Jesus, and maybe it’s this moment, of beholding the “holy one of God’ that he sees the change he needs to make—but the uncleanliness, part of his will isn’t going to let go, isn’t going to let him follow Jesus like James and John. Jesus is quick to recognize it and drive it out: he performs healing and liberation for this man, right under the nose of those he criticizes.

What if I told you that today, we’re also going to cast out demons. Would you all be up for an exorcism today?

According to ABC news, exorcisms are more popular in the US than they used to be. The Catholic church now has 10 official exorcists: 9 more than they had a decade ago . . . but it’s certainly not something they cover in seminary. The most I really know is from the movie, and I haven’t even seen all of it. I think of people convulsing and turning green. But it’s here, in Mark, and we’d do well to remember the existence of unclean spirits in whatever form they take.

One of the Desert Fathers—Abba Poemen lived the life of an ascetic, in the Egyptian desert, in the 3rd century. When asked if demons attack us he replied: “our own wills become the demons and it is these which attack us.” He thought that as long as we do our own will we are fine, but when we strive for that which is better, when we questions ourselves and what God wants of us, and turn towards God, that is when our struggles begin. This man might have seemed normal—he could slip into the temple unnoticed, but the message of Jesus calls to this man and the spirit isn’t pleased with the change.

There have been times when I have had to choose God over myself. These have been times that I believed in God’s existence: but doubted God’s goodness: thought that maybe God had set me up, was having a good laugh at my pathetic expense. I was getting closer to God: and further from my own will: and I felt my very being being ripped in two. The part of me that it’s charge of self-preservation was not pleased: it slid me into doubt. That part is getting weaker in me: the part that thinks God is really leading me to some lonesome valley of death, instead of carrying me through it. I still worry that God will cost me more than I’m willing to live without.

I met with a woman in a hospital in Atlanta, who had voices in her head that wanted her to kill her husband and she had tried. She was in agony, because she loved her husband and said he was such a good man. I don’t know what her diagnosis was or her treatment, but her brain was doing things to her, that were beyond her control. It seems like it’d almost be easier if someone could perform a ritual and relieve her, instead of the years of treatment she will likely endure.

A member of my family has a long complicated history of mental illness. She’s been diagnosed with different things, in and out of clinics, several suicide attempts: some that she remembers and some that she doesn’t . . . She’s been completely out of it, quiet and daydreaming, or sitting and acting like a child, but with the right combination of medicines she can be alert and happy.

I don’t mean to say that people with mental illnesses are possessed, just that perhaps that’s the kind of thing Mark is describing: the way that an addiction or chemical imbalance in the brain seems to hold a power and sway over us.

It’s irresponsible to say to someone that they just need an exorcism. We wouldn’t need 12 step programs if a simple prayer could do it. I think the ritual for an exorcism would still be in our hymnal.

Regardless, I know I’ve had experience with people who seemed: almost evil? Who had a certain gleam to their eye, who were doing terrible things: ruining lives, tearing apart families, and seemed not to care, seemed almost pleased with themselves . . . there is a reason we call these “the spiritual forces of wickedness” a reason we personify them in the form of demons. Because how else could people be so awful? And maybe it’s their experience, personality, or past, maybe it’s an addiction or compulsion, or maybe something more, far more sinister . . .

The point is: that in Mark: Jesus spends a great deal of time healing and casting out unclean spirits: he heals the sick, the lame: things like leprosy and blindness, diseases that affect the body, mostly. And then he casts out the unclean spirits: diseases that affect the mind: things like depression and addiction: things that keep our spirits from being whole and good, things that stand between us and God.

Whatever it is, Jesus is taking it on.
The first of his miracles:
The first of his healings:
Is to take on the spiritual type of healing.

Jesus has authority: when we follow Jesus, there’s trouble: there’s parts of us that may shriek with disdain for the light of God—parts of us that we have to test and question and overcome and cast out: or ask Jesus to cast out: We all have limitations, I’ll leave that up to you whether or not you call them demons.