John 1:6-8, 19-28
Shawn and I watched the movie Elf last night. I know this is a favorite for some of us around here and I’d like to explore the whole concept of the “Christmas Movie.”
The Christmas Movie, has become quite the phenomenon. When I was a kid, it seemed like there were about 3 of these movies: The Grench, Rudoph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and Frosty the Snowman. These movies are now lost among the hundreds of Christmasy movies and shows that come through the TV. They seem to all end up depicting the same scenes, despite their variances in plots and mishaps: maybe he was left home while the family went to Europe, maybe she kidnapped her date for family Christmas, maybe he’s losing the light competition to his neighbor, maybe that obnoxious brother has parked his RV in the driveway, maybe he’s killed Santa Claus and now has to BE Santa Claus. You know, everyday stuff.
In the end, the movie is always about love and family. The girl gets the guy, the child and parents are reunited, the feuding brothers call for a truce. Everyone exchanges gifts, and eats large turkeys, while the snow falls softly outside and for a moment all is calm, all is bright. For these shows, things become possible at Christmas, like in no other time. People tell the truth, they help each other, the lost return home, the prisoners are set free, wars cease. All kinds of miracles happen—Christmas miracles.
I picked movies to talk about our cultural ideas of Christmas. I’m guessing we’re all smart enough to know the difference. To not think that Santa might really pull through this time with that wish we’ve always had. But there’s still something about it all that holds sway with me. I feel the nostalgia creeping up in the fall, the second I start to smell cinnamon candles in the grocery story. It hits me when I see a snow flurry, hear a particular song, think of a Christmas Eve candlelight service, or a beautiful tree. The first time I saw this sanctuary all decorated, it caught my breath. Because Christmas is coming. In all of its glorious, magic, feel-good possibilities.
When we meet John the Baptist in today’s scripture, he is busy. He is crying in the wilderness, he is preparing the way, he is baptizing with water, he is testifying to the light, to the coming Messiah.
In our wider culture, Christmas is about Christ only in name. Even the local Christian radio stations talk more about listeners’ “favorite xmas memories” which are things like “decorating cookies with my mom” “finding the tree with my dad,” “snow.”
Nothing that sounds like the true meaning of the coming of an Incarnational God in the body of a human baby boy. It all sounds more like traditional family values and Northern weather.
Instead we have this strange, overly sentimental holiday which might have more to do with getting us all through the depressing slump of winter than anything else. A holiday in which we honor the celebrations instead of the true event. The way we might celebrate a wedding, more than a marriage.
And then we come to church, and it’s all ruined. We hear about buying less and giving more, about sacrifice and courage in the face of fear and change. We talk about Jesus. And we don’t sing Christmas carols. We’re not buying poinsettias. We honor the waiting, the coming before we honor the presence. To that end, Christmas is just the beginning. It’s the birth of God Among Us. Not the day that it all is unwrapped, opened, and then quickly put away.
The thing I love about cultural Christmas, is the hope and joy. And maybe not everyone needs Jesus for that, but I do. And maybe Christmas ought to be just about Christ. And the Winter Festival of Hope and Joy can be for everyone else.
I wonder if our churches haven’t become more like Christmas and less like Christ. I wonder if we haven’t replaced Christ with warm, accommodation, if we have become culturally comfortable instead of radically disreputable.
John the Baptist is radical. He lives on the fringe of society and preaches an urgent message of quick repentance. He baptizes with water, as part of a cleansing ritual of purification in the face of the end times. Jesus comes to baptize with water and the spirit, as the Son of God.
To those who interrogate him, John tells them who he is not and who he is. He is not the Light. He is the voice crying in the wilderness. John knows his reason for existence, his purpose, and the one whose way he is preparing. As we prepare for Christmas this Advent, do we know for whom we are preparing? Are we repenting?
Like John, we are to testify to the light. Not the trappings of the holiday, but the light that it’s supposed to celebrate. Not the sentimental light, not twinkly lights, but true blazing light. Not light that sparkles politely in the night. The light that ends all darkness. The light of a baby who turns out to be God the Father Almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth, lying in a dirty trough, tiny, helpless, and squalling. What can we do with that other than drink another cup of eggnog?
From the very beginning, God chooses to be in the suffering. God doesn’t come as an earthly king, not into a rich family, not to experience the luxuries of wealth, but the realities of poverty, dirt, and hard work. The incarnation reveals exactly what kind of God we’re dealing with. A God who comes to us as both God and Human Being. Who comes as a baby—helpless and dependent—unable to do anything but the most basic of creaturely functions. And born into a poor family at that, with young, unmarried parents, who couldn’t find a decent hotel to stay in.
The baby grows up to become a man, who, like John the baptizer, is not always someone we’re comfortable with. But someone we’re supposed to testify about.
Words like witness and testimony have become like the bogeyman in many of our churches. We don’t witness to Jesus, or testify about our faith, because then we sound like THOSE Christians: the pushy kind, those who debate people on the street, who say things like “if you were to die tomorrow, where would you spend eternity?”
Instead, I think we need to reclaim those words. Instead of thinking of winning a debate, of converting another person as a competition, in the purest sense, testimony just means telling our story. It means witnessing to the light of Christ in our lives, whether or not we are convincing. It doesn’t mean memorizing scripture to be able to proof text it in a theological street fight.
We all need to be able to tell our story, of how we got here, and not just how we came to be at Washington Street, whether it’s been 40 years or 30 minutes, but how we understand the pull that God has on us, the claim that Jesus has on our lives, the Holy Spirit that we feel moving.
I’ve had to tell my story a lot, and it’s never been in a church service. It’s usually with a group of other preachers, and we call it “THE CALL STORY.” It’s deeply personal, but it’s fair game in almost any gathering that we will tell of our callings. Even these aren’t necessarily about how or why we’re Christians, just how or why we think we should be ministers. The Christian part goes something like this” Well, I was raised in the church and as a I grew up, I found that I still found my faith in church teachings.” Everyone nods knowingly and we go on to talk about family reactions and so forth.
John came to testify to the light. I am not the light. I have no confusion that I am anyone’s savior, but the more I see and experience of humanity, I realize that we are deeply, deeply in need of a redeemer. It makes sense to me that a divine “thing” would have created this world and everything in it, that it didn’t happen by accident, however it happened. But that belief doesn’t make me a Christian. It just means I’m not an atheist.
With all our pain and brokenness, it’s hard to breath sometimes, just thinking about it all. We are not all fine on our own, even with a loving God somewhere, it’s not enough. When God the Word came to live on the earth as Jesus, God validated us in a wholly unique way. God said not only have I created you, but I am one of you too. God came and validated and honored our existence and our life: our joys and our pains, the full spectrum of all that it means to be a human person. When he died, he just went that much further, to share death, the immortal God, sharing in death and suffering, and then he vanquished that death once and for all.
And that’s the kind of God I believe in. The kind that lived in a human body, and allowed himself to break in order to save the world.
The hope and joy of the season, radiate from and point back to the hope and joy and promise of Jesus. It’s kind of nice to see everyone embracing these and striving for happiness and joy and merriment. But it’s also sad, like in so many instances, we cherish and celebrate the effects of something, instead of the actual thing. Perhaps it’s because the party, the celebration is much more fun then the actual event, then the actual caring and raising of a baby. Or we don’t know what to do with Jesus. It’s nice when he’s a baby even if it’s weird that he’s also God. But he’s manageable, small, and sweet. But he grows up, lives a strange life, and dies a gruesome death. We don’t get to keep the Christmas Jesus, the tiny omnipotent baby God. Our sweet images of baby Jesus will soon be replaced by an embarrassingly skinny, rib showing, half-naked man nailed to a cross. Then that will be replaced by an even stranger image of a scarred man dressed in white ascending into heaven. Maybe Santa Claus and flying reindeer really do make more sense.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Monday, November 17, 2008
Irresponsible Privilege
Matthew 25: 14-30
Perfectionism just thrives inside the beltway. If you look around this room, I bet you’ll spot many perfectionists in our midst. At the root of this all, is the fear of failure. If we’re not perfectionists, we may still be ridden with self-absorption and anxiety, with the persistent thought that we’re not good enough. Not good enough parents, not good enough for the job we really want, not good enough to find someone to spend the rest of our lives with, not good enough to be and do all that we’ve ever wanted. Or all that God has ever wanted for us. That is if God really is a loving supportive God, and not the demanding punitive one.
For the first slaves in our story, self-esteem is a not an issue. They receive their tasks, tailored to each one’s ability, and go about fulfilling their work. The last slave, however, is overcome by fear: he fears this master who is ruthless, who reaps what he does not sow. He wouldn’t be able to do the job anyway, so why try? Better to bury the talents so they will at least be safe. In the end, when confronted by the master, the slave doesn’t blame himself, he points his finger at the master, for being a cruel man who would never have been satisfied anyway. Maybe this is an accurate depiction of an assertive and creative God, or maybe it’s a fearful projection. It’s not his fear that matters, but his inaction in the face of it.
We are made in the image of a God who loves us. Our being begins and ends with God, how could we not value who we are?
The talents, whether we think of them as money or abilities are resources: God-given resources that the can be put to good use in service of the Commonwealth of God. We are responsible for our collective values, decisions, and stewardship. Like those slaves, we are both entrusted and accountable with much of sacred value.
The mistake for the third servant is the assumption that he had anything in the first place. The only thing he had of value belonged to the master and he sat on it, as if it were really his. No glory came out of it. What do we have that doesn’t ultimately belong to God? And who are we to squander that gift?
This idea of wasting God’s gifts reminds me of a poem by Marianne Williamson:
Our deepest fear
Is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear
Is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light,
Not our darkness,
That most frightens us.
We ask ourselves,
Who am I to be brilliant,
Gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking
So that other people
Won’t feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest
The glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us;
It’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine,
We unconsciously give other people
Permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.
We are entrusted with the glory of God, for the love of God. This isn’t glory so that we can outdo others, it’s glory and liberation for everyone. That we can glorify God through ourselves. Not that we can love only ourselves, that we can get over ourselves enough to love God and others. We don’t have to waste time wondering if we’re good enough, but we get out there and actually do something.
The talents come to represent power for the slaves. For those who invest well, they are given more. In this same story in the gospel of Luke, the productive ones are given more cities to rule. God has given us each a measure of power and influence in our own lives.
Now before you go off to take over the world, let’s think about what these means. If God gives us power that we are to invest and not squander, what does that mean? How do we use this power for good and not to co-opt others?
It’s easy for most of us to deny that we have any power or gifts: that we have nothing to bring to God’s kingdom, but ourselves. We may feel poor in earthly power, there’s a long list of people who have more.
The real truth is that every person in this room is powerful. As individuals, families, and congregation gathered here for worship: we have a lot of power. We need to use that to be involved in God, and not give in to the apathy of “there’s nothing I can do.”
The Carpenter’s Shelter, just up the street, provides many services for the city’s lost: the homeless, the hungry, the needy. The people who run the shelter and those who volunteer have a lot more power in the world than those who come seeking help. Generally, these are the people society who can hold a job, pay for their own housing, buy cars and groceries, balance their income, and invest wisely. They are self-sufficient citizens. The people who come seeking help have very little power in the world. For whatever circumstances in their lives, they are not able to play the game of life in America without guidance.
For this situation, it would be all too easy, for the powerful to help the needy without changing the hierarchy of power. Never ending hand-outs and bailouts would keep the helpless helpless.
In the shelter’s early years, its dedicated workers noticed that many folks who staid in the shelter and then left, would end up at the shelter again. Perhaps they had trouble keeping their job and paying the rent, or for some, the shelter was the safest home they had ever known. The Carpenter Shelter now provides an extensive list of programs that help people find jobs and keep them, helps them find and secure affordable housing, helps them get into college, helps in ways that break the cycle of dependency. Currently, for every 100 people who pass through their shelter, 90 never have the need to return. The shelter workers have not buried their talents, but have invested them in the people that they serve. They have used their power to empower others. They have used their privilege responsibly.
Think about verse 29: “For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away” (Matthew 25:29). In the midst of November, we find ourselves making our lists: our wish lists and our shopping lists: in the midst of thankfulness for what we have we face the excess consumerism of the Christmas season. We temper this with our charitable giving: so both our consumerism and our charity reach new heights. But we don’t hear as much about social change. Our Christmas consumerism and charity are all about this moment, but not usually about lasting changes.
VOICE stands for Virginians Organized for Interfaith Community Engagement. You’ll be hearing more about VOICE in the coming months, as we plan and dream about the future of the mission here at WSUMC.
VOICE represents a collection of faith communities: Christian, Jewish, Muslim, people of different backgrounds and economic levels all united around the common cause of improving life, based on the challenge to care for all of God’s children. They seek to work with the government to change policy, to help create more affordable housing, immigration reform, and affordable medical care.
They are faith communities who are coming together: combining their power and their influence to get the attention of elected officials: to work for the greatest needs of the Northern Virginia area. They are combining their power to help those without power.
The Rainbow Fish has everything when it comes to beautiful scales, but no friends. He gives away his scales, and so he looses, he only has one instead of many, but his scales are distributed among all of he new friends, and he has more than he ever had before. He loses most of his scales, but he becomes rich in friendship and love.
Love is one of those “talents” that easily multiplies the more it is given away. We can never run out of love. The more we love others, the more love we receive. Loving someone else means not being afraid: it means investing ourselves, our gifts, and abilities, in the world: in the lives of other people, and not hoarding everything to ourselves because we’re afraid we may have nothing to offer.
Jesus invested his whole life in the world. He gave us everything he had. On the night before he was arrested, he shared a simple meal with the few that he had entrusted to be a community of God in the world. They were a group of people, many of whom buried their talent in the face of fear, but who came to have enough faith in themselves and God to carry out Jesus’ work.
Jesus took food from the table: common, ordinary food and told another story with it. He picked up a loaf of unleavened bread, the kind their ancestors had eaten in Egypt, a bread already rich in redemption and said “it’s as if this were my body and its broken for you, that you may live, remember me when you eat it.” And he took a cup of wine, made from grapes and vines, grown out of God’s good earth and said “it’s as if this were my blood that is shed for you that you may have eternal life in God, think of me when you drink it.”
Perfectionism just thrives inside the beltway. If you look around this room, I bet you’ll spot many perfectionists in our midst. At the root of this all, is the fear of failure. If we’re not perfectionists, we may still be ridden with self-absorption and anxiety, with the persistent thought that we’re not good enough. Not good enough parents, not good enough for the job we really want, not good enough to find someone to spend the rest of our lives with, not good enough to be and do all that we’ve ever wanted. Or all that God has ever wanted for us. That is if God really is a loving supportive God, and not the demanding punitive one.
For the first slaves in our story, self-esteem is a not an issue. They receive their tasks, tailored to each one’s ability, and go about fulfilling their work. The last slave, however, is overcome by fear: he fears this master who is ruthless, who reaps what he does not sow. He wouldn’t be able to do the job anyway, so why try? Better to bury the talents so they will at least be safe. In the end, when confronted by the master, the slave doesn’t blame himself, he points his finger at the master, for being a cruel man who would never have been satisfied anyway. Maybe this is an accurate depiction of an assertive and creative God, or maybe it’s a fearful projection. It’s not his fear that matters, but his inaction in the face of it.
We are made in the image of a God who loves us. Our being begins and ends with God, how could we not value who we are?
The talents, whether we think of them as money or abilities are resources: God-given resources that the can be put to good use in service of the Commonwealth of God. We are responsible for our collective values, decisions, and stewardship. Like those slaves, we are both entrusted and accountable with much of sacred value.
The mistake for the third servant is the assumption that he had anything in the first place. The only thing he had of value belonged to the master and he sat on it, as if it were really his. No glory came out of it. What do we have that doesn’t ultimately belong to God? And who are we to squander that gift?
This idea of wasting God’s gifts reminds me of a poem by Marianne Williamson:
Our deepest fear
Is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear
Is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light,
Not our darkness,
That most frightens us.
We ask ourselves,
Who am I to be brilliant,
Gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking
So that other people
Won’t feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest
The glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us;
It’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine,
We unconsciously give other people
Permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.
We are entrusted with the glory of God, for the love of God. This isn’t glory so that we can outdo others, it’s glory and liberation for everyone. That we can glorify God through ourselves. Not that we can love only ourselves, that we can get over ourselves enough to love God and others. We don’t have to waste time wondering if we’re good enough, but we get out there and actually do something.
The talents come to represent power for the slaves. For those who invest well, they are given more. In this same story in the gospel of Luke, the productive ones are given more cities to rule. God has given us each a measure of power and influence in our own lives.
Now before you go off to take over the world, let’s think about what these means. If God gives us power that we are to invest and not squander, what does that mean? How do we use this power for good and not to co-opt others?
It’s easy for most of us to deny that we have any power or gifts: that we have nothing to bring to God’s kingdom, but ourselves. We may feel poor in earthly power, there’s a long list of people who have more.
The real truth is that every person in this room is powerful. As individuals, families, and congregation gathered here for worship: we have a lot of power. We need to use that to be involved in God, and not give in to the apathy of “there’s nothing I can do.”
The Carpenter’s Shelter, just up the street, provides many services for the city’s lost: the homeless, the hungry, the needy. The people who run the shelter and those who volunteer have a lot more power in the world than those who come seeking help. Generally, these are the people society who can hold a job, pay for their own housing, buy cars and groceries, balance their income, and invest wisely. They are self-sufficient citizens. The people who come seeking help have very little power in the world. For whatever circumstances in their lives, they are not able to play the game of life in America without guidance.
For this situation, it would be all too easy, for the powerful to help the needy without changing the hierarchy of power. Never ending hand-outs and bailouts would keep the helpless helpless.
In the shelter’s early years, its dedicated workers noticed that many folks who staid in the shelter and then left, would end up at the shelter again. Perhaps they had trouble keeping their job and paying the rent, or for some, the shelter was the safest home they had ever known. The Carpenter Shelter now provides an extensive list of programs that help people find jobs and keep them, helps them find and secure affordable housing, helps them get into college, helps in ways that break the cycle of dependency. Currently, for every 100 people who pass through their shelter, 90 never have the need to return. The shelter workers have not buried their talents, but have invested them in the people that they serve. They have used their power to empower others. They have used their privilege responsibly.
Think about verse 29: “For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away” (Matthew 25:29). In the midst of November, we find ourselves making our lists: our wish lists and our shopping lists: in the midst of thankfulness for what we have we face the excess consumerism of the Christmas season. We temper this with our charitable giving: so both our consumerism and our charity reach new heights. But we don’t hear as much about social change. Our Christmas consumerism and charity are all about this moment, but not usually about lasting changes.
VOICE stands for Virginians Organized for Interfaith Community Engagement. You’ll be hearing more about VOICE in the coming months, as we plan and dream about the future of the mission here at WSUMC.
VOICE represents a collection of faith communities: Christian, Jewish, Muslim, people of different backgrounds and economic levels all united around the common cause of improving life, based on the challenge to care for all of God’s children. They seek to work with the government to change policy, to help create more affordable housing, immigration reform, and affordable medical care.
They are faith communities who are coming together: combining their power and their influence to get the attention of elected officials: to work for the greatest needs of the Northern Virginia area. They are combining their power to help those without power.
The Rainbow Fish has everything when it comes to beautiful scales, but no friends. He gives away his scales, and so he looses, he only has one instead of many, but his scales are distributed among all of he new friends, and he has more than he ever had before. He loses most of his scales, but he becomes rich in friendship and love.
Love is one of those “talents” that easily multiplies the more it is given away. We can never run out of love. The more we love others, the more love we receive. Loving someone else means not being afraid: it means investing ourselves, our gifts, and abilities, in the world: in the lives of other people, and not hoarding everything to ourselves because we’re afraid we may have nothing to offer.
Jesus invested his whole life in the world. He gave us everything he had. On the night before he was arrested, he shared a simple meal with the few that he had entrusted to be a community of God in the world. They were a group of people, many of whom buried their talent in the face of fear, but who came to have enough faith in themselves and God to carry out Jesus’ work.
Jesus took food from the table: common, ordinary food and told another story with it. He picked up a loaf of unleavened bread, the kind their ancestors had eaten in Egypt, a bread already rich in redemption and said “it’s as if this were my body and its broken for you, that you may live, remember me when you eat it.” And he took a cup of wine, made from grapes and vines, grown out of God’s good earth and said “it’s as if this were my blood that is shed for you that you may have eternal life in God, think of me when you drink it.”
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Food for the Journey
Matthew 22:34-46
Change is one of those things that happen whether we like it or not. Usually, we don’t like it. We fear it. As mortal human beings, we know that nothing ever stays the same, and that in some sense stability really is a myth.
Today we celebrate Reformation Sunday, as the anniversary of the day that Martin Luther made his dramatic break with the Catholic church. As Protestants ourselves, we generally think of this as a good change. Of course as Methodists, we trace our denominational heritage back to the Church of England which broke away from the established church through its own reforms, both theological and political.
Phyllis Tickle and many other current church scholars see overall church history as a series of change and settling, change and settling. They have suggested that every 500 years the church goes through a giant rummage sale. About 1000 years ago the church split between the West and the East. About 500 the Protestant Reformation began. Now, we find ourselves in a general state of decline and social change and confusion: some say the overall church is dying and some say it is being transformed into something new. There’s no doubt of a “decline” of mainline Protestantism: we see it here in all that empty space in the pews, the empty overflow chapel downstairs and the balcony seating that we don’t really need. But we can hope for a transformation and renewed life. The fact is not that the church will change, but that the church is changing.
If this is true, then current forms of church will not die out and end. The Eastern Church continues to exist. The Roman Catholic continues to exist. During the period following Luther’s reform, the Catholic Church underwent its own changes and adjustments.
The Protestant Reformation didn’t destroy the established church, instead new branches arose and everyone changed and transformed into something new.
Like 500 years ago, we find ourselves in the midst of great social and technological change. We now have a global culture and limitless information at our finger tips. We’ve taken our sense of individual identity quite seriously to the neglect of our communal nature. Many people are suspicious of institutions that remind us that we are dependent on each other and not merely individuals. And so we hear lots of folks say they are “spiritual” but not “religious.” They believe in God, but not organized religion. They may have been hurt by religion, or jaded by its sense of hope, or just don’t want someone else telling them what to believe. Sadly, the church sometimes looks like a place where not everyone is loved and accepted, is full of empty platitudes and a false kindness, or a narrow set of beliefs that demand strict adherence or else. Ideally, the church is a true community, where each person is strengthened and challenged in faith and loved and accepted. That it is a genuine place where folks can come with their questions and wrestle to find answers together—can be genuinely caring and yet fully cognizant of the depth of the mystery we find in God. And that we ultimately arrive at our beliefs together, that there is room for doubt and questions and no one has to take what the preacher says as law.
About 2000 years ago there was a reformer. He looked at the current religion and showed them a way to live more faithfully: more by grace and less by law. He taught amazing lessons about love, about feeding the hungry, about loving God, and loving all other people just as much as we love ourselves. Like other reformers who would follow, he made the status quo uncomfortable, he rubbed religious and political leaders the wrong way and they sentenced him to capital punishment just like any other radical renegade. But this guy wasn’t just a crazy fool, he was also God. Christians are not alone in worshipping God. But we are unique in that we believe in the kind of God that would become so humble, who would walk in our shoes, who would show us what love really looks like, and would willingly die because of it. God incarnate, in human flesh.
One way we celebrate this incarnation is through Communion.
We eat every day. In most homes, the kitchen is the central place for family and friends to gather. It’s an obvious, basic part of human survival. But, for the most part, it is also something inherently pleasant. If most human beings did not enjoy food, we wouldn’t have so many restaurants, and so many types of food, and so many chefs. We’d eat something basic and move on. Because they were all human, Jesus and his disciples ate meals. They physically had to, but they also did it for the fellowship.
John Wesley actually participated in Communion as frequently as he could because he found it to be a source of daily sustenance for the spiritual journey. Wesley also called it a “means of grace” meaning that the Lord’s Super is one of the ways that God communicates directly to us: we have prayer, we have scripture, we have communion.
In early American Methodism, churches could only have communion every few months because that’s how long it would be before a traveling preacher could be with them to preside. Then they bumped it up to once every four months and now to once a month. Those days are long gone and we still tend to treat communion as an occasional element of worship instead of a regular one.
When we share in this meal, we have to get up, if we are able, and come forward. We might bump into each other, we might be clumsy, but there’s no wrong way to come to the table. We touch and taste the bread and the juice, we can kneel at the altar, we can sing, we can smile at each other, we can pray. We have the chance to be awake and alive and connected during worship. We’ll see how worship can’t always be something that we can do all alone in our living room, watching a service on TV or listening to a sermon pod cast. It isn’t just a walk alone in the woods. There’s a reason to get out of bed and come to church. It’s not something we can do alone or online, it’s not personal enlightenment, it’s not just “me and God.” Christian practice is loving God and loving all other people. Worship requires coming together because the love and grace of God comes to us and then immediately must go back out. Our communion liturgy reminds us of this. The bread and cup become the body and blood of Christ so that we can be Christ for the world: so that we can work Christ’s loving, sacrificial redemption in a hateful, selfish, unforgiving world. Communion reminds us of who we are and how we’re supposed to be.
Jesus broke bread with his friends and followers on many occasions. He ate with sinners and saints alike. He fed 5000 with a few loaves of bread on the shores of the Sea of Galilee and turned water into wine at a wedding in Cana. He described the kingdom of heaven as a glorious feast and spoke of food for the hungry.
Jesus loved his disciples and he loves all of us. He was willing to let his physical body die in order to show us what sacrificial love truly is. His sacrifice would feed our spirits. Before he died, his disciples never quite understood that Jesus was going to die and then live again. Before he was arrested, Jesus shared one last meal. And in an attempt to help them understand, he took a loaf of bread and blessed it and gave it to them and said: this is my body: physical food with spiritual meaning, for you to eat when I am gone and to remember me when you can no longer see me. The wine, he took and blessed, and said this is my blood, its new wine, poured out for you as my love is poured out for you: when you eat and drink, remember me.
Change is one of those things that happen whether we like it or not. Usually, we don’t like it. We fear it. As mortal human beings, we know that nothing ever stays the same, and that in some sense stability really is a myth.
Today we celebrate Reformation Sunday, as the anniversary of the day that Martin Luther made his dramatic break with the Catholic church. As Protestants ourselves, we generally think of this as a good change. Of course as Methodists, we trace our denominational heritage back to the Church of England which broke away from the established church through its own reforms, both theological and political.
Phyllis Tickle and many other current church scholars see overall church history as a series of change and settling, change and settling. They have suggested that every 500 years the church goes through a giant rummage sale. About 1000 years ago the church split between the West and the East. About 500 the Protestant Reformation began. Now, we find ourselves in a general state of decline and social change and confusion: some say the overall church is dying and some say it is being transformed into something new. There’s no doubt of a “decline” of mainline Protestantism: we see it here in all that empty space in the pews, the empty overflow chapel downstairs and the balcony seating that we don’t really need. But we can hope for a transformation and renewed life. The fact is not that the church will change, but that the church is changing.
If this is true, then current forms of church will not die out and end. The Eastern Church continues to exist. The Roman Catholic continues to exist. During the period following Luther’s reform, the Catholic Church underwent its own changes and adjustments.
The Protestant Reformation didn’t destroy the established church, instead new branches arose and everyone changed and transformed into something new.
Like 500 years ago, we find ourselves in the midst of great social and technological change. We now have a global culture and limitless information at our finger tips. We’ve taken our sense of individual identity quite seriously to the neglect of our communal nature. Many people are suspicious of institutions that remind us that we are dependent on each other and not merely individuals. And so we hear lots of folks say they are “spiritual” but not “religious.” They believe in God, but not organized religion. They may have been hurt by religion, or jaded by its sense of hope, or just don’t want someone else telling them what to believe. Sadly, the church sometimes looks like a place where not everyone is loved and accepted, is full of empty platitudes and a false kindness, or a narrow set of beliefs that demand strict adherence or else. Ideally, the church is a true community, where each person is strengthened and challenged in faith and loved and accepted. That it is a genuine place where folks can come with their questions and wrestle to find answers together—can be genuinely caring and yet fully cognizant of the depth of the mystery we find in God. And that we ultimately arrive at our beliefs together, that there is room for doubt and questions and no one has to take what the preacher says as law.
About 2000 years ago there was a reformer. He looked at the current religion and showed them a way to live more faithfully: more by grace and less by law. He taught amazing lessons about love, about feeding the hungry, about loving God, and loving all other people just as much as we love ourselves. Like other reformers who would follow, he made the status quo uncomfortable, he rubbed religious and political leaders the wrong way and they sentenced him to capital punishment just like any other radical renegade. But this guy wasn’t just a crazy fool, he was also God. Christians are not alone in worshipping God. But we are unique in that we believe in the kind of God that would become so humble, who would walk in our shoes, who would show us what love really looks like, and would willingly die because of it. God incarnate, in human flesh.
One way we celebrate this incarnation is through Communion.
We eat every day. In most homes, the kitchen is the central place for family and friends to gather. It’s an obvious, basic part of human survival. But, for the most part, it is also something inherently pleasant. If most human beings did not enjoy food, we wouldn’t have so many restaurants, and so many types of food, and so many chefs. We’d eat something basic and move on. Because they were all human, Jesus and his disciples ate meals. They physically had to, but they also did it for the fellowship.
John Wesley actually participated in Communion as frequently as he could because he found it to be a source of daily sustenance for the spiritual journey. Wesley also called it a “means of grace” meaning that the Lord’s Super is one of the ways that God communicates directly to us: we have prayer, we have scripture, we have communion.
In early American Methodism, churches could only have communion every few months because that’s how long it would be before a traveling preacher could be with them to preside. Then they bumped it up to once every four months and now to once a month. Those days are long gone and we still tend to treat communion as an occasional element of worship instead of a regular one.
When we share in this meal, we have to get up, if we are able, and come forward. We might bump into each other, we might be clumsy, but there’s no wrong way to come to the table. We touch and taste the bread and the juice, we can kneel at the altar, we can sing, we can smile at each other, we can pray. We have the chance to be awake and alive and connected during worship. We’ll see how worship can’t always be something that we can do all alone in our living room, watching a service on TV or listening to a sermon pod cast. It isn’t just a walk alone in the woods. There’s a reason to get out of bed and come to church. It’s not something we can do alone or online, it’s not personal enlightenment, it’s not just “me and God.” Christian practice is loving God and loving all other people. Worship requires coming together because the love and grace of God comes to us and then immediately must go back out. Our communion liturgy reminds us of this. The bread and cup become the body and blood of Christ so that we can be Christ for the world: so that we can work Christ’s loving, sacrificial redemption in a hateful, selfish, unforgiving world. Communion reminds us of who we are and how we’re supposed to be.
Jesus broke bread with his friends and followers on many occasions. He ate with sinners and saints alike. He fed 5000 with a few loaves of bread on the shores of the Sea of Galilee and turned water into wine at a wedding in Cana. He described the kingdom of heaven as a glorious feast and spoke of food for the hungry.
Jesus loved his disciples and he loves all of us. He was willing to let his physical body die in order to show us what sacrificial love truly is. His sacrifice would feed our spirits. Before he died, his disciples never quite understood that Jesus was going to die and then live again. Before he was arrested, Jesus shared one last meal. And in an attempt to help them understand, he took a loaf of bread and blessed it and gave it to them and said: this is my body: physical food with spiritual meaning, for you to eat when I am gone and to remember me when you can no longer see me. The wine, he took and blessed, and said this is my blood, its new wine, poured out for you as my love is poured out for you: when you eat and drink, remember me.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
BookShelf
There are some books that are floating around WSUMC. Almost literally. Take This Bread by Sara Miles is one such book. It has popped into my life, it found its way into one of Mike's recent sermons, and I spied a bag of copies in the sanctuary on Sunday. The Shack by William Young is another one. I know a few folks have read it, I saw it on a coffee table in 112 a few weeks ago, I bought my own copy yesterday, and then a stack found its way to a committee meeting this morning. I haven't read this, but you can be sure that I'll be reading it as soon as possible. I am also reading The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by A.J. Jacobs. I've only read the first chapter, but its enjoyable and interesting so far. So here you have three books: one I've read, one I intend to read, and one that I am reading. I invite you to join me, share your thoughts as we go along, and add to the list of books we all ought to be reading!
Monday, October 6, 2008
It's Not Ours
Matthew 21:33-43
Generally, vineyards are lovely places. Think of picturesque wineries in France, California or the hills of Virginia. The wine makers watch as the grapes grow and then turn that fruit into a new creation—all on one estate. The kingdom of heaven, the new earth, must look a bit like this too: plump grapes growing on a hillside, people who take pride in their work, and fine wine and delicious banquets for everyone. Jesus talks so much about vineyards and wine. He talks about himself as the vine and us as the branches. He turns water into wine to quench the thirsts of wedding guests at Canaan and he turns his blood into wine to quench our thirst.
Let me tell you a story.
There once was a deity who built a church. He had lots of churches, but he placed this particular church in Old Town Alexandria. He built a fine sanctuary and a large education building. He underestimated the need for parking. Then he leased the church to tenants. These tenants were charged with the responsibility of nurturing the faith community, with genuinely reaching out to strangers, with worshipping the deity with vigor and thoughtfulness. Throughout the decades the church saw many changes in the world. It struggled and grew and struggled again. The congregation wrestled with who it was and who the deity wanted it to be. In times of growth they were strong and confident, in leaner times they became anxious and distraught.
Jesus doesn’t say much about the vineyard tenants. Whether or not they grow grapes and make wine, if they drink it all themselves, or sit around and do nothing. All we know, is that when the owner sends slaves to collect the produce, the tenants kill the slaves. Twice. When the owner sends his son to collect the harvest, the tenants kill him as well.
The tenants are wicked because they seem to have forgotten that the vineyard isn’t theirs and they are willing to murder the landowner’s messengers. The owner should then take that vineyard and give it to responsible tenants who will produce and yield fruit. So too, Jesus says, God will take the kingdom of heaven and give it to people who will produce fruit.
In our local vineyard on Washington Street, are we producing fruit?
Are we deepening our spiritual connection to God? Are we praying and exploring other spiritual disciplines? Do we bring our full selves to worship? Do we allow ourselves to invoke and experience the Holy presence of God? Are we deepening our relationship with God?
Are we welcoming the strangers in our midst, are we hospitable to our visitors and our new members? Are we nurturing and caring for one another?
Are we risking our comfort level and reaching out to those in need in service and mission? Are we sharing God’s love and connecting deeply with our broken, suffering world?
Are we using our financial gifts to benefit the kingdom of God?
Are we opening the doors to our community? As a down-town church on the cusp of Washington DC, how are we finding and living out our unique calling?
If it is at least our desire to do and be these things, then our hearts are in the right place. But that’s not enough. We need to work harder in our vineyard.
Drive around the countryside and you may find a closed, abandoned church. Travel through the city and you may find an old church with a new congregation now residing in it. To stay alive and vibrant the church has got to want to live. The people must produce fruit and gifts and graces. It must exist for reasons other than itself. It must engage God and its community.
Church is more than a Sunday morning activity, it’s a faith community that really hopes to help God change the world. We need to give our tithes, not out of guilt, but out of joy, as an investment in the life and vitality of our spiritual community. We need to make a commitment to be present, to be here for ourselves and each other, to nurture our community, to reach out to the suffering, to plant our spiritual roots and reach out in love to others.
Our church is a family. It is a place for us to tend our spiritual lives, to feed our physical bodies, to connect to our human family, and to reach out to our broken world. Your giving keeps everything going here. The hope is that we will give, not because we have to, but because we want to.
Being fruitful is not an option. Jesus comes across a fig tree without fruit, curses it, and it withers on the spot. He speaks of taking away a vineyard and giving it to those who will produce fruit. Those who will carry out his message, those who will do what he’s talking about, those who will comfort the poor and challenge the rich those who will love the unlovable, those who will risk everything for truth and justice and mercy.
As much as we may love our church, we have to remember that it does not exist solely for our purposes and joy. It is not a private winery. It’s not ours. It’s God’s church. It is God we worship we when come here, God that we seek for relationship, God that we look for in each other, God’s word that we proclaim and God’s word that we feast on. When we come to the table we realize that this act is one of the few that make us uniquely Christian. We speak of body and blood and bread and wine, flesh and food. The Eucharist is not supposed to make sense in our minds. It’s meant to connect our bodies to Jesus and to each other throughout the world. Christ is as near to us as the food that we eat. How could he communicate such closeness other than to lift the bread and say take this as my body. I’m going to die, to show you what it means to take love seriously, to live a life of integrity, to stand up for your convictions even when facing death. Jesus showed us how to live and love and he had to die for it because the status quo couldn’t handle what he was saying. Rather than search themselves for the truth, they murdered him. Jesus is God incarnate, God in human, fleshly form, fully human, fully God. Facing his death, Jesus knew he wouldn’t share that human form for long. He knew that his followers would no longer have a savior that they could physically touch. With bread and wine, Jesus created a symbol, a physical element that they could see and touch and smell and taste to represent a God they could no longer physically experience. Jesus didn’t shy away from the ickier parts of being human. He could talk about blood without being grossed out, because he knows that without blood our bodies cannot exist. When he took the cup, and said that the wine is his blood, he simply meant that blood gives us life and his blood gives us life. His cup is one of renewed life, of restorative wine. We’re acknowledging our human bodies and Jesus’ human body and we’re sharing the spiritual food that Jesus has prepared for us. Jesus provides us food, the way a mother’s body feeds her baby. This Sunday in particular we celebrate World Communion Sunday. Various other churches, or other denominations, in other towns and states and countries are also coming to the table of Christ. Together, we make up the body of Christ and together we seek to honor love and peace in a violent and broken world, to bear fruit and bring about unity for the present and coming vineyard of heaven.
Generally, vineyards are lovely places. Think of picturesque wineries in France, California or the hills of Virginia. The wine makers watch as the grapes grow and then turn that fruit into a new creation—all on one estate. The kingdom of heaven, the new earth, must look a bit like this too: plump grapes growing on a hillside, people who take pride in their work, and fine wine and delicious banquets for everyone. Jesus talks so much about vineyards and wine. He talks about himself as the vine and us as the branches. He turns water into wine to quench the thirsts of wedding guests at Canaan and he turns his blood into wine to quench our thirst.
Let me tell you a story.
There once was a deity who built a church. He had lots of churches, but he placed this particular church in Old Town Alexandria. He built a fine sanctuary and a large education building. He underestimated the need for parking. Then he leased the church to tenants. These tenants were charged with the responsibility of nurturing the faith community, with genuinely reaching out to strangers, with worshipping the deity with vigor and thoughtfulness. Throughout the decades the church saw many changes in the world. It struggled and grew and struggled again. The congregation wrestled with who it was and who the deity wanted it to be. In times of growth they were strong and confident, in leaner times they became anxious and distraught.
Jesus doesn’t say much about the vineyard tenants. Whether or not they grow grapes and make wine, if they drink it all themselves, or sit around and do nothing. All we know, is that when the owner sends slaves to collect the produce, the tenants kill the slaves. Twice. When the owner sends his son to collect the harvest, the tenants kill him as well.
The tenants are wicked because they seem to have forgotten that the vineyard isn’t theirs and they are willing to murder the landowner’s messengers. The owner should then take that vineyard and give it to responsible tenants who will produce and yield fruit. So too, Jesus says, God will take the kingdom of heaven and give it to people who will produce fruit.
In our local vineyard on Washington Street, are we producing fruit?
Are we deepening our spiritual connection to God? Are we praying and exploring other spiritual disciplines? Do we bring our full selves to worship? Do we allow ourselves to invoke and experience the Holy presence of God? Are we deepening our relationship with God?
Are we welcoming the strangers in our midst, are we hospitable to our visitors and our new members? Are we nurturing and caring for one another?
Are we risking our comfort level and reaching out to those in need in service and mission? Are we sharing God’s love and connecting deeply with our broken, suffering world?
Are we using our financial gifts to benefit the kingdom of God?
Are we opening the doors to our community? As a down-town church on the cusp of Washington DC, how are we finding and living out our unique calling?
If it is at least our desire to do and be these things, then our hearts are in the right place. But that’s not enough. We need to work harder in our vineyard.
Drive around the countryside and you may find a closed, abandoned church. Travel through the city and you may find an old church with a new congregation now residing in it. To stay alive and vibrant the church has got to want to live. The people must produce fruit and gifts and graces. It must exist for reasons other than itself. It must engage God and its community.
Church is more than a Sunday morning activity, it’s a faith community that really hopes to help God change the world. We need to give our tithes, not out of guilt, but out of joy, as an investment in the life and vitality of our spiritual community. We need to make a commitment to be present, to be here for ourselves and each other, to nurture our community, to reach out to the suffering, to plant our spiritual roots and reach out in love to others.
Our church is a family. It is a place for us to tend our spiritual lives, to feed our physical bodies, to connect to our human family, and to reach out to our broken world. Your giving keeps everything going here. The hope is that we will give, not because we have to, but because we want to.
Being fruitful is not an option. Jesus comes across a fig tree without fruit, curses it, and it withers on the spot. He speaks of taking away a vineyard and giving it to those who will produce fruit. Those who will carry out his message, those who will do what he’s talking about, those who will comfort the poor and challenge the rich those who will love the unlovable, those who will risk everything for truth and justice and mercy.
As much as we may love our church, we have to remember that it does not exist solely for our purposes and joy. It is not a private winery. It’s not ours. It’s God’s church. It is God we worship we when come here, God that we seek for relationship, God that we look for in each other, God’s word that we proclaim and God’s word that we feast on. When we come to the table we realize that this act is one of the few that make us uniquely Christian. We speak of body and blood and bread and wine, flesh and food. The Eucharist is not supposed to make sense in our minds. It’s meant to connect our bodies to Jesus and to each other throughout the world. Christ is as near to us as the food that we eat. How could he communicate such closeness other than to lift the bread and say take this as my body. I’m going to die, to show you what it means to take love seriously, to live a life of integrity, to stand up for your convictions even when facing death. Jesus showed us how to live and love and he had to die for it because the status quo couldn’t handle what he was saying. Rather than search themselves for the truth, they murdered him. Jesus is God incarnate, God in human, fleshly form, fully human, fully God. Facing his death, Jesus knew he wouldn’t share that human form for long. He knew that his followers would no longer have a savior that they could physically touch. With bread and wine, Jesus created a symbol, a physical element that they could see and touch and smell and taste to represent a God they could no longer physically experience. Jesus didn’t shy away from the ickier parts of being human. He could talk about blood without being grossed out, because he knows that without blood our bodies cannot exist. When he took the cup, and said that the wine is his blood, he simply meant that blood gives us life and his blood gives us life. His cup is one of renewed life, of restorative wine. We’re acknowledging our human bodies and Jesus’ human body and we’re sharing the spiritual food that Jesus has prepared for us. Jesus provides us food, the way a mother’s body feeds her baby. This Sunday in particular we celebrate World Communion Sunday. Various other churches, or other denominations, in other towns and states and countries are also coming to the table of Christ. Together, we make up the body of Christ and together we seek to honor love and peace in a violent and broken world, to bear fruit and bring about unity for the present and coming vineyard of heaven.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
As We Forgive Our Debtors
Matthew 18: 21-35
When it comes to forgiveness, we’re in a double bind. We like to be forgiven. But it’s much harder to forgive. We ask forgiveness for our sins just as we forgive those who sin against us.
We’ve domesticated forgiveness to the point that it’s become something soft and fluffy. It has some supernatural powers since God forgives all of our sins, and the baptismal waters wash them away. It sounds kind of easy, but we still sin, and we still need forgiveness, both to be forgiven and to forgive.
There are some other wilder, scary words, that we don’t hear as often: confession, confrontation, reparation, reconciliation.
Jesus’ answer to forgive those who sin against us 70 times 7 times has become a sound bite to encourage Christians to be forgiving. But that’s it. Be willing to forgive. If someone wrongs you—no matter how atrocious and painful—you forgive them and let it go. Turn the other cheek. Do what Jesus would do.
You know, there’s a certain movie rental company that I’m not pleased with. I rented movies from them a few years ago and stopped when they decided to threaten me with charges for a movie I had long returned. They informed me that I would own this movie within a few days and that might have been fine if I hadn’t already returned it. They did, at the last minute, discover that I was telling the truth and they had the movie all along.
When we moved up here and that was the closest rental place to us, I thought, well, it’s been a while since that last indiscretion maybe things will be different. Then I returned some movies that we’d rented last week. And on Thursday, got a phone call that I would once again be the proud owner of these movies sometime next week if I don’t return them. I’m feeling that perhaps I forgave this company a second chance too quickly. Here we are, in the same position we were a year ago and nothing has changed and I’m just as irritated as I was the first time. But you see, that first forgiveness was a one-sided deal. I did not confront them with their mistake and they did not apologize. They did not confess or offer any sort of reconciliation action. There was no coupon for a free rental. They did not reform their organizational structure to keep better track of their inventory.
Obviously, this is a minor insignificant example, but I’m just saying. I don’t like being accused of things I didn’t do. Forgiveness in this situation is just a mechanism for me to get over my frustration. It doesn’t invoke or require true transformation and change.
The most classic example—and obviously more serious—is in cases of domestic abuse. For too long, abused women seeking help from their priests have been exhorted to forgive their abusers and go home. Victims have been told to “suck it up” more or less, forgive and move on. Because Jesus says to forgive infinitely.
Except that forgiveness is about more than getting over something. And in cases of violence, it’s about more than going home to a never ending cycle.
When Jesus tells the story of the master and the slaves, he demonstrates a true change in behavior—at least the expectation of true change. As the master pardons the debt of that first servant, he assumes that this goodwill ought to trickle down and the slave would go and do likewise. Instead, the slave is just as vindictive and petty to his debtor as we might have expected the master to be. Instead of offering forgiveness and pardon, he shows no mercy. Upon hearing this news, the master takes back his forgiveness and severely punishes that offending slave.
Jesus says that God will do no less to us. Refusing to forgive can result in feeling spiritually tortured.
To the ones that God has forgiven, we must also forgive.
I recently ran across this story of a small California family. The daughter, Amy, went to South Africa to work against apartheid. While there, she was murdered by a mob. Her parents, in an unbelievable act, left California to finish their daughter’s work in South Africa. They started a service foundation in Amy’s name and now, two of her killers are working for that foundation as an act of atonement. Her parents have forgiven them and even befriended them.
This seems like almost a perverse level of forgiveness. To pardon and befriend a love ones killer?
We all know what happened this week 7 years ago. And seven years later, we know that justice, while dramatically sought, has not come full cycle. We have neither revenge nor reconciliation. But what about forgiveness? Can we forgive while our attackers are still out there? Do we need them to confess, repent, and atone before they can be forgiven?
The following is a statement from Desmond Tutu, Archbishop of Cape Town: regarding the US and 9/11. He says:
“Forgiveness is not to condone or minimize the awfulness of an atrocity or wrong. It is to recognize its ghastliness but to choose to acknowledge the essential humanity of the perpetrator and to give that perpetrator the possibility of making a new beginning. It is an act of much hope and not despair. It is to hope in the essential goodness of people and to have faith in their potential to change. It is to bet on that possibility. Forgiveness is not opposed to justice, especially if it is not punitive justice but restorative justice, justice that does not seek primarily to punish the perpetrator, to hit out, but looks to heal a breach, to restore a social equilibrium that the atrocity or misdeed has disturbed.”
This isn’t a comfortable place to be in. It’s not a distinction between forgiving and forgiven, wrong and right. Instead, we’re both. We are to offer an open, loving forgiveness to those who have sinned against us. And we hope for a change, for true reconciliation and repentance, but we can’t require it. We can only hope. And for us, as people who know we are forgiven, we need to remember that that forgiveness comes with a price. God forgives us abundantly, but not without cost. Like that slave that took his forgiveness and turned it into retribution against his fellow slave. As forgiven people, we must also be able to forgive.
The acts of forgiveness remind us that we are all connected to each other. Our actions have consequences and affect the wider web of humanity. We sin, both as individuals and as groups. We sin as a church, as a nation.
We are all forgiving and forgiven. Its not about being nice, but about being honest. Not about escaping accountability—for ourselves or others—as we also have to be accountable.
We can ask God to help us forgive and thank God for forgiving us first.
As forgiven and reconciled people, we are to go and do likewise
When it comes to forgiveness, we’re in a double bind. We like to be forgiven. But it’s much harder to forgive. We ask forgiveness for our sins just as we forgive those who sin against us.
We’ve domesticated forgiveness to the point that it’s become something soft and fluffy. It has some supernatural powers since God forgives all of our sins, and the baptismal waters wash them away. It sounds kind of easy, but we still sin, and we still need forgiveness, both to be forgiven and to forgive.
There are some other wilder, scary words, that we don’t hear as often: confession, confrontation, reparation, reconciliation.
Jesus’ answer to forgive those who sin against us 70 times 7 times has become a sound bite to encourage Christians to be forgiving. But that’s it. Be willing to forgive. If someone wrongs you—no matter how atrocious and painful—you forgive them and let it go. Turn the other cheek. Do what Jesus would do.
You know, there’s a certain movie rental company that I’m not pleased with. I rented movies from them a few years ago and stopped when they decided to threaten me with charges for a movie I had long returned. They informed me that I would own this movie within a few days and that might have been fine if I hadn’t already returned it. They did, at the last minute, discover that I was telling the truth and they had the movie all along.
When we moved up here and that was the closest rental place to us, I thought, well, it’s been a while since that last indiscretion maybe things will be different. Then I returned some movies that we’d rented last week. And on Thursday, got a phone call that I would once again be the proud owner of these movies sometime next week if I don’t return them. I’m feeling that perhaps I forgave this company a second chance too quickly. Here we are, in the same position we were a year ago and nothing has changed and I’m just as irritated as I was the first time. But you see, that first forgiveness was a one-sided deal. I did not confront them with their mistake and they did not apologize. They did not confess or offer any sort of reconciliation action. There was no coupon for a free rental. They did not reform their organizational structure to keep better track of their inventory.
Obviously, this is a minor insignificant example, but I’m just saying. I don’t like being accused of things I didn’t do. Forgiveness in this situation is just a mechanism for me to get over my frustration. It doesn’t invoke or require true transformation and change.
The most classic example—and obviously more serious—is in cases of domestic abuse. For too long, abused women seeking help from their priests have been exhorted to forgive their abusers and go home. Victims have been told to “suck it up” more or less, forgive and move on. Because Jesus says to forgive infinitely.
Except that forgiveness is about more than getting over something. And in cases of violence, it’s about more than going home to a never ending cycle.
When Jesus tells the story of the master and the slaves, he demonstrates a true change in behavior—at least the expectation of true change. As the master pardons the debt of that first servant, he assumes that this goodwill ought to trickle down and the slave would go and do likewise. Instead, the slave is just as vindictive and petty to his debtor as we might have expected the master to be. Instead of offering forgiveness and pardon, he shows no mercy. Upon hearing this news, the master takes back his forgiveness and severely punishes that offending slave.
Jesus says that God will do no less to us. Refusing to forgive can result in feeling spiritually tortured.
To the ones that God has forgiven, we must also forgive.
I recently ran across this story of a small California family. The daughter, Amy, went to South Africa to work against apartheid. While there, she was murdered by a mob. Her parents, in an unbelievable act, left California to finish their daughter’s work in South Africa. They started a service foundation in Amy’s name and now, two of her killers are working for that foundation as an act of atonement. Her parents have forgiven them and even befriended them.
This seems like almost a perverse level of forgiveness. To pardon and befriend a love ones killer?
We all know what happened this week 7 years ago. And seven years later, we know that justice, while dramatically sought, has not come full cycle. We have neither revenge nor reconciliation. But what about forgiveness? Can we forgive while our attackers are still out there? Do we need them to confess, repent, and atone before they can be forgiven?
The following is a statement from Desmond Tutu, Archbishop of Cape Town: regarding the US and 9/11. He says:
“Forgiveness is not to condone or minimize the awfulness of an atrocity or wrong. It is to recognize its ghastliness but to choose to acknowledge the essential humanity of the perpetrator and to give that perpetrator the possibility of making a new beginning. It is an act of much hope and not despair. It is to hope in the essential goodness of people and to have faith in their potential to change. It is to bet on that possibility. Forgiveness is not opposed to justice, especially if it is not punitive justice but restorative justice, justice that does not seek primarily to punish the perpetrator, to hit out, but looks to heal a breach, to restore a social equilibrium that the atrocity or misdeed has disturbed.”
This isn’t a comfortable place to be in. It’s not a distinction between forgiving and forgiven, wrong and right. Instead, we’re both. We are to offer an open, loving forgiveness to those who have sinned against us. And we hope for a change, for true reconciliation and repentance, but we can’t require it. We can only hope. And for us, as people who know we are forgiven, we need to remember that that forgiveness comes with a price. God forgives us abundantly, but not without cost. Like that slave that took his forgiveness and turned it into retribution against his fellow slave. As forgiven people, we must also be able to forgive.
The acts of forgiveness remind us that we are all connected to each other. Our actions have consequences and affect the wider web of humanity. We sin, both as individuals and as groups. We sin as a church, as a nation.
We are all forgiving and forgiven. Its not about being nice, but about being honest. Not about escaping accountability—for ourselves or others—as we also have to be accountable.
We can ask God to help us forgive and thank God for forgiving us first.
As forgiven and reconciled people, we are to go and do likewise
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
The Church Around the Corner
There's so much talk about the decline of Mainline Protestantism that I’m bored just writing these words. Mainline churches are suffering. We are low in numbers and low in money and Washington Street UMC is no different. Our ability to sustain ourselves is on shaky ground. For many churches it’s because it’s no longer the 1950s and people are not flocking to church and giving it their time energy and funds. So many fixtures around our buildings have not changed since then. So many plaques date to that period as if nothing substantial has taken place within these walls for 50 years.
In many ways, that’s the simple truth. Our culture has massively shifted and so have our churches, but we have not done anything to catch up except wallow in the self-pity and loss of our golden era.
Have you watched the Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks flick You’ve Got Mail? I feel like we’re The Shop Around the Corner. We’re the local store that’s trying to survive. But there are Fox Books churches out there that are easier to drive to, offer slicker merchandize, intoxicating interiors, and cheap grace.
People should come to us for some of the same reasons that they don’t want to go to a super store. Some of it might be out of an interest in reconnecting to the local, the organic, the fair-trade side of life. We do have fair-trade coffee on Sunday mornings. We do serve organic meals on Wednesday evenings. We are a local church with local folks.
We live in such a time of anxiety and uncertainty. The churches that are growing are ones that can offer stability and certainty. You have questions? We have answers!
Well, let me tell you I have questions too! More questions than answers really. And my answers do not always satisfy me. We don’t have certainty here. Stability is a myth. Security never really existed anyway.
But if a church doesn’t offer answers, then what good are we?
Is it worth your time to go to a place where everyone, including the pastors, have just as many questions and doubts as you do? Is it worth it to sit in a Sunday School and wrestle with issues and never come up with anything definitive? Is it worth getting to know people who don’t have it all figured out?
It turns out that I do have an answer: Yes. It’s worth it to come together with other people and wrestle and fight and question and talk and cry and sing and pray. It is good to not be alone. It is good to find other believers and doubters, to figure out what that means, to figure out who we want to be, and to figure out what we can do for those suffering around us.
I don’t know how the story at Washington Street ends. I hope that we don’t fight a good fight only to close our doors anyway. I hope it doesn’t “become something really depressing like a Baby Gap.” Like everything else, we’re facing great times of change. I’m not sure what its going to look like, but I hope you’ll join me in figuring it out.
In many ways, that’s the simple truth. Our culture has massively shifted and so have our churches, but we have not done anything to catch up except wallow in the self-pity and loss of our golden era.
Have you watched the Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks flick You’ve Got Mail? I feel like we’re The Shop Around the Corner. We’re the local store that’s trying to survive. But there are Fox Books churches out there that are easier to drive to, offer slicker merchandize, intoxicating interiors, and cheap grace.
People should come to us for some of the same reasons that they don’t want to go to a super store. Some of it might be out of an interest in reconnecting to the local, the organic, the fair-trade side of life. We do have fair-trade coffee on Sunday mornings. We do serve organic meals on Wednesday evenings. We are a local church with local folks.
We live in such a time of anxiety and uncertainty. The churches that are growing are ones that can offer stability and certainty. You have questions? We have answers!
Well, let me tell you I have questions too! More questions than answers really. And my answers do not always satisfy me. We don’t have certainty here. Stability is a myth. Security never really existed anyway.
But if a church doesn’t offer answers, then what good are we?
Is it worth your time to go to a place where everyone, including the pastors, have just as many questions and doubts as you do? Is it worth it to sit in a Sunday School and wrestle with issues and never come up with anything definitive? Is it worth getting to know people who don’t have it all figured out?
It turns out that I do have an answer: Yes. It’s worth it to come together with other people and wrestle and fight and question and talk and cry and sing and pray. It is good to not be alone. It is good to find other believers and doubters, to figure out what that means, to figure out who we want to be, and to figure out what we can do for those suffering around us.
I don’t know how the story at Washington Street ends. I hope that we don’t fight a good fight only to close our doors anyway. I hope it doesn’t “become something really depressing like a Baby Gap.” Like everything else, we’re facing great times of change. I’m not sure what its going to look like, but I hope you’ll join me in figuring it out.
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