It was time for a change, so Saying Graces has moved. Come on over to www.SayingGraces.com
Peace,
Ben
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Monday, February 7, 2011
"Theirs is the Kingdom" - Matthew 5:1-12
Sermon on January 30, 2011
When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:
‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
‘Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
I have more books than I know what to do with. Last weekend during the overnight retreat for our confirmation class, we took the confirmands into my office and into Amy’s office, simply to say that they were welcome there - welcome to come and visit, to chat, to say what’s on their minds… I have hundreds of books in my office on the shelves. Some are neatly categorized according to subject matter, and quite a few more are just stuck somewhere. I told the confirmation class, “If you ever want to read an interesting book about God, I’ve probably got one here for you. And if you ever want to read a book that will bore you to absolute tears, I’ve unfortunately got a few of those too.”
There are a few books on my office shelves that have been with me for more than twelve years, but not many. It was about twelve years ago now that I applied to be a student at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago, and thus began a book collection that my reading will likely struggle to keep up with for the rest of my life. But I have a few theological books, just a few, that predate any notion I ever had of seminary. Not long ago I became curious about those books - just personally curious about how they might have influenced me before I even considered being a pastor.
One of those books is called Theirs is the Kingdom: Celebrating the Gospel in Urban America, by Robert D. Lupton. I received that book when I was 19 years old. During my sophomore and junior years of college, I spent my spring breaks working with an organization called the Chicago Urban Project. Located in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago’s west side, the Urban Project works to empower families struggling in the midst of poverty. Theirs is the Kingdom was given to me by a man named John Hochevar, who was the project’s director.
John was a pretty amazing guy. He’s been ministering on the streets of the west side of Chicago for the better part of three decades now, reaching out to the poor, the homeless, the addicted, the lost… John was the first person I ever met who so clearly helped me understand the connection between our physical and spiritual salvations. God wants goodness and wholeness to be ours for all eternity, yes. But God also wants goodness and wholeness in our lives today, right now.
John was full of stories. Of course, working in a community where gangs ruled the streets and prostitutes strolled back and forth right in front of your church, you’d have to be full of stories, wouldn’t you? Once he told me about a time he got robbed. It was after dark, and he and one of his staff interns were coming home late from a meeting. They were driving through a horrible section of the neighborhood - a place known for continual violence and crime. In the middle of that neighborhood, the car broke down. Just sputtered to a stop. John coasted to the side of the road, put the car in park, and looked at his intern. “We’re in trouble,” he said, “so let’s pray.”
John and this intern began to pray, but not for long. A few men who had noticed the car dying surrounded the car, forced them out, and took everything they had, including their shoes. At one point, John said that he was frantically trying to pull his wedding band off of his finger because the robbers said that they would cut it off if he couldn’t. And they would have.
The robbers left, and there they were. No money, no shoes, (no cell phones, mind you, this was the 1980’s), stranded in the dark streets of this violent Chicago neighborhood. What would you do? I suppose instinct would tell you to get back in that car and hide. Maybe peek out from time to time and hope that a squad car came by. But John must have had Matthew 5:12 in his head: “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven,” because instead of hiding in the car, he climbed right up on top of it. He sat himself up there on the roof of his car and began singing. “A Mighty Fortress is Our God,” “Amazing Grace,” at the top of his lungs, hymn after hymn after hymn, until help finally came. “They might think I’m crazy,” he said, “but at least they’ll see I’ve already been robbed, and they’ll also know why I’m here.”
As a young college kid from the safe suburbs, I was amazed by John’s commitment to God and to the city. So maybe it’s no surprise that I’m here, twenty-one years later with you in this city. I saw God’s heart for the city long before I ever saw myself in ministry.
It was just three years ago now that I began to have some conversation with others and a few of you about the possibility of ministry here at First Presbyterian in Racine. So many moments in that story confirmed that yes, this was where we needed to be, but I can remember one thing early on that drew me to you and to this church. I read in the material that the search committee had compiled that this congregation had made a conscious decision to remain here, in the city. On coming to Racine and seeing this building for the first time, I thought to myself, “Yes. This is where a church needs to be! In the city. Right next to downtown. Coffee shops and bars, the courthouse and a few abandoned storefronts. A neighborhood struggling with poverty. If you asked me where I’d put a church if I could, it would be here.” From the beginning I’ve been drawn to the fact that First Presbyterian Church is a church in the city.
During Jesus’ first sermon in Matthew’s gospel, he blesses so many of those who we see living in our cities.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven…
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted…
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth…
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…
Cities have a way of amplifying human brokenness. A church that would choose to situate itself in a city must be a church that is willing to confront that brokenness and, like Jesus, bless those who are meek, those who are poor in spirit, those who hunger and thirst…
Today after worship, this congregation will hold its 172nd annual congregational meeting. During the past 172 years, the city around us has changed quite a bit, hasn’t it? At one time, we were pretty much on the edge of town. Now we’re in the middle of it. This church has seen the surrounding blocks go through change after change after change. Property values rising and falling. Businesses coming and going. People and families changing…
I’m glad we’re here. And when I say that, I don’t mean to just say that I’m glad we’re alive and awake. I mean that I’m glad we’re sitting here on the corner of 7th and College, here in this city where the need is great and where churches willing to face that need have an opportunity to embody God’s love in a unique way.
I know of churches in the suburbs and churches in rural areas that are struggling to figure out how they might reach out and care for others. But you and I - we can walk out any door of this church or look through any window and see the need around us.
Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, which begins with our passage today, is a sermon to people who, like us, live and worship in the midst of a broken world. Jesus speaks to people who are perhaps tired of the way the world around them has defined what it means to “be blessed.”
To a world that says you’re blessed if you have a six-figure income, Jesus says you’re blessed if you’re poor in spirit. To a world that says you’re blessed if you’re happy, Jesus says you’re blessed even when you mourn. To a world that says you’re blessed if secure in your finances and insulated against a bad economy, Jesus says you’re blessed if you’re simply meek, and that the inheritance of the earth is yours.
Why is it important that we are a church in a city? For one thing, it’s in the city where we come face to face every day with those for whom Jesus says the kingdom awaits. “Blessed are they,” Jesus says, “for theirs is the Kingdom.”
This book that my friend John Hochevar gave me, Theirs is the Kingdom, still sits on my shelf. Its author, Robert Lupton, lived a life much like John’s. Lupton was a white, middle-class guy who cared for God’s people living in poverty, and so he moved into a high-crime area of Atlanta - right into a ghetto of that city - and there he began a ministry of outreach and love.
His book is just a collection of his stories and observations about that ministry. I want to close today by sharing just one of them with you. It’s a story about one cold January morning when Lupton walked out to his car to find a homeless man sleeping there. As you listen, may God soften your heart for our neighbors in this city, and may we find ourselves as a family of faith called more deeply into God’s love and service.
I hit the button on my alarm at 6:00 a.m. The whistling at the windows told me it was another cold January day. I’d slept restlessly: the thermostat was slightly high and I’d fluctuated between being too warm with two blankets and too cold with only one. No matter now. The hot steamy shower woke me up, and my thoughts turned ahead to a day of meetings and projects.
At 6:29 I walked out the front door, bundled in scarf and coat against the chill, thinking of my first meeting. As I opened the car door, my heart froze. A man sat behind the wheel.
I reacted instantly, defensively. No knowing whether the man was dead or dangerous, I drew my fist back to strike him before he recovered from his surprise. He slowly turned to meet my angry, startled face.
“What are you doing in my car?” I blurted out, my fist still clenched.
“I’m not in your car, sir,” the man slurred in a frightened, thick-tongued voice. “I’m not in your car, sir,” he buttered again and again as he slowly maneuvered his body out of my car and teetered off across the front lawn.
M heart was still pounding as I drove past him on the street. It wasn’t until I turned onto the expressway that my mind slowed down enough for me to reflect on what just had happened.
I remembered my thoughts in the shower about the thermostat. I had been glad our house was tight and well insulated. There were worse things than sleeping too warm. I remembered also how good it felt to shave and slip into freshly pressed clothes. And then I remembered how terribly frightened I was, how violated I felt that this stranger had intruded where he had no right to be.
I began to wonder where the man was headed. His dark silhouette stumbling down the street was vivid in my mind. I hoped that his dull mind was directing him to his home. I tried to avoid thoughts that he might have no home, that perhaps the temporary lodging in my car was all the home he possessed.
Why? Why should it be, I wondered, that I am so concerned about sleeping too warm when another human being equally loved by the Creator barely survives in a cold car outside my door? Why is it that I have a secure place to rest and be restored, when this man, and so many others like him, has no place to lay his head in peace?
The Christ, the despised one, the one from who we hid our faces, spoke softly, deeply in my spirit. It was the voice of one who himself claimed to have no place to lay his head. I began to weep. I remembered my clenched fist and my compassionless expulsion of this stranger from my life. I cried in sorrow for a broken man whom I had sent off into the cold—unshowered, unfed. And I sorrowed for the one whose heart is not yet sufficiently broken, whose heart hardens too quickly against the call of the Lord among the least of these.
“I am sorry, Lord, for turning you out into the cold. Thank you for using my car.”
When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:
‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
‘Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
I have more books than I know what to do with. Last weekend during the overnight retreat for our confirmation class, we took the confirmands into my office and into Amy’s office, simply to say that they were welcome there - welcome to come and visit, to chat, to say what’s on their minds… I have hundreds of books in my office on the shelves. Some are neatly categorized according to subject matter, and quite a few more are just stuck somewhere. I told the confirmation class, “If you ever want to read an interesting book about God, I’ve probably got one here for you. And if you ever want to read a book that will bore you to absolute tears, I’ve unfortunately got a few of those too.”
There are a few books on my office shelves that have been with me for more than twelve years, but not many. It was about twelve years ago now that I applied to be a student at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago, and thus began a book collection that my reading will likely struggle to keep up with for the rest of my life. But I have a few theological books, just a few, that predate any notion I ever had of seminary. Not long ago I became curious about those books - just personally curious about how they might have influenced me before I even considered being a pastor.
One of those books is called Theirs is the Kingdom: Celebrating the Gospel in Urban America, by Robert D. Lupton. I received that book when I was 19 years old. During my sophomore and junior years of college, I spent my spring breaks working with an organization called the Chicago Urban Project. Located in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago’s west side, the Urban Project works to empower families struggling in the midst of poverty. Theirs is the Kingdom was given to me by a man named John Hochevar, who was the project’s director.
John was a pretty amazing guy. He’s been ministering on the streets of the west side of Chicago for the better part of three decades now, reaching out to the poor, the homeless, the addicted, the lost… John was the first person I ever met who so clearly helped me understand the connection between our physical and spiritual salvations. God wants goodness and wholeness to be ours for all eternity, yes. But God also wants goodness and wholeness in our lives today, right now.
John was full of stories. Of course, working in a community where gangs ruled the streets and prostitutes strolled back and forth right in front of your church, you’d have to be full of stories, wouldn’t you? Once he told me about a time he got robbed. It was after dark, and he and one of his staff interns were coming home late from a meeting. They were driving through a horrible section of the neighborhood - a place known for continual violence and crime. In the middle of that neighborhood, the car broke down. Just sputtered to a stop. John coasted to the side of the road, put the car in park, and looked at his intern. “We’re in trouble,” he said, “so let’s pray.”
John and this intern began to pray, but not for long. A few men who had noticed the car dying surrounded the car, forced them out, and took everything they had, including their shoes. At one point, John said that he was frantically trying to pull his wedding band off of his finger because the robbers said that they would cut it off if he couldn’t. And they would have.
The robbers left, and there they were. No money, no shoes, (no cell phones, mind you, this was the 1980’s), stranded in the dark streets of this violent Chicago neighborhood. What would you do? I suppose instinct would tell you to get back in that car and hide. Maybe peek out from time to time and hope that a squad car came by. But John must have had Matthew 5:12 in his head: “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven,” because instead of hiding in the car, he climbed right up on top of it. He sat himself up there on the roof of his car and began singing. “A Mighty Fortress is Our God,” “Amazing Grace,” at the top of his lungs, hymn after hymn after hymn, until help finally came. “They might think I’m crazy,” he said, “but at least they’ll see I’ve already been robbed, and they’ll also know why I’m here.”
As a young college kid from the safe suburbs, I was amazed by John’s commitment to God and to the city. So maybe it’s no surprise that I’m here, twenty-one years later with you in this city. I saw God’s heart for the city long before I ever saw myself in ministry.
It was just three years ago now that I began to have some conversation with others and a few of you about the possibility of ministry here at First Presbyterian in Racine. So many moments in that story confirmed that yes, this was where we needed to be, but I can remember one thing early on that drew me to you and to this church. I read in the material that the search committee had compiled that this congregation had made a conscious decision to remain here, in the city. On coming to Racine and seeing this building for the first time, I thought to myself, “Yes. This is where a church needs to be! In the city. Right next to downtown. Coffee shops and bars, the courthouse and a few abandoned storefronts. A neighborhood struggling with poverty. If you asked me where I’d put a church if I could, it would be here.” From the beginning I’ve been drawn to the fact that First Presbyterian Church is a church in the city.
During Jesus’ first sermon in Matthew’s gospel, he blesses so many of those who we see living in our cities.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven…
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted…
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth…
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…
Cities have a way of amplifying human brokenness. A church that would choose to situate itself in a city must be a church that is willing to confront that brokenness and, like Jesus, bless those who are meek, those who are poor in spirit, those who hunger and thirst…
Today after worship, this congregation will hold its 172nd annual congregational meeting. During the past 172 years, the city around us has changed quite a bit, hasn’t it? At one time, we were pretty much on the edge of town. Now we’re in the middle of it. This church has seen the surrounding blocks go through change after change after change. Property values rising and falling. Businesses coming and going. People and families changing…
I’m glad we’re here. And when I say that, I don’t mean to just say that I’m glad we’re alive and awake. I mean that I’m glad we’re sitting here on the corner of 7th and College, here in this city where the need is great and where churches willing to face that need have an opportunity to embody God’s love in a unique way.
I know of churches in the suburbs and churches in rural areas that are struggling to figure out how they might reach out and care for others. But you and I - we can walk out any door of this church or look through any window and see the need around us.
Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, which begins with our passage today, is a sermon to people who, like us, live and worship in the midst of a broken world. Jesus speaks to people who are perhaps tired of the way the world around them has defined what it means to “be blessed.”
To a world that says you’re blessed if you have a six-figure income, Jesus says you’re blessed if you’re poor in spirit. To a world that says you’re blessed if you’re happy, Jesus says you’re blessed even when you mourn. To a world that says you’re blessed if secure in your finances and insulated against a bad economy, Jesus says you’re blessed if you’re simply meek, and that the inheritance of the earth is yours.
Why is it important that we are a church in a city? For one thing, it’s in the city where we come face to face every day with those for whom Jesus says the kingdom awaits. “Blessed are they,” Jesus says, “for theirs is the Kingdom.”
This book that my friend John Hochevar gave me, Theirs is the Kingdom, still sits on my shelf. Its author, Robert Lupton, lived a life much like John’s. Lupton was a white, middle-class guy who cared for God’s people living in poverty, and so he moved into a high-crime area of Atlanta - right into a ghetto of that city - and there he began a ministry of outreach and love.
His book is just a collection of his stories and observations about that ministry. I want to close today by sharing just one of them with you. It’s a story about one cold January morning when Lupton walked out to his car to find a homeless man sleeping there. As you listen, may God soften your heart for our neighbors in this city, and may we find ourselves as a family of faith called more deeply into God’s love and service.
I hit the button on my alarm at 6:00 a.m. The whistling at the windows told me it was another cold January day. I’d slept restlessly: the thermostat was slightly high and I’d fluctuated between being too warm with two blankets and too cold with only one. No matter now. The hot steamy shower woke me up, and my thoughts turned ahead to a day of meetings and projects.
At 6:29 I walked out the front door, bundled in scarf and coat against the chill, thinking of my first meeting. As I opened the car door, my heart froze. A man sat behind the wheel.
I reacted instantly, defensively. No knowing whether the man was dead or dangerous, I drew my fist back to strike him before he recovered from his surprise. He slowly turned to meet my angry, startled face.
“What are you doing in my car?” I blurted out, my fist still clenched.
“I’m not in your car, sir,” the man slurred in a frightened, thick-tongued voice. “I’m not in your car, sir,” he buttered again and again as he slowly maneuvered his body out of my car and teetered off across the front lawn.
M heart was still pounding as I drove past him on the street. It wasn’t until I turned onto the expressway that my mind slowed down enough for me to reflect on what just had happened.
I remembered my thoughts in the shower about the thermostat. I had been glad our house was tight and well insulated. There were worse things than sleeping too warm. I remembered also how good it felt to shave and slip into freshly pressed clothes. And then I remembered how terribly frightened I was, how violated I felt that this stranger had intruded where he had no right to be.
I began to wonder where the man was headed. His dark silhouette stumbling down the street was vivid in my mind. I hoped that his dull mind was directing him to his home. I tried to avoid thoughts that he might have no home, that perhaps the temporary lodging in my car was all the home he possessed.
Why? Why should it be, I wondered, that I am so concerned about sleeping too warm when another human being equally loved by the Creator barely survives in a cold car outside my door? Why is it that I have a secure place to rest and be restored, when this man, and so many others like him, has no place to lay his head in peace?
The Christ, the despised one, the one from who we hid our faces, spoke softly, deeply in my spirit. It was the voice of one who himself claimed to have no place to lay his head. I began to weep. I remembered my clenched fist and my compassionless expulsion of this stranger from my life. I cried in sorrow for a broken man whom I had sent off into the cold—unshowered, unfed. And I sorrowed for the one whose heart is not yet sufficiently broken, whose heart hardens too quickly against the call of the Lord among the least of these.
“I am sorry, Lord, for turning you out into the cold. Thank you for using my car.”
Monday, January 24, 2011
"Born Again?" - Exodus 1:8-2:10
Sermon on Sunday, January 23, 2011
The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, “When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, she shall live.” But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live. So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this, and allowed the boys to live?” 19The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.” (Exodus 1:15-19)
Well, this morning, I know what most of you are probably thinking. In spite of everything I say up here today — in spite of all the questions I might raise and in spite of all the insights we might contemplate this morning, I won’t pretend to ignore perhaps the most compelling and pressing question of the day today: “Who’s going to come out on top? The Steelers or the Jets?” Right? Oh, I’m sorry. Is there another game on today? I hadn’t realized…
According to Google Maps there are 211 miles between Lambeau Field and Soldier Field. And we in Racine are somewhere south of the half-way point. I think I can speak for all of us when I say that the Packers and the Bears are two really fine teams and it’s simply nice to know that one of them is sure to be in the Super Bowl in two weeks, right? Just trying to make a little peace up here.
It’s funny, exciting, and sometimes a little strange to see how football can manage to ignite our passions so vividly. This past week, Sports Illustrated has run a series online featuring Bear fans making fun of Packer fans and Packer fans making fun of Bear fans. Mainly, these articles feature pictures of the most ridiculously dressed on each side — people who come to the game in costume, dressed as bears or as giant blocks of cheese; shirtless men in sub-zero temperatures with their chests painted green and gold or blue and orange…
For some, there’s a religious zeal in their love for football. And I’m often amazed that while extreme displays of crazed loyalty seem accepted and even encouraged in our culture, we tend to be less accepting of other, more commonly held displays of public affection. Take our sermon title this morning. “Born Again.” That’s a phrase that makes some of us Christians a little uncomfortable.
Most of you know that before my family and I came here to Racine, I served as a campus pastor at a Presbyterian Church next to the University of Texas in Austin. Our church was right behind the university’s co-op bookstore, which was directly across the street from the student union, so it was a busy place to be.
On most days during the school year, one particular group of Christians stationed themselves right in front of the union building, and they took it upon themselves to see to the spiritual health of the college students, passing out brochures and confronting people passers-by with religiously-charged questions. I was stopped once and asked, “Are you a Christian?” Hoping to keep things brief, I simply said, “Yes.” But then this man, standing there in the hot, scorching sun under his wide-brimmed hat with his Bible and a stack of leaflets said, “Are you born again?”
What about you? Are you born again? I’m not sure how you feel about that question precisely. As Christians we have lots of ways of describing ourselves. Saying that you’re “born again” might not be one of them. Maybe you feel like you were born ok the first time. Maybe you’d describe yourself as “spiritually hungry but institutionally suspicious,” so you're not sure you’d adopt that particular religious language. Maybe you’re not comfortable being categorized by other Christians. Maybe you’d prefer to simply call yourself a Christian, a follower of Jesus, and leave it at that.
The man was still looking at me, waiting for an answer. “Are you born again?” “Yup,” I said. He seemed satisfied, I suppose, and I made my way along. The thought has occurred to me, though: “What if I had said more?”
The story that comes to us today from Exodus is a story about threat. Listen again to Pharaoh’s first two lines: "Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land."
Can you sense his fear? Can you feel how Pharaoh has been threatened? Can you imagine a history of events that has brought Pharaoh to this moment in time
After all, what are we to picture here? Are we to think that Pharaoh, upon being appointed as king, took a stroll around his palace and while doing so happened to look out a large palace window when suddenly, to his great shock, he realized, "There are a lot of Israelites out there!" Are we to believe that this scenario of a growing Israelite population is one that neither Pharaoh nor his political advisors could have possibly foreseen, that the whole thing just sort of took Egypt completely by surprise?
No. Pharaoh is speaking here about something he's known about for a long, long time. Most likely, he has been raised in a culture that has received the immigration of Israelites into Egyptian lands. He and his people are more than aware of this rising tide of Israelites in their midst.
In fact, maybe we can imagine some of the things that were being said on the streets and in the marketplaces, in homes and in chatrooms: “The Israelites - there are too many of them! They’re taking our jobs. They're using all the water. They're sucking our resources dry. They're making our family lines impure. They've brought their own God with them. They're ruining Egyptian culture. Something needs to be done.”
Pharaoh has grown up in a climate of tense fear. Dogging him through his rise to power has been the threat of the growing Israelite population and what they might do. Is Pharaoh now coming up with a revolutionary plan - a way to deal with the rising Israelite population once and for all? Are his ideas really new? Or are they as much a part of him and his culture as anything else? And do they not flow from heart of his culture—from the core of a society struggling with what it does not understand - a culture diversified with the growing presence of out-of-towners - a culture that is threatened?
Pharaoh isn't just speaking from his own heart, but rather from the heart of a people living in fear for its cultural identity and sense of nationalism. "Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land."
And the people said, "Yes! That's what it is!" They listened to Pharaoh and they followed him. They became taskmasters of their Israelite neighbors; they oppressed them with forced labor. And I wonder about Pharaoh's "in the event of war" line. "In the event of war," he tells the people, what to stop these Israelites form jumping ship and joining the other side? Nothing! Why, they're probably just waiting for the right time to take over! Pharaoh looks at his people and says, “Is that what you want? Is that the kind of fear you'll agree to live under?” And I can just picture Pharaoh's people listening to every word. In their hearts they've got their doubts about the Israelites, they carry the racism that's inherent in their culture. Now they hear their leader – who chooses his words ever so carefully: Those Israelites want to take us over! That's what they want! We can't let that happen! This spells doom for the society we've worked so hard to create!
And so the Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites. Ruthless: without compassion, without pity, without grief—ruthless. And of course, it's easier to behave ruthlessly when you believe that the people you're mistreating aren't really people at all.
Enter the story two people - the two most unlikely of characters: Shiphrah and Puah. Two Hebrew midwives. Pharaoh calls them in and instructs them, “When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, she shall live.” If it is a boy... If it is one who might grow up and resist Egypt, if it could become a soldier one day, if it has the power to carry Israelite names and Israelite blood to future generations, if it is a threat, kill it.
It’s ironic, though, that Pharaoh lets the girls live, isn’t it? “If it is a girl, let it live,” he says, completely unaware that the Hebrew women are strong and the Hebrew women who become midwives apparently know a thing or two about civil disobedience. Once Pharaoh realizes that plenty of healthy Hebrew boys are being born, he again summons Shiphrah and Puah and says, “What’s going on? Why are you letting these boys live?” I can just see Shiphrah and Puah exchanging a quick glance. They’re prepared for this: “You see, Pharaoh,” they respond, “the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.”
And who knows how long this has been going on? Really, how long? Days? Weeks? Months? Who knows how many births these midwives have seen? Birth after birth after birth, again and again and again…
Born again to a Hebrew family, an infant, a boy who will grow longing for a better way of life.
Born again to a Hebrew mother and father, a girl who, throughout her childhood, will hear stories of Shiphrah and Puah, stories that will inspire resistance and courage.
Born again to a Hebrew mother, a boy, whose name will be Moses, who will rise up in Pharaoh’s very own house and lead the Israelites away from Egypt, away from oppression, away from bondage to freedom.
Born again and again and again. Threat to Pharaoh. Threat to Egypt. Threat to a culture whose national identity has been offended by the presence of outsiders. Born again: a threat that change is about to take place.
Born again and again and again… Are you born again? Are we born again? What do we do with threat? What do we do when our lives, pregnant with possibilities for change, for growth in new directions, for understanding God in a new way, pose a threat to us?
When working with integrity means changing jobs,
When a difficult conversation threatens to change a relationship,
When being healthy means admitting we need help,
When living an honest lifestyle threatens to isolate us from our friends and family,
When answering God’s call threatens to undo our sense of security,
When honest doubts threaten to change the way we understand our faith…
There is a bit of Pharaoh in us, I think. There’s a bit of that spirit that yells, “STOP!” every time our lives reach the birthing stage - every time when that which could be born to us represents a threat - a theological, political, action-oriented, relational, truth-telling threat… And in so many ways, we put that threat to death.
Yet there is a spirit of Christ in us too, isn’t there? That Spirit present with us when, like Shiphrah and Puah, we act as midwives for each other, present at the birthstools of life’s challenges and difficult choices - that Spirit that breathes life into our living and speaks to us in a myriad of ways, saying, “Life is too precious to spend it all on that which is non-threatening! Be born! Again and again! Be born!”
And so we are church. And so we gather. And so we are all pregnant, and so we are all one another’s midwives. And so we create safe community and say to one another and to the world:
“Be born!”
“Live into change!”
“Come out!”
“Go forth!”
“Live.”
And of course, we cannot help but wonder... If the Church is born again, what does it look like? What do we as a Church begin to look like when, despite the threats, we live in rebirth day after day after day? What happens when reborn people in a reborn Church long for a reborn world? What happens if they do it again and again and again?
Are we born again?
The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, “When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, she shall live.” But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live. So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this, and allowed the boys to live?” 19The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.” (Exodus 1:15-19)
Well, this morning, I know what most of you are probably thinking. In spite of everything I say up here today — in spite of all the questions I might raise and in spite of all the insights we might contemplate this morning, I won’t pretend to ignore perhaps the most compelling and pressing question of the day today: “Who’s going to come out on top? The Steelers or the Jets?” Right? Oh, I’m sorry. Is there another game on today? I hadn’t realized…
According to Google Maps there are 211 miles between Lambeau Field and Soldier Field. And we in Racine are somewhere south of the half-way point. I think I can speak for all of us when I say that the Packers and the Bears are two really fine teams and it’s simply nice to know that one of them is sure to be in the Super Bowl in two weeks, right? Just trying to make a little peace up here.
It’s funny, exciting, and sometimes a little strange to see how football can manage to ignite our passions so vividly. This past week, Sports Illustrated has run a series online featuring Bear fans making fun of Packer fans and Packer fans making fun of Bear fans. Mainly, these articles feature pictures of the most ridiculously dressed on each side — people who come to the game in costume, dressed as bears or as giant blocks of cheese; shirtless men in sub-zero temperatures with their chests painted green and gold or blue and orange…
For some, there’s a religious zeal in their love for football. And I’m often amazed that while extreme displays of crazed loyalty seem accepted and even encouraged in our culture, we tend to be less accepting of other, more commonly held displays of public affection. Take our sermon title this morning. “Born Again.” That’s a phrase that makes some of us Christians a little uncomfortable.
Most of you know that before my family and I came here to Racine, I served as a campus pastor at a Presbyterian Church next to the University of Texas in Austin. Our church was right behind the university’s co-op bookstore, which was directly across the street from the student union, so it was a busy place to be.
On most days during the school year, one particular group of Christians stationed themselves right in front of the union building, and they took it upon themselves to see to the spiritual health of the college students, passing out brochures and confronting people passers-by with religiously-charged questions. I was stopped once and asked, “Are you a Christian?” Hoping to keep things brief, I simply said, “Yes.” But then this man, standing there in the hot, scorching sun under his wide-brimmed hat with his Bible and a stack of leaflets said, “Are you born again?”
What about you? Are you born again? I’m not sure how you feel about that question precisely. As Christians we have lots of ways of describing ourselves. Saying that you’re “born again” might not be one of them. Maybe you feel like you were born ok the first time. Maybe you’d describe yourself as “spiritually hungry but institutionally suspicious,” so you're not sure you’d adopt that particular religious language. Maybe you’re not comfortable being categorized by other Christians. Maybe you’d prefer to simply call yourself a Christian, a follower of Jesus, and leave it at that.
The man was still looking at me, waiting for an answer. “Are you born again?” “Yup,” I said. He seemed satisfied, I suppose, and I made my way along. The thought has occurred to me, though: “What if I had said more?”
The story that comes to us today from Exodus is a story about threat. Listen again to Pharaoh’s first two lines: "Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land."
Can you sense his fear? Can you feel how Pharaoh has been threatened? Can you imagine a history of events that has brought Pharaoh to this moment in time
After all, what are we to picture here? Are we to think that Pharaoh, upon being appointed as king, took a stroll around his palace and while doing so happened to look out a large palace window when suddenly, to his great shock, he realized, "There are a lot of Israelites out there!" Are we to believe that this scenario of a growing Israelite population is one that neither Pharaoh nor his political advisors could have possibly foreseen, that the whole thing just sort of took Egypt completely by surprise?
No. Pharaoh is speaking here about something he's known about for a long, long time. Most likely, he has been raised in a culture that has received the immigration of Israelites into Egyptian lands. He and his people are more than aware of this rising tide of Israelites in their midst.
In fact, maybe we can imagine some of the things that were being said on the streets and in the marketplaces, in homes and in chatrooms: “The Israelites - there are too many of them! They’re taking our jobs. They're using all the water. They're sucking our resources dry. They're making our family lines impure. They've brought their own God with them. They're ruining Egyptian culture. Something needs to be done.”
Pharaoh has grown up in a climate of tense fear. Dogging him through his rise to power has been the threat of the growing Israelite population and what they might do. Is Pharaoh now coming up with a revolutionary plan - a way to deal with the rising Israelite population once and for all? Are his ideas really new? Or are they as much a part of him and his culture as anything else? And do they not flow from heart of his culture—from the core of a society struggling with what it does not understand - a culture diversified with the growing presence of out-of-towners - a culture that is threatened?
Pharaoh isn't just speaking from his own heart, but rather from the heart of a people living in fear for its cultural identity and sense of nationalism. "Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land."
And the people said, "Yes! That's what it is!" They listened to Pharaoh and they followed him. They became taskmasters of their Israelite neighbors; they oppressed them with forced labor. And I wonder about Pharaoh's "in the event of war" line. "In the event of war," he tells the people, what to stop these Israelites form jumping ship and joining the other side? Nothing! Why, they're probably just waiting for the right time to take over! Pharaoh looks at his people and says, “Is that what you want? Is that the kind of fear you'll agree to live under?” And I can just picture Pharaoh's people listening to every word. In their hearts they've got their doubts about the Israelites, they carry the racism that's inherent in their culture. Now they hear their leader – who chooses his words ever so carefully: Those Israelites want to take us over! That's what they want! We can't let that happen! This spells doom for the society we've worked so hard to create!
And so the Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites. Ruthless: without compassion, without pity, without grief—ruthless. And of course, it's easier to behave ruthlessly when you believe that the people you're mistreating aren't really people at all.
Enter the story two people - the two most unlikely of characters: Shiphrah and Puah. Two Hebrew midwives. Pharaoh calls them in and instructs them, “When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, she shall live.” If it is a boy... If it is one who might grow up and resist Egypt, if it could become a soldier one day, if it has the power to carry Israelite names and Israelite blood to future generations, if it is a threat, kill it.
It’s ironic, though, that Pharaoh lets the girls live, isn’t it? “If it is a girl, let it live,” he says, completely unaware that the Hebrew women are strong and the Hebrew women who become midwives apparently know a thing or two about civil disobedience. Once Pharaoh realizes that plenty of healthy Hebrew boys are being born, he again summons Shiphrah and Puah and says, “What’s going on? Why are you letting these boys live?” I can just see Shiphrah and Puah exchanging a quick glance. They’re prepared for this: “You see, Pharaoh,” they respond, “the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.”
And who knows how long this has been going on? Really, how long? Days? Weeks? Months? Who knows how many births these midwives have seen? Birth after birth after birth, again and again and again…
Born again to a Hebrew family, an infant, a boy who will grow longing for a better way of life.
Born again to a Hebrew mother and father, a girl who, throughout her childhood, will hear stories of Shiphrah and Puah, stories that will inspire resistance and courage.
Born again to a Hebrew mother, a boy, whose name will be Moses, who will rise up in Pharaoh’s very own house and lead the Israelites away from Egypt, away from oppression, away from bondage to freedom.
Born again and again and again. Threat to Pharaoh. Threat to Egypt. Threat to a culture whose national identity has been offended by the presence of outsiders. Born again: a threat that change is about to take place.
Born again and again and again… Are you born again? Are we born again? What do we do with threat? What do we do when our lives, pregnant with possibilities for change, for growth in new directions, for understanding God in a new way, pose a threat to us?
When working with integrity means changing jobs,
When a difficult conversation threatens to change a relationship,
When being healthy means admitting we need help,
When living an honest lifestyle threatens to isolate us from our friends and family,
When answering God’s call threatens to undo our sense of security,
When honest doubts threaten to change the way we understand our faith…
There is a bit of Pharaoh in us, I think. There’s a bit of that spirit that yells, “STOP!” every time our lives reach the birthing stage - every time when that which could be born to us represents a threat - a theological, political, action-oriented, relational, truth-telling threat… And in so many ways, we put that threat to death.
Yet there is a spirit of Christ in us too, isn’t there? That Spirit present with us when, like Shiphrah and Puah, we act as midwives for each other, present at the birthstools of life’s challenges and difficult choices - that Spirit that breathes life into our living and speaks to us in a myriad of ways, saying, “Life is too precious to spend it all on that which is non-threatening! Be born! Again and again! Be born!”
And so we are church. And so we gather. And so we are all pregnant, and so we are all one another’s midwives. And so we create safe community and say to one another and to the world:
“Be born!”
“Live into change!”
“Come out!”
“Go forth!”
“Live.”
And of course, we cannot help but wonder... If the Church is born again, what does it look like? What do we as a Church begin to look like when, despite the threats, we live in rebirth day after day after day? What happens when reborn people in a reborn Church long for a reborn world? What happens if they do it again and again and again?
Are we born again?
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Evotional - A Thermostat that Transforms
A Thermostat that Transforms
Still fresh in my mind is this past Sunday's wonderful worship service, when we invited Rev. Randy Bush back into the pulpit. Being Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, Randy reflected on Dr. King's life, among other things. Our affirmation of faith that followed was a piece that I wrote based on King's 1963 "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." Here's a bit of it:
Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world?
No. But so often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an arch-defender of the status quo. And far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often even vocal sanction of things as they are.
Rationally speaking, isn't there something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills?
Human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability.
What, then, shall we do?
We will not wait for a convenient season for justice. We will be a Church that is not merely a thermometer that records the ideas and principles of popular opinion, but a thermostat that transforms our culture and our world.
Those words continue to roll around in my mind as I think about our mission and purpose as a family of faith. What a prophetic, life-shaping task we have - to function as a thermostat in our culture, transforming out culture and our world. May Dr. King's words remind us of our calling as a church and may they compel us to courageous actions of transformation and love.
Peace,
Pastor Ben
Still fresh in my mind is this past Sunday's wonderful worship service, when we invited Rev. Randy Bush back into the pulpit. Being Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, Randy reflected on Dr. King's life, among other things. Our affirmation of faith that followed was a piece that I wrote based on King's 1963 "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." Here's a bit of it:
Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world?
No. But so often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an arch-defender of the status quo. And far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often even vocal sanction of things as they are.
Rationally speaking, isn't there something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills?
Human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability.
What, then, shall we do?
We will not wait for a convenient season for justice. We will be a Church that is not merely a thermometer that records the ideas and principles of popular opinion, but a thermostat that transforms our culture and our world.
Those words continue to roll around in my mind as I think about our mission and purpose as a family of faith. What a prophetic, life-shaping task we have - to function as a thermostat in our culture, transforming out culture and our world. May Dr. King's words remind us of our calling as a church and may they compel us to courageous actions of transformation and love.
Peace,
Pastor Ben
Monday, January 3, 2011
"The God in Striped Pajamas" - Psalms 139:1-12; John 1:1-18
Yesterday my friend and colleague Steve Fringer preached in worship. Steve serves First Presbyterian Church as our visitation pastor, but he is also an excellent crafter of sermons, so I'm excited to share his words here...
She climbed into her parents’ bed, whimpering. A bad dream. In five minutes she was asleep and her father carried her back into her bedroom, laying her in her own bed. She awoke as he pulled the blankets up. “Noooooo,” she whined. “You’ll be all right, sweetheart.” He knelt down beside the bed, his face close to hers in the dark. “I’ll put your night light on. It was only a dream.” “I know. I don’t like to be alone. I get scared.” “Well, mommy and daddy are just down the hall,” he said. “And you know God is always with you.” She was quiet, looking at him and then looking away. “I know, but…” The “but” hung in the dark quiet. “But what?” “Well,” she said, “I like somebody close to me with skin on.”
Our little theologian gives expression to what we all want at times, to what the evangelist says has happened: And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. Emmanuel—God with us. So, heaven kisses earth; enter Jesus. In the birth of Jesus we see that there is no length to which God will not go to prove that we are loved. To show that God’s love has no bottom, no top, no sides, no end. Yes, we may be afraid to be alone or afraid of the dark, or of the boogie man in the closet or under our bed, or the boogie man of foreclosure or job loss or the diagnosis we dreaded to hear, but since God in Jesus has stepped into our skin we have the reassurance that God knows intimately the depths of our fears, the risk in trusting others, the pain of betrayal, the agony of grief, as well as the dangnabbit feeling of a stubbed toe, the joy of a good laugh, the deep satisfaction of loving others and being loved.
But as our little theologian bemoans--we do at times lose a sense of God’s presence with us. It’s easy to imagine God’s presence and goodness when things are going well and we’re cartwheeling across the sunny mountaintops of our lives. But when we’re scared or alone, trudging through the dark valleys, or wandering in the wilderness, we often wonder, Where are you, God? Even Jesus, in his most painful skin moment, cries, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And history on more than one occasion has pointed an accusing finger at the faithful and asked, Where was God?
Bruno is a young boy in John Boyne’s novel, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. His father is a high ranking officer in the German army of WWII and at the beginning of the book the family is being transferred to, as Bruno understands, Out-With. In his new home he finds little to like and cannot find any friends to play with. Soldiers now come in and out of his home, reporting to his father and calling him commandant.
One day Bruno goes exploring and finds a fence that stretches as far as he can see. He walks along the fence for a long time seeing nothing, but then he sees a little speck and coming closer he finds a boy, small, skinny, with large eyes in a thin, grey face, his head shaven. He is wearing striped pajamas, sitting on the ground with his back to the camp and looking through the fence. Bruno sits down in front of him and they talk through the fence. His name is Shmeul and they discover that they share the same birthday and are both nine years old.
Bruno returns day after day, sometimes sneaking food from the kitchen for his friend, who is always hungry, keeping his visits a secret from his family because they’ve forbidden him to go anywhere near the fence. What he learns from his new friend is often too hard for Bruno to believe—that he has no change of clothes, only the striped pajamas and cap he wears, that everyone on that side of the fence doesn’t have their own bedrooms, and the boys don’t have any toys.
One day Bruno contracts head lice and has his head shaven and when he sees Schmeul again, they joke how similar they look, only Bruno is fatter. Shortly thereafter Bruno’s mother decides she and Bruno and his sister will return to Berlin. It’s been almost a year since they arrived in Out-With. Bruno is deeply saddened and when he sees Shmeul he tells him he will be leaving. Shmeul is scared because he can’t find his father. The two boys hatch a plan to go looking for his father together the next day. Shmeul will bring pajamas and cap for Bruno to wear and he’ll crawl under the fence and change clothes; with his short hair he’ll appear no different than the others.
Their plan works. They do go looking for Shmeul’s father, but they get caught up in a large crowd of people who are being forced to march and the grey sky overhead grows darker and the rain falls harder and Bruno starts thinking he should return home because they were having roast beef that night and then he and Shmeul were out of the rain in a large, warm room packed with pajama people and the door closed and all seemed better and, quite out of character, Bruno took Shmuel’s tiny hand in his and told him he was the best friend he’d ever had and then the room went dark.
“Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? … if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.” In the end, I believe, it comes down to making a stance, a stance of faith and trust, even when the evidence, be it historical or personal, the evidence of God’s absence or indifference seems overwhelming; evidence such as Bruno and Shmeul’s camp of Auschwitz, or the killing fields of Cambodia, or the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia or Rwanda. Even when we feel alone and lost and scared and God-abandoned in our hospital room or looking at the foreclosure notice. Can we see God, moving in our midst? In Jesus God has stepped into our skin and God is also in the striped pajamas entering the gas chambers, standing with the oppressed, the hurting, the dying. God dying over and over again. And then being born anew in our midst when we walk with someone through their wilderness, make the hard sacrifice, comfort the grieving, listen with our hearts, practice forgiveness, become hope for someone else, live love. Then we become the midwives for God’s birth. Then we make every day Christmas because every day and every moment in every day is sacramental. Then we become the light in the darkness that the darkness does not overcome.
Amen.
She climbed into her parents’ bed, whimpering. A bad dream. In five minutes she was asleep and her father carried her back into her bedroom, laying her in her own bed. She awoke as he pulled the blankets up. “Noooooo,” she whined. “You’ll be all right, sweetheart.” He knelt down beside the bed, his face close to hers in the dark. “I’ll put your night light on. It was only a dream.” “I know. I don’t like to be alone. I get scared.” “Well, mommy and daddy are just down the hall,” he said. “And you know God is always with you.” She was quiet, looking at him and then looking away. “I know, but…” The “but” hung in the dark quiet. “But what?” “Well,” she said, “I like somebody close to me with skin on.”
Our little theologian gives expression to what we all want at times, to what the evangelist says has happened: And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. Emmanuel—God with us. So, heaven kisses earth; enter Jesus. In the birth of Jesus we see that there is no length to which God will not go to prove that we are loved. To show that God’s love has no bottom, no top, no sides, no end. Yes, we may be afraid to be alone or afraid of the dark, or of the boogie man in the closet or under our bed, or the boogie man of foreclosure or job loss or the diagnosis we dreaded to hear, but since God in Jesus has stepped into our skin we have the reassurance that God knows intimately the depths of our fears, the risk in trusting others, the pain of betrayal, the agony of grief, as well as the dangnabbit feeling of a stubbed toe, the joy of a good laugh, the deep satisfaction of loving others and being loved.
But as our little theologian bemoans--we do at times lose a sense of God’s presence with us. It’s easy to imagine God’s presence and goodness when things are going well and we’re cartwheeling across the sunny mountaintops of our lives. But when we’re scared or alone, trudging through the dark valleys, or wandering in the wilderness, we often wonder, Where are you, God? Even Jesus, in his most painful skin moment, cries, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And history on more than one occasion has pointed an accusing finger at the faithful and asked, Where was God?
Bruno is a young boy in John Boyne’s novel, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. His father is a high ranking officer in the German army of WWII and at the beginning of the book the family is being transferred to, as Bruno understands, Out-With. In his new home he finds little to like and cannot find any friends to play with. Soldiers now come in and out of his home, reporting to his father and calling him commandant.
One day Bruno goes exploring and finds a fence that stretches as far as he can see. He walks along the fence for a long time seeing nothing, but then he sees a little speck and coming closer he finds a boy, small, skinny, with large eyes in a thin, grey face, his head shaven. He is wearing striped pajamas, sitting on the ground with his back to the camp and looking through the fence. Bruno sits down in front of him and they talk through the fence. His name is Shmeul and they discover that they share the same birthday and are both nine years old.
Bruno returns day after day, sometimes sneaking food from the kitchen for his friend, who is always hungry, keeping his visits a secret from his family because they’ve forbidden him to go anywhere near the fence. What he learns from his new friend is often too hard for Bruno to believe—that he has no change of clothes, only the striped pajamas and cap he wears, that everyone on that side of the fence doesn’t have their own bedrooms, and the boys don’t have any toys.
One day Bruno contracts head lice and has his head shaven and when he sees Schmeul again, they joke how similar they look, only Bruno is fatter. Shortly thereafter Bruno’s mother decides she and Bruno and his sister will return to Berlin. It’s been almost a year since they arrived in Out-With. Bruno is deeply saddened and when he sees Shmeul he tells him he will be leaving. Shmeul is scared because he can’t find his father. The two boys hatch a plan to go looking for his father together the next day. Shmeul will bring pajamas and cap for Bruno to wear and he’ll crawl under the fence and change clothes; with his short hair he’ll appear no different than the others.
Their plan works. They do go looking for Shmeul’s father, but they get caught up in a large crowd of people who are being forced to march and the grey sky overhead grows darker and the rain falls harder and Bruno starts thinking he should return home because they were having roast beef that night and then he and Shmeul were out of the rain in a large, warm room packed with pajama people and the door closed and all seemed better and, quite out of character, Bruno took Shmuel’s tiny hand in his and told him he was the best friend he’d ever had and then the room went dark.
“Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? … if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.” In the end, I believe, it comes down to making a stance, a stance of faith and trust, even when the evidence, be it historical or personal, the evidence of God’s absence or indifference seems overwhelming; evidence such as Bruno and Shmeul’s camp of Auschwitz, or the killing fields of Cambodia, or the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia or Rwanda. Even when we feel alone and lost and scared and God-abandoned in our hospital room or looking at the foreclosure notice. Can we see God, moving in our midst? In Jesus God has stepped into our skin and God is also in the striped pajamas entering the gas chambers, standing with the oppressed, the hurting, the dying. God dying over and over again. And then being born anew in our midst when we walk with someone through their wilderness, make the hard sacrifice, comfort the grieving, listen with our hearts, practice forgiveness, become hope for someone else, live love. Then we become the midwives for God’s birth. Then we make every day Christmas because every day and every moment in every day is sacramental. Then we become the light in the darkness that the darkness does not overcome.
Amen.
Monday, December 13, 2010
"Into the Wild" - Matthew 3:1-12
Sermon on Sunday, December 5, 2010
In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”
Growing up, I was a scout. First a cub scout and then a boy scout, I spent a good seven or eight years learning how to tie double bowlines and tourniquets—how to set up a basic shelter and cook over an open fire. I enjoyed scouting. My brother and my friends were all in it with me, and we had fun on all those camping trips and weeks at scout camp.
Our scoutmaster was a man named Del LaGow. Mr. LaGow was a loving man who made ample space in his life for 30-some-odd pre-teen and teenage boys. He was always interested in teaching us how to cook Cornish game hens in a Dutch oven buried in a pit of coals or how to splint an injured leg with the contents of our tent bag. Through it all, certain things were ingrained in us, the scouts of Troop 31: Always bring a first aid kit and a tarp, keep your matches dry, and there is no such thing as too much rope. That all goes with the old scouting motto: “Be Prepared.” As boy scouts, we were certainly prepared, and to this day, I always pack rope, usually a few too many bungee cords, and at least one extra tarp. Mr. LaGow would be proud, I suppose.
A word that usually shouts out from Scripture during the Advent season is “prepare.” John the Baptist would have made a good boy scout, out in the wild, earning merit badges in sewing clothes with camel hair and living off the fat of the land—if you can call locusts and wild honey the “fat” of the land. But he was out there—living beyond civilization in the wilderness, surviving. And his message to anyone who would listen was, “Prepare! Prepare the way of the Lord! Make his paths straight!”
John the Baptist must have been an amazing presence—the kind of person you meet just once and then never ever forget—because he had crowds coming out in the wilderness to hear him and be baptized. John wasn’t doing miracles. We don’t know of any healings or turning water into wine. He wasn’t out in the wilderness multiplying fish and loaves or walking on water. He was just preaching the same sermon over and over again: Prepare the way of the Lord!
One of the reasons we know John the Baptist was popular was that the Pharisees and Sadducees themselves went out to see him. John must have been more than a blip on the radar screen—more than just some crazy prophet out in the wild eating bugs and preaching sermons—because these religious elites, even, ventured out there to see just what in God’s name he was doing. Did they feel threatened by John’s ministry? Were they out in the wilderness to keep an eye on him? Or were they, too, drawn to John’s charismatic personality?
In any case, the Pharisees and Sadducees serve as powerful reminders in the story of John the Baptist. They remind us that the announcement of Jesus’ ministry did not come from within the religious establishment. Jesus’ life was not a plan hatched and then signed off on by a committee of faith leaders. No one with any religious clout in Jesus’ day had a word to say about the scope and shape of his ministry.
If Jesus came today, we in the church might like to think that we could prepare a little reception for him—maybe a little meet-n-greet after church so that he could get to know people. Before he came, we’d probably make a couple lists: “What to do to get ready for Jesus’ coming” and then “What to do when Jesus gets here.” We’d like to think that we could invite him to preach during worship and then speak during our Sunday school class. We’d love to think that Jesus would linger near the church as long as we like, taking our questions and talking with us about God.
John the Baptist, however, reminds us vividly that Jesus’ ministry was not a church program. Jesus was not the brainchild of an institutionalized religion, sent to celebrate and reinforce the status quo. Rather, he was the child of a rambunctiously loving God, sent in part to turn religion on its head. So no, the announcement about Jesus’ coming did not appear in a Temple newsletter, and it was not in anyone’s Sunday morning bulletin. Knowledge of Jesus’ life did not begin with a select handful of pastor-types and then filter out into the congregations. It began with John the Baptist, out there in the wilderness, preaching to anyone who would listen.
Sometimes you have to be in the wilderness to get your message across, though, and truth be told, sometimes you have to be in the wilderness to hear what God is saying.
Mike was a man who went to church every Sunday, but it wasn’t until he went through the wilderness of cancer and chemotherapy that he learned to trust God through each moment and thank God for each breath.
Emily was a woman who’d grown up in church and Sunday school, but it wasn’t until she experienced the wilderness of a troubled marriage that she dug more deeply into her quest to find God’s direction for her life.
Jay and Helen met in a campus Christian fellowship and got married in the church, but it wasn’t until they trudged through the wilderness of a difficult pregnancy that they began to rely on God’s presence together.
Now let me be clear. I do not believe that God sets up “wilderness moments” in our lives. I do not believe that God shoves our lives into the wilderness—into cancer, into troubled marriages or into moments of anxiety and fear—so that we can become more able to hear God’s voice. But the trust is this: sometimes you and I, we find ourselves in the wilderness, don’t we? The wilderness of disappointment, the wilderness of loss, the wilderness of depression or sorrow, the wilderness of real financial trouble… Sometime’s life’s path takes us through the long, dark wilderness of slowly losing a parent or a spouse.
The loving gospel truth is that God will not leave us alone in the wilderness. And sometimes the wilderness is where we are more apt to listen for and receive news of Christ’s coming in our lives.
The invitation I would like to share with you this Advent season is for you to actually venture off into the wilderness. You can skip the part about eating locusts if you want, but you really should get out into the wild for a change.
Adam was a church-twice-a-month kind of guy. But then he started tutoring some middle school kids in a troubled school, and in the wilderness of those students’ lives he heard Christ calling him to new depths of faith and faithfulness.
Megan never really went to church at all—just never made the time. But in the wilderness of the local homeless shelter, she met men and women who trusted Jesus with each second of their lives, and she began to wonder…
Alex was a leader in the church—sang in the choir and served on the Session. But then his friends at work started getting laid off. Rather than avoid the awkward conversations, he kept calling, kept in touch. And guess what—in the wilderness of his friends’ struggles to find work and figure out what to do with themselves, Alex heard Christ’s voice in his own life, and began to wonder more fully if he was doing what he was called to do.
I suppose as a pastor I’d love the thought that the church is going to be the place where you can listen most attentively to God’s voice. And sometimes it is. But sometimes you’ve to get out into the wild, because it’s in the wilderness that you can most completely prepare for Christ’s coming in your own life.
Long before Fred Craddock was a well-known theologian and preacher in the church, he was a bright seminary student who was sometimes too smart for his own good. He’d written a paper on one of his heroes, a man by the name of Albert Schweizer. Schweizer was German doctor and a kind of “Mother Teresa” in his generation, as he’d spent much of his life serving the critically ill in Africa.
Fred Craddock earned an A+ on his Albert Schweizer paper, and considered himself something of an expert. About that same time Schweizer was coming to town to play a benefit concert (besides being a doctor, he was also an accomplished musician). So Craddock planted himself in the front row at that concert, hoping for a little Q and A afterwards, during which he would show of his brilliance.
The concert ended, but afterwards, Schweizer didn’t ask the audience, “Are there any questions?” Instead he simply said, “I thank you for your hospitality and your gracious reception of me, but I have to leave now to catch my plane back to my people in Africa. They are sick and hungry and dying. If any of you have in you the love of Jesus, come help me.”
Fred Craddock’s self-serving, smarty questions turned to ashes right then and there. And his life became pointed in a whole new direction. This was Fred Craddock’s invitation into the wilderness—the wilderness of sickness and struggle that so many human beings face—the wilderness that prepared him to make way for Christ in his own life and to be faithful.
Friends, I don’t think it’s any stretch of the imagination to say that there’s a wilderness out there waiting for you to come and prepare for Christ’s way in your own life. Somewhere out there, outside the city limits of your own comfort zone, God is calling you to listen and be faithful. May God grant you courage and strength for the journey there and the ministry that follows. Amen.
In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”
Growing up, I was a scout. First a cub scout and then a boy scout, I spent a good seven or eight years learning how to tie double bowlines and tourniquets—how to set up a basic shelter and cook over an open fire. I enjoyed scouting. My brother and my friends were all in it with me, and we had fun on all those camping trips and weeks at scout camp.
Our scoutmaster was a man named Del LaGow. Mr. LaGow was a loving man who made ample space in his life for 30-some-odd pre-teen and teenage boys. He was always interested in teaching us how to cook Cornish game hens in a Dutch oven buried in a pit of coals or how to splint an injured leg with the contents of our tent bag. Through it all, certain things were ingrained in us, the scouts of Troop 31: Always bring a first aid kit and a tarp, keep your matches dry, and there is no such thing as too much rope. That all goes with the old scouting motto: “Be Prepared.” As boy scouts, we were certainly prepared, and to this day, I always pack rope, usually a few too many bungee cords, and at least one extra tarp. Mr. LaGow would be proud, I suppose.
A word that usually shouts out from Scripture during the Advent season is “prepare.” John the Baptist would have made a good boy scout, out in the wild, earning merit badges in sewing clothes with camel hair and living off the fat of the land—if you can call locusts and wild honey the “fat” of the land. But he was out there—living beyond civilization in the wilderness, surviving. And his message to anyone who would listen was, “Prepare! Prepare the way of the Lord! Make his paths straight!”
John the Baptist must have been an amazing presence—the kind of person you meet just once and then never ever forget—because he had crowds coming out in the wilderness to hear him and be baptized. John wasn’t doing miracles. We don’t know of any healings or turning water into wine. He wasn’t out in the wilderness multiplying fish and loaves or walking on water. He was just preaching the same sermon over and over again: Prepare the way of the Lord!
One of the reasons we know John the Baptist was popular was that the Pharisees and Sadducees themselves went out to see him. John must have been more than a blip on the radar screen—more than just some crazy prophet out in the wild eating bugs and preaching sermons—because these religious elites, even, ventured out there to see just what in God’s name he was doing. Did they feel threatened by John’s ministry? Were they out in the wilderness to keep an eye on him? Or were they, too, drawn to John’s charismatic personality?
In any case, the Pharisees and Sadducees serve as powerful reminders in the story of John the Baptist. They remind us that the announcement of Jesus’ ministry did not come from within the religious establishment. Jesus’ life was not a plan hatched and then signed off on by a committee of faith leaders. No one with any religious clout in Jesus’ day had a word to say about the scope and shape of his ministry.
If Jesus came today, we in the church might like to think that we could prepare a little reception for him—maybe a little meet-n-greet after church so that he could get to know people. Before he came, we’d probably make a couple lists: “What to do to get ready for Jesus’ coming” and then “What to do when Jesus gets here.” We’d like to think that we could invite him to preach during worship and then speak during our Sunday school class. We’d love to think that Jesus would linger near the church as long as we like, taking our questions and talking with us about God.
John the Baptist, however, reminds us vividly that Jesus’ ministry was not a church program. Jesus was not the brainchild of an institutionalized religion, sent to celebrate and reinforce the status quo. Rather, he was the child of a rambunctiously loving God, sent in part to turn religion on its head. So no, the announcement about Jesus’ coming did not appear in a Temple newsletter, and it was not in anyone’s Sunday morning bulletin. Knowledge of Jesus’ life did not begin with a select handful of pastor-types and then filter out into the congregations. It began with John the Baptist, out there in the wilderness, preaching to anyone who would listen.
Sometimes you have to be in the wilderness to get your message across, though, and truth be told, sometimes you have to be in the wilderness to hear what God is saying.
Mike was a man who went to church every Sunday, but it wasn’t until he went through the wilderness of cancer and chemotherapy that he learned to trust God through each moment and thank God for each breath.
Emily was a woman who’d grown up in church and Sunday school, but it wasn’t until she experienced the wilderness of a troubled marriage that she dug more deeply into her quest to find God’s direction for her life.
Jay and Helen met in a campus Christian fellowship and got married in the church, but it wasn’t until they trudged through the wilderness of a difficult pregnancy that they began to rely on God’s presence together.
Now let me be clear. I do not believe that God sets up “wilderness moments” in our lives. I do not believe that God shoves our lives into the wilderness—into cancer, into troubled marriages or into moments of anxiety and fear—so that we can become more able to hear God’s voice. But the trust is this: sometimes you and I, we find ourselves in the wilderness, don’t we? The wilderness of disappointment, the wilderness of loss, the wilderness of depression or sorrow, the wilderness of real financial trouble… Sometime’s life’s path takes us through the long, dark wilderness of slowly losing a parent or a spouse.
The loving gospel truth is that God will not leave us alone in the wilderness. And sometimes the wilderness is where we are more apt to listen for and receive news of Christ’s coming in our lives.
The invitation I would like to share with you this Advent season is for you to actually venture off into the wilderness. You can skip the part about eating locusts if you want, but you really should get out into the wild for a change.
Adam was a church-twice-a-month kind of guy. But then he started tutoring some middle school kids in a troubled school, and in the wilderness of those students’ lives he heard Christ calling him to new depths of faith and faithfulness.
Megan never really went to church at all—just never made the time. But in the wilderness of the local homeless shelter, she met men and women who trusted Jesus with each second of their lives, and she began to wonder…
Alex was a leader in the church—sang in the choir and served on the Session. But then his friends at work started getting laid off. Rather than avoid the awkward conversations, he kept calling, kept in touch. And guess what—in the wilderness of his friends’ struggles to find work and figure out what to do with themselves, Alex heard Christ’s voice in his own life, and began to wonder more fully if he was doing what he was called to do.
I suppose as a pastor I’d love the thought that the church is going to be the place where you can listen most attentively to God’s voice. And sometimes it is. But sometimes you’ve to get out into the wild, because it’s in the wilderness that you can most completely prepare for Christ’s coming in your own life.
Long before Fred Craddock was a well-known theologian and preacher in the church, he was a bright seminary student who was sometimes too smart for his own good. He’d written a paper on one of his heroes, a man by the name of Albert Schweizer. Schweizer was German doctor and a kind of “Mother Teresa” in his generation, as he’d spent much of his life serving the critically ill in Africa.
Fred Craddock earned an A+ on his Albert Schweizer paper, and considered himself something of an expert. About that same time Schweizer was coming to town to play a benefit concert (besides being a doctor, he was also an accomplished musician). So Craddock planted himself in the front row at that concert, hoping for a little Q and A afterwards, during which he would show of his brilliance.
The concert ended, but afterwards, Schweizer didn’t ask the audience, “Are there any questions?” Instead he simply said, “I thank you for your hospitality and your gracious reception of me, but I have to leave now to catch my plane back to my people in Africa. They are sick and hungry and dying. If any of you have in you the love of Jesus, come help me.”
Fred Craddock’s self-serving, smarty questions turned to ashes right then and there. And his life became pointed in a whole new direction. This was Fred Craddock’s invitation into the wilderness—the wilderness of sickness and struggle that so many human beings face—the wilderness that prepared him to make way for Christ in his own life and to be faithful.
Friends, I don’t think it’s any stretch of the imagination to say that there’s a wilderness out there waiting for you to come and prepare for Christ’s way in your own life. Somewhere out there, outside the city limits of your own comfort zone, God is calling you to listen and be faithful. May God grant you courage and strength for the journey there and the ministry that follows. Amen.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Evotional - "If Jesus was born today"
I've been thinking lately about Advent and Christmas, of course, and I've been struck again this year by the overcommercialization of it all. So here's a Steve Turner poem for this week's evotional. In many of his poems, Turner has a knack for exposing the gulf that often exists between the gospel message and a comfortable, institutionalized religion. May his words find a place in your thinking and believing today!
"If Jesus was born today"
by Steve Turner
If Jesus was born today
it would be in a downtown motel
marked by a helicopter's flashing bulb.
A traffic warden, working late,
would be the first upon the scene.
Later, at the expense of a TV network,
an eminent sociologist,
the host of a chat show
and a controversial author
would arrive with their good wishes
-the whole occasion to be filmed as part of the
'Is This The Son Of God?' one hour special.
Childhood would be a blur of photographs and speculation
dwindling by his late teens into
'Where Is He Now?' features in Sunday magazines.
If Jesus was thirty today
they wouldn't really care about the public ministry,
they'd be too busy investigating His finances
and trying to prove He had Church or Mafia connections.
The miracles would be explained by
an eminent and controversial magician,
His claims to be God's Son recognised as
excellent examples of Spoken English
and immediately incorporated into
the O-Level syllabus,
His sinless perfection considered by moral philosophers
as, OK, but a bit repressive.
If Jesus was thirty-one today
He'd be the fly in everyone's ointment-
the sort of controversial person who
stands no chance of eminence.
Communists would expel Him, capitalists
would exploit Him or have Him
smeared by people who know a thing or two about God.
Doctors would accuse Him of quackery,
soldiers would accuse Him of cowardice,
theologians would take Him aside and try
to persuade Him of His non-existence.
If Jesus was thirty-two today we'd have to
end it all. Heretic, fundamentalist, literalist,
puritan, pacifist, non-conformist, we'd take Him
away and quietly end the argument.
But the argument would rumble in the ground
at the end of three days and would break out
and walk around as though death was some bug,
saying 'I am the resurrection and the life...
No man cometh to the Father but by me'.
While the magicians researched new explanations
and the semanticists wondered exactly what
He meant by 'I' and 'No man' there would be those
who stand around amused, asking for something
called proof.
"If Jesus was born today"
by Steve Turner
If Jesus was born today
it would be in a downtown motel
marked by a helicopter's flashing bulb.
A traffic warden, working late,
would be the first upon the scene.
Later, at the expense of a TV network,
an eminent sociologist,
the host of a chat show
and a controversial author
would arrive with their good wishes
-the whole occasion to be filmed as part of the
'Is This The Son Of God?' one hour special.
Childhood would be a blur of photographs and speculation
dwindling by his late teens into
'Where Is He Now?' features in Sunday magazines.
If Jesus was thirty today
they wouldn't really care about the public ministry,
they'd be too busy investigating His finances
and trying to prove He had Church or Mafia connections.
The miracles would be explained by
an eminent and controversial magician,
His claims to be God's Son recognised as
excellent examples of Spoken English
and immediately incorporated into
the O-Level syllabus,
His sinless perfection considered by moral philosophers
as, OK, but a bit repressive.
If Jesus was thirty-one today
He'd be the fly in everyone's ointment-
the sort of controversial person who
stands no chance of eminence.
Communists would expel Him, capitalists
would exploit Him or have Him
smeared by people who know a thing or two about God.
Doctors would accuse Him of quackery,
soldiers would accuse Him of cowardice,
theologians would take Him aside and try
to persuade Him of His non-existence.
If Jesus was thirty-two today we'd have to
end it all. Heretic, fundamentalist, literalist,
puritan, pacifist, non-conformist, we'd take Him
away and quietly end the argument.
But the argument would rumble in the ground
at the end of three days and would break out
and walk around as though death was some bug,
saying 'I am the resurrection and the life...
No man cometh to the Father but by me'.
While the magicians researched new explanations
and the semanticists wondered exactly what
He meant by 'I' and 'No man' there would be those
who stand around amused, asking for something
called proof.
Monday, November 29, 2010
"Best Wishes" - Isaiah 2:1-5
Sermon on the first Sunday of Advent, November 28, 2010
"He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."
Like many of you, perhaps, I woke this morning eager and anxious for the latest news. At midnight our time—just ten hours ago—the United States and South Korea began military exercises in the Yellow Sea, just off the Korean peninsula, and so I braced myself when I opened my laptop for the most recent reports.
Global spotlights have shifted towards North and South Korea as tensions have mounted in that region, reminding the world that, technically speaking, the two nations have been at war for sixty years now.
For the past few weeks, I’ve contemplated preaching from the second chapter of Isaiah, basing this morning’s sermon largely on Isaiah’s vision of God’s reign, when the nations “shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks”—when “nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” In light of wars raging on in our world and in light of a new war on the brink of ignition, it’s been strange to conceive a biblical message that feels largely out of touch with reality.
We might call Isaiah 2:1-5 wishful thinking at best, at least in this day and age. Swords and spears—tools of war melted into farming implements as nations commit never to fight again. Often our best wishes fall short of depicting such a wistful, far-flung scenario.
Our faith ancestors, however, clung to Isaiah’s vision of peace. The Assyrians had already conquered the northern kingdom of Israel. From the Sea of Galilee down to the cities of Samaria and Bethel, Assyrian armies had swept through from the north. Jerusalem was next, and with it, the rest of Judah. Each and every day, the question for the Judeans wasn’t if the war would come, but when.
But the land of Judah did have some time—time enough, perhaps, to make some attempt at a defense before the Assyrians invaded. And so do you know what the Judeans did to get ready? They were mostly farmers, of course—not soldiers. Eight weeks of boot camp was probably unrealistic. No time for drills or maneuvers or officer training. But they did have time to do one thing, and so they did what they could. They gathered together their tools—all their farming tools—and they took the metal from those tools and melted it down to make weapons. Plows and spades, scythes, pitchforks, and pruning hooks… All of it could be reshaped to make helmets and shields, swords and spears.
The Judeans couldn’t use sickles and plowshares to fight the Assyrians, but in a week or so, they could exchange them for tools of war. And that’s what they did.
But, of course, this came with a high price. You can’t till the soil with a spear and you can’t plant wheat with a broad sword. If you exchange your farming tools for weapons, basically you give up on an entire harvest season—you commit yourself to your immediate survival, but you essentially write off the year to come. And you hope that, should you survive the Assyrian assault, you’ll be able to scrounge enough to make it through to the next planting season with enough time to turn your swords back into plowshares and your spears back into pruning hooks.
This is where the Judeans found themselves. On the brink of war with no other option than to melt their livelihood into some semblance of a military stand. Bleak. Hopeless. Wishful.
Not much has changed. Well, ok—a lot has changed. But still today the nations scrounge their own resources to attack and defend. Close to a quarter of our own federal budget is currently assigned to defense spending, and for the past several years, China has increased its military spending by close to 10% annually. It’s estimated that worldwide, annual military expenditures come close to 1200 billion US dollars. That is, of course, a staggering amount of money to spend again and again, year after year.
A question to consider is this: what if Isaiah was right? And what if a day could come when the nations said, “We’re not going to ‘learn war any more’?” What if the United States and China and Iraq and Afghanistan and North and South Korea… What if we all melted down swords and spears and tanks and shell casings, and what if we committed those global resources to other things?
Well, for starters, it would only take 10 billion dollars to provide enough technology and infrastructure to present the entire world with access to safe drinking water. Just 10 billion! Currently, half the developing world—over 2 billion men, women, and children—suffer because their water isn’t clean. But we could solve that with just a fraction of one year’s worth of global military spending.
This may not be possible in this day and age, but it is nonetheless a biblical image that our faith ancestors clung to. They longed for the day they could melt down their swords and spears and turn them into the things they needed to feed their children and build a life for themselves. But of course, in spite of their best wishes, they sharpened their swords and braced themselves for the day they’d have to use them.
Now as I move on, let me be clear. This morning I do not mean to oversimplify globally complex issues of military conflict. I do not mean to nurture a naïve vision of soldiers and drug lords and members of the Taliban merrily dancing around a bonfire of melting weaponry.
I do mean to say this, however: the world we have is not the world for which God wishes.
So then, it can be with renewed hope and possibility that we as Christians enter once again into this time of year we call “Advent.” “Advent” means “coming,” and in this spiritual season, friends, we commit our thinking and believing to Christ’s coming in our world and in our lives.
What does this mean? It means that no matter how damaged, worn, or broken our lives become—no matter how destructive our world may be and no matter how far we fall from God’s wishes, Christ is coming to make all things new.
Once there was this preacher who’d just graduated from seminary. She was installed in a small church and, eager to begin her ministry, she set a goal of personally visiting every family in the church within her first six months.
At the end of six months, she almost had it done. Only one family remained, but people said, “Don’t bother. They’re not coming back.” Ignoring those words, this young minister drove out to the couple’s house. The wife was home and she invited her in, made some coffee.
The conversation rolled from one thing to the next. They talked about this. They talked about that. And then, they talked about it.
Two years ago, the wife was home with their young son. She was vacuuming in the back bedroom and hadn’t checked on him in a little while, so she went into the den—and did not find him. She looked through the rest of the house—no sign of him. And then in a panic she followed his trail—through the back patio door, across the patio, to the swimming pool… and then she found him.
“At the funeral, our friends from church were very kind,” she said. “They told us it was God’s will.”
The minister put her coffee cup down on the table. Should she touch it? Should she touch it? She touched it. “Your friends meant well, but they were wrong. God does not will the death of children.”
The woman’s face reddened, and her jaw got firm. “They who do you blame? I guess you blame me.”
“No, I don’t blame you. I don’t blame God… I can’t explain it. I only know that God’s heart broke when yours did.”
The woman sat there with her arms crossed. It was clear that the conversation was over. On the way home, the pastor kept kicking herself. “Why didn’t I leave it alone?”
Several days later the phone rang. It was the wife. “We don’t know where this is going, but would you come out and talk with my husband and me? We assumed that God was angry with us; but maybe it’s the other way around.” (1)
Sometimes life feels beyond repair. The wound is too deep. The odds of recovery, insurmountable. Sometimes the pain of life is too great to bear. Too many swords, not enough plowshares. Too many bombs, not enough fresh water wells.
Our hope this Advent season is not simple wishful thinking. It is our hope in the Christ—the one who transforms the broken places in our lives—the one who transformed even the cross, that instrument of death, and made it a symbol of life and new life.
Our hope is in Christ, the one who melts our suspicions and fears,and reshapes them into new images of promise and possibility. It is in Christ, then, that all our best hopes, our best dreams, and our best wishes lie. Amen.
(1) A story from the sermons of the Rev. Tom Long.
"He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."
Like many of you, perhaps, I woke this morning eager and anxious for the latest news. At midnight our time—just ten hours ago—the United States and South Korea began military exercises in the Yellow Sea, just off the Korean peninsula, and so I braced myself when I opened my laptop for the most recent reports.
Global spotlights have shifted towards North and South Korea as tensions have mounted in that region, reminding the world that, technically speaking, the two nations have been at war for sixty years now.
For the past few weeks, I’ve contemplated preaching from the second chapter of Isaiah, basing this morning’s sermon largely on Isaiah’s vision of God’s reign, when the nations “shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks”—when “nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” In light of wars raging on in our world and in light of a new war on the brink of ignition, it’s been strange to conceive a biblical message that feels largely out of touch with reality.
We might call Isaiah 2:1-5 wishful thinking at best, at least in this day and age. Swords and spears—tools of war melted into farming implements as nations commit never to fight again. Often our best wishes fall short of depicting such a wistful, far-flung scenario.
Our faith ancestors, however, clung to Isaiah’s vision of peace. The Assyrians had already conquered the northern kingdom of Israel. From the Sea of Galilee down to the cities of Samaria and Bethel, Assyrian armies had swept through from the north. Jerusalem was next, and with it, the rest of Judah. Each and every day, the question for the Judeans wasn’t if the war would come, but when.
But the land of Judah did have some time—time enough, perhaps, to make some attempt at a defense before the Assyrians invaded. And so do you know what the Judeans did to get ready? They were mostly farmers, of course—not soldiers. Eight weeks of boot camp was probably unrealistic. No time for drills or maneuvers or officer training. But they did have time to do one thing, and so they did what they could. They gathered together their tools—all their farming tools—and they took the metal from those tools and melted it down to make weapons. Plows and spades, scythes, pitchforks, and pruning hooks… All of it could be reshaped to make helmets and shields, swords and spears.
The Judeans couldn’t use sickles and plowshares to fight the Assyrians, but in a week or so, they could exchange them for tools of war. And that’s what they did.
But, of course, this came with a high price. You can’t till the soil with a spear and you can’t plant wheat with a broad sword. If you exchange your farming tools for weapons, basically you give up on an entire harvest season—you commit yourself to your immediate survival, but you essentially write off the year to come. And you hope that, should you survive the Assyrian assault, you’ll be able to scrounge enough to make it through to the next planting season with enough time to turn your swords back into plowshares and your spears back into pruning hooks.
This is where the Judeans found themselves. On the brink of war with no other option than to melt their livelihood into some semblance of a military stand. Bleak. Hopeless. Wishful.
Not much has changed. Well, ok—a lot has changed. But still today the nations scrounge their own resources to attack and defend. Close to a quarter of our own federal budget is currently assigned to defense spending, and for the past several years, China has increased its military spending by close to 10% annually. It’s estimated that worldwide, annual military expenditures come close to 1200 billion US dollars. That is, of course, a staggering amount of money to spend again and again, year after year.
A question to consider is this: what if Isaiah was right? And what if a day could come when the nations said, “We’re not going to ‘learn war any more’?” What if the United States and China and Iraq and Afghanistan and North and South Korea… What if we all melted down swords and spears and tanks and shell casings, and what if we committed those global resources to other things?
Well, for starters, it would only take 10 billion dollars to provide enough technology and infrastructure to present the entire world with access to safe drinking water. Just 10 billion! Currently, half the developing world—over 2 billion men, women, and children—suffer because their water isn’t clean. But we could solve that with just a fraction of one year’s worth of global military spending.
This may not be possible in this day and age, but it is nonetheless a biblical image that our faith ancestors clung to. They longed for the day they could melt down their swords and spears and turn them into the things they needed to feed their children and build a life for themselves. But of course, in spite of their best wishes, they sharpened their swords and braced themselves for the day they’d have to use them.
Now as I move on, let me be clear. This morning I do not mean to oversimplify globally complex issues of military conflict. I do not mean to nurture a naïve vision of soldiers and drug lords and members of the Taliban merrily dancing around a bonfire of melting weaponry.
I do mean to say this, however: the world we have is not the world for which God wishes.
So then, it can be with renewed hope and possibility that we as Christians enter once again into this time of year we call “Advent.” “Advent” means “coming,” and in this spiritual season, friends, we commit our thinking and believing to Christ’s coming in our world and in our lives.
What does this mean? It means that no matter how damaged, worn, or broken our lives become—no matter how destructive our world may be and no matter how far we fall from God’s wishes, Christ is coming to make all things new.
Once there was this preacher who’d just graduated from seminary. She was installed in a small church and, eager to begin her ministry, she set a goal of personally visiting every family in the church within her first six months.
At the end of six months, she almost had it done. Only one family remained, but people said, “Don’t bother. They’re not coming back.” Ignoring those words, this young minister drove out to the couple’s house. The wife was home and she invited her in, made some coffee.
The conversation rolled from one thing to the next. They talked about this. They talked about that. And then, they talked about it.
Two years ago, the wife was home with their young son. She was vacuuming in the back bedroom and hadn’t checked on him in a little while, so she went into the den—and did not find him. She looked through the rest of the house—no sign of him. And then in a panic she followed his trail—through the back patio door, across the patio, to the swimming pool… and then she found him.
“At the funeral, our friends from church were very kind,” she said. “They told us it was God’s will.”
The minister put her coffee cup down on the table. Should she touch it? Should she touch it? She touched it. “Your friends meant well, but they were wrong. God does not will the death of children.”
The woman’s face reddened, and her jaw got firm. “They who do you blame? I guess you blame me.”
“No, I don’t blame you. I don’t blame God… I can’t explain it. I only know that God’s heart broke when yours did.”
The woman sat there with her arms crossed. It was clear that the conversation was over. On the way home, the pastor kept kicking herself. “Why didn’t I leave it alone?”
Several days later the phone rang. It was the wife. “We don’t know where this is going, but would you come out and talk with my husband and me? We assumed that God was angry with us; but maybe it’s the other way around.” (1)
Sometimes life feels beyond repair. The wound is too deep. The odds of recovery, insurmountable. Sometimes the pain of life is too great to bear. Too many swords, not enough plowshares. Too many bombs, not enough fresh water wells.
Our hope this Advent season is not simple wishful thinking. It is our hope in the Christ—the one who transforms the broken places in our lives—the one who transformed even the cross, that instrument of death, and made it a symbol of life and new life.
Our hope is in Christ, the one who melts our suspicions and fears,and reshapes them into new images of promise and possibility. It is in Christ, then, that all our best hopes, our best dreams, and our best wishes lie. Amen.
(1) A story from the sermons of the Rev. Tom Long.
Monday, November 22, 2010
"Upside Down Kingdom" - Luke 23:33-43
Sermon on Sunday, November 21, 2010
There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.”
Reading near the end of the gospel of Luke can feel like visiting a museum for the fiftieth time. We’ve seen it before—walked by this particular display on countless occasions. It’s the gruesome scene—Jesus’ final moments.
I don’t know about you, but I haven’t found too many museums that can hold my attention for much more than an hour, or maybe two. After that, I get glazed over and then it doesn’t matter what I’m looking at—a sixth century sword from the Byzantine Empire? An ancient Roman urn? One of Van Gogh’s finest? It’s not that I don’t appreciate great art and culture—I do. I’ve simply found that I can appreciate it more when I’ve liberated myself from having to appreciate it all at once. Give me one hour to find three or four things that I can truly stop and study any day, but please don’t ask me to try to see it all. I know myself—I’ll lose focus. I’ll get tired and crabby.
Sometimes the twenty-third chapter of Luke can feel like that tableau at the natural history museum that you’ve passed by dozens and dozens of times. We’ve read it. We’ve seen it. The Bible story, the passion play, the TV drama, the movie version… The Good Friday sermons and the Sunday school lessons… We hear the line, “they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left,” and we’re in territory that is perhaps too familiar—familiar enough, at least, so that nothing in the scene is sufficiently jarring enough to stop us in our tracks and make us linger for awhile.
Sometimes just one detail, though, is enough. Just one tiny detail—the inscription on the hilt of that particular sword, a chip in mouth of that urn, the brushstrokes Van Gogh used to make that one sunflower near the top… Sometimes a small detail is enough to draw us in, wondering anew about what it is we’re really looking at. I may not be able to lose an entire day at the museum, but I can get wonderfully lost in the right detail.
So let’s zoom in on our story a bit… See Jesus there, on the cross. He’s between two criminals, and he’s asking for forgiveness for these people who don’t know what they’re doing. Others are there, too—people who came to watch, and they’re just standing there, looking. Picture it all. A few more are grabbing at the clothes that have been stripped from Jesus. The soldiers are mocking him, offering cheap, sour wine. Someone from the crowd, a leader, shouts out, “let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” And this catches on. A soldier yells, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” And then even one of the criminals hanging there with Jesus says, “Yes! Save yourself and us!”
Zoom in a little more, and focus on this one detail. See that above Jesus’ head there’s a little sign hanging there, and it says, “This is the King of the Jews.” Dwell on that detail for a minute. It was a joke, really—a cruel joke someone thought of, maybe at the last minute. Was it one of the soldiers? Did he say to his friends, “Hey, I got an idea. Let’s make a sign and hang it on the cross. What should it say?” Or was he one of those who had been in the room when Pilate asked Jesus, “Are you the king of the Jews?” And maybe he heard Jesus respond: “You say so.” In any case, someone made that sign, the one that said, “This is the King of the Jews” and then attached it to the top of that cross.
Usually, when someone is crowned king, it doesn’t go like that. Recently, with Prince William’s engagement, the cameras have zoomed in on Britain’s royal family, and some of that attention has fallen on Prince Charles, who will assume the throne once Queen Elizabeth dies. When that happens, we can expect an uber-extravagant coronation ceremony—an international television event with all eyes on the crown as it is carefully lowered onto Prince Charles’ head. Then at some point, there will be a grand pronouncement: “This is the king.”
The pronouncement of Jesus’ kingship wasn’t quite so austere. No pomp, no circumstance. Just a soldier’s spur-of-the-moment joke, hand-written on a sign that got tacked to the cross: “This is the King of the Jews.” A cruel, sober reminder that Jesus isn’t like other kings—that Jesus’ kingdom isn’t like other kingdoms. It’s sort of the upside down kingdom—the kingdom where the first are in fact last and the last are first, the poor are rich and the rich are poor, where the meek inherit everything. It’s the kingdom where you love your enemies and pray for the people who persecute you—the kingdom where you are blessed if you mourn, blessed if you hunger, and blessed if you thirst. It’s all upside down. It’s the kingdom where the King refuses to force anyone to do anything, but instead behaves like a servant. It’s the kingdom where the King is mocked as he is crowned.
Now today is Christ the King Sunday. In the church year, it’s the Sunday before we do it all over again—Advent, then Christmas, then Epiphany, then Ash Wednesday, Lent, Easter… The message of any self-respecting Christ the King Sunday is, well, that Jesus Christ is King and Lord. It’s really sort of an everyday message, much like “Christ is born” and “Christ is risen,” but if nothing else, Christ the King Sunday gives us a shove towards saying it more intentionally: Jesus Christ is King.
But maybe then the question remains for you and for me: What does it mean to say that? What does it mean to say, “Jesus Christ is King and Lord”?
There’s a great story about George Buttrick, one of the absolute best preachers of all time. I recently came across a list of the top ten preachers of the twentieth century. Buttrick came in at number three, right behind Billy Graham and right ahead of Martin Luther King Jr. He was a force.
Well anyway, Buttrick was on a flight once, heading back to New York City, where he served as a pastor, and he was jotting down some notes for his sermon the following Sunday. The man sitting next to him on the plane looked over several times, and finally his curiosity got the best of him and he said to Buttrick: “I hate to bother you—but what in the world are you working on?”
“Oh, I’m a minister,” Buttrick explained, “and I’m working on my sermon for Sunday.”
“Oh, religion,” said the man, “I don’t like to get all caught up in the in’s and out’s and complexities of religion. I like to keep it simple. ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ The Golden Rule—that’s my religion.”
“I see,” said Buttrick, “and what do you do?”
“I’m an astronomer,” said the man. “I teach at the university.”
“Oh yes,” said Buttrick, “Astronomy—I don’t like to get all caught up in the in’s and out’s and complexities of astronomy. Twinkle, twinkle little star—that’s my astronomy…” (1)
I suppose that in many ways, we tend to reduce Christianity to something we can manage. Maybe it’s the golden rule. Maybe it’s just trusting God and trying to be a good person. Maybe it’s showing up for church and looking for good advice to get you through the week.
But friends, we are citizens of the upside down kingdom. And central to our identity can be nothing other than this: Jesus Christ is King and Lord. Now maybe that language bothers you. Maybe you’re afraid of sounding like one of those crazy Christians on TV, or like that distant relative who shows up at family reunions and pesters everyone with his religious chatter.
But look at it this way: Someone is “Lord” in your life, or something is “Lord.” If there’s a throne in the kingdom of your life, it’s probably good to acknowledge that it seldom sits empty. Someone or something is always there, ruling over you. Now, in a self-reflective moment, you might say that that “someone” is you, actually. Oftentimes, we are the ones sitting on that throne, attempting to rule the life before us. Though even that is an oversimplification, because usually it’s just a part of us on the throne, calling the shots and attempting to be king.
Which part of you has been trying to rule your life lately?
Which part of your life is king and lord right now?
Is it the workaholic in you?
The voice in you that can’t imagine your life without your job?
Is it the part of you that thinks that a higher salary is your final ticket to joy?
What voice is ruling in your life?
The voice that says that if you could just lose ten pounds, you’d be happy?
Or are you being ruled by that inner voice that keeps telling you, over and over again that your job is to keep everybody happy, so don’t argue, don’t say what you really think, don’t make waves…
What is sitting on the throne of your life?
Is it a wound that you can’t let heal?
A past hurt that you can’t let go of?
Are you ruled by anger?
Or fear?
Is your king an attachment or an addiction?
Or is your “king” a certain belief you have, deep down, that the world would be a wonderful place if everybody could just see things your way?
Or in a strange way, is the king in your life your growing conviction that it just doesn’t matter anymore, so why try?
Today I want to encourage you to make room in the throne room of your soul for the One who turns all that stuff upside down.
If we were another church, I suppose this is where we’d stick the alter call. And if you wanted to publicly acknowledge Jesus as Lord, you could trot on up here and make it happen. But here’s the truth, friends—it already did happen. In Jesus Christ, God has already loved you with a love that you can’t do a darn thing about. You can’t make it more real by acknowledging it, just like you can’t make it less real by ignoring it. That's what grace is, by the way.
The real question is this: what does Christ as King mean for you today? Answering that question is not a once-in-a-lifetime moment, but rather a daily practice that we engage as we live forward in faith. God bless us as we do just that. Amen.
(1) This is a fairly well-known story, but I got it first from my friend Mark Ramsey, pastor of Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church in Asheville, NC, in his sermon "Uncomfortable" on June 20, 2010. You can read it here.
There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.”
Reading near the end of the gospel of Luke can feel like visiting a museum for the fiftieth time. We’ve seen it before—walked by this particular display on countless occasions. It’s the gruesome scene—Jesus’ final moments.
I don’t know about you, but I haven’t found too many museums that can hold my attention for much more than an hour, or maybe two. After that, I get glazed over and then it doesn’t matter what I’m looking at—a sixth century sword from the Byzantine Empire? An ancient Roman urn? One of Van Gogh’s finest? It’s not that I don’t appreciate great art and culture—I do. I’ve simply found that I can appreciate it more when I’ve liberated myself from having to appreciate it all at once. Give me one hour to find three or four things that I can truly stop and study any day, but please don’t ask me to try to see it all. I know myself—I’ll lose focus. I’ll get tired and crabby.
Sometimes the twenty-third chapter of Luke can feel like that tableau at the natural history museum that you’ve passed by dozens and dozens of times. We’ve read it. We’ve seen it. The Bible story, the passion play, the TV drama, the movie version… The Good Friday sermons and the Sunday school lessons… We hear the line, “they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left,” and we’re in territory that is perhaps too familiar—familiar enough, at least, so that nothing in the scene is sufficiently jarring enough to stop us in our tracks and make us linger for awhile.
Sometimes just one detail, though, is enough. Just one tiny detail—the inscription on the hilt of that particular sword, a chip in mouth of that urn, the brushstrokes Van Gogh used to make that one sunflower near the top… Sometimes a small detail is enough to draw us in, wondering anew about what it is we’re really looking at. I may not be able to lose an entire day at the museum, but I can get wonderfully lost in the right detail.
So let’s zoom in on our story a bit… See Jesus there, on the cross. He’s between two criminals, and he’s asking for forgiveness for these people who don’t know what they’re doing. Others are there, too—people who came to watch, and they’re just standing there, looking. Picture it all. A few more are grabbing at the clothes that have been stripped from Jesus. The soldiers are mocking him, offering cheap, sour wine. Someone from the crowd, a leader, shouts out, “let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” And this catches on. A soldier yells, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” And then even one of the criminals hanging there with Jesus says, “Yes! Save yourself and us!”
Zoom in a little more, and focus on this one detail. See that above Jesus’ head there’s a little sign hanging there, and it says, “This is the King of the Jews.” Dwell on that detail for a minute. It was a joke, really—a cruel joke someone thought of, maybe at the last minute. Was it one of the soldiers? Did he say to his friends, “Hey, I got an idea. Let’s make a sign and hang it on the cross. What should it say?” Or was he one of those who had been in the room when Pilate asked Jesus, “Are you the king of the Jews?” And maybe he heard Jesus respond: “You say so.” In any case, someone made that sign, the one that said, “This is the King of the Jews” and then attached it to the top of that cross.
Usually, when someone is crowned king, it doesn’t go like that. Recently, with Prince William’s engagement, the cameras have zoomed in on Britain’s royal family, and some of that attention has fallen on Prince Charles, who will assume the throne once Queen Elizabeth dies. When that happens, we can expect an uber-extravagant coronation ceremony—an international television event with all eyes on the crown as it is carefully lowered onto Prince Charles’ head. Then at some point, there will be a grand pronouncement: “This is the king.”
The pronouncement of Jesus’ kingship wasn’t quite so austere. No pomp, no circumstance. Just a soldier’s spur-of-the-moment joke, hand-written on a sign that got tacked to the cross: “This is the King of the Jews.” A cruel, sober reminder that Jesus isn’t like other kings—that Jesus’ kingdom isn’t like other kingdoms. It’s sort of the upside down kingdom—the kingdom where the first are in fact last and the last are first, the poor are rich and the rich are poor, where the meek inherit everything. It’s the kingdom where you love your enemies and pray for the people who persecute you—the kingdom where you are blessed if you mourn, blessed if you hunger, and blessed if you thirst. It’s all upside down. It’s the kingdom where the King refuses to force anyone to do anything, but instead behaves like a servant. It’s the kingdom where the King is mocked as he is crowned.
Now today is Christ the King Sunday. In the church year, it’s the Sunday before we do it all over again—Advent, then Christmas, then Epiphany, then Ash Wednesday, Lent, Easter… The message of any self-respecting Christ the King Sunday is, well, that Jesus Christ is King and Lord. It’s really sort of an everyday message, much like “Christ is born” and “Christ is risen,” but if nothing else, Christ the King Sunday gives us a shove towards saying it more intentionally: Jesus Christ is King.
But maybe then the question remains for you and for me: What does it mean to say that? What does it mean to say, “Jesus Christ is King and Lord”?
There’s a great story about George Buttrick, one of the absolute best preachers of all time. I recently came across a list of the top ten preachers of the twentieth century. Buttrick came in at number three, right behind Billy Graham and right ahead of Martin Luther King Jr. He was a force.
Well anyway, Buttrick was on a flight once, heading back to New York City, where he served as a pastor, and he was jotting down some notes for his sermon the following Sunday. The man sitting next to him on the plane looked over several times, and finally his curiosity got the best of him and he said to Buttrick: “I hate to bother you—but what in the world are you working on?”
“Oh, I’m a minister,” Buttrick explained, “and I’m working on my sermon for Sunday.”
“Oh, religion,” said the man, “I don’t like to get all caught up in the in’s and out’s and complexities of religion. I like to keep it simple. ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ The Golden Rule—that’s my religion.”
“I see,” said Buttrick, “and what do you do?”
“I’m an astronomer,” said the man. “I teach at the university.”
“Oh yes,” said Buttrick, “Astronomy—I don’t like to get all caught up in the in’s and out’s and complexities of astronomy. Twinkle, twinkle little star—that’s my astronomy…” (1)
I suppose that in many ways, we tend to reduce Christianity to something we can manage. Maybe it’s the golden rule. Maybe it’s just trusting God and trying to be a good person. Maybe it’s showing up for church and looking for good advice to get you through the week.
But friends, we are citizens of the upside down kingdom. And central to our identity can be nothing other than this: Jesus Christ is King and Lord. Now maybe that language bothers you. Maybe you’re afraid of sounding like one of those crazy Christians on TV, or like that distant relative who shows up at family reunions and pesters everyone with his religious chatter.
But look at it this way: Someone is “Lord” in your life, or something is “Lord.” If there’s a throne in the kingdom of your life, it’s probably good to acknowledge that it seldom sits empty. Someone or something is always there, ruling over you. Now, in a self-reflective moment, you might say that that “someone” is you, actually. Oftentimes, we are the ones sitting on that throne, attempting to rule the life before us. Though even that is an oversimplification, because usually it’s just a part of us on the throne, calling the shots and attempting to be king.
Which part of you has been trying to rule your life lately?
Which part of your life is king and lord right now?
Is it the workaholic in you?
The voice in you that can’t imagine your life without your job?
Is it the part of you that thinks that a higher salary is your final ticket to joy?
What voice is ruling in your life?
The voice that says that if you could just lose ten pounds, you’d be happy?
Or are you being ruled by that inner voice that keeps telling you, over and over again that your job is to keep everybody happy, so don’t argue, don’t say what you really think, don’t make waves…
What is sitting on the throne of your life?
Is it a wound that you can’t let heal?
A past hurt that you can’t let go of?
Are you ruled by anger?
Or fear?
Is your king an attachment or an addiction?
Or is your “king” a certain belief you have, deep down, that the world would be a wonderful place if everybody could just see things your way?
Or in a strange way, is the king in your life your growing conviction that it just doesn’t matter anymore, so why try?
Today I want to encourage you to make room in the throne room of your soul for the One who turns all that stuff upside down.
If we were another church, I suppose this is where we’d stick the alter call. And if you wanted to publicly acknowledge Jesus as Lord, you could trot on up here and make it happen. But here’s the truth, friends—it already did happen. In Jesus Christ, God has already loved you with a love that you can’t do a darn thing about. You can’t make it more real by acknowledging it, just like you can’t make it less real by ignoring it. That's what grace is, by the way.
The real question is this: what does Christ as King mean for you today? Answering that question is not a once-in-a-lifetime moment, but rather a daily practice that we engage as we live forward in faith. God bless us as we do just that. Amen.
(1) This is a fairly well-known story, but I got it first from my friend Mark Ramsey, pastor of Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church in Asheville, NC, in his sermon "Uncomfortable" on June 20, 2010. You can read it here.
Monday, November 8, 2010
"Busy" - Luke 10:38-42
Sermon on November 7, 2010
Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”
Daylight Savings Time has ended. You know this either because you remembered to set your clocks back last night, or because you showed up at church an hour early this morning and sat around waiting for the coffee to get done. That extra hour of sleep is always something to look forward to. Of course, if your family is like ours right now, you know that while you can set a clock back 60 minutes, you’ll have no such luck with a toddler, who cares nothing for daylight saved or spent.
We tried explaining all of this to Ezzy at bedtime last night, but to no avail. She is our consistent early riser, and Daylight Savings Time to her does not mean an extra hour of sleep, but rather an extra hour to run around the house at 4:30 in the morning. So she was up five hours ago, ready to get busy with her day—ready to keep us busy with her day…
I want to talk about being busy this morning. Are you busy? Have you been busy lately? Is that a good thing in your mind?
Maybe you’ve heard this one before. A man grows up in a small town, heads off to college and then to law school. He passes the bar, and then returns home, a new lawyer. He’s eager to get going, and perhaps to be a man of importance in this small town where he grew up. He opens a new law practice, but business is slow at first. In fact, he doesn’t have a single client yet.
But then one day, he sees a man coming up the sidewalk, and figures he should probably try to make a big impression on this prospective client. So as the man comes to the door, the young lawyer picks up the phone. He motions for the man to come in and sit down, all the while talking on the phone: “No. Absolutely not. You tell those clowns in New York that I won't settle this case for less than one million. Yes. Tell the DA that I'll meet with him next week to discuss the details.”
He goes on like this for almost five minutes, while the man sits there patiently. Finally, the lawyer puts down the phone and turns to the man. “I'm sorry for the delay, but as you can see, I'm very busy. What can I do for you?”
The man replies, “I'm from the phone company. I came to hook up your phone.”
We like being thought of as busy people.
On Wednesday night we had our monthly Taizé worship service here in the sanctuary. One of the things I’ve come to love about that service is its quiet, reflective mood. There’s no sermon at our Taizé service—instead we share ten minutes of absolute silence, sitting here in the dark with some candles burning up front. It’s a beautiful time to be mindful and prayerful with God.
This past Wednesday, though, I caught myself during that silent time struggling to actually be quiet. I was sitting still in one of the pews back there, and though I wasn’t making any noise, I certainly wasn’t “quiet.” My mind was racing with the things I still needed to get done—lists to take care of, issues to think about, phone calls to make… I think I spent five of my ten silent minutes just trying to be silent.
Maybe you’ve been there too. If not at Taizé worship, then perhaps here, on Sunday morning. It takes intentional time to shrug off the busy-ness of the week—the scheduling and rescheduling, mental notes and unfinished lists, and the weekly scrum of work, school, soccer practice, piano lessons, doctors’ visits, birthday parties, board meetings, and fundraisers—not to mention all the church stuff going on.
As a pastor, one thing I know for sure is that no one needs more stuff to do. Nobody shows up at church these days saying, “Please, help me max out my schedule this week—I’m not busy enough.”
If anything, we come to worship on Sunday morning looking for some shelter from it all—a chance to step away from the rush and the clutter—to be, perhaps, in one agenda-less moment with God and with our faith family.
And yet church life itself brings its own kind of busy into our lives. Let me remind you that none of you go to church; rather, you are the church. And being the church means more than the confines of a Sunday morning worship service.
In his gospel, Luke tells the story of two women, Mary and Martha, who welcome Jesus into their home. Martha does what a lot of us might do if the Son of God showed up at our place. She cleans, she sweeps, she fires up the stove and gets supper going. This isn’t just any houseguest, mind you, so she tackles that recipe she’s been saving, the one with the blanching and the braising and the mincing—the one that uses every pan in the kitchen.
She’s setting the table, getting the drinks ready, trying to keep the counter clean, thinking ahead to dessert, and wondering just where in God’s name her sister is! Mary is in the other room. She’s sitting at Jesus’ feet. Listening.
Can you hear what Martha is muttering under her breath? “Well, I guess in Mary’s world, food for Jesus just cooks itself!” She paces back and forth, getting more and more irritated with Mary for just sitting there, not helping out. Finally she can’t take it anymore, so she comes into the room. She doesn’t even talk to Mary—maybe she’s too mad. Instead she says to Jesus, “Don’t you care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself?”
I wonder what Martha wanted to hear. I wonder if she wanted Jesus to say, “Yes, Martha! You’re right! Mary, don’t you see how hard your sister is working? Are you going to leave her to do it all alone? Oh, poor Martha—you’ve been slaving away in that kitchen. How can we help?”
That’s not what Martha heard. I’m sure she didn’t expect Jesus to say what he did. “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”
That’s where the story ends. And we’re left to wonder what happened next. Did Martha literally throw in the towel and join Mary at Jesus’ feet? Did she keep cooking? Did anybody eat anything that afternoon?
This morning I’d like to use this story of Mary and Martha to help us think about the busy-ness of our own lives.
Being a Christian might make you busy, but being busy does not necessarily make you a Christian. I think most of us would accept this to be true, and yet when we’re asked to describe our presence in the Christian faith, most of us most of the time lead with those things that make us busy. Choir, Sunday school, the mission committee, bells, buildings and grounds, youth group, potlucks, senior gems, fellowship… The list goes on and on of all those things that can keep a church busy for years and years.
For many of us, our busy-ness in the church mirrors our busy-ness in the rest of our lives. High-functioning, sometimes over-functioning… Scheduled, sometimes over-scheduled… Often not a minute to spare, sometimes not a second to spare… We look forward to a vacation, to a weekend, even, when we can unplug and enjoy some free time, but then we find that we tend to over-program and over-schedule our free time, too.
Now, let’s not completely discount busy-ness. Much of the time, we’re busy with things that we love. And being busy, we get things done—things that we’re passionate about, things that give us life and energy. The problem, of course, is this: we tend to define ourselves by what we do, and not by who we are.
Right? You meet someone for the first time.“What do you do?” they ask. It’s not just a conversation piece. It’s a basic assumption in our society that what we do defines us.
Jesus says to Martha, “Martha, dear, this isn’t about what you do. It’s about who you are.” And this is where Luke’s gospel becomes clear. Mary is sitting at Jesus’ feet.This is where disciples sat—at their teacher’s feet. Sitting at Jesus’ feet, Mary isn’t shirking her responsibilities as a host; she’s claiming her identity as a follower of Jesus.
And Jesus says, “Martha, there is only need of one thing, and Mary has chosen it.”
This month we find ourselves in season of Stewardship. By now you’ve received a pledge card in mail. And for the last week, perhaps, you’ve been asking yourself, “What did we pledge this year?” “What can we afford to give next year?”
I want to warn you. Stewardship can become like all the other things that occupy our busy thoughts and anxieties and activities in the church. Filling out that pledge card may feel to you like “one more thing” to take care of in a busy week.
The first stewardship question I want to invite you all to ask is not, “How much can we spare?” or even “How much does the church need?”
The first question to consider is this: WHO AM I?
This was Mary’s first question when Jesus came into her home. Not “What should I do to get ready?” or even “What’s for supper?”
Her first question was this: WHO AM I? And answering that question, the busy-ness of the day faded away and she sat a Jesus’ feet to listen and learn.
I want to be clear about something this stewardship season. You are not a “giver.” You are not a “pledging unit.” You are a disciple of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And everything, everything, EVERYTHING—stewardship included— begins there.
Amen
Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”
Daylight Savings Time has ended. You know this either because you remembered to set your clocks back last night, or because you showed up at church an hour early this morning and sat around waiting for the coffee to get done. That extra hour of sleep is always something to look forward to. Of course, if your family is like ours right now, you know that while you can set a clock back 60 minutes, you’ll have no such luck with a toddler, who cares nothing for daylight saved or spent.
We tried explaining all of this to Ezzy at bedtime last night, but to no avail. She is our consistent early riser, and Daylight Savings Time to her does not mean an extra hour of sleep, but rather an extra hour to run around the house at 4:30 in the morning. So she was up five hours ago, ready to get busy with her day—ready to keep us busy with her day…
I want to talk about being busy this morning. Are you busy? Have you been busy lately? Is that a good thing in your mind?
Maybe you’ve heard this one before. A man grows up in a small town, heads off to college and then to law school. He passes the bar, and then returns home, a new lawyer. He’s eager to get going, and perhaps to be a man of importance in this small town where he grew up. He opens a new law practice, but business is slow at first. In fact, he doesn’t have a single client yet.
But then one day, he sees a man coming up the sidewalk, and figures he should probably try to make a big impression on this prospective client. So as the man comes to the door, the young lawyer picks up the phone. He motions for the man to come in and sit down, all the while talking on the phone: “No. Absolutely not. You tell those clowns in New York that I won't settle this case for less than one million. Yes. Tell the DA that I'll meet with him next week to discuss the details.”
He goes on like this for almost five minutes, while the man sits there patiently. Finally, the lawyer puts down the phone and turns to the man. “I'm sorry for the delay, but as you can see, I'm very busy. What can I do for you?”
The man replies, “I'm from the phone company. I came to hook up your phone.”
We like being thought of as busy people.
On Wednesday night we had our monthly Taizé worship service here in the sanctuary. One of the things I’ve come to love about that service is its quiet, reflective mood. There’s no sermon at our Taizé service—instead we share ten minutes of absolute silence, sitting here in the dark with some candles burning up front. It’s a beautiful time to be mindful and prayerful with God.
This past Wednesday, though, I caught myself during that silent time struggling to actually be quiet. I was sitting still in one of the pews back there, and though I wasn’t making any noise, I certainly wasn’t “quiet.” My mind was racing with the things I still needed to get done—lists to take care of, issues to think about, phone calls to make… I think I spent five of my ten silent minutes just trying to be silent.
Maybe you’ve been there too. If not at Taizé worship, then perhaps here, on Sunday morning. It takes intentional time to shrug off the busy-ness of the week—the scheduling and rescheduling, mental notes and unfinished lists, and the weekly scrum of work, school, soccer practice, piano lessons, doctors’ visits, birthday parties, board meetings, and fundraisers—not to mention all the church stuff going on.
As a pastor, one thing I know for sure is that no one needs more stuff to do. Nobody shows up at church these days saying, “Please, help me max out my schedule this week—I’m not busy enough.”
If anything, we come to worship on Sunday morning looking for some shelter from it all—a chance to step away from the rush and the clutter—to be, perhaps, in one agenda-less moment with God and with our faith family.
And yet church life itself brings its own kind of busy into our lives. Let me remind you that none of you go to church; rather, you are the church. And being the church means more than the confines of a Sunday morning worship service.
In his gospel, Luke tells the story of two women, Mary and Martha, who welcome Jesus into their home. Martha does what a lot of us might do if the Son of God showed up at our place. She cleans, she sweeps, she fires up the stove and gets supper going. This isn’t just any houseguest, mind you, so she tackles that recipe she’s been saving, the one with the blanching and the braising and the mincing—the one that uses every pan in the kitchen.
She’s setting the table, getting the drinks ready, trying to keep the counter clean, thinking ahead to dessert, and wondering just where in God’s name her sister is! Mary is in the other room. She’s sitting at Jesus’ feet. Listening.
Can you hear what Martha is muttering under her breath? “Well, I guess in Mary’s world, food for Jesus just cooks itself!” She paces back and forth, getting more and more irritated with Mary for just sitting there, not helping out. Finally she can’t take it anymore, so she comes into the room. She doesn’t even talk to Mary—maybe she’s too mad. Instead she says to Jesus, “Don’t you care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself?”
I wonder what Martha wanted to hear. I wonder if she wanted Jesus to say, “Yes, Martha! You’re right! Mary, don’t you see how hard your sister is working? Are you going to leave her to do it all alone? Oh, poor Martha—you’ve been slaving away in that kitchen. How can we help?”
That’s not what Martha heard. I’m sure she didn’t expect Jesus to say what he did. “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”
That’s where the story ends. And we’re left to wonder what happened next. Did Martha literally throw in the towel and join Mary at Jesus’ feet? Did she keep cooking? Did anybody eat anything that afternoon?
This morning I’d like to use this story of Mary and Martha to help us think about the busy-ness of our own lives.
Being a Christian might make you busy, but being busy does not necessarily make you a Christian. I think most of us would accept this to be true, and yet when we’re asked to describe our presence in the Christian faith, most of us most of the time lead with those things that make us busy. Choir, Sunday school, the mission committee, bells, buildings and grounds, youth group, potlucks, senior gems, fellowship… The list goes on and on of all those things that can keep a church busy for years and years.
For many of us, our busy-ness in the church mirrors our busy-ness in the rest of our lives. High-functioning, sometimes over-functioning… Scheduled, sometimes over-scheduled… Often not a minute to spare, sometimes not a second to spare… We look forward to a vacation, to a weekend, even, when we can unplug and enjoy some free time, but then we find that we tend to over-program and over-schedule our free time, too.
Now, let’s not completely discount busy-ness. Much of the time, we’re busy with things that we love. And being busy, we get things done—things that we’re passionate about, things that give us life and energy. The problem, of course, is this: we tend to define ourselves by what we do, and not by who we are.
Right? You meet someone for the first time.“What do you do?” they ask. It’s not just a conversation piece. It’s a basic assumption in our society that what we do defines us.
Jesus says to Martha, “Martha, dear, this isn’t about what you do. It’s about who you are.” And this is where Luke’s gospel becomes clear. Mary is sitting at Jesus’ feet.This is where disciples sat—at their teacher’s feet. Sitting at Jesus’ feet, Mary isn’t shirking her responsibilities as a host; she’s claiming her identity as a follower of Jesus.
And Jesus says, “Martha, there is only need of one thing, and Mary has chosen it.”
This month we find ourselves in season of Stewardship. By now you’ve received a pledge card in mail. And for the last week, perhaps, you’ve been asking yourself, “What did we pledge this year?” “What can we afford to give next year?”
I want to warn you. Stewardship can become like all the other things that occupy our busy thoughts and anxieties and activities in the church. Filling out that pledge card may feel to you like “one more thing” to take care of in a busy week.
The first stewardship question I want to invite you all to ask is not, “How much can we spare?” or even “How much does the church need?”
The first question to consider is this: WHO AM I?
This was Mary’s first question when Jesus came into her home. Not “What should I do to get ready?” or even “What’s for supper?”
Her first question was this: WHO AM I? And answering that question, the busy-ness of the day faded away and she sat a Jesus’ feet to listen and learn.
I want to be clear about something this stewardship season. You are not a “giver.” You are not a “pledging unit.” You are a disciple of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And everything, everything, EVERYTHING—stewardship included— begins there.
Amen
Monday, November 1, 2010
"A Private Conversation" - Luke 19:1-10
Sermon on Sunday, October 31, 2010
Jericho. Our story from Luke’s gospel takes place in the city of Jericho. But before we get to Zacchaeus climbing a tree to see Jesus, you should know something about Jericho. You see, in New Testament times, there were just two major highways in all of Israel, and one of them ran right through Jericho. This alone made Jericho a strategic city at the time, but there’s more.
To understand Jericho’s location in Jesus’ day, let’s picture ourselves traveling from Madison to Milwaukee. Obviously it makes sense to take I-94 straight across. Only in this case, the people living along the interstate are hostile enemies. Oconomowoc, Delafield, Waukesha—all full of people who are likely to mug us on our way.
So instead of traveling straight east, we’re going to dip south, almost to the Illinois border, then move east through Lake Geneva, and push on, all the way to Kenosha before heading back north along the lake. Inevitably, we’re going to come through Racine on our way to Milwaukee. But now here’s the rub—in order to travel through Racine, we’ve got to pay a toll. Racine is the customs station between Madison and Milwaukee. Are you riding a camel? There’s a fee for that. Got any cows? Any goats? There are fees for those too. Oxen pulling a cart? How many axles? There’s a fee for that.
This was Jericho during Jesus’ day. And folks didn’t have a choice. Coming to Jerusalem during the Passover, they didn’t want to travel through Samaria, for fear of what might happen to them, so they took the long way around—on a highway that took them straight through Jericho. During the Passover, Jerusalem swelled with at least several hundred thousand out-of-towners, so Jericho itself became a bit like Racine on a Fourth of July weekend—packed with people. And every single one of them had to pay.
Now where did all those tax dollars go? Jericho schools? The Jericho senior center? New recycling bins? No, the travel tax went to Rome. Keep in mind that the Roman Empire had control over Israel at this time in history. Caesar looked at Jericho and all those Jewish families passing through, year after year, and said to himself, I believe we can make some serious money off of this! So the taxes didn’t stay in Jericho—they went straight to Rome. Except…
Except that someone had to collect the tax, right? Someone had to be the one to make sure everybody paid—to make sure that every calf, ram, sheep, goat, donkey, and ox was charged on its way through town. After all, you can’t have taxes without a tax collector, right? This was Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus was the chief tax collector in all of Jericho, the most lucrative city for tax collectors in all of Israel. And here’s what Rome said to tax collectors like Zacchaeus: “We don’t care what you charge—just so long as we get our cut.” And so guys like Zacchaeus charged people though the nose, sent a portion to Rome, and pocketed the rest. Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector of Jericho, was filthy rich. Which is really quite ironic—the name, “Zacchaeus” means “clean” or “innocent.”
Jesus came to Jericho, and by this time he had true celebrity status. He’d raised the dead, healed the sick, restored sight to the blind… Already we had tens of thousands flocking through Jericho to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. Once word got out that Jesus was among them, they all strained to catch a glimpse—to hear Jesus speak, to watch him heal, or to be healed themselves. Now this really was like Racine on the Fourth of July—a parade crowd waiting for Jesus to come by! And Zacchaeus couldn’t find a seat.
Luke says that Zacchaeus was short, and so that’s why he had to climb a sycamore tree to see Jesus. But I wonder if there wasn’t more to it than that. I wonder if Zacchaeus had any friends—anyone to sit with along the parade route while they waited for Jesus—anyone who’d make room for him on their blanket, maybe share a cheese sandwich and a drink. Anyone? No. You don’t make too many friends by gouging money from them, so Zacchaeus’ best seat was alone, up the tree.
It must have come as quite a shock when Jesus stopped by that tree and looked up. Clearly he was staring right at Zacchaeus. And you know what I think? I think that the crowd gathered around saw Jesus look up that tree, and they thought to themselves, “Oh this is going to be good. Zacchaeus, the “pure” and “innocent” one is going to get his now—and we get to watch!” Every vindictive bone in every single body there was twitching—ready to watch Jesus give Zacchaeus what he had coming: judgment for every dime he squeezed out of the people, judgment for lining his pockets and living the high life in a poor city, judgment for turning his back on Israel for the sake of Rome.
Jesus said, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.” And two things happened. One, the people went ballistic. “What?!? Are you kidding, Jesus? Obviously you have no idea who this guy is! He’s a sinner! The worst of the worst!” Someone might have yelled out, “Hey, Jesus—I thought you said, ‘Blessed are the meek.’” And in fact, I bet there were some who gave up on Jesus right then and there—“Well, forget it. No friend of Zacchaeus is a friend of mine”—and they walked away.
The second thing that happened was this: Zacchaeus got out of the tree. Luke says that Zacchaeus “hurried down and was happy to welcome Jesus,” but I picture him scrambling down out of that tree as fast as he possibly could. And you know what? Zacchaeus might have been thinking the same thing the people were: “What? Are you kidding, Jesus? Obviously you have no idea who I am. I’m a sinner. The worst of the worst.”
Jesus followed Zacchaeus to his home, and the two men went in. And what we have next in Luke’s gospel is a private conversation. We don’t know how it went. We don’t know what Jesus said or how Zacchaeus took it. What we do know is that when all was said and done, Zacchaeus was ready to give half his stuff to the poor and to pay four times back to anyone he’d ever cheated.
But what happened in Zacchaeus’ house? What went on in there? We’ll never know, except to say that a radical transformation occurred.
Now few of us here would easily identify ourselves with Zacchaeus. His extreme wealth, coupled with his extreme social isolation make him one with whom you might not have much in common. I do wonder, however, if there aren’t two moments in Zacchaeus’ story that might help us think about our faith lives.
The first is a private conversation with Jesus. A turn-off-the-cell-phone, sit-down-and-get-serious private conversation with Jesus. Sure, you go to church, you sing in the choir, you teach Sunday school, you read up on theology and read the Bible from time to time. Sure, you show up at church most Sundays, you hang out with church friends… you even act like a Christian most of the time! You help out at the food pantry, you volunteer at the shelter, you look for ways that you can “live out your faith.” All of that is great—just great! But sooner or later, and then hopefully often, you need to have a private conversation with Jesus.
No one else needs to know about it at that point. The whole city of Jericho might be loitering outside, but inside, it’s just you and Jesus. When’s the last time you had that private conversation? The one where you let Jesus in, skip the chit-chat, and get down to what’s real. This is the private conversation where you let Jesus have his say—the one where he says to you, “Zacchaeus, there’s a reason why I’m here in your life. I want you. Not just a part of you. I want all of you. Not just your Sunday best, or you on your best behavior—I want you. Follow me.”
Jesus says, “I know about the parts of you that you try to hide. The insecure you. The me-first you. The part of you that you keep hidden from your family and friends—the selfish you, the cruel you.” Keep in mind that Zacchaeus was selfish and cruel in a city where it paid handsomely to be selfish and cruel. Jesus says, “This isn’t about what you’ve done—it’s about what you’re going to do. And I want in.”
The second moment in the Zacchaeus story that can help us think about our own lives of faith is that moment when Zacchaeus goes public. We’re not sure how this went down. Maybe he said it just to Jesus, but I picture Zacchaeus running out onto the front porch of his house and announcing, “Hey world! I’m giving away half of everything! And to the people I’ve cheated: I’m paying you back times four!”
Faith, and the conversations we have with Jesus, are private, but at some point and in some way, we need to go public.
I recently stumbled across a website called “privatefaith.com.” Here’s what it says on their homepage: “Here there are no rules except those that you create for yourself with God. All people are accepted as you are. Please consider joining this new religion if you think it is right for you.” You can join the “church” at privatefaith.com by just telling them you’re “in.” And as its title would suggest, your presence there is completely private.
Now while I can appreciate and honor someone’s desire for privacy when it comes to his or her relationship with God, the simple truth of the matter is that Christianity is not a private religion! At some point we need to go public with our faith. The private commitments we make in our private conversations with Jesus must have public ramifications.
Jesus said, “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.” (Matthew 5:14-15)
How will you “go public” today? This week? In what way will you allow Christ’s lordship in your life move you to act? Will it be an act of compassion? Will it be a radical act of commitment? Will you give away half of your wealth? Will you give anything away? You don’t have to answer yet. Have that private conversation with Jesus first. And listen to what he wants you to do. Amen.
Jericho. Our story from Luke’s gospel takes place in the city of Jericho. But before we get to Zacchaeus climbing a tree to see Jesus, you should know something about Jericho. You see, in New Testament times, there were just two major highways in all of Israel, and one of them ran right through Jericho. This alone made Jericho a strategic city at the time, but there’s more.
To understand Jericho’s location in Jesus’ day, let’s picture ourselves traveling from Madison to Milwaukee. Obviously it makes sense to take I-94 straight across. Only in this case, the people living along the interstate are hostile enemies. Oconomowoc, Delafield, Waukesha—all full of people who are likely to mug us on our way.
So instead of traveling straight east, we’re going to dip south, almost to the Illinois border, then move east through Lake Geneva, and push on, all the way to Kenosha before heading back north along the lake. Inevitably, we’re going to come through Racine on our way to Milwaukee. But now here’s the rub—in order to travel through Racine, we’ve got to pay a toll. Racine is the customs station between Madison and Milwaukee. Are you riding a camel? There’s a fee for that. Got any cows? Any goats? There are fees for those too. Oxen pulling a cart? How many axles? There’s a fee for that.
This was Jericho during Jesus’ day. And folks didn’t have a choice. Coming to Jerusalem during the Passover, they didn’t want to travel through Samaria, for fear of what might happen to them, so they took the long way around—on a highway that took them straight through Jericho. During the Passover, Jerusalem swelled with at least several hundred thousand out-of-towners, so Jericho itself became a bit like Racine on a Fourth of July weekend—packed with people. And every single one of them had to pay.
Now where did all those tax dollars go? Jericho schools? The Jericho senior center? New recycling bins? No, the travel tax went to Rome. Keep in mind that the Roman Empire had control over Israel at this time in history. Caesar looked at Jericho and all those Jewish families passing through, year after year, and said to himself, I believe we can make some serious money off of this! So the taxes didn’t stay in Jericho—they went straight to Rome. Except…
Except that someone had to collect the tax, right? Someone had to be the one to make sure everybody paid—to make sure that every calf, ram, sheep, goat, donkey, and ox was charged on its way through town. After all, you can’t have taxes without a tax collector, right? This was Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus was the chief tax collector in all of Jericho, the most lucrative city for tax collectors in all of Israel. And here’s what Rome said to tax collectors like Zacchaeus: “We don’t care what you charge—just so long as we get our cut.” And so guys like Zacchaeus charged people though the nose, sent a portion to Rome, and pocketed the rest. Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector of Jericho, was filthy rich. Which is really quite ironic—the name, “Zacchaeus” means “clean” or “innocent.”
Jesus came to Jericho, and by this time he had true celebrity status. He’d raised the dead, healed the sick, restored sight to the blind… Already we had tens of thousands flocking through Jericho to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. Once word got out that Jesus was among them, they all strained to catch a glimpse—to hear Jesus speak, to watch him heal, or to be healed themselves. Now this really was like Racine on the Fourth of July—a parade crowd waiting for Jesus to come by! And Zacchaeus couldn’t find a seat.
Luke says that Zacchaeus was short, and so that’s why he had to climb a sycamore tree to see Jesus. But I wonder if there wasn’t more to it than that. I wonder if Zacchaeus had any friends—anyone to sit with along the parade route while they waited for Jesus—anyone who’d make room for him on their blanket, maybe share a cheese sandwich and a drink. Anyone? No. You don’t make too many friends by gouging money from them, so Zacchaeus’ best seat was alone, up the tree.
It must have come as quite a shock when Jesus stopped by that tree and looked up. Clearly he was staring right at Zacchaeus. And you know what I think? I think that the crowd gathered around saw Jesus look up that tree, and they thought to themselves, “Oh this is going to be good. Zacchaeus, the “pure” and “innocent” one is going to get his now—and we get to watch!” Every vindictive bone in every single body there was twitching—ready to watch Jesus give Zacchaeus what he had coming: judgment for every dime he squeezed out of the people, judgment for lining his pockets and living the high life in a poor city, judgment for turning his back on Israel for the sake of Rome.
Jesus said, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.” And two things happened. One, the people went ballistic. “What?!? Are you kidding, Jesus? Obviously you have no idea who this guy is! He’s a sinner! The worst of the worst!” Someone might have yelled out, “Hey, Jesus—I thought you said, ‘Blessed are the meek.’” And in fact, I bet there were some who gave up on Jesus right then and there—“Well, forget it. No friend of Zacchaeus is a friend of mine”—and they walked away.
The second thing that happened was this: Zacchaeus got out of the tree. Luke says that Zacchaeus “hurried down and was happy to welcome Jesus,” but I picture him scrambling down out of that tree as fast as he possibly could. And you know what? Zacchaeus might have been thinking the same thing the people were: “What? Are you kidding, Jesus? Obviously you have no idea who I am. I’m a sinner. The worst of the worst.”
Jesus followed Zacchaeus to his home, and the two men went in. And what we have next in Luke’s gospel is a private conversation. We don’t know how it went. We don’t know what Jesus said or how Zacchaeus took it. What we do know is that when all was said and done, Zacchaeus was ready to give half his stuff to the poor and to pay four times back to anyone he’d ever cheated.
But what happened in Zacchaeus’ house? What went on in there? We’ll never know, except to say that a radical transformation occurred.
Now few of us here would easily identify ourselves with Zacchaeus. His extreme wealth, coupled with his extreme social isolation make him one with whom you might not have much in common. I do wonder, however, if there aren’t two moments in Zacchaeus’ story that might help us think about our faith lives.
The first is a private conversation with Jesus. A turn-off-the-cell-phone, sit-down-and-get-serious private conversation with Jesus. Sure, you go to church, you sing in the choir, you teach Sunday school, you read up on theology and read the Bible from time to time. Sure, you show up at church most Sundays, you hang out with church friends… you even act like a Christian most of the time! You help out at the food pantry, you volunteer at the shelter, you look for ways that you can “live out your faith.” All of that is great—just great! But sooner or later, and then hopefully often, you need to have a private conversation with Jesus.
No one else needs to know about it at that point. The whole city of Jericho might be loitering outside, but inside, it’s just you and Jesus. When’s the last time you had that private conversation? The one where you let Jesus in, skip the chit-chat, and get down to what’s real. This is the private conversation where you let Jesus have his say—the one where he says to you, “Zacchaeus, there’s a reason why I’m here in your life. I want you. Not just a part of you. I want all of you. Not just your Sunday best, or you on your best behavior—I want you. Follow me.”
Jesus says, “I know about the parts of you that you try to hide. The insecure you. The me-first you. The part of you that you keep hidden from your family and friends—the selfish you, the cruel you.” Keep in mind that Zacchaeus was selfish and cruel in a city where it paid handsomely to be selfish and cruel. Jesus says, “This isn’t about what you’ve done—it’s about what you’re going to do. And I want in.”
The second moment in the Zacchaeus story that can help us think about our own lives of faith is that moment when Zacchaeus goes public. We’re not sure how this went down. Maybe he said it just to Jesus, but I picture Zacchaeus running out onto the front porch of his house and announcing, “Hey world! I’m giving away half of everything! And to the people I’ve cheated: I’m paying you back times four!”
Faith, and the conversations we have with Jesus, are private, but at some point and in some way, we need to go public.
I recently stumbled across a website called “privatefaith.com.” Here’s what it says on their homepage: “Here there are no rules except those that you create for yourself with God. All people are accepted as you are. Please consider joining this new religion if you think it is right for you.” You can join the “church” at privatefaith.com by just telling them you’re “in.” And as its title would suggest, your presence there is completely private.
Now while I can appreciate and honor someone’s desire for privacy when it comes to his or her relationship with God, the simple truth of the matter is that Christianity is not a private religion! At some point we need to go public with our faith. The private commitments we make in our private conversations with Jesus must have public ramifications.
Jesus said, “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.” (Matthew 5:14-15)
How will you “go public” today? This week? In what way will you allow Christ’s lordship in your life move you to act? Will it be an act of compassion? Will it be a radical act of commitment? Will you give away half of your wealth? Will you give anything away? You don’t have to answer yet. Have that private conversation with Jesus first. And listen to what he wants you to do. Amen.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Evotional - As long as ever you can
We tend to simplify the complicated and complicate the simple. It's only human, I suppose. So when someone comes along and uses simple language to speak to the depths of our faithful existence, our ears perk up. Here's a bit of that today...
Do all the good you can
By all the means you can
In all the ways you can
In all the places you can
To all the people you can
As long as ever you can.
- John Wesley
Yes. Please. Amen.
Do all the good you can
By all the means you can
In all the ways you can
In all the places you can
To all the people you can
As long as ever you can.
- John Wesley
Yes. Please. Amen.
Monday, October 25, 2010
"And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen."
Sermon on Sunday, October 24, 2010
Ephesians 1:3-14
Matthew 6:7-13
God doesn’t belong to us. We belong to God. That’s the sermon today, really, and I could stop there. God doesn’t belong to us. We belong to God. That would be an amazingly short sermon, though, wouldn’t it? So I suppose I’ll elaborate for at least a few more minutes…
This morning we find ourselves at the end of our sermon series on the Lord’s Prayer. And today I’m going to tackle that big chunk at the end: “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever, amen.”
Again and again during this series, it has occurred to me that a world of meaning lies behind each of these little phrases in this prayer that we say together so often. On more than a few occasions, I’ve been able to imagine preaching from the Lord’s Prayer indefinitely—long enough, perhaps, to make some of you wish it wasn’t in the Bible to begin with! But once again, my hope in preaching on the Lord’s Prayer is that we find ourselves praying through it with more intentionality than ever before—that each time we begin to pray, “Our Father, who art in heaven…” we can resist the temptation to set our minds on auto-pilot—that we can summon deep connections and convictions within us, and that the words of the Lord’s Prayer become for us a continuous call to think and live more vividly in our faith.
Our section of the prayer today begins with the phrase, “Lead us not into temptation,” and I’ll confess to you that it’s the part of the prayer with which I have the most trouble. “Lead us not into temptation…” I tend to think that we do just fine leading ourselves into temptation, and so I’m not sure that God needs convincing in this department. But that’s an image of God that’s really out there, isn’t it? That notion of a God who’s got the whole world hanging on the puppet strings, and God’s up there, making it all happen. Stuff happens here on earth, and it looks random and unplanned, but really God’s got it all mapped out, and minute by minute, God’s up there pulling the strings, keeping it all going.
That’s an image of God we need to get rid of, by the way—a God who doesn’t love the world, but who operates the world.
Still, the truth is that in this world that is so loved by God, temptations exist. Sometimes daily. We’re tempted by simple things—a juicy piece of gossip or a convenient lie…
But we’re also tempted by more subtle and complicated forces. Greed, envy, lust, mistrust… temptations to be something less than who we are and temptations to think of ourselves as more than who we are… Temptations to believe the worst fears we have about the world… to believe, for example, that a mosque in our neighborhood somehow poses a threat and not an opportunity for greater understanding. Temptations to think of the world as “us and them”—Christian and non-Christian, liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican, black and white, rich and poor…
Susan Retik and Patti Quigley both lost their husbands in the attacks of 9/11. Susan was seven months pregnant and Patti eight months pregnant, when their husbands’ planes crashed that day.
In response to their loss, they created an organization called Beyond the 11th, and since its inception, they’ve helped more than 1,000 widows from Afghanistan start businesses, including one that makes soccer balls and one that raises chickens for selling eggs. Beyond the 11th also supports, among other projects, a literacy center for Afghan women. For the past nine years, their work has grown and flourished, but here’s an amazing statistic: all of it has cost less than keeping one American soldier in Afghanistan for just eight months. (1)
The temptation for Susan and Patti might have been to believe that the world was as evil and worthless as it felt the morning their husbands’ lives were taken. The temptation might have been to live with a pervasive sense of fear and mistrust for the Muslim world. The temptation might have been to give up on any possibility of change for a world broken with violence. But in the end, these women found themselves able to believe in and hope for a world that had been unkind to them.
Sometimes temptations are so real—so overwhelming, that it’s hard to imagine life without them. And so we pray, “Lord, deliver us! Deliver us from evil.” Deliver us from our shortsightedness. Deliver us from our mistrust of others. Deliver us from fear, from hopelessness. Deliver us from our mistaken impression that love and goodness are scarce in this world. Deliver us from evil.
And that’s actually where the Lord’s Prayer ends as it appears in Matthew’s gospel. That’s the last request: deliver us. Somewhere along the line, liturgists added the phrase, “for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.” In that version of the Lord’s Prayer that we used last week in worship, we prayed, “For you reign in the glory of the power that is love, now and forever.”
I’d like to end our Lord’s Prayer series by simply wondering about that last word with you—forever.
Fred Craddock, a celebrated thinker and preacher in our tradition, tells this story from his own childhood. He and his father were lying in the grass in their backyard on a warm summer night. He was just a young boy then, and they were lying there, chewing on tender stems of grass, and looking up at the evening sky.
His father said to him, “Son how far can you think?”
The boy said, “What?”
“How far can you think?” his dad asked.
“Well, I don’t know what you mean,” the boy replied.
“Just think as far as you can think up towards the stars.”
The boy looked up, concentrating, and said, “I’m thinking… I’m thinking… I’m thinking…”
“Think as far as you can think,” said his dad.
“Ok. I’m thinking as far as I can think,” the boy said.
And then his dad said, “Well, drive down a stake out there now. In your mind, drive down a stake… Have you driven down the stake? That’s how far you can think.”
The young boy said, “Yes, sir.”
And then his dad said, “Now what’s on the other side of your stake?”
And the boy said, “Well, there’s more sky.”
And his dad said, “Move your stake.”
Fred Craddock says that that summer night, he and his father kept moving his stake further and further out into the night sky. “It was a crazy thing to do,” Craddock admits, “but I can never thank [my father] enough for doing it.” (2)
How far can you think? In a way, that’s the question that the Lord’s Prayer could leave us with each time we pray it. “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever…” Forever. And in some churches, they pray, “and the glory forever and ever…” Either way, forever’s quite a ways, isn’t it?
The Lord’s Prayer ends with an acknowledgement that God’s presence goes on and on and on—that a true endlessness exists when it comes to God’s power and glory.
“How good is God?” we might ask, or “How big is God’s love?”
Think about your answer to that question—“How big is God’s love?”—and put a stake there, and then ask yourself, “What’s on the other side of that stake?”
We will never get to the bottom of God’s love. It is and always will be beyond our ability to name, describe, or contain. So we could end the Lord’s prayer like this, really: “… for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, beyond our limits, beyond our perceptions, beyond our ability to fully comprehend—kingdom, power, and glory infinitely beyond all the words we can summon… amen.”
That’s the “forever” at the end of the Lord’s Prayer—a reminder of God’s nature beyond all we can name or describe.
Had Paul written the Lord’s Prayer, he might have ended it a little differently. In his letter to the Ephesians, he writes, “With all wisdom and insight, God has made known to us the mystery of his will… as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth.”
That’s what we acknowledge and celebrate with our “forever” at the end of the Lord’s Prayer—our faith that at the end of it all, in the final forever, in the fullness of time, God is gathering up all things in Christ! All things! Not just the church things, not just the faithful things, certainly not just the Presbyterian things, and not even just the good things, but all things.
In the Lord’s Prayer, we acknowledge week after week that the kingdom and the power and the glory are God’s forever—and that we belong to God too—that we are infinitely part of God’s forever. Put a little more simply, the Lord’s Prayer sets forth a reminder each time we pray it. God doesn’t belong to us. We belong to God. Forever. Amen.
____________________________
1 I first read about Beyond the 11th in the 10/5/10 issue of The Christian Century, but the Century picked it up here.
2 Fred Craddock, Craddock Stories, Chalice Press, 2001
Ephesians 1:3-14
Matthew 6:7-13
God doesn’t belong to us. We belong to God. That’s the sermon today, really, and I could stop there. God doesn’t belong to us. We belong to God. That would be an amazingly short sermon, though, wouldn’t it? So I suppose I’ll elaborate for at least a few more minutes…
This morning we find ourselves at the end of our sermon series on the Lord’s Prayer. And today I’m going to tackle that big chunk at the end: “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever, amen.”
Again and again during this series, it has occurred to me that a world of meaning lies behind each of these little phrases in this prayer that we say together so often. On more than a few occasions, I’ve been able to imagine preaching from the Lord’s Prayer indefinitely—long enough, perhaps, to make some of you wish it wasn’t in the Bible to begin with! But once again, my hope in preaching on the Lord’s Prayer is that we find ourselves praying through it with more intentionality than ever before—that each time we begin to pray, “Our Father, who art in heaven…” we can resist the temptation to set our minds on auto-pilot—that we can summon deep connections and convictions within us, and that the words of the Lord’s Prayer become for us a continuous call to think and live more vividly in our faith.
Our section of the prayer today begins with the phrase, “Lead us not into temptation,” and I’ll confess to you that it’s the part of the prayer with which I have the most trouble. “Lead us not into temptation…” I tend to think that we do just fine leading ourselves into temptation, and so I’m not sure that God needs convincing in this department. But that’s an image of God that’s really out there, isn’t it? That notion of a God who’s got the whole world hanging on the puppet strings, and God’s up there, making it all happen. Stuff happens here on earth, and it looks random and unplanned, but really God’s got it all mapped out, and minute by minute, God’s up there pulling the strings, keeping it all going.
That’s an image of God we need to get rid of, by the way—a God who doesn’t love the world, but who operates the world.
Still, the truth is that in this world that is so loved by God, temptations exist. Sometimes daily. We’re tempted by simple things—a juicy piece of gossip or a convenient lie…
But we’re also tempted by more subtle and complicated forces. Greed, envy, lust, mistrust… temptations to be something less than who we are and temptations to think of ourselves as more than who we are… Temptations to believe the worst fears we have about the world… to believe, for example, that a mosque in our neighborhood somehow poses a threat and not an opportunity for greater understanding. Temptations to think of the world as “us and them”—Christian and non-Christian, liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican, black and white, rich and poor…
Susan Retik and Patti Quigley both lost their husbands in the attacks of 9/11. Susan was seven months pregnant and Patti eight months pregnant, when their husbands’ planes crashed that day.
In response to their loss, they created an organization called Beyond the 11th, and since its inception, they’ve helped more than 1,000 widows from Afghanistan start businesses, including one that makes soccer balls and one that raises chickens for selling eggs. Beyond the 11th also supports, among other projects, a literacy center for Afghan women. For the past nine years, their work has grown and flourished, but here’s an amazing statistic: all of it has cost less than keeping one American soldier in Afghanistan for just eight months. (1)
The temptation for Susan and Patti might have been to believe that the world was as evil and worthless as it felt the morning their husbands’ lives were taken. The temptation might have been to live with a pervasive sense of fear and mistrust for the Muslim world. The temptation might have been to give up on any possibility of change for a world broken with violence. But in the end, these women found themselves able to believe in and hope for a world that had been unkind to them.
Sometimes temptations are so real—so overwhelming, that it’s hard to imagine life without them. And so we pray, “Lord, deliver us! Deliver us from evil.” Deliver us from our shortsightedness. Deliver us from our mistrust of others. Deliver us from fear, from hopelessness. Deliver us from our mistaken impression that love and goodness are scarce in this world. Deliver us from evil.
And that’s actually where the Lord’s Prayer ends as it appears in Matthew’s gospel. That’s the last request: deliver us. Somewhere along the line, liturgists added the phrase, “for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.” In that version of the Lord’s Prayer that we used last week in worship, we prayed, “For you reign in the glory of the power that is love, now and forever.”
I’d like to end our Lord’s Prayer series by simply wondering about that last word with you—forever.
Fred Craddock, a celebrated thinker and preacher in our tradition, tells this story from his own childhood. He and his father were lying in the grass in their backyard on a warm summer night. He was just a young boy then, and they were lying there, chewing on tender stems of grass, and looking up at the evening sky.
His father said to him, “Son how far can you think?”
The boy said, “What?”
“How far can you think?” his dad asked.
“Well, I don’t know what you mean,” the boy replied.
“Just think as far as you can think up towards the stars.”
The boy looked up, concentrating, and said, “I’m thinking… I’m thinking… I’m thinking…”
“Think as far as you can think,” said his dad.
“Ok. I’m thinking as far as I can think,” the boy said.
And then his dad said, “Well, drive down a stake out there now. In your mind, drive down a stake… Have you driven down the stake? That’s how far you can think.”
The young boy said, “Yes, sir.”
And then his dad said, “Now what’s on the other side of your stake?”
And the boy said, “Well, there’s more sky.”
And his dad said, “Move your stake.”
Fred Craddock says that that summer night, he and his father kept moving his stake further and further out into the night sky. “It was a crazy thing to do,” Craddock admits, “but I can never thank [my father] enough for doing it.” (2)
How far can you think? In a way, that’s the question that the Lord’s Prayer could leave us with each time we pray it. “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever…” Forever. And in some churches, they pray, “and the glory forever and ever…” Either way, forever’s quite a ways, isn’t it?
The Lord’s Prayer ends with an acknowledgement that God’s presence goes on and on and on—that a true endlessness exists when it comes to God’s power and glory.
“How good is God?” we might ask, or “How big is God’s love?”
Think about your answer to that question—“How big is God’s love?”—and put a stake there, and then ask yourself, “What’s on the other side of that stake?”
We will never get to the bottom of God’s love. It is and always will be beyond our ability to name, describe, or contain. So we could end the Lord’s prayer like this, really: “… for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, beyond our limits, beyond our perceptions, beyond our ability to fully comprehend—kingdom, power, and glory infinitely beyond all the words we can summon… amen.”
That’s the “forever” at the end of the Lord’s Prayer—a reminder of God’s nature beyond all we can name or describe.
Had Paul written the Lord’s Prayer, he might have ended it a little differently. In his letter to the Ephesians, he writes, “With all wisdom and insight, God has made known to us the mystery of his will… as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth.”
That’s what we acknowledge and celebrate with our “forever” at the end of the Lord’s Prayer—our faith that at the end of it all, in the final forever, in the fullness of time, God is gathering up all things in Christ! All things! Not just the church things, not just the faithful things, certainly not just the Presbyterian things, and not even just the good things, but all things.
In the Lord’s Prayer, we acknowledge week after week that the kingdom and the power and the glory are God’s forever—and that we belong to God too—that we are infinitely part of God’s forever. Put a little more simply, the Lord’s Prayer sets forth a reminder each time we pray it. God doesn’t belong to us. We belong to God. Forever. Amen.
____________________________
1 I first read about Beyond the 11th in the 10/5/10 issue of The Christian Century, but the Century picked it up here.
2 Fred Craddock, Craddock Stories, Chalice Press, 2001
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Evotional - Determined, Repeated, Leisurely
I came across this quote from Eugene Peterson yesterday, and it's been on my mind. Our worship lately has drawn our thinking and believing toward the subject of prayer, and I'm particularly struck by the way he describes it as a "determined, repeated, leisurely" meeting with God. Here's the quote:
"Civilization is littered with unsolved problems, baffling impasses. The best minds of the world are at the end of their tether. The most knowledgeable observers of our condition are badly frightened. The most relevant contribution that Christians make at these points of impasse is the act of prayer -- determined, repeated, leisurely meetings with the personal and living God. New life is conceived in these meetings."
- Eugene H. Peterson, from his book Earth & Altar
I love those words...
Determined. Because we depend on God, because sometimes we have nowhere else to turn, because the "baffling impasses" of this world are beyond our ability to manage or understand, because we don't know what else to do, because ultimately our faith is in God...
Repeated. Because prayer is a practice, because prayer over time calls us more deeply into faithfulness, because prayer is for us, too, and we struggle to listen the first time...
Leisurely. Because prayer isn't about saying the "right" things the "right" way, because God listens openly, because talking with God can be like talking with a trusted friend, because it's never a bad time...
Blessings to you in your prayerful life!
"Civilization is littered with unsolved problems, baffling impasses. The best minds of the world are at the end of their tether. The most knowledgeable observers of our condition are badly frightened. The most relevant contribution that Christians make at these points of impasse is the act of prayer -- determined, repeated, leisurely meetings with the personal and living God. New life is conceived in these meetings."
- Eugene H. Peterson, from his book Earth & Altar
I love those words...
Determined. Because we depend on God, because sometimes we have nowhere else to turn, because the "baffling impasses" of this world are beyond our ability to manage or understand, because we don't know what else to do, because ultimately our faith is in God...
Repeated. Because prayer is a practice, because prayer over time calls us more deeply into faithfulness, because prayer is for us, too, and we struggle to listen the first time...
Leisurely. Because prayer isn't about saying the "right" things the "right" way, because God listens openly, because talking with God can be like talking with a trusted friend, because it's never a bad time...
Blessings to you in your prayerful life!
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
"And Forgive Us Our Debts..."
Sermon on Sunday, October 17, 2010
As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.
- Colossians 3:12-13
A mother was preparing pancakes for her sons, Kevin 5, and Ryan 3. The boys began to argue over who would get the first pancake. Their mother saw the opportunity for a lesson, and so she said to her boys, “If Jesus were sitting here, he would say, ‘Let my brother have the first pancake. I can wait.’” Kevin thought fast, turned to his younger brother, and said, “Ryan, you be Jesus!”
Sometimes just because we’ve had the lesson doesn’t mean we have any idea what the lesson really means.
Today is the fourth Sunday in our sermon series on the Lord’s Prayer, and so we’ll spend some time with the phrase, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” And you could say that we’ve all had the lesson on this one. From an early age, most of us are indoctrinated into some sense of understanding about forgiveness.
In most cases, our early sense of forgiveness was thrust upon us. “Say you’re sorry,” we all heard our parents and teachers order as they tried to resolve conflicts at the breakfast table and on the playground. “You go and apologize right now!” Did you ever hear something like that? “You march over there and say you’re sorry this very instant.” I caught myself intervening the other day with two of my own daughters. There’d been an altercation involving some Polly Pockets, and it had required a time out, after which, in an effort to promote peace and reconciliation in the Johnston-Krase home, I ushered the offender back to the scene of the crime and, before play could resume, asked the offending daughter, “Now what do you say to your sister?”
In so doing, I joined the ranks and ranks of parents who have attempted to force forgiveness on their children, only to have it backfire. You see, my own children are learning, as I did at their age, that the purpose of an apology is often to get you off the hook, or even worse, that the purpose of an apology is to satisfy not the person to whom you’re apologizing, but rather the adult who’s managing the conflict.
Of course, when it comes to helping our children navigate conflict, much of our energy is put into helping them say the right things. Actual forgiveness is a deeper and more complicated issue, and as we grow into adulthood, we all discover that at one time or another.
Most people genuinely aspire to forgive in their daily lives. A while back, a Gallup Poll in this country shared that 94% of the people surveyed felt like it was important to forgive. In that same poll, however, only 48% said that they usually try to forgive. It’s always one thing to say the right things about forgiveness—it’s another to actually put forgiveness into practice. In the same poll, 85% of those surveyed said that they could not forgive on their own and needed outside help.
Sunday after Sunday, we pray, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Others pray, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Some Christian churches have found that “debts” and “trespasses” don’t make immediate sense to folks in our culture these days, and so they pray, simply, “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” They’re all fine ways to pray a prayer that we struggle to follow.
The early Christian church must have found it difficult too. In his letter to the Colossians, Paul wrote, “Bear with one another and… forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive”—imploring the faithful to mirror God’s forgiveness in their own lives.
“So you also must forgive…” But what does that look like? Mother Theresa said “if we really want to love, we must learn how to forgive.” And that’s just it. Forgiveness isn’t simply about accepting an apology, and it’s especially not about accepting an apology that’s been coached by an “adult” or some other authority figure.
In the daily and weekly scrum of living, practicing forgiveness is tough. In the midst of feelings damaged, when we find ourselves as victims, when hurtful words have been said, when we push through the troubled waters of separation and divorce… forgiving can be tough. And yet, as Paul Boese said, “Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.” And so it is good for us to name and honor the potential that forgiveness holds for us.
This morning I won’t pretend to make forgiveness easy. The fact that our need to forgive appears so frequently in Scripture reminds us that forgiveness has never been easy. I would like to take some time, however, to help us think a little more openly and perhaps hopefully about forgiveness in our own lives—about the power of forgiveness to “enlarge the future.”
An author I’m liking more and more these days, Lewis Smedes, lifts up four truths about forgiveness that I’d like to share with you today.
The first is that forgiving is the only way to be fair to yourself.
When we think about forgiveness, we’re often led to consider the issue of fairness. And it often can feel like forgiveness isn’t fair. Maybe you’ve been hurt or maybe your life has been changed forever because of someone else’s carelessness or meanness. And while forgiving may sound like the “Christian” thing to do, it still doesn’t seem fair, in light of the damage that’s been done. Smedes argues that offering forgiveness may not be about fairness to the other person, but rather fairness to yourself.
“Forgiving is the only way to be fair to yourself,” he writes. And so he argues that when someone hurts us, it’s not fair that the hurt goes on and on and on, for the rest of our lives. It’s not fair to us that the one who hurt us once can hurt us again and again in our memory. And so while forgiveness may be about fairness to another person, it’s also, and perhaps more importantly, about fairness to ourselves.
The second truth about forgiveness, according to Lewis Smedes, is that forgivers are not doormats.
That’s an image of forgivers that we need to shake—that image of someone offering forgiveness looking like a doormat, lying down and letting others walk all over him or her.
Smedes tells a story about a woman who learned about being a forgiver without being a doormat. This woman had a five year old son who was playing in the front yard near the curb when a drunk driver swerved off the road and killed him, right in front of the house. The absolute worst thing for a parent to imagine. For two years, she lived in a fog of rage and even fantasized about the most horrible things happening to the man who took her son’s life. She wanted him to somehow suffer more than he had made her suffer.
“Well,” says Smedes, “after living in the misery of her blind, unhealed rage for two years, she woke up to the fact that the drunk who killed her son was now killing her—inside—a day at a time, killing her soul. And she was helping him do it.” With the help of the woman’s priest, she began to forgive even this man, and to send a message to her community and prevent further misery, she began a local chapter of Mothers Against Drunk driving. These two acts went hand in hand. Forgivers are not doormats. They forgive others, but do not tolerate their wrong doing.
The third truth about forgiveness is that you don’t have to wait until someone says they’re sorry.
Sometimes we get to thinking that the beginning of forgiveness is an apology, but that’s not always the case. “I’m sorry” can be nice to hear, when it’s genuine, but sometimes it’s not, and sometimes it never comes.
If we wait for the other person to ask for forgiveness, we just might wait forever, and then we’re the ones stuck with the pain. “Why should you put your future happiness in the hands of an unrepentant person who had hurt you so unfairly to begin with?” Smedes asks. “If you refuse to forgive until he begs you to forgive, you are letting him decide for you when you may be healed of the memory of the rotten thing he did to you.” I can remember talking with Dee Talley, the interim minister in this church before me. We were talking about forgiveness, and Dee made this remark: “Not forgiving another person is like drinking poison and then waiting for the other person to die.”
Waiting for an apology can result in you putting your happiness in the hands of the person who made you unhappy in the first place. Don’t let your forgiveness wait for an “I’m sorry.” Let the other person be responsible for that while you go on healing yourself.
The fourth truth about forgiveness is that forgiving is a journey.
Sometimes forgiveness is a lot like grief. It isn’t over in a day or a week, or even a year. Sometimes it’s part of life’s journey, and it takes time. It may help to remember, then, that forgiveness isn’t about letting someone else off the hook—it’s about healing and recovering in the midst of pain.
And so sometimes we find ourselves struggling to forgive the same person again and again and again. And that’s ok. And while we’re on the subject, let me simply say that sometimes the person we’re struggling to forgive is ourselves. You might hear someone say to you, “Oh, well, you just need to forgive yourself,” but sometimes that’s easier said than done. Forgiveness is a journey, and it can take time.
So, to recap some truths about forgiveness:
1. Forgiving is the only way to be fair to yourself.
2. Forgivers are not doormats.
3. You don’t have to wait until someone says they’re sorry.
4. Forgiveness is a journey.
My hope all along in this Lord’s Prayer sermon series is that we might pray the Lord’s Prayer with more hope and intentionality than ever before. I pray today that the prayer, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” might make new and gracious sense to you. I pray, too, that forgiving others and forgiving yourself, you might find your future enlarged with faith and love. Amen.
As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.
- Colossians 3:12-13
A mother was preparing pancakes for her sons, Kevin 5, and Ryan 3. The boys began to argue over who would get the first pancake. Their mother saw the opportunity for a lesson, and so she said to her boys, “If Jesus were sitting here, he would say, ‘Let my brother have the first pancake. I can wait.’” Kevin thought fast, turned to his younger brother, and said, “Ryan, you be Jesus!”
Sometimes just because we’ve had the lesson doesn’t mean we have any idea what the lesson really means.
Today is the fourth Sunday in our sermon series on the Lord’s Prayer, and so we’ll spend some time with the phrase, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” And you could say that we’ve all had the lesson on this one. From an early age, most of us are indoctrinated into some sense of understanding about forgiveness.
In most cases, our early sense of forgiveness was thrust upon us. “Say you’re sorry,” we all heard our parents and teachers order as they tried to resolve conflicts at the breakfast table and on the playground. “You go and apologize right now!” Did you ever hear something like that? “You march over there and say you’re sorry this very instant.” I caught myself intervening the other day with two of my own daughters. There’d been an altercation involving some Polly Pockets, and it had required a time out, after which, in an effort to promote peace and reconciliation in the Johnston-Krase home, I ushered the offender back to the scene of the crime and, before play could resume, asked the offending daughter, “Now what do you say to your sister?”
In so doing, I joined the ranks and ranks of parents who have attempted to force forgiveness on their children, only to have it backfire. You see, my own children are learning, as I did at their age, that the purpose of an apology is often to get you off the hook, or even worse, that the purpose of an apology is to satisfy not the person to whom you’re apologizing, but rather the adult who’s managing the conflict.
Of course, when it comes to helping our children navigate conflict, much of our energy is put into helping them say the right things. Actual forgiveness is a deeper and more complicated issue, and as we grow into adulthood, we all discover that at one time or another.
Most people genuinely aspire to forgive in their daily lives. A while back, a Gallup Poll in this country shared that 94% of the people surveyed felt like it was important to forgive. In that same poll, however, only 48% said that they usually try to forgive. It’s always one thing to say the right things about forgiveness—it’s another to actually put forgiveness into practice. In the same poll, 85% of those surveyed said that they could not forgive on their own and needed outside help.
Sunday after Sunday, we pray, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Others pray, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Some Christian churches have found that “debts” and “trespasses” don’t make immediate sense to folks in our culture these days, and so they pray, simply, “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” They’re all fine ways to pray a prayer that we struggle to follow.
The early Christian church must have found it difficult too. In his letter to the Colossians, Paul wrote, “Bear with one another and… forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive”—imploring the faithful to mirror God’s forgiveness in their own lives.
“So you also must forgive…” But what does that look like? Mother Theresa said “if we really want to love, we must learn how to forgive.” And that’s just it. Forgiveness isn’t simply about accepting an apology, and it’s especially not about accepting an apology that’s been coached by an “adult” or some other authority figure.
In the daily and weekly scrum of living, practicing forgiveness is tough. In the midst of feelings damaged, when we find ourselves as victims, when hurtful words have been said, when we push through the troubled waters of separation and divorce… forgiving can be tough. And yet, as Paul Boese said, “Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.” And so it is good for us to name and honor the potential that forgiveness holds for us.
This morning I won’t pretend to make forgiveness easy. The fact that our need to forgive appears so frequently in Scripture reminds us that forgiveness has never been easy. I would like to take some time, however, to help us think a little more openly and perhaps hopefully about forgiveness in our own lives—about the power of forgiveness to “enlarge the future.”
An author I’m liking more and more these days, Lewis Smedes, lifts up four truths about forgiveness that I’d like to share with you today.
The first is that forgiving is the only way to be fair to yourself.
When we think about forgiveness, we’re often led to consider the issue of fairness. And it often can feel like forgiveness isn’t fair. Maybe you’ve been hurt or maybe your life has been changed forever because of someone else’s carelessness or meanness. And while forgiving may sound like the “Christian” thing to do, it still doesn’t seem fair, in light of the damage that’s been done. Smedes argues that offering forgiveness may not be about fairness to the other person, but rather fairness to yourself.
“Forgiving is the only way to be fair to yourself,” he writes. And so he argues that when someone hurts us, it’s not fair that the hurt goes on and on and on, for the rest of our lives. It’s not fair to us that the one who hurt us once can hurt us again and again in our memory. And so while forgiveness may be about fairness to another person, it’s also, and perhaps more importantly, about fairness to ourselves.
The second truth about forgiveness, according to Lewis Smedes, is that forgivers are not doormats.
That’s an image of forgivers that we need to shake—that image of someone offering forgiveness looking like a doormat, lying down and letting others walk all over him or her.
Smedes tells a story about a woman who learned about being a forgiver without being a doormat. This woman had a five year old son who was playing in the front yard near the curb when a drunk driver swerved off the road and killed him, right in front of the house. The absolute worst thing for a parent to imagine. For two years, she lived in a fog of rage and even fantasized about the most horrible things happening to the man who took her son’s life. She wanted him to somehow suffer more than he had made her suffer.
“Well,” says Smedes, “after living in the misery of her blind, unhealed rage for two years, she woke up to the fact that the drunk who killed her son was now killing her—inside—a day at a time, killing her soul. And she was helping him do it.” With the help of the woman’s priest, she began to forgive even this man, and to send a message to her community and prevent further misery, she began a local chapter of Mothers Against Drunk driving. These two acts went hand in hand. Forgivers are not doormats. They forgive others, but do not tolerate their wrong doing.
The third truth about forgiveness is that you don’t have to wait until someone says they’re sorry.
Sometimes we get to thinking that the beginning of forgiveness is an apology, but that’s not always the case. “I’m sorry” can be nice to hear, when it’s genuine, but sometimes it’s not, and sometimes it never comes.
If we wait for the other person to ask for forgiveness, we just might wait forever, and then we’re the ones stuck with the pain. “Why should you put your future happiness in the hands of an unrepentant person who had hurt you so unfairly to begin with?” Smedes asks. “If you refuse to forgive until he begs you to forgive, you are letting him decide for you when you may be healed of the memory of the rotten thing he did to you.” I can remember talking with Dee Talley, the interim minister in this church before me. We were talking about forgiveness, and Dee made this remark: “Not forgiving another person is like drinking poison and then waiting for the other person to die.”
Waiting for an apology can result in you putting your happiness in the hands of the person who made you unhappy in the first place. Don’t let your forgiveness wait for an “I’m sorry.” Let the other person be responsible for that while you go on healing yourself.
The fourth truth about forgiveness is that forgiving is a journey.
Sometimes forgiveness is a lot like grief. It isn’t over in a day or a week, or even a year. Sometimes it’s part of life’s journey, and it takes time. It may help to remember, then, that forgiveness isn’t about letting someone else off the hook—it’s about healing and recovering in the midst of pain.
And so sometimes we find ourselves struggling to forgive the same person again and again and again. And that’s ok. And while we’re on the subject, let me simply say that sometimes the person we’re struggling to forgive is ourselves. You might hear someone say to you, “Oh, well, you just need to forgive yourself,” but sometimes that’s easier said than done. Forgiveness is a journey, and it can take time.
So, to recap some truths about forgiveness:
1. Forgiving is the only way to be fair to yourself.
2. Forgivers are not doormats.
3. You don’t have to wait until someone says they’re sorry.
4. Forgiveness is a journey.
My hope all along in this Lord’s Prayer sermon series is that we might pray the Lord’s Prayer with more hope and intentionality than ever before. I pray today that the prayer, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” might make new and gracious sense to you. I pray, too, that forgiving others and forgiving yourself, you might find your future enlarged with faith and love. Amen.
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