Two short pieces about joy and thanksgiving to pass along today. The first is a modern prayer from Hawaii:
We thank you, God, for the moments of fulfillment:
the end of a day's work,
the harvest of sugar cane,
the birth of a child,
for in these pauses, we feel the rhythm of the eternal.
Your moment of joy, whatever it is (a warm hug, a handwritten letter from a friend, a really good cup of coffee...), is more than a brief sense of satisfaction; rather, it is your fulfillment - a moment to feel the rhythm of the eternal. Maybe that's what Paul was thinking of when he wrote to the Thessalonians...
Rejoice always, pray without ceasing,
give thanks in all circumstances;
or this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
Do not quench the Spirit. (1 Thes. 5:16-19)
May today find you joyfully aware of all that connects you to the eternal - all that fulfills, all that warrants thanksgiving, brings light and love - and may your awareness of these things be your simple, unceasing prayer.
Peace!
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
"Thy Kingdom Come" - Matthew 5:1-12
Sermon on Sunday, September 26
Today is the second Sunday in our sermon series on the Lord’s Prayer. Last week we looked at the opening to that prayer, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name,” and today we will spend some time with, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Once again, a hope I have in presenting this series is that we will find ourselves praying the Lord’s Prayer with intentionality—that each time we begin the prayer together, we’ll find ourselves open to new connections and possibilities in our faith.
I can remember that from an early age, it always struck me as strange that we prayed to God, “Thy will be done.” “If it’s God’s will,” I thought, “and God has the power to make it happen, then what do I think I’m accomplishing by praying for it?”
“Thy will be done, God. Just wanted to let you know that I approve of your will being done. I know that you were going to do your will—not trying to stop you here! Just saying, God, that if you feel like doing something, I for one think you should just go ahead and do it. ”
“Thy will be done, God! Go ahead and do whatever it is you were planning on doing!” Sounds sort of like a child saying to a parent in the candy aisle at the supermarket, “Mom, when it comes to buying or not buying me a treat, I just want you to know that I approve in advance of your decision.”
This hits on a big question for us in prayer, which is, “Just what do we think we’re accomplishing when we pray?” Is God somewhere waiting for us to pray so that action can finally be taken? Does God have a will to act in this world that is somehow reliant on our giving it permission? “Ok, God, thy will be done—go ahead.” Surely not. Whatever God’s will is, it’s God’s will, and I highly doubt that you and I are the final say in enabling or disabling that will through our prayers. So then the question: what are we really doing when we pray to God, “Thy will be done”?
I shared this story with the Sunday school class last week after worship. A friend of mine a few years back was suffering from a terrible sinus infection, and she asked me to pray for her. We were actually standing in a parking lot outside the mall in Rockford, IL. I was in college at the time, and I felt a little self-conscious praying right there and then, but I did. We bowed our heads and I mumbled out some sort of prayer, and at one point I prayed, “God, if it’s your will, please heal Danielle,” and at that moment she hit me! She stopped the prayer right there and smacked me in the arm and said, “What do you mean, ‘God, if it’s your will’? Of course it’s God’s will! God doesn’t want me to be sick! Let’s pray again.” So we bowed our heads again, and this time, I tried to be more sure of what God wanted.
If I’d been a little more astute at the time, I might have reminded my friend that Jesus began a prayer once with “God, if it’s your will…” He was in the garden just hours before his arrest, and he knew what was coming. Betrayal, crucifixion, death. And in a prayer that reveals just how human Jesus was, he prayed to God, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.”
“God, if it’s your will, make this go away.” I for one appreciate the element of uncertainty in that prayer, because I’ve been there. We’ve all been there. Life crumbles apart and the only prayer we can think to pray is, “God, if you are God, can’t you just snap your fingers and change all this? The car wreck, the foreclosure, the cancer diagnosis… Hit the reset button, God, and make it all better.”
It’s hard not to look at the whole world and wonder. The AIDS pandemic, debilitating poverty, horrific wars, millions struggling without access to fresh water… The list goes on and on. It’s hard not to wonder, “God, do you even have a will for this world? And if you do, God, we can only assume that it doesn’t include these awful things, right? That your will is not for a world where thousands die each day from starvation and preventable disease? That your will is not for a world torn apart by violence?”
That’s the prayer we pray when we say to God, “Thy kingdom come,” though, isn’t it? “God, the kingdoms of this world are failing. Kingdoms of division and power—they’re not working too well here. Kingdoms where the gap between rich and poor widens at an alarming rate, kingdoms where two percent of the people own half the world’s wealth, kingdoms where children make up the fastest growing homeless population… These kingdoms have failed, God. Thy kingdom come.”
“Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.” These aren’t prayers that give God “permission” to act; they’re prayers that confess just how broken and needy this world is.
Another story from my college days. For a couple years during my spring break, I went with some other students from the University of Illinois to volunteer in an impoverished neighborhood on Chicago’s west side. One of the highlights of those trips was being invited for dinner into families’ homes. These were families being served by the Chicago Urban Project. Living day to day, they struggled to make ends meet.
I’ll never forget my time with one of those families. Two kids, their mother, and their grandmother, all living in a tiny apartment in the Austin neighborhood. Another student and I joined them for a delicious supper of ham and pea soup, corn bread, collard greens… It was an amazing meal and their hospitality was so warm and gracious. The interesting thing about this apartment was that there were boxes here and there, full of things. “Are you getting ready to move?” we asked. “Oh, we’re always thinking about moving.” And then the young daughter pointed to the clock on the wall in their dining room. Just a basic wall clock, but this one was different. Someone had taped a little sign above the number twelve, and it read, “Nebraska time.”
“We’re hoping to move someday,” the mom said. “Get out of here and go to Scottsbluff, Nebraska.” The family knew someone who lived out there, and Scottsbluff had come to represent a new start for them. Now the funny thing is that Nebraska is in the same time zone as Chicago. But that clock wasn’t about keeping track of another time zone, it was about keeping hope alive for another reality. A place where the kids were safe walking to school—where gangs didn’t rule the streets—where the playgrounds weren’t littered with broken glass.
“Nebraska time” is a “thy kingdom come” prayer—a prayer that refuses to believe that the kingdoms around us are final—a courageous prayer that, in the midst of a broken world, says, “God, this cannot possibly be your will!” “Thy kingdom come thy will be done” is not a wish that God would wave a magic wand and make all the bad things go away; rather it’s a statement of faith that brokenness is not the final reality in this world.
“Thy kingdom come” is an active prayer. And a question for you to consider the next time you pray the Lord’s Prayer is this: If I’m willing to pray for God’s kingdom, am I also willing to work for it? Right? If I’m willing to pray for God’s kingdom come, am I also willing to commit myself to its coming.
Alan Redpath once said that “before we can pray, ‘Lord, Thy Kingdom come,’ we must be willing to pray, ‘My Kingdom go.’”
Think for a moment about your own “my kingdom”—the one you’d have to let go of if God’s kingdom were to become more real for you.
In my kingdom, I get to love my friends, and while I don’t hate my enemies, I don’t choose to spend time with them. In God’s kingdom, I’m called to love everyone—everyone.
In my kingdom, it’s often every man and woman for himself or herself. In God’s kingdom, every man is my brother, every woman my sister.
In my kingdom, I get to pretend that the money I have is mine to save or spend. In God’s kingdom, I come to realize that everything belongs to God, and so the money currently in my possession is to be spent and shared responsibly.
Thy kingdom come, my kingdom go. And so the Lord’s Prayer is more than a prayer—it’s a call to action—a commitment we make to God’s kingdom, not someday, but now.
The prophet Micah said it best, perhaps, when he asked, “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” When we do that—when we do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God, we say goodbye to the kingdoms of our own making and we invite God’s kingdom to be a more present reality in our day to day lives.
This week, friends, may the prayer “thy kingdom come” be one that takes you from moment to moment. Begin when you wake up, before your feet even hit the floor, and pray, “God, your kingdom come.” When you greet members of your family and friends and strangers, whisper to yourself, “God, may your kingdom be made known in me in this conversation.” When you work, when you play, when you express warmth and sympathy, let your prayer be, “thy kingdom come.” Pray that God’s kingdom would be made known in your life and in the world around you. Especially when you dream about your own life. When you imagine your days to come and summon hope about your future, make it your earnest prayer: God, may your kingdom come in me.
God’s kingdom come in us, friends, today, this week, and in all our days ahead. Amen.
Today is the second Sunday in our sermon series on the Lord’s Prayer. Last week we looked at the opening to that prayer, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name,” and today we will spend some time with, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Once again, a hope I have in presenting this series is that we will find ourselves praying the Lord’s Prayer with intentionality—that each time we begin the prayer together, we’ll find ourselves open to new connections and possibilities in our faith.
I can remember that from an early age, it always struck me as strange that we prayed to God, “Thy will be done.” “If it’s God’s will,” I thought, “and God has the power to make it happen, then what do I think I’m accomplishing by praying for it?”
“Thy will be done, God. Just wanted to let you know that I approve of your will being done. I know that you were going to do your will—not trying to stop you here! Just saying, God, that if you feel like doing something, I for one think you should just go ahead and do it. ”
“Thy will be done, God! Go ahead and do whatever it is you were planning on doing!” Sounds sort of like a child saying to a parent in the candy aisle at the supermarket, “Mom, when it comes to buying or not buying me a treat, I just want you to know that I approve in advance of your decision.”
This hits on a big question for us in prayer, which is, “Just what do we think we’re accomplishing when we pray?” Is God somewhere waiting for us to pray so that action can finally be taken? Does God have a will to act in this world that is somehow reliant on our giving it permission? “Ok, God, thy will be done—go ahead.” Surely not. Whatever God’s will is, it’s God’s will, and I highly doubt that you and I are the final say in enabling or disabling that will through our prayers. So then the question: what are we really doing when we pray to God, “Thy will be done”?
I shared this story with the Sunday school class last week after worship. A friend of mine a few years back was suffering from a terrible sinus infection, and she asked me to pray for her. We were actually standing in a parking lot outside the mall in Rockford, IL. I was in college at the time, and I felt a little self-conscious praying right there and then, but I did. We bowed our heads and I mumbled out some sort of prayer, and at one point I prayed, “God, if it’s your will, please heal Danielle,” and at that moment she hit me! She stopped the prayer right there and smacked me in the arm and said, “What do you mean, ‘God, if it’s your will’? Of course it’s God’s will! God doesn’t want me to be sick! Let’s pray again.” So we bowed our heads again, and this time, I tried to be more sure of what God wanted.
If I’d been a little more astute at the time, I might have reminded my friend that Jesus began a prayer once with “God, if it’s your will…” He was in the garden just hours before his arrest, and he knew what was coming. Betrayal, crucifixion, death. And in a prayer that reveals just how human Jesus was, he prayed to God, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.”
“God, if it’s your will, make this go away.” I for one appreciate the element of uncertainty in that prayer, because I’ve been there. We’ve all been there. Life crumbles apart and the only prayer we can think to pray is, “God, if you are God, can’t you just snap your fingers and change all this? The car wreck, the foreclosure, the cancer diagnosis… Hit the reset button, God, and make it all better.”
It’s hard not to look at the whole world and wonder. The AIDS pandemic, debilitating poverty, horrific wars, millions struggling without access to fresh water… The list goes on and on. It’s hard not to wonder, “God, do you even have a will for this world? And if you do, God, we can only assume that it doesn’t include these awful things, right? That your will is not for a world where thousands die each day from starvation and preventable disease? That your will is not for a world torn apart by violence?”
That’s the prayer we pray when we say to God, “Thy kingdom come,” though, isn’t it? “God, the kingdoms of this world are failing. Kingdoms of division and power—they’re not working too well here. Kingdoms where the gap between rich and poor widens at an alarming rate, kingdoms where two percent of the people own half the world’s wealth, kingdoms where children make up the fastest growing homeless population… These kingdoms have failed, God. Thy kingdom come.”
“Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.” These aren’t prayers that give God “permission” to act; they’re prayers that confess just how broken and needy this world is.
Another story from my college days. For a couple years during my spring break, I went with some other students from the University of Illinois to volunteer in an impoverished neighborhood on Chicago’s west side. One of the highlights of those trips was being invited for dinner into families’ homes. These were families being served by the Chicago Urban Project. Living day to day, they struggled to make ends meet.
I’ll never forget my time with one of those families. Two kids, their mother, and their grandmother, all living in a tiny apartment in the Austin neighborhood. Another student and I joined them for a delicious supper of ham and pea soup, corn bread, collard greens… It was an amazing meal and their hospitality was so warm and gracious. The interesting thing about this apartment was that there were boxes here and there, full of things. “Are you getting ready to move?” we asked. “Oh, we’re always thinking about moving.” And then the young daughter pointed to the clock on the wall in their dining room. Just a basic wall clock, but this one was different. Someone had taped a little sign above the number twelve, and it read, “Nebraska time.”
“We’re hoping to move someday,” the mom said. “Get out of here and go to Scottsbluff, Nebraska.” The family knew someone who lived out there, and Scottsbluff had come to represent a new start for them. Now the funny thing is that Nebraska is in the same time zone as Chicago. But that clock wasn’t about keeping track of another time zone, it was about keeping hope alive for another reality. A place where the kids were safe walking to school—where gangs didn’t rule the streets—where the playgrounds weren’t littered with broken glass.
“Nebraska time” is a “thy kingdom come” prayer—a prayer that refuses to believe that the kingdoms around us are final—a courageous prayer that, in the midst of a broken world, says, “God, this cannot possibly be your will!” “Thy kingdom come thy will be done” is not a wish that God would wave a magic wand and make all the bad things go away; rather it’s a statement of faith that brokenness is not the final reality in this world.
“Thy kingdom come” is an active prayer. And a question for you to consider the next time you pray the Lord’s Prayer is this: If I’m willing to pray for God’s kingdom, am I also willing to work for it? Right? If I’m willing to pray for God’s kingdom come, am I also willing to commit myself to its coming.
Alan Redpath once said that “before we can pray, ‘Lord, Thy Kingdom come,’ we must be willing to pray, ‘My Kingdom go.’”
Think for a moment about your own “my kingdom”—the one you’d have to let go of if God’s kingdom were to become more real for you.
In my kingdom, I get to love my friends, and while I don’t hate my enemies, I don’t choose to spend time with them. In God’s kingdom, I’m called to love everyone—everyone.
In my kingdom, it’s often every man and woman for himself or herself. In God’s kingdom, every man is my brother, every woman my sister.
In my kingdom, I get to pretend that the money I have is mine to save or spend. In God’s kingdom, I come to realize that everything belongs to God, and so the money currently in my possession is to be spent and shared responsibly.
Thy kingdom come, my kingdom go. And so the Lord’s Prayer is more than a prayer—it’s a call to action—a commitment we make to God’s kingdom, not someday, but now.
The prophet Micah said it best, perhaps, when he asked, “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” When we do that—when we do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God, we say goodbye to the kingdoms of our own making and we invite God’s kingdom to be a more present reality in our day to day lives.
This week, friends, may the prayer “thy kingdom come” be one that takes you from moment to moment. Begin when you wake up, before your feet even hit the floor, and pray, “God, your kingdom come.” When you greet members of your family and friends and strangers, whisper to yourself, “God, may your kingdom be made known in me in this conversation.” When you work, when you play, when you express warmth and sympathy, let your prayer be, “thy kingdom come.” Pray that God’s kingdom would be made known in your life and in the world around you. Especially when you dream about your own life. When you imagine your days to come and summon hope about your future, make it your earnest prayer: God, may your kingdom come in me.
God’s kingdom come in us, friends, today, this week, and in all our days ahead. Amen.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Be Still. Stop.
Evotional on Wednesday, September 22
Some words from Wayne Muller in his book Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives
When we breathe, we do not stop inhaling because we have taken in all the oxygen we will ever need, but because we have all the oxygen we need for this breath. Then we exhale, release carbon dioxide, and make room for more oxygen. Sabbath, like the breath, allows us to imagine we have done enough work for this day. Do not be anxious about tomorrow, Jesus said again and again. Let the work of this day be sufficient…
Sabbath says, “Be still. Stop. There is no rush to get to the end, because we are never finished. Take time to rest, and eat, and drink, and be refreshed. And in the gentle rhythm of that refreshment, listen to the sound the heart makes as it speaks the quiet truth of what is needed.”
Both in our worship and in our adult Sunday school class, we’ve been thinking openly and expansively about the practice of prayer in our daily lives. In that vein, I’m finding Wayne Muller’s words helpful—especially his line, “Listen to the sound the heart makes as it speaks the quiet truth of what is needed.” The connection between prayer and Sabbath isn’t always automatic for us, I think. We readily acknowledge listening as a form of prayer, but it’s hard to create time for quiet amid the busy clutter of our day-to-day lives.
Maybe it won’t be a whole day for you this week. Maybe not even a whole afternoon or even an hour. But could you carve out some time for Sabbath today? And in that restful quiet, might your prayer simply be your willingness to listen?
Peace,
Pastor Ben
Some words from Wayne Muller in his book Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives
When we breathe, we do not stop inhaling because we have taken in all the oxygen we will ever need, but because we have all the oxygen we need for this breath. Then we exhale, release carbon dioxide, and make room for more oxygen. Sabbath, like the breath, allows us to imagine we have done enough work for this day. Do not be anxious about tomorrow, Jesus said again and again. Let the work of this day be sufficient…
Sabbath says, “Be still. Stop. There is no rush to get to the end, because we are never finished. Take time to rest, and eat, and drink, and be refreshed. And in the gentle rhythm of that refreshment, listen to the sound the heart makes as it speaks the quiet truth of what is needed.”
Both in our worship and in our adult Sunday school class, we’ve been thinking openly and expansively about the practice of prayer in our daily lives. In that vein, I’m finding Wayne Muller’s words helpful—especially his line, “Listen to the sound the heart makes as it speaks the quiet truth of what is needed.” The connection between prayer and Sabbath isn’t always automatic for us, I think. We readily acknowledge listening as a form of prayer, but it’s hard to create time for quiet amid the busy clutter of our day-to-day lives.
Maybe it won’t be a whole day for you this week. Maybe not even a whole afternoon or even an hour. But could you carve out some time for Sabbath today? And in that restful quiet, might your prayer simply be your willingness to listen?
Peace,
Pastor Ben
"Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name." - Matthew 6:7-13
Sermon on Sunday, September 19
Well, as many of you know, today we begin a series on prayer here at First Presbyterian Church. Today and for the next five Sundays, we’re going to explore the Lord’s Prayer together in the sermons, one phrase at a time. By mid-October, you may never want to pray the Lord’s Prayer again. Or (and this is what I hope to accomplish) you may find yourself praying it with more intentionality than ever before.
This past spring I was thinking to myself that while we pray the Lord’s Prayer every single week, it’s not something we necessarily think about much. In fact, I’m going to just go ahead and make a little confession: sometimes my mind wanders when I say it. Am I the only one? It just happens so easily. Beginning the Lord’s Prayer is a little bit like engaging the auto-pilot system of our brains. “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name…” and I’m wondering, is my microphone still on? Hmmm… I’m hungry. What’s for lunch today? Are the Packers “home” or “away” this afternoon? It happens, right? Our lips move and our minds take a little vacation.
This may not be an entirely bad thing. I have been with people who, near the end of their lives, didn’t recognize me or even members of their own families. They didn’t know where they were and couldn’t come close to holding a conversation together. But they could remember the Lord’s Prayer, and they could say it with me. Even more importantly, saying the Lord’s Prayer in those last days of life clearly seemed to bring them a measure of peace and comfort.
Maybe you’ve had that experience with someone else, or maybe you’ve found yourself relying on the Lord’s Prayer in another way—a moment, perhaps, when you knew you needed to pray, but for the life of you, you couldn’t imagine how or what to say. Sometimes it can be nice to just have a prayer ready to go when all else fails. At bedsides and gravesides and following great tragedies, the Lord’s Prayer can come in quite handy, simply because people have it memorized.
This is probably true for most of us—that, having the Lord’s Prayer memorized, we know that it will be there if and when we need it most, but also, because we have the Lord’s Prayer memorized on such a deep level, when we say it each week in worship, we tend not to think about what we’re praying as much as we could.
That’s one of the reasons I’ve chosen to lead us through this series. We pray the Lord’s Prayer every Sunday, and because of that it has become ingrained on a deep level in our spirits, but also it has become something we can easily recite without engaging our minds much. And that interests me—that we have this weekly prayer that is both central to our identity and distanced from our thinking.
My hope in this series is that by dwelling on the language of the Lord’s Prayer, we might find ourselves entering into it a little more deeply each Sunday. My hope is that this prayer becomes something new for you on some level—not just more talking in church, but something new.
I remember when my brother and I were little and we made a case with our parents for why we didn’t want to go to church one Sunday. “We’d rather not go,” we told them. “Why?” my mom asked? “Don’t you like church? Don’t you like Sunday school? Don’t you want to see all your friends?” And we were ready with our reason: “There’s too much talking in church.” Too much talking. It wasn’t that we didn’t want to get up early on a Sunday and it wasn’t that we didn’t like wearing our Sunday clothes. It was that at church, there was too much talking.
As an adult in the church today, sometimes I wonder if we have too much talking in here—which, of course, leads to a bit of a dilemma for me personally, since I’m the one doing much of it. But here we have this hour together and week after week, we tend to fill it up with a lot of words…
Jesus taught, “When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words.” So maybe Jesus would have joined my brother and me in our plight, claiming that there was “too much talking” in church. Jesus encouraged his followers to get to the point and do it quickly. And so the Lord’s Prayer was born out of a desire to be brief before God—to approach prayer with simplicity, using as few words as possible and certainly to avoid heaping up “empty phrases.”
And so Jesus begins: “Our Father…” Right away, this prayer is different—radically different. Did you know that in the entire Old Testament, the father image for God appears only seven times? Seven! God is called a lot of things in the Hebrew Scriptures, and we’ll get to that shortly, but “Father”? Just seven times. By the way, guess how many times a motherly image for God appears in the Old Testament. Ten. My point here is simple—in the Old Testament, we have seventeen parental images for God—just seventeen. And yet Jesus calls God “Father.”
This was Jesus’ favorite description of God. In fact, Jesus sometimes called God “Abba,” an Aramaic word which really should be translated as something like “Papa” or “Daddy.” Jesus’ word for God was an intimate one—Daddy—and it implied something their relationship. “Daddy, will you tell me a story.” “Daddy, can I stay up late with you tonight?” “Daddy, I fell and hurt my knee.”
Jesus begins the prayer with a model for understanding God’s relationship with us. And it’s not an invitation to think of God not just as some far-distant force in the universe or as some untouchable, unapproachable presence, but rather as a parent.
I tend not to get too caught up in discussions of God’s gender. In the Old Testament, we’ve got seven images of God as father and ten as mother. Jesus’ favorite way of thinking about God was as “Father” or “Daddy,” but certainly the Bible’s got lots of other names. God is Spirit, and the Eternal Word, and God is Wisdom. The Old Testament psalmists and prophets sometimes used images of animals to describe God: a mother bear, an eagle, a lion, a mother hen. And then we’ve got some nature images for God. In the book of Deuteronomy, God is Fire, in Acts, God comes as the Wind. God is a Rock in Isaiah and Water in Jeremiah. Finally, in John’s gospel, God is referred to as Light. The Bible also contains a number of human images for God—shepherd, baker, potter, midwife, friend…
So which is it? Should we call God “Father” or “Mother.” Well, the problem with that question is that it’s too small. Remember that story from Exodus, where God’s voice comes to Moses from the burning bush? Moses asks, “Who are you?” and God responds, “I am who I am”—or—“I will be who I will be.” In other words, there is no pinning me down. If all you do is call me “Father” or “Mother,” it’s not enough.
We have no human categories to contain God. All our words fall short. God is God, and there is no word or phrase or image in the human language that can pin God down to one identity or name. [10:13] So what do we do? We call God “Father” and “Mother” and “Spirit” and “Truth” and “Shepherd” and “Jesus” and “Love” and…
A lot of kids think God’s name is Howard. Did you know that? There’s at least one in every church. “Our Father, who art in heaven, Howard be thy name.”
I love the phrase, “Hallowed be thy name.” Hallowed is your name. Holy and Sacred is your name. And so it’s as if Jesus makes two moves in the beginning of the Prayer. First, he names God something specific, “Father”—and so he implies that closeness, that intimacy between parent and child. But then, without naming God specifically, Jesus says that God’s name is “hallowed”—sacred, holy. Jesus, in good Jewish tradition, understood that God’s name was beyond a human being’s ability to pronounce—that there is no human word that can speak to the depths of God’s existence, and so it is better to say instead that God’s name is hallowed, sacred and beyond what we can say or imagine.
So now I’d like to give you two things to do the next time you pray the Lord’s Prayer. Just two things. The first is this: think of God as a child thinks of his or her parent. “Daddy.” “Mommy.” When you pray, approach God in that way, knowing God intimately, trusting God completely. And remember that a child doesn’t worry about how the words come out. Believe me, a three-year-old or a six-year-old child isn’t overly concerned about proper form when it comes to making herself heard in the presence of a parent. So quit worrying about praying the “right way.” Don’t try to sound like a serious Christian. Don’t try to sound like your pastor. Don’t try to be anybody you’re not. Just pray. “Daddy… Mommy… God…”
The second thing I’d like you to do the next time you pray the Lord’s Prayer is to simply dwell for a moment on the phrase, “hallowed be thy name.” In fact, let’s all begin the prayer together, and let’s stop right there, after that phrase. Ready? “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name… God, your name—your identity—is hallowed, holy, sacred. It’s beyond all our words. We could talk to the end of time, God, and still not completely name or describe you. All the words in the Bible and all the words in human language can’t make a word to adequately name you, God.”
Friends, next time you pray, “hallowed be thy name,” remember that! And then remember this: you were created in God’s image! Just as God is known as “hallowed, sacred,” there is a part of you, too, that is beyond knowing. There is a depth to your character that is beyond words. Part of your adventure in life is plunging the depths of your own soul, knowing that you will never reach the bottom.
That’s a beautiful way to think of yourself, and you should think of yourself that way. And while you’re at it, remember that the people around you contain that same hallowed, sacred quality. Everyone around you… here in this church, in your family, that angry guy who cut you off in traffic, the people you work with, the woman on the street who’s going to ask you for spare change this week… all created in the sacred, hallowed image of God.
Hallowed-holy and sacred-be the name of God, the name that is beyond all our words. And hallowed be our sense of God's presence in our own lives and in the lives of those around us. Amen and amen!
Well, as many of you know, today we begin a series on prayer here at First Presbyterian Church. Today and for the next five Sundays, we’re going to explore the Lord’s Prayer together in the sermons, one phrase at a time. By mid-October, you may never want to pray the Lord’s Prayer again. Or (and this is what I hope to accomplish) you may find yourself praying it with more intentionality than ever before.
This past spring I was thinking to myself that while we pray the Lord’s Prayer every single week, it’s not something we necessarily think about much. In fact, I’m going to just go ahead and make a little confession: sometimes my mind wanders when I say it. Am I the only one? It just happens so easily. Beginning the Lord’s Prayer is a little bit like engaging the auto-pilot system of our brains. “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name…” and I’m wondering, is my microphone still on? Hmmm… I’m hungry. What’s for lunch today? Are the Packers “home” or “away” this afternoon? It happens, right? Our lips move and our minds take a little vacation.
This may not be an entirely bad thing. I have been with people who, near the end of their lives, didn’t recognize me or even members of their own families. They didn’t know where they were and couldn’t come close to holding a conversation together. But they could remember the Lord’s Prayer, and they could say it with me. Even more importantly, saying the Lord’s Prayer in those last days of life clearly seemed to bring them a measure of peace and comfort.
Maybe you’ve had that experience with someone else, or maybe you’ve found yourself relying on the Lord’s Prayer in another way—a moment, perhaps, when you knew you needed to pray, but for the life of you, you couldn’t imagine how or what to say. Sometimes it can be nice to just have a prayer ready to go when all else fails. At bedsides and gravesides and following great tragedies, the Lord’s Prayer can come in quite handy, simply because people have it memorized.
This is probably true for most of us—that, having the Lord’s Prayer memorized, we know that it will be there if and when we need it most, but also, because we have the Lord’s Prayer memorized on such a deep level, when we say it each week in worship, we tend not to think about what we’re praying as much as we could.
That’s one of the reasons I’ve chosen to lead us through this series. We pray the Lord’s Prayer every Sunday, and because of that it has become ingrained on a deep level in our spirits, but also it has become something we can easily recite without engaging our minds much. And that interests me—that we have this weekly prayer that is both central to our identity and distanced from our thinking.
My hope in this series is that by dwelling on the language of the Lord’s Prayer, we might find ourselves entering into it a little more deeply each Sunday. My hope is that this prayer becomes something new for you on some level—not just more talking in church, but something new.
I remember when my brother and I were little and we made a case with our parents for why we didn’t want to go to church one Sunday. “We’d rather not go,” we told them. “Why?” my mom asked? “Don’t you like church? Don’t you like Sunday school? Don’t you want to see all your friends?” And we were ready with our reason: “There’s too much talking in church.” Too much talking. It wasn’t that we didn’t want to get up early on a Sunday and it wasn’t that we didn’t like wearing our Sunday clothes. It was that at church, there was too much talking.
As an adult in the church today, sometimes I wonder if we have too much talking in here—which, of course, leads to a bit of a dilemma for me personally, since I’m the one doing much of it. But here we have this hour together and week after week, we tend to fill it up with a lot of words…
Jesus taught, “When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words.” So maybe Jesus would have joined my brother and me in our plight, claiming that there was “too much talking” in church. Jesus encouraged his followers to get to the point and do it quickly. And so the Lord’s Prayer was born out of a desire to be brief before God—to approach prayer with simplicity, using as few words as possible and certainly to avoid heaping up “empty phrases.”
And so Jesus begins: “Our Father…” Right away, this prayer is different—radically different. Did you know that in the entire Old Testament, the father image for God appears only seven times? Seven! God is called a lot of things in the Hebrew Scriptures, and we’ll get to that shortly, but “Father”? Just seven times. By the way, guess how many times a motherly image for God appears in the Old Testament. Ten. My point here is simple—in the Old Testament, we have seventeen parental images for God—just seventeen. And yet Jesus calls God “Father.”
This was Jesus’ favorite description of God. In fact, Jesus sometimes called God “Abba,” an Aramaic word which really should be translated as something like “Papa” or “Daddy.” Jesus’ word for God was an intimate one—Daddy—and it implied something their relationship. “Daddy, will you tell me a story.” “Daddy, can I stay up late with you tonight?” “Daddy, I fell and hurt my knee.”
Jesus begins the prayer with a model for understanding God’s relationship with us. And it’s not an invitation to think of God not just as some far-distant force in the universe or as some untouchable, unapproachable presence, but rather as a parent.
I tend not to get too caught up in discussions of God’s gender. In the Old Testament, we’ve got seven images of God as father and ten as mother. Jesus’ favorite way of thinking about God was as “Father” or “Daddy,” but certainly the Bible’s got lots of other names. God is Spirit, and the Eternal Word, and God is Wisdom. The Old Testament psalmists and prophets sometimes used images of animals to describe God: a mother bear, an eagle, a lion, a mother hen. And then we’ve got some nature images for God. In the book of Deuteronomy, God is Fire, in Acts, God comes as the Wind. God is a Rock in Isaiah and Water in Jeremiah. Finally, in John’s gospel, God is referred to as Light. The Bible also contains a number of human images for God—shepherd, baker, potter, midwife, friend…
So which is it? Should we call God “Father” or “Mother.” Well, the problem with that question is that it’s too small. Remember that story from Exodus, where God’s voice comes to Moses from the burning bush? Moses asks, “Who are you?” and God responds, “I am who I am”—or—“I will be who I will be.” In other words, there is no pinning me down. If all you do is call me “Father” or “Mother,” it’s not enough.
We have no human categories to contain God. All our words fall short. God is God, and there is no word or phrase or image in the human language that can pin God down to one identity or name. [10:13] So what do we do? We call God “Father” and “Mother” and “Spirit” and “Truth” and “Shepherd” and “Jesus” and “Love” and…
A lot of kids think God’s name is Howard. Did you know that? There’s at least one in every church. “Our Father, who art in heaven, Howard be thy name.”
I love the phrase, “Hallowed be thy name.” Hallowed is your name. Holy and Sacred is your name. And so it’s as if Jesus makes two moves in the beginning of the Prayer. First, he names God something specific, “Father”—and so he implies that closeness, that intimacy between parent and child. But then, without naming God specifically, Jesus says that God’s name is “hallowed”—sacred, holy. Jesus, in good Jewish tradition, understood that God’s name was beyond a human being’s ability to pronounce—that there is no human word that can speak to the depths of God’s existence, and so it is better to say instead that God’s name is hallowed, sacred and beyond what we can say or imagine.
So now I’d like to give you two things to do the next time you pray the Lord’s Prayer. Just two things. The first is this: think of God as a child thinks of his or her parent. “Daddy.” “Mommy.” When you pray, approach God in that way, knowing God intimately, trusting God completely. And remember that a child doesn’t worry about how the words come out. Believe me, a three-year-old or a six-year-old child isn’t overly concerned about proper form when it comes to making herself heard in the presence of a parent. So quit worrying about praying the “right way.” Don’t try to sound like a serious Christian. Don’t try to sound like your pastor. Don’t try to be anybody you’re not. Just pray. “Daddy… Mommy… God…”
The second thing I’d like you to do the next time you pray the Lord’s Prayer is to simply dwell for a moment on the phrase, “hallowed be thy name.” In fact, let’s all begin the prayer together, and let’s stop right there, after that phrase. Ready? “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name… God, your name—your identity—is hallowed, holy, sacred. It’s beyond all our words. We could talk to the end of time, God, and still not completely name or describe you. All the words in the Bible and all the words in human language can’t make a word to adequately name you, God.”
Friends, next time you pray, “hallowed be thy name,” remember that! And then remember this: you were created in God’s image! Just as God is known as “hallowed, sacred,” there is a part of you, too, that is beyond knowing. There is a depth to your character that is beyond words. Part of your adventure in life is plunging the depths of your own soul, knowing that you will never reach the bottom.
That’s a beautiful way to think of yourself, and you should think of yourself that way. And while you’re at it, remember that the people around you contain that same hallowed, sacred quality. Everyone around you… here in this church, in your family, that angry guy who cut you off in traffic, the people you work with, the woman on the street who’s going to ask you for spare change this week… all created in the sacred, hallowed image of God.
Hallowed-holy and sacred-be the name of God, the name that is beyond all our words. And hallowed be our sense of God's presence in our own lives and in the lives of those around us. Amen and amen!
Monday, September 13, 2010
Remember Who You Are - Matthew 18:1-5
Sermon on September 12, 2010
At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” He called a child, whom he put among them, and said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”
Well, today is Rally Day—the last utter confirmation that summer is indeed over and that fall is here. As far as church life is concerned, we are now officially “back into the swing of things” as we watch our kids scamper off to Kaleidoscope and Sunday school this morning. At the end of this worship service, we will invite our children and youth to come forward to join their teachers at the front of the sanctuary, and we’ll celebrate them as they make their way upstairs or downstairs to their classrooms.
Maybe you’ve heard this one. A little girl, dressed in her Sunday best, was running as fast as she could, trying not to be late for Sunday school. As she ran she prayed, “Dear Lord, please don't let me be late! Dear Lord, please don't let me be late!” While she was running and praying, she tripped on a curb and fell, getting her clothes dirty and tearing her dress. She got up, brushed herself off, and started running again. As she ran she once again began to pray, “Dear Lord, please don't let me be late... But please don't shove me either!”
Off they go for another year. And I know I’ve said this before. We often hear that our children are the future of the church—that our youth are the future of the church. But that’s just wrong, completely wrong. Our children and youth are the church right now. They’re the church now. Maybe that’s a little bit of what Jesus was thinking when he called the disciples’ attention to a child and said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” The simple nature of childhood is a gift to those of us who would embrace the kingdom more fully.
Jesus goes on to say that “whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.” Keep that in mind every time you welcome children in this church family—when you see them coming in the door on Sunday morning, when you see them running around fellowship hall, and even when the child in the pew behind you is getting a little restless during worship. When you welcome one such child, you welcome Christ. Jesus seems pretty clear on this one, folks—that God’s very presence is seen and felt in the lives of the least of these—especially children.
Change. Become like children and enter the kingdom. I hope I’m not the first or last to confess that I often think more about what our children need to learn than what they have to teach. Perhaps it’s just that as I look at the world around us, I can’t help but feel the weight of this task before us—this task of raising our children in the faith and helping them embrace their identity as followers of Jesus. Because it’s been some of Jesus’ followers who’ve been driving me crazy lately… Christians whose language is filled with fear, Christians who somehow think it’s appropriate to even consider burning the Koran, Christians who think of the world in terms of “us” and “them.”
We live in an age where people’s beliefs about God seem to inspire them to build fences rather than bridges. The proposal to build a mosque near Ground Zero in New York City reveals an ugly truth about humankind at the moment—not only do we not understand each another, but we’re also apparently not willing to work to understand each other.
Now make no mistake. The presence of violent Islamic extremism is a real threat in this world—just as the presence of violent Christian extremism has been and could continue to be a real threat in this world. The true enemy is any ideology that fails to acknowledge God’s image in another human being. The real enemy is that temptation we face to project our fears and insecurities onto someone else and to see difference as deficiency.
So this morning, as our kiddos trot off to Sunday school, I wonder to myself, “What kind of world will these children get themselves into one day, and how do we prepare them for it? How do we, as their family of faith, encourage and equip our children to be faithful to a gospel of love in a world so easily tempted by fear?” The great task we’ve been given as a church when it comes to our children is one of shaping and nurturing identity.
With that in mind, a story that I love comes out of a particular tribe of people in Africa. When a woman of that tribe knows she is pregnant, she goes into the wilderness with a few friends and together they pray and meditate until they hear the song of the unborn child. When the women attune to the song, they sing it out loud. Then they return to the tribe and teach it to everyone else. When the child is born, the community gathers and sings the child’s song to him or her. Later, when the child enters education, the village gathers and chants the child’s song. When the child passes through the initiation to adulthood, the people again come together and sing. At the time of marriage, the person hears his or her song. If the person commits a crime or inflicts harm on another, the community sings the song. And I have a feeling that, no matter what the words are to that song, the meaning is always the same: remember who you are, remember who you are, remember who you are.
All along the journey of life, remember who you are.
When you have reason to celebrate, remember who you are.
When you fall in love, remember who you are.
When things get rough, when you make a mistake, when life tempts you to be something you are not, remember who you are.
I have a friend back in Texas who said to his teenage children every time they left the house, “Remember who you are. And remember whose you are.” I like that. And I may use that line someday with my own daughters as they run out the door with the car keys: Remember who you are. You’re a Johnston-Krase. Don’t be someone you’re not. Be yourself. Be your best, truest self. And remember whose you are. You’re a child of God. God’s love is a force in your life to be honored and lived out. So remember whose you are.
When you stop and think about it, that’s basically what we do each week as a church family, isn’t it? For our children and for each other—we come together in worship say, essentially, “Remember who you are.” Remember who you are. Your sins and shortcoming do not define you, for in Jesus Christ you are forgiven. Remember whose you are. You are a disciple of Jesus Christ, and as such, you are called to a life of compassion, love, and peace.
This is life-giving, important work, friends—singing this music of “remember who you are” to each other and to our children—because the world we live can make that song hard to hear.
We’ve got the music of routine, the music of comfort
The music of it’s on sale!
The music of scarcity and get it while you can
The music of fear, the music of isolation
The music of an overscheduled life
The music of every man for himself
The music of nationalism, the music of death, the music of ME first
The drumbeats to these songs are all the same. More, more, more, and me, me, me. And we listen to it all the time. Truth be told, it’s background music to the soundtrack of our lives that plays incessantly on and on and on… Sure, in a clear, quiet moment, we can listen to it and recognize it for the lie that it is, but we seem to run short on clear, quiet moments these days, and it’s as if someone is turning up the volume slowly enough that we never notice.
And in the midst of it all, our song, the song that’s always been ours, is a tune we can’t quite recall. We can sort of hum the melody sometimes, but at other times we open our mouths to sing and find, to our great shock, our song’s gone missing. It’s easy to lose track.
Jesus said that “unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” So, friends, remember your song. Remember who you are. Remember whose you are.
Someone asked me over the summer about the water. You know, every Sunday morning at the beginning of the worship service, I pour water here in this baptismal font. “Why do you do that?” she asked. After all, it’s not like we do a baptism every Sunday.
Every Sunday I pour water into the font to remind us of God’s love and grace. Here at the font, in the sacrament of baptism, we remember that we are God’s children not because of anything we could ever do or believe. Rather, we are God’s children because of who God is. God has loved us, and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it! We can’t escape that love, of course, but neither can we make it more real by trying to earn it. That’s what we believe. And so every Sunday, as I pour water into this font, it’s essentially a song. And the words are…
“Remember who you are. Remember who you are. Remember who you are.”
Amen.
At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” He called a child, whom he put among them, and said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”
Well, today is Rally Day—the last utter confirmation that summer is indeed over and that fall is here. As far as church life is concerned, we are now officially “back into the swing of things” as we watch our kids scamper off to Kaleidoscope and Sunday school this morning. At the end of this worship service, we will invite our children and youth to come forward to join their teachers at the front of the sanctuary, and we’ll celebrate them as they make their way upstairs or downstairs to their classrooms.
Maybe you’ve heard this one. A little girl, dressed in her Sunday best, was running as fast as she could, trying not to be late for Sunday school. As she ran she prayed, “Dear Lord, please don't let me be late! Dear Lord, please don't let me be late!” While she was running and praying, she tripped on a curb and fell, getting her clothes dirty and tearing her dress. She got up, brushed herself off, and started running again. As she ran she once again began to pray, “Dear Lord, please don't let me be late... But please don't shove me either!”
Off they go for another year. And I know I’ve said this before. We often hear that our children are the future of the church—that our youth are the future of the church. But that’s just wrong, completely wrong. Our children and youth are the church right now. They’re the church now. Maybe that’s a little bit of what Jesus was thinking when he called the disciples’ attention to a child and said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” The simple nature of childhood is a gift to those of us who would embrace the kingdom more fully.
Jesus goes on to say that “whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.” Keep that in mind every time you welcome children in this church family—when you see them coming in the door on Sunday morning, when you see them running around fellowship hall, and even when the child in the pew behind you is getting a little restless during worship. When you welcome one such child, you welcome Christ. Jesus seems pretty clear on this one, folks—that God’s very presence is seen and felt in the lives of the least of these—especially children.
Change. Become like children and enter the kingdom. I hope I’m not the first or last to confess that I often think more about what our children need to learn than what they have to teach. Perhaps it’s just that as I look at the world around us, I can’t help but feel the weight of this task before us—this task of raising our children in the faith and helping them embrace their identity as followers of Jesus. Because it’s been some of Jesus’ followers who’ve been driving me crazy lately… Christians whose language is filled with fear, Christians who somehow think it’s appropriate to even consider burning the Koran, Christians who think of the world in terms of “us” and “them.”
We live in an age where people’s beliefs about God seem to inspire them to build fences rather than bridges. The proposal to build a mosque near Ground Zero in New York City reveals an ugly truth about humankind at the moment—not only do we not understand each another, but we’re also apparently not willing to work to understand each other.
Now make no mistake. The presence of violent Islamic extremism is a real threat in this world—just as the presence of violent Christian extremism has been and could continue to be a real threat in this world. The true enemy is any ideology that fails to acknowledge God’s image in another human being. The real enemy is that temptation we face to project our fears and insecurities onto someone else and to see difference as deficiency.
So this morning, as our kiddos trot off to Sunday school, I wonder to myself, “What kind of world will these children get themselves into one day, and how do we prepare them for it? How do we, as their family of faith, encourage and equip our children to be faithful to a gospel of love in a world so easily tempted by fear?” The great task we’ve been given as a church when it comes to our children is one of shaping and nurturing identity.
With that in mind, a story that I love comes out of a particular tribe of people in Africa. When a woman of that tribe knows she is pregnant, she goes into the wilderness with a few friends and together they pray and meditate until they hear the song of the unborn child. When the women attune to the song, they sing it out loud. Then they return to the tribe and teach it to everyone else. When the child is born, the community gathers and sings the child’s song to him or her. Later, when the child enters education, the village gathers and chants the child’s song. When the child passes through the initiation to adulthood, the people again come together and sing. At the time of marriage, the person hears his or her song. If the person commits a crime or inflicts harm on another, the community sings the song. And I have a feeling that, no matter what the words are to that song, the meaning is always the same: remember who you are, remember who you are, remember who you are.
All along the journey of life, remember who you are.
When you have reason to celebrate, remember who you are.
When you fall in love, remember who you are.
When things get rough, when you make a mistake, when life tempts you to be something you are not, remember who you are.
I have a friend back in Texas who said to his teenage children every time they left the house, “Remember who you are. And remember whose you are.” I like that. And I may use that line someday with my own daughters as they run out the door with the car keys: Remember who you are. You’re a Johnston-Krase. Don’t be someone you’re not. Be yourself. Be your best, truest self. And remember whose you are. You’re a child of God. God’s love is a force in your life to be honored and lived out. So remember whose you are.
When you stop and think about it, that’s basically what we do each week as a church family, isn’t it? For our children and for each other—we come together in worship say, essentially, “Remember who you are.” Remember who you are. Your sins and shortcoming do not define you, for in Jesus Christ you are forgiven. Remember whose you are. You are a disciple of Jesus Christ, and as such, you are called to a life of compassion, love, and peace.
This is life-giving, important work, friends—singing this music of “remember who you are” to each other and to our children—because the world we live can make that song hard to hear.
We’ve got the music of routine, the music of comfort
The music of it’s on sale!
The music of scarcity and get it while you can
The music of fear, the music of isolation
The music of an overscheduled life
The music of every man for himself
The music of nationalism, the music of death, the music of ME first
The drumbeats to these songs are all the same. More, more, more, and me, me, me. And we listen to it all the time. Truth be told, it’s background music to the soundtrack of our lives that plays incessantly on and on and on… Sure, in a clear, quiet moment, we can listen to it and recognize it for the lie that it is, but we seem to run short on clear, quiet moments these days, and it’s as if someone is turning up the volume slowly enough that we never notice.
And in the midst of it all, our song, the song that’s always been ours, is a tune we can’t quite recall. We can sort of hum the melody sometimes, but at other times we open our mouths to sing and find, to our great shock, our song’s gone missing. It’s easy to lose track.
Jesus said that “unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” So, friends, remember your song. Remember who you are. Remember whose you are.
Someone asked me over the summer about the water. You know, every Sunday morning at the beginning of the worship service, I pour water here in this baptismal font. “Why do you do that?” she asked. After all, it’s not like we do a baptism every Sunday.
Every Sunday I pour water into the font to remind us of God’s love and grace. Here at the font, in the sacrament of baptism, we remember that we are God’s children not because of anything we could ever do or believe. Rather, we are God’s children because of who God is. God has loved us, and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it! We can’t escape that love, of course, but neither can we make it more real by trying to earn it. That’s what we believe. And so every Sunday, as I pour water into this font, it’s essentially a song. And the words are…
“Remember who you are. Remember who you are. Remember who you are.”
Amen.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Evotional - Hand and Heart
“To Those Songs”
Your body is a divine stream,
as is your spirit.
When your two great rivers merge, one voice is found
and the earth applauds
in excitement.
Shrines are erected to those songs
the hand had heart have sung
as they served
the world
with a love, a love
we cherish.
- St. John of the Cross (1542-1592), translated by Daniel Ladinsky
The richest definitions of faithfulness imply a healthy marriage of mind and body—of heartfelt conviction and the actions that follow. May this image of the hand and heart singing a song together inspire you to think about your own life and minstry.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
"Counting the Cost" Luke 14:25-33
Sermon on September 5, 2010
Now large crowds were traveling with him; and he turned and said to them, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
Rachel was in her mid-twenties when she left the church. It wasn’t a gradual drifting away, but rather a conscious decision to leave. She’d been active in the congregation—showed up at quite a few things, helped out with Vacation Bible School… Folks in the church were a little surprised to hear that she’d left.
“Oh, well you know Rachel—she’s so busy all the time,” someone said. And it was true. Rachel had a new job that took a lot of energy and time, and she and her fiancé Chuck were planning a wedding the following summer. She volunteered at the food pantry, she mentored a student in a local after-school program, and she had just started taking classes for a master’s degree. She was the kind of person any church would love to have on board—bright, energetic, engaged… and busy, too, that’s true.
Her pastor was a friend of mine, and he gave her a call and they met for a cup of coffee. “Well, we miss you at church,” he said to Rachel as they sat down, “but I think I understand. You’ve got a lot going on, and it can be hard when you’re so busy.” Rachel looked him straight in the eye and said, politely but firmly, “Busy has nothing to do with it. I didn’t stop coming because I was too busy—I stopped coming because the church didn’t seem to need me.”
Her pastor confessed to me and some other colleagues later that he’d been hesitant to ask too much of Rachel when she was a member. “With her being so busy, I didn’t want Rachel to feel like the church was piling too much on. But as it turned out, it was her sense of the church’s low expectations that drove her away.”
Have you ever felt that way? Like the church isn’t expecting enough of you? (If you do, please see me and we can talk!) It’s easy for a church, though, to fall into the trap of having low expectations. After all, people really are busy these days, and with that, they’re understandably skittish when it comes to long-term commitments. That’s probably why the term “commitment-free” is popping up more and more these days. Cell phone plans, cable TV options, marketing strategies—they’re all using the language of “commitment-free” in hopes to connect with consumers who can’t stand the thought of one more thing to keep track of in their lives.
A nation-wide volunteer organization called “One Brick” has tapped into this same reluctance to commit in our culture. One Brick’s website lists ways that people can volunteer in their communities, but the jobs are always short-term—a couple hours on a Saturday afternoon, maybe. When the job is done, it’s over. One Brick boasts on its website, “Our ‘commitment-free volunteering’ allows you to choose when you volunteer, rather than having to make commitments for a certain number of volunteer hours, or agree to be available every week at a specific time. Volunteering made easy!”
And I get it. I’m nervous about commitments too. I’m reminded of that every time I’m asked to write down my email address. All can be right with the world, but then, while filling out a form in the dentist’s office or buying a pair of shoes online, I’m asked for my email, and suddenly the thought of just one more useless email in my inbox is about enough to do me in!
So I get it. I don’t need more emails to delete. I don’t need more stuff to read. I don’t need more stuff to do. No one needs more stuff to do! But I also get it when I see churches fall into the trap of having low expectations. It’s never an intentional strategy, really—more like a subconscious surrender to an overly-cluttered culture.
Jesus says to his disciples and to the crowds in Luke’s gospel, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple… Not one of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.” Yikes! Obviously Jesus did not confer with his marketing strategist before he chose these words. Hate father and mother? Hate? Carry the cross? And hate life itself? Give up all my possessions? Gosh golly, Jesus, you really make being a disciple sound fun, but as it turns out, I am kind of busy right now… Clearly this is not a “commitment-free” discipleship Jesus is offering.
I do want to take a moment to talk about the word “hate” here. In our family, “hate” is a bad word, and Sylvia reminds us of that every time we say it. “Oh, I hate being late,” I’ll say as we dash off to the van on a school morning. “Dad, you shouldn’t hate.” “You’re right, Sylvia…”
Here Jesus tells us to hate your father and mother, hate your spouse and children, hate your brother and sister, hate life itself… It’s sort of strange hearing these words coming from the one who commanded us to love others as we love ourselves. But the word “hate” here is an ancient expression that means “to turn away from.” So what Jesus is demanding here is not a true hatred of family or self. Rather, Jesus is acknowledging the commitments and loyalties we keep, and he’s saying that in the midst of them all, the gospel should not only take precedence, but it should also redefine the others. (1)
“Turn away from anything that attempts to define you more clearly than the gospel,” Jesus could have said—“Turn away from the expectations of others, turn away from that mountain of stuff you have, and even turn away from your life as you know it, if you have to.” These words come as a challenge to any church attempting to cope with an overscheduled culture by demanding less of its people. But friends, we do have an overscheduled culture on our hands. None of us need more stuff to do. Certainly the people who aren’t here yet don’t need more stuff to do.
So what do we do? First, I think we need to identify the disconnect that often exists between our message and our expectations.
When I taught eighth grade, I had a colleague who was constantly telling his class to stop talking and pay attention. “Stop talking. Pay attention. This is important,” he’d tell his class. Over and over again. “Stop talking. Pay attention. This is important.” Sometimes he’d say it nonchalantly: “Stop talking. Pay attention. This is important.” Sometimes it would be a yell: “Stop talking! Pay attention! This is important!” He said it so much, it lost all meaning. And it never worked. His class never seemed to stop talking. I don’t know if they paid attention or thought anything was important in that room. I do know that in an odd way, that teacher’s strategy for classroom management undermined his hopes for teaching. He said “Stop talking, pay attention, this is important” so many times that it became background noise, and by the end of the year, he may as well have been telling his students, “Keep talking, guys. Don’t pay attention. This isn’t important.”
Sometimes I think the Christian church is like that teacher. The message we send to our culture, time and time again, is “Jesus Christ is Lord.” But the expectation we often make is that Jesus’ lordship is something you can easily squeeze into your busy schedule—that there’s room in your free time for the gospel.
The message Jesus gives the crowd is that this isn’t about anybody’s free time. It’s not about what you do when you’re not committed to work or family. It’s not about something you can squeeze in on the weekend. Rather for Jesus, discipleship is about life itself. Discipleship isn’t about one more thing—rather, it’s about everything.
I think this is good news for those of us who feel trapped by the demands of an overscheduled lifestyle in a cluttered culture. Following Christ’s Way isn’t about adding something new to the long list of things we have to do: Finish up the project at work, stop at the store on the way home, feed the kids, drive them to soccer practice, do laundry, mow the lawn, and follow Jesus. It doesn’t work that way. Your spirituality is not meant to be an “add-on” in your life. Christ’s invitation to become a disciple, rather, is an invitation for Christ’s Way to be everything in your life.
With that in mind, there isn’t a church in the world that will score points for long by making Christianity sound convenient or compatible with life’s busy-ness. But there’s a lot of room for a family of faith that understands more fully the cost of being a disciple of Jesus Christ. And the cost is this: everything. Everything. Jesus tells all would-be followers in Luke’s gospel, “I don’t want half of you. I don’t want the left-over you. I don’t want the care-about-justice-sometimes you. I don’t want the when-I-get-around-to-it you.” I want you entirely. Every fiber of your thought and being. Every care and concern. Every hope and possibility.
Now make no mistake. This is not a discussion of church activity. This is not a hope for perfect worship attendance. Rather, this is a reminder that being a disciple of Jesus Christ is not part-time. When we give our lives over to the lordship of Jesus Christ, we invite Christ’s Way to be our way completely. Christ’s Way—the way of compassion, the way of justice, the way of looking out for the poor and the oppressed, the way of mindful, attentive love for others and for self. Being a disciple means being a follower of that Way, and consequently hating—or turning from—anything that would prevent us from doing otherwise.
As we enter another school year, my hopeful prayer for this church is that we would continually find ourselves centered in Christ—allowing the loving character of Christ to define us as a family of faith, and following Christ in all that we do.
Racine doesn’t need another church giving people stuff to do when they’re not busy with other stuff. And neither do you. Racine—the whole world—needs a church that has found its identity in Christ—a church that understands that the cost of discipleship is everything—and a church that therefore has everything to give. Amen.
1. I'm grateful for Fred Craddock's insights into this passage in his commentary on Luke's gospel in the Interpretation series.
Now large crowds were traveling with him; and he turned and said to them, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
Rachel was in her mid-twenties when she left the church. It wasn’t a gradual drifting away, but rather a conscious decision to leave. She’d been active in the congregation—showed up at quite a few things, helped out with Vacation Bible School… Folks in the church were a little surprised to hear that she’d left.
“Oh, well you know Rachel—she’s so busy all the time,” someone said. And it was true. Rachel had a new job that took a lot of energy and time, and she and her fiancé Chuck were planning a wedding the following summer. She volunteered at the food pantry, she mentored a student in a local after-school program, and she had just started taking classes for a master’s degree. She was the kind of person any church would love to have on board—bright, energetic, engaged… and busy, too, that’s true.
Her pastor was a friend of mine, and he gave her a call and they met for a cup of coffee. “Well, we miss you at church,” he said to Rachel as they sat down, “but I think I understand. You’ve got a lot going on, and it can be hard when you’re so busy.” Rachel looked him straight in the eye and said, politely but firmly, “Busy has nothing to do with it. I didn’t stop coming because I was too busy—I stopped coming because the church didn’t seem to need me.”
Her pastor confessed to me and some other colleagues later that he’d been hesitant to ask too much of Rachel when she was a member. “With her being so busy, I didn’t want Rachel to feel like the church was piling too much on. But as it turned out, it was her sense of the church’s low expectations that drove her away.”
Have you ever felt that way? Like the church isn’t expecting enough of you? (If you do, please see me and we can talk!) It’s easy for a church, though, to fall into the trap of having low expectations. After all, people really are busy these days, and with that, they’re understandably skittish when it comes to long-term commitments. That’s probably why the term “commitment-free” is popping up more and more these days. Cell phone plans, cable TV options, marketing strategies—they’re all using the language of “commitment-free” in hopes to connect with consumers who can’t stand the thought of one more thing to keep track of in their lives.
A nation-wide volunteer organization called “One Brick” has tapped into this same reluctance to commit in our culture. One Brick’s website lists ways that people can volunteer in their communities, but the jobs are always short-term—a couple hours on a Saturday afternoon, maybe. When the job is done, it’s over. One Brick boasts on its website, “Our ‘commitment-free volunteering’ allows you to choose when you volunteer, rather than having to make commitments for a certain number of volunteer hours, or agree to be available every week at a specific time. Volunteering made easy!”
And I get it. I’m nervous about commitments too. I’m reminded of that every time I’m asked to write down my email address. All can be right with the world, but then, while filling out a form in the dentist’s office or buying a pair of shoes online, I’m asked for my email, and suddenly the thought of just one more useless email in my inbox is about enough to do me in!
So I get it. I don’t need more emails to delete. I don’t need more stuff to read. I don’t need more stuff to do. No one needs more stuff to do! But I also get it when I see churches fall into the trap of having low expectations. It’s never an intentional strategy, really—more like a subconscious surrender to an overly-cluttered culture.
Jesus says to his disciples and to the crowds in Luke’s gospel, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple… Not one of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.” Yikes! Obviously Jesus did not confer with his marketing strategist before he chose these words. Hate father and mother? Hate? Carry the cross? And hate life itself? Give up all my possessions? Gosh golly, Jesus, you really make being a disciple sound fun, but as it turns out, I am kind of busy right now… Clearly this is not a “commitment-free” discipleship Jesus is offering.
I do want to take a moment to talk about the word “hate” here. In our family, “hate” is a bad word, and Sylvia reminds us of that every time we say it. “Oh, I hate being late,” I’ll say as we dash off to the van on a school morning. “Dad, you shouldn’t hate.” “You’re right, Sylvia…”
Here Jesus tells us to hate your father and mother, hate your spouse and children, hate your brother and sister, hate life itself… It’s sort of strange hearing these words coming from the one who commanded us to love others as we love ourselves. But the word “hate” here is an ancient expression that means “to turn away from.” So what Jesus is demanding here is not a true hatred of family or self. Rather, Jesus is acknowledging the commitments and loyalties we keep, and he’s saying that in the midst of them all, the gospel should not only take precedence, but it should also redefine the others. (1)
“Turn away from anything that attempts to define you more clearly than the gospel,” Jesus could have said—“Turn away from the expectations of others, turn away from that mountain of stuff you have, and even turn away from your life as you know it, if you have to.” These words come as a challenge to any church attempting to cope with an overscheduled culture by demanding less of its people. But friends, we do have an overscheduled culture on our hands. None of us need more stuff to do. Certainly the people who aren’t here yet don’t need more stuff to do.
So what do we do? First, I think we need to identify the disconnect that often exists between our message and our expectations.
When I taught eighth grade, I had a colleague who was constantly telling his class to stop talking and pay attention. “Stop talking. Pay attention. This is important,” he’d tell his class. Over and over again. “Stop talking. Pay attention. This is important.” Sometimes he’d say it nonchalantly: “Stop talking. Pay attention. This is important.” Sometimes it would be a yell: “Stop talking! Pay attention! This is important!” He said it so much, it lost all meaning. And it never worked. His class never seemed to stop talking. I don’t know if they paid attention or thought anything was important in that room. I do know that in an odd way, that teacher’s strategy for classroom management undermined his hopes for teaching. He said “Stop talking, pay attention, this is important” so many times that it became background noise, and by the end of the year, he may as well have been telling his students, “Keep talking, guys. Don’t pay attention. This isn’t important.”
Sometimes I think the Christian church is like that teacher. The message we send to our culture, time and time again, is “Jesus Christ is Lord.” But the expectation we often make is that Jesus’ lordship is something you can easily squeeze into your busy schedule—that there’s room in your free time for the gospel.
The message Jesus gives the crowd is that this isn’t about anybody’s free time. It’s not about what you do when you’re not committed to work or family. It’s not about something you can squeeze in on the weekend. Rather for Jesus, discipleship is about life itself. Discipleship isn’t about one more thing—rather, it’s about everything.
I think this is good news for those of us who feel trapped by the demands of an overscheduled lifestyle in a cluttered culture. Following Christ’s Way isn’t about adding something new to the long list of things we have to do: Finish up the project at work, stop at the store on the way home, feed the kids, drive them to soccer practice, do laundry, mow the lawn, and follow Jesus. It doesn’t work that way. Your spirituality is not meant to be an “add-on” in your life. Christ’s invitation to become a disciple, rather, is an invitation for Christ’s Way to be everything in your life.
With that in mind, there isn’t a church in the world that will score points for long by making Christianity sound convenient or compatible with life’s busy-ness. But there’s a lot of room for a family of faith that understands more fully the cost of being a disciple of Jesus Christ. And the cost is this: everything. Everything. Jesus tells all would-be followers in Luke’s gospel, “I don’t want half of you. I don’t want the left-over you. I don’t want the care-about-justice-sometimes you. I don’t want the when-I-get-around-to-it you.” I want you entirely. Every fiber of your thought and being. Every care and concern. Every hope and possibility.
Now make no mistake. This is not a discussion of church activity. This is not a hope for perfect worship attendance. Rather, this is a reminder that being a disciple of Jesus Christ is not part-time. When we give our lives over to the lordship of Jesus Christ, we invite Christ’s Way to be our way completely. Christ’s Way—the way of compassion, the way of justice, the way of looking out for the poor and the oppressed, the way of mindful, attentive love for others and for self. Being a disciple means being a follower of that Way, and consequently hating—or turning from—anything that would prevent us from doing otherwise.
As we enter another school year, my hopeful prayer for this church is that we would continually find ourselves centered in Christ—allowing the loving character of Christ to define us as a family of faith, and following Christ in all that we do.
Racine doesn’t need another church giving people stuff to do when they’re not busy with other stuff. And neither do you. Racine—the whole world—needs a church that has found its identity in Christ—a church that understands that the cost of discipleship is everything—and a church that therefore has everything to give. Amen.
1. I'm grateful for Fred Craddock's insights into this passage in his commentary on Luke's gospel in the Interpretation series.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Evotional - Back to School
It's that time of year again. Our kids are heading back to school. Some of them are even just beginning that particular journey in life as they march off to preschool and kindergarten.
Here at First Presbyterian, we're excited about another year of Sunday school, just days away! Rally Day is Sunday, September 12. Immediately after the worship service, our children will head off to their classrooms with their teachers, and as adults we'll have a short "info-mercial" about some adult education opportunities for the fall. Then, we'll all enjoy a bite to eat in the dining room, thanks to Deborah Circle!
Thinking about learning and the school year ahead, here's a quote to ponder...
"We teach children how to measure, how to weigh. We fail to teach them how to revere, how to sense wonder and awe. The sense of the sublime, the sign of the inward greatness of the human soul and something which is potentially given to all, is now a rare gift." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
In an age that can be anxiously obsessed with certainties, may our educational ministry with children and youth (and with ourselves!) gift our lives with reverie, awe, and wonder.
Here at First Presbyterian, we're excited about another year of Sunday school, just days away! Rally Day is Sunday, September 12. Immediately after the worship service, our children will head off to their classrooms with their teachers, and as adults we'll have a short "info-mercial" about some adult education opportunities for the fall. Then, we'll all enjoy a bite to eat in the dining room, thanks to Deborah Circle!
Thinking about learning and the school year ahead, here's a quote to ponder...
"We teach children how to measure, how to weigh. We fail to teach them how to revere, how to sense wonder and awe. The sense of the sublime, the sign of the inward greatness of the human soul and something which is potentially given to all, is now a rare gift." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
In an age that can be anxiously obsessed with certainties, may our educational ministry with children and youth (and with ourselves!) gift our lives with reverie, awe, and wonder.
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